PARANOIAC POWER

A contribution from Alenka Zupančič

Welcome to the desert of the real!

Below, a fascinating contribution from Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič on power and psychoanalysis.

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(Photograph: Jürgen Klauke Ästhetische Paranoia, 2006 C-print 180 x 240 cm; (70 7/8 x 94 1/2 in.)

In 2006/2007, an exhibition called “Paranoia” was on display at Freud Museum in London. One of its aims was to reflect (mostly through artworks) “the collective sense of dismay over the stupidity, prejudice, and superstition engendered by the ‘war on terror’ in a post-9/11 world.”[1] Some of the key mechanisms of paranoia that the text accompanying the exhibition brings to the fore, based on several quotes from Freud, include projection, absence of reality-check, truth having no grip on us, scapegoating, and an inclination to aggression.

From the initial emphasis on the “post-9/11 world,” it is also clear that “paranoia” was understood here in its broad social meaning and context, rather than just as a clinical category. This is also the approach we will take in this essay. Looking at the world roughly two decades after the exhibition took place, we can certainly detect some similarities in both political and popular comprehension of what is going on. In both cases, there is the sentiment that something has ended for good, or that the world will never be the same again. The world as we knew it is undergoing dramatic changes. Our natural and social environments are experiencing drastic transformations, and profound tectonic shifts are occurring as we speak. These changes mostly manifest through a series of crises that keep hitting us one after another, inducing a rise in precarity and uncertainty: economic crises, the Covid crisis, the war in Ukraine, the Middle East crisis (what a euphemism!), the Trump-induced crisis (aiming for a new domestic as well as global order), and more. On another level, there is also the climate crisis, accompanied by increasingly frequent extreme weather events in different parts of the world.

Several traits emerging in this contemporary context of crises also bear similarities to the epoch in which Freud theorized about the social aspects of paranoia—namely, the period between the two world wars, leading to or coinciding with the rise of fascism. Today, fascism seems to be reemerging in a new form—one that is not simply identical to its previous incarnations but demands further reflection and analysis.

In this article, I would like to contribute a small piece to this analysis by examining the emerging new forms of power, the rise of new authoritarian leaders, and their relationship with the people (particularly their supporters) from the perspective of a singular form of paranoia that seems to be part of this new “end times” configuration.

Before going any further, the following remark is needed: the comments that follow should not be seen as an alternative to socio-economic or geopolitical analysis, nor as an attempt to suggest that a psychological mapping of our social predicaments is superior to other approaches. What I do believe, however, is that such an analysis can help us understand certain mechanisms that play a key role in orchestrating social antagonisms, which are largely independent of individual psychology. Since much of this analysis will focus on the example of Donald Trump and his current administration, it is also important to stress that I do not perceive him or his personality as the root of the problem. A great deal had to happen for someone like him to win the presidency—and for the second time. We should in no way become victims of a reversed Trumpian fantasy, cultivated by many Democrats, and simply believe that if Trump were removed, “America would be great again.” However, his particular persona was able to give concrete form to pre-existing antagonisms and steer them in a certain direction. Even though the problem is “systemic”, its concrete appearance is always determined by some contingency.

What “actually” happened to us?

Dire economic circumstances, wars, social uncertainty and instability, and other forms of crisis: we can indeed observe that these are precisely the conditions in which social paranoia thrives. But is this enough to propose a direct causal relation between the two, and thus explain the rising social forms of paranoia by pointing to hardship, real crises, threats, and traumas to which many people are exposed? I believe that would be a serious mistake. While real, empirical conditions of hardship and insecurity certainly play an important role, the causality is more complex. This is already apparent if we consider the fact that there is no direct correlation between the degree of real hardship one experiences and a tendency, for example, to believe in conspiracy theories—one of the predominant social forms taken by contemporary paranoia. The most ardent advocates of conspiracy theories are seldom those who are the most destitute.

The key element of causality takes place on the level at which empirical hardship or crisis is narratively framed. By this I do not simply mean the explanations (and eventual scapegoats) offered to clarify why we are where we are—that is already secondary. What is at stake is something more fundamental (yet constituting a short-circuit between the most intimate or particular and the social): namely, the characterization of “where we are” (that is, what exactly happened to us, or is happening to us), rather than why we got there (which, again, belongs to another level that certainly exists as well).

