Global Trauma in the Shadow of Collectivization

If History is the story told by the victors, trauma is the untold story of the vanquished.

“When the people of a particular culture or tradition have been torn from their homes and lands, when their libraries, burial places, religious centers, or sacred sites have been desecrated or denied them, when their language, rituals, or customs have been banned, forbidden, or forgotten… a traumatic wound cleaves the collective psyche–scarring both persecuted and persecutor–and will be carried and transmitted for many generations” – Thomas Hübl, Healing collective Trauma

It is not only through violence, war, and oppression that the trauma of cultural eradication has been inflicted. Throughout the 20th century and still today, an all out assault on people of particular cultures and traditions has been and is being carried out? in the name of progress through forced collectivization, as described by Erich Neumann in The Origins and History of Consciousness.

"The global revolution which has seized upon modern man and in whose storm center we find ourselves today has, with its trans-valuation of all values, led to a loss of orientation in the part and in the whole, and daily we have new and painful experience of its repercussions in the political life of the collective, as well as in the psychological life of the individual…"

"In our culture there has been a steady disintegration of small groups and small nations, and hence an undermining of the psychological foundation of the group which expresses itself in mass-mindedness, in the atomization and conscious internationalization of the individual..."

"In this way the original group psychology and the cultural canon determining it, once taken for granted, become relativized and profoundly disturbed."

The winner in the global story of forced collectivization is the shadow of collectivization itself. This is not understood, and this story is not told.

Individuals still living in traditional groups are not pockets of backward, uneducated people who need to be assimilated through higher collectivization. Their pushback is not culpable intransigence. They are protecting their lives and all that gives them meaning from unprovoked assault where their sacred sites are desecrated, their language censored and cultural habitation eradicated. Adding insult to traumatic injury, the collective shadow of the perpetrators is projected onto them. They did not deserve any of this.

"Although the genuine group man is for the most part unconscious, he nevertheless...is a psychic whole in which powerful tendencies are at work, making for consciousness, individualization, and spiritual growth. ...in spite of his unconsciousness, in spite of projections, emotionality, and so forth, the group man possesses enormously constructive, synthetic and creative power which manifest themselves in his culture, his society, his religion, art, customs, and even in what we call his superstitions."

So what does collectivization bring about when it destroys this, in the victims and the perpetrators?

“When the individual falls away from the cultural fabric like this, he finds himself completely isolated in an egotistically inflated private world...As a result, the ego-sphere of the human and personal is lost. Personality values no longer count [the personal is political], and the supreme achievement of the individual--his behavior as an individual human being--is broken down and replaced by collective modes of behavior.”

The whole defense position of the conscious mind crumples up and the spiritual world of values with it…” ?

In addition to the way the trauma is denied by the perpetrators, there is an even more dangerous reason why the leaders of collectivization are silent about this danger: the? surrender of consciousness is intoxicating.

"The great danger that evidently prevents a conscious realization of this situation lies in the illusory phenomena which appear with recollectivization and blind the ego. The toxic effect of the mass situation lies precisely in its intoxicating character, which is always a concomitant of the dissolution of consciousness and its powers of discrimination.

“In recollectivization the image of the original group and its wholeness is projected by the renegade ego upon the mass. The ego surrenders and, re-emotionalized, pouring itself out in an orgy of mass participations, experiences with pleasure a mass self...which sucks it in, embraces, and engulfs it... That it is purely a matter of mass unification and a travesty of unity is evident from the swift disillusionment which ensues, and from the fact that mass illusion is incapable of producing any genuine and durable participation, much less anything constructive. In the real group, the group phenomenon of participation brings a synthetic development, taking the form of mutual responsibility, increased readiness for self-sacrifice, etc., which appears not merely as a momentary intoxication but embodies itself in institutions and communal undertakings.

“But in the mass phenomena the illusory elation is as transient as that induced by hypnosis; it does not impress itself upon the conscious mind by bringing it to a creative synthesis, but leads away like any momentary intoxication. Yet even this delusive frenzy of mass possession is zealously desired by an ego emptied of all meaning, and is one of the chief allurements with which the mass hypnotist successfully operates.”

Neumann calls this “recollectivization,” because it has happened once before: the original collectivized psychological state of primitive humanity. The global collective today mass produces highly educated people who are psychologically primitive.

Programs that teach collective consciousness, in my admittedly limited and anecdotal? experience, seem to share an unexamined assumption that political liberalism is what unites them. They are one in that collective, not in mystical transcendence.

In spite of all the language of inclusiveness and universalism, the mask of neutrality slips, and the shadow of collectivization peaks through, mostly evident in what is NOT included: the trauma of mass politicized collectivization.

When the personal is politicized, what is left behind is a personality in name only, individual only in a statistical sense. The root meaning of “individual” is undivided, whole. They are not individual in that sense.

Thomas Hübl, an eloquent spokesman for collective consciousness and teacher of a process to heal collective trauma, cited Ken Wilbur saying “humans develop or evolve in consciousness through a process of transcending but including previous stages.” [emphasis in the original]?

Wise advice, but does collectivization include previous stages in practice?

If not, consciousness can also regress, falling back through previous stages until it lands back in the primitive.

We could imagine a group of MAGA Republicans and San Francisco Progressives being led by wise, capable facilitators like Hübl. Could they find that what unites them is their humanity, not their membership in a collective? Possibly, but maybe what truly unites the collectivized is the belief that they are above unenlightened humanity. What then?

Oh, we might learn so much!?

Hübl describes his experience with working groups, “When we find ourselves in groups...and feel the energy rising with the profound quality of connection and shared intention, some degree of coherence and field thinking is occurring. We feel excited and energized by our sharing and more closely connected with one another, despite our differences. Too often, we leave these groups and return to the ordinary reality of our separate lives, and the vitality and intelligence we felt with the group seems to disappear…”

Hübl then added, “...this is a vital area of inquiry for future research.”?

Neumann could help them.

“That it is purely a matter of mass unification and a travesty of unity is evident from the swift disillusionment which ensues... In the real group, the group phenomenon of participation brings a synthetic development… which appears not merely as a momentary intoxication….”

“But in the mass phenomena the illusory elation is as transient as that induced by hypnosis; it does not impress itself upon the conscious mind by bringing it to a creative synthesis, but leads away like any momentary intoxication.”?

Then, they leave these groups and return to the ordinary reality of their separate, atomized lives.

If we cannot redress this consciousness-crippling politicization with its mass regression of consciousness and a gathering shadow of collectivization, then the stability of the personality rests only on an inherently unstable foundation. Nothing to build on that could evolve.

And the trauma will repeat, becoming more insistent on being heard.