The following excerpt from: Terror and Societal Regression
After a national trauma, there are a number of signs of "large group" regression. (I will not here go into some of the characteristics of what constitutes a large group; it relates to elements that I have referred to in the past as our tribal nature; see also here.) The panel chair, Vamik Volkan, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and founder of the Center for the Study of the Mind and Human Interaction at the University of Virginia and Emeritus Training and Supervising Analyst of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, described 14 major symptoms of large-group regression:
1) Rallying around the leader.
2) Losing individuality.
3) Severe splitting. This can occur as a polarity between "us" and "them" or within society.
4) Massive, shared introjections and projections, such as societal paranoia. This phenomenon was seen in Enver Hoxha's Albania, where something like slave labor was used to build over seventy-five hundred bunkers in anticipation of an attack that never came.
5) A shared narcissistic preoccupation. An example is the grandiose historical view taken by Iraq that it is the cradle of civilization.
6) Magical thinking, blurring of reality, and new or modified societal patterns. The customary "kidnapping" of brides in South Ossetia is an instance of this last. What under normal conditions is a playful cultural norm whereby the girl is symbolically kidnapped and married has become under conditions of societal regression, far more aggressive; today's "brides" are kidnapped, tortured, and raped.
7) Inability to mourn or difficulty in mourning whereby a large group becomes a society of perennial mourners and the use of "linking objects" is recognized and institutionalized.... Volkan (1981) has described how perennial mourners ... keep the mourning process externalized and incomplete.
8) Reactivation of "chosen glories" pertaining to the history of a large group's past. This was seen in Baathist Iraq, where Saddam Hussein tried to identify himself with Saladin.... this history was incorporated into his battle cry to defeat the U.S., the new infidels.
9) Reactivation of a "chosen trauma" whereby a large group unconsciously "chooses" to make a shared mental representation of an event that caused it terrible losses, helplessness, humiliation, and victimization....Slobodan Milosevic exemplified this phenomenon in his reactivation of the shared memory of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which the Serbian hero, Prince Lazar, was killed.
10) Dehumanization. Exemplified by the Nazis, this is a two-step process. Step one is identifying undesirable humans; step two is turning them into nonhumans, as in the Hutus' degradation of the Tutsis, referred to as cafrads, or insects. Interestingly, the Tutsis were also called the "Jews" of Rwanda.
11) Border Psychology, in which borders become shared psychological skins.
12) The narcissism of minor differences.
13) Ruining of basic trust. This was seen in Nazi child-rearing practices and in the elementary schools of Enver Hoxha's Albania, where students were brainwashed into pledging their allegiance to the leader and were rewarded for spying on and betraying family members who expressed any doubt or opposition to the ruler.
14) Heightened importance of the leader's personality. When a large group is regressed, the personality organization of the leader becomes extremely influential, as he or she can tame or inflame the regression. Contrast Slobodan Milosevic's use of violence and terror with Nelson Mandela's use of nonviolent means.
http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2006/09/terror_and_soci.html
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