In other words, what is at stake is a narrative rendering of hurt—of the status of our “wounds”—which then opens up a whole new playground or “platform” on which our hurt exists socially (even if we do not experience it directly), in relation to others, as a force of both binding and division, and as a basis for possible “explanations” and recipes for recovery.

If we look at how the present problems affecting a growing number of people in the West are being framed by the populist right—most prominently in the US—what do we see? That they are being framed through the overarching trope and rhetoric of “castration.” Perhaps a more adequate word would be “emasculation,” since this is mostly expressed in terms of immediate, almost physical loss of power, potency, vitality, and enjoyment. For example, we can detect this in the way the far right has appropriated the notion of “freedom of speech”—not as a civil right to protect critical voices, but simply as a right to enjoy: in this discourse, “loss of free speech” refers to the inability to insult others freely and to say whatever one feels like saying. Requirements of polite and considerate language, as well as prohibitions concerning symbols and rhetoric associated with Nazism and fascism, are increasingly presented as impediments to freedom understood as the freedom of enjoyment—and, in this sense, as “castrating.” Another trait of this peculiar framing of social ills as “emasculation” is the invocation of humiliation and the dread of being humiliated: “Everybody is laughing at us,” “Nobody takes us seriously,” etc.

This particular narrative framing, however, is not simply one possible framing among others, but a singular one. We could describe it as a framing of “crisis” that has a peculiar power to block the possibility of dealing with the crisis on a symbolic level. In the context of the Lacanian clinic paranoia is understood as a structure erected around an inacessability (or forclosure) of some key signifier. However, if we talk about paranoia as a social and political phenomenon, it is important to keep in mind that we are usually not dealing with a situation in which, due to some contingent yet objective circumstances, a key signifier falls out of reach and gives rise to a paranoid structure. Rather we are dealing with an inaccessibility of the signifier that is being produced on the social level—and produced quite intentionally—even if those producing it don’t fully understand the mechanisms behind it. But they know how to apply them, and they know this because the structure of paranoia is not foreign to them.

We are thus dealing with an interpretative move that blocks, at some crucial point, the symbolic register: the framing of a crisis in terms evoking “castration” goes a long way toward pushing out its signifier, rendering it inaccessible. The “emasculation” narrative does not simply induce fear or castration anxiety—it also succeeds in banning the very signifier that could help people process this anxiety within the symbolic register, that is, help them transpose it from the register of (physical) impotence to that of (symbolic) impossibility or “symbolic castration”. Castration remains operative only in the resister of the imaginary and the real. If you keep telling people that they are being “castrated,” this is obviously not very empowering for them. The message, rather, is: You are (rendered) impotent, and I—the populist leader—am the only one you can trust to eventually restore some power to you. In other words, this is not simply about inducing fear, anxiety, and insecurity in people, but also—and above all—about cutting these experiences off from the symbolic register, presenting them as the real which, at least for the time being, renders people angry, outraged and at the same time powerless.

The battle cry is thus: We are being emasculated, and we cannot allow this—I, your leader, will not allow this! As suggested, this is particularly evident in the US and in the everyday rhetoric of its politics. Everyone is accused of “stealing” from America, “ripping it off,” “taking advantage of it”; the country is said to be invaded by “rapists and criminals”; LGBTQ people are “coming after our children” and want to “chemically castrate them.” People who criticize Trump are labeled as victims of TDS, “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (allegedly making people lose their rationality when it comes to Trump), which is one of the ways the paranoid presuppositions of the far right are projected onto the opposition.[2] And since TDS is also the acronym for “Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome,” this naming performs a double function: accusing the other side of paranoia while simultaneously suggesting their “emasculation.”

Economy, border, foreign policy, and domestic affairs—they all become highly sexualized in this worldview, and this sexualization revolves primarily around the crude opposition Powerful/Weak, invoking and relying on fantasies of “castration.”

It is important to stress that I am not attempting to provide a deeper psychoanalytic reading of this rhetoric by pointing to some underlying fear or threat of castration. On the contrary, the rhetoric is quite explicit: the new authoritarian leaders themselves are the ones shouting “Castration!” and using this trope or “threat” to mobilize people. If anything, they act as amateur psychologists pressing the right buttons in the population. That they themselves might be sensitive to some of these buttons changes little in terms of their instrumental use.

Castration as a contagious disease

There is another peculiar trait at work in this instrumentalized “threat of castration”: the immediate threat is not presented as coming from some other, competing great Power, but rather from those who are already seen as “emasculated” and “weak.” True, there is also the suggestion of some other power-agency—like a “deep state” or “Brussels”—orchestrating this emasculation from behind the scenes. But the important point is that the weapon of this other agency is not power or violence, but the spread of weakness.

Being weak (“emasculated”) is seen as contagious; it immediately corrupts the nature of the strong and powerful. This is why, for example, a simple mention in schools and kindergartens of the existence of gay and trans people is deemed capable of immediately corrupting the eternal and innate Nature of children, turning them all into gay or trans people—that is, into “emasculated people.” Similarly, immigrants are persecuted precisely when they are already most vulnerable, because of their precarious status, and not simply as representatives of some other, alternative potency. To be sure—and similarly to the “deep state” reference—there is also the idea or fantasy of an alternative potency threatening to weaken and “replace us.” But again, most of the immediate fights and battles are fought against the weak, rather than against the strong.

The template here is quite simple—as well as nauseating: when someone is down and vulnerable, keep kicking them until they die or crawl away. Otherwise, this may seriously affect your own “virility.” This is one of the reasons behind the truly nauseating effect of the infamous “showdown” in the Oval Office during Zelensky’s visit in February. Something similar could be said about the infamous recordings of the ruthless deportations of “illegal immigrants,” distributed through official channels. If these things were previously hidden from the public eye, they are now displayed and bragged about. The spectacle of the active humiliation and beating of the “weak” has not only become acceptable, but is actively encouraged and serves a specific purpose. Much of Netanyahu’s rhetoric and that of the genocidal Zionist actions follows the same logic. Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” plan rests on a similar basis: Gaza is in ruins, the devastation is complete, and the Palestinian people are already defeated—so they might as well recognize this and crawl away from our sight.

On the other hand, authoritarian leaders feel good in each other’s company—that is, in the company of other “powerful men.” There is something in this logic that suggests power is just as contagious as weakness: it rubs off on you. If you are in the company of the powerful, power rubs off on you. If you are in the company of the weak, it is weakness (“emasculation”) that rubs off on you. This attitude aligns closely with Elon Musk’s famous statement about empathy being “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”

It should be stressed, however, that the truly detrimental aspect of this position is not simply the alliance of the “powerful” against the “weak,” but rather that this rhetoric and imagery of power obfuscate a very different reality: this “power” is fundamentally a paranoiac power—a power of paranoia.

It was already Freud[3] who pointed out that the fear of being contaminated by the weak (or “castrated by contamination”)—that is, the idea that castration is contagious, something that can be “caught”—is a key trait of paranoia. And it is easy to see why: due to the absence of the signifying cut that separates the symbolic from the real. Without its signifier, castration is no longer the basis of symbolic differentiation and symbolic power, but instead functions more like a virus. (In some parts of society, it even seems as though the denial of the COVID virus and its power is returning here in a displaced form—as a devastating “virus of castration.”)

However, the point is not that these leaders are themselves showing clear signs of paranoia, and are therefore in truth “weak” and scared, that they are not really as powerful and confident as they pretend to be—as if such an exposure could somehow make them lose their harmful power. Because it doesn’t, and we can observe this practically every day. They won’t “deflate” if we expose them as “in fact” weak, because this specific paranoid weakness is precisely what brought them to power under current conditions—and what keeps them there. Put differently: they won’t collapse if we expose them, because their power is not symbolic power—at least not primarily. Which is not to say that it is harmless or incapable of hurting us—quite the contrary.

It is a power that exists only as accumulated real material force—military or police power, direct pressure, and, of course, wealth (we are talking about some of the wealthiest individuals in the world). The flip side of this is the—correct—paranoid assumption that most people do not truly respect them, or not enough. Again, the infamous Trump–Zelensky Oval Office showdown is a clear example of this (“You are being disrespectful!”). The old adage that respect cannot be bought or forced into existence is true—but in the case of paranoid power, this truth only leads to increased displays of force, in search of the other’s break-point.

Mladen Dolar concisely formulates Hannah Arendt’s reflections on authority: symbolic authority essentially functions as a postponed threat, a suspended force or violence. It works as “authority” only for as long as it does not need to directly deploy force. The moment it does, “authority loses its authority.”[4] In relation to authority, authoritarianism starts at the opposite end: it begins as an already lost authority (it usually starts with force and the realization of threats) and tries to make its way back to the impossible point of the coincidence of symbolic authority with the real. In authoritarianism, authority is over-realized; authoritarianism is all about “realization” (“we do things, and efficiently, not just talk about them”), yet at the same time this “realization” is desperately trying to reach the point of symbolic efficiency (that is, the “efficiency of talk” itself), which remains inaccessible to it. This inaccessibility is the driving force of the “surplus realization” and “efficiency.”

The flood of “executive orders” we are witnessing these days is not merely a strategy to overwhelm the opposition—it is also a need that drives this particular authoritarian order, which operates through a peculiar combination of paranoia and perversion. [5]

Or should we say that, in the position of symbolic power, paranoia becomes a form of perversion? Netanyahu’s rhetoric of “existential threats” that require “preemptive” bombings and mass killings of civilians is another bleak expression of this twisted logic of paranoia gone perverse. Or, in the doubly twisted German version of it: Merz stating that Israel is doing “dirty work for all of us”.

The more passionately this kind of authoritarianism tries to reach the point of pure symbolic authority, the more violent it becomes, the more raw force it deploys. From its perspective, it is not the signifier that forges reality; rather, force is applied to reality in order for it to (finally) produce and spit out its signifier. And this is the point where it becomes perverse: the paranoiac idea that signifiers are hiding in the real meets here the perverse logic of forcing reality to itself produce what it is lacking.

When the Woman has to exist

This is important if we are to understand the peculiar combination, in these authoritarian orders, of “naturalism” (biologism, genetic engineering) and “symbolism.” The current obsession of the Trump administration with “biological sex”—which also accompanies the rise of the far right in many other countries—has everything to do with this, and very little, if anything, to do with serious debate about sex and gender. It is also no surprise that the focus is (again, as so often throughout history) on women.

Defining what a “woman” is thus—comically or sinisterly—became a number one state priority. One of the first executive orders signed by President Trump after he took office (in the midst of major world crises and domestic social problems) was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

The way it goes about this goal is well illustrated in the article:

“(b) ‘Women’ or ‘woman’ and ‘girls’ or ‘girl’ shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.”

It is difficult not to see in this pirouetted definition the impossibility that Lacan pointed to in his famous dictum: “The Woman doesn’t exist.” And it is a fact that the imperative to make Her exist on a signifying level has always played a role in the most brutal repression of women. Women have historically been repressed not by the erasure of their symbolic identity, but by being assigned one—by being told what they are, and what that means.

“Feminine” and “masculine” sex are not subjected to culture and cultural meaning(s) of their sex in the same way – there is no symmetry here. When it comes to “men”, the given cultural signification of masculinity colors their being in this or that way; whereas when it comes to women, it creates their being: the (cultural) meaning is their being, immediately. From the Lacanian perspective we could thus say that “woman” is cultural construction in a much stronger, ontological sense of the term. The specifications and determination of what does it mean to be a woman take place of the non-existing signifier, and is expected to fulfil the role of the later: the content or signification has to function itself as a signifier (of the feminine), and it is precisely at this point that the worst violence is being generated.

We can also see in the executive order how and why policing “trans” and policing “women” are essentially part of the same agenda. “Trans” functions as the surplus object in which the lack of a signifier for the “other sex” appears as something positive, something visible and external. The underlying idea is that if you remove this surplus object, women will be “whole” again—they will function as the proper signifying counterpart to men, and this restored complementarity will resolve the sexual as well as social (non-)relation.

In other words, the Trumpian “real men” are not afraid of the Woman as a possible signifying counterpart to their own manhood; they are afraid of women as the other sex with whom they share the same signifier—despite their different sexualities. This is the Lacanian point: sexual difference functions across an irreducible “sameness”—the sexes share the same lack, represented by the “phallic signifier.” What these “real men” reject is precisely this phallic signifier—phallos as signifier—because it already presupposes “castration.” Their obsessive attachment to anything phallic or phallic-shaped is a direct correlate of that. It only works for them if they are full of it, or if it is full of them.

Paranoia, perversion and love

Does the “real man”s self-confidence not suggest the opposite of paranoia? No—but it does suggest its fusion with perversion, as suggested above. The strange combination of believing oneself “untouchable” while remaining “paranoid” is the very form of this merger. “Real men” like Trump are “the most powerful,” “the greatest,” yet the symbolic dimension of this power is still lacking. The obverse of this absence is a compulsive need to fill the lack of symbolic power with the real—with the display of “real” power. The megalomaniac self-assurance goes hand in hand with an obsession to eliminate all traces that could contest this power, challenge it, or subject it to critique. What we used to call “critical thinking” is being hit by a tsunami of this obverse side of confident megalomania—which is the paranoiac inability to perceive critical arguments as anything other than direct, physical threats to one's integrity. The “freedom of speech” as freedom to enjoy ends up as a triumph of censorship and persecution, and the fight against “cancel culture” as a quintesential form of “cancel culture”.

So yes, these “real men” remain “paranoid,” but they are no less dangerous because of it. In fact, this makes them all the more harmful. Which is why, when mockery—pointing out their “true weakness”—becomes our only response, the joke is on us. All the more so because, when combined with state power, this dynamic becomes truly explosive.

This “realization” of symbolic power—the attempt to fill symbolic power with empirical force—also echoes J. A. Miller’s proposition that, in paranoia, jouissance is located in the Other itself (that is, in the symbolic frame, which is normally devoid of jouissance). It involves locating the other in the Other, or even substituting the Other with the other. [6] And this, again, underscores the perhaps unexpected proximity between authoritarianism and paranoia.

This also has important consequences for the relationship between such leaders and their followers—namely, the apparently strange combination of two features that often define these followers. On the one hand, they cultivate a complete distrust in all public authority, institutions, and science. On the other hand, they place blind trust in the leader, even when his statements are obviously contradictory or demonstrably false—he simply cannot do anything wrong. How do these two things—this absolute, often “paranoid” distrust and unconditional trust—go together?

In his text Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Freud calls this blind trust “love,” [7] which indeed comes closer to the mark than simply calling it “blind trust.” Because at a crucial point, this trust is not actually blind—it sees something: namely, enjoyment. Love is situated here in contrast to trust as based on respect. Simply put, respect presupposes a distance to be maintained—one that evacuates the immediate issues of enjoyment and desire from the relation to the Other. “Love,” on the other hand, implies an intimate and privileged relation to the Other, one that includes desire and enjoyment. However, Lacan seems to bring the two together when he rather surprisingly places the question of knowledge at the heart of love: “Celui à qui je suppose le savoir, je l’aime.” [8] (“The one to whom I suppose knowledge, I love.”) Love is never simply immediate; it involves a presupposition of knowledge on the part of the Other.

This could help us distinguish between two kinds of love. One is predicated on desire—that is, on the lack in the Other—and consequently on the interrogation of the enigma of the Other: “What does the Other want?” and “What am I for the Other?” Love is an answer to this interrogation—an answer in which the subject responds to the lack in the Other with its own lack: by giving the Other what one does not have. In love, we fill in the lack implied in the desire of the Other with our own lack or desire, rather than with any positive content. More precisely—and to reiterate Lacan’s point—it is the presupposition of knowledge that constitutes the positive, concrete form that “giving my lack to the Other” takes. This presupposition is, of course, not based on any empirical evidence of the Other’s knowledge, but rather depends on the place the Other occupies in relation to me and to others.

But this is not the only kind of love, and it is not the kind Freud refers to in his mass psychology essay, where he also calls it “hypnotic.” I am tempted to call this other form of love “perverse,” because it is based on a perverse kind of seduction. The Other here seduces or fascinates the subject not through desire or lack, but through plenitude. There is no exchange taking place (such as the exchange of my lack for the lack in the Other), and in this sense, the bond thus created is indeed hypnotic: it remains external and one-sided. What distinguishes this relation from classical respect for social authority is that the latter is predicated on authority being emptied of enjoyment, whereas the former operates in the name of enjoyment. This is also the reason why perverse authority—unlike classical authority—is not vulnerable to the exposure of enjoyment. On the contrary, such exposure only reinforces it.

The presupposition of knowledge here is not an empty token of trust. Love for the leader begins with some—possibly lost—experience of enjoyment that he evokes or stirs up in us, and which then becomes associated with knowledge: knowledge about enjoyment. To take Trump again as an example: the presupposition of knowledge in his case is not about political insight or wisdom in governance. It is simply this: he is rich, he knows how to get rich—and “rich” here evokes enjoyment. He knows how to enjoy, and he can take care of our enjoyment. At the same time, the exposure of enjoyment (“I can do and say whatever I want”) functions as a source of fascination—fascination in the strict sense, where one is unable to look away, drawn in and repulsed at once. Enjoyment is the lure.

So, to return to our question of how to understand the coexistence of complete distrust in all public authorities and unconditional trust in the leader, we have to understand that this “unconditional” trust is, in fact, not unconditional at all. It is conditioned by the surplus enjoyment, which is also our enjoyment, circulating in the Other—under the paranoid presumption that someone (everyone!) is trying to steal it. In this precise sense, the love for the leader is nothing other than the positive form taken by distrust in all other authorities—they are one and the same mechanism. To love the leader is to distrust everything and everyone else.

This, of course, is not the kind of love that liberates or empowers, “gives as strength”; it only makes us “strong” in the endless exercise of purges—or, as Lacan calls them in his discussion of perversion and power, crusades. He adds this prophetic warning: “Byzantium never rose from the ashes of the crusades. We must pay attention to such games, for they can be played again, even now, in the name of other crusades.” [9]

Indeed.

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[1] https://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/paranoia/

[2] However, this does not mean that in the past years, and leading up to the elections, the Democrats’ exclusive focus on Trump—at the expense of developing a solid social policy—was not a reality. Sadly, it was. And this exclusive strategic focus on Trump contributed significantly to their electoral loss. Trump functioned as a fetish that allowed the Democrats to disavow their own deficiencies when it came to addressing the economic and social problems that an increasing number of people were facing. A similar problem exists in many other countries, where the left appears unable to counter the rise of proto-fascist popular movements by any other means than by urging voters simply to vote against this or that populist leader.

[3] In his study of phobia (Sigmund Freud, Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben, Studienausgabe, Band VIII: Krankengeschichten, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2000, S. 1–122.), as well as of paranoia (S. Freud, Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia paranoides), Studienausgabe, Band VIII: Krankengeschichten, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2000, S. 235–320.)

[4] Mladen Dolar, Od kod prihaja oblast, DPU, Ljubljana 2021, p. 29. This of course, is not to say that the symbolic authority is simply non-violent, but it excercise a different kind of violence (symbolic violence). This difference, however, leads to two very different logics.

[5] As suggested by Marie Bendtsen at the international confernce »Reawakening Freud«, held at the Copenhagen University on January 17-18 2025.

[6] Jacques-Alain Miller, “Paranoia, Primary Relation to the Other”, The Lacanian Review 10, December 2020, p. 81, 85.

[7] Sigmund Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse In: Studienausgabe, Band IX. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2000, p. 85-86.

[8] Jacques Lacan, Le Seminaire. Livre XX. Encore, Seuli, Paris 1976, p. 64.

[9] Jacques Lacan, Le Seminaire. Livre XVI. D'un Autre à l'autre. Seuli, Paris 2006, p. 256.