Anyone who knows my work on "fearanalysis" over the decades, knows that it is my own adaptation of several psychoanalysts' works, theories, etc. Ultimately, fearanalysis focuses the understading of the development and evolution of human individuals and societies (and history) around how they deal with "fear" ('fear'). Recently I have been reading the 1933 work by Wilhelm Reich (Austrian-American psychoanalyst, 1897-57), a contemporary with Freud, Jung, etc. Reich was much more radical and controversial, and decidedly more political--that's why I am liking his work in The Mass Psychology of Fascism" [1].
Many critical commentators today are raising awareness (again) of the rising problem of "fascism" (left or right)--and, they tend to pin that fascism (ideology) on this or that political party and/or social movement, etc. This is exactly where Reich saw beneath the pattern of the patterns of such surface symptoms of "fascist" regimes in history. Reich came up with his own theory of "emotional plague" (what, I would label now, as a fear psychology of the masses). I won't say more but that you may want to look at this notion and related it to fearwork and fearanalysis, fearism, etc.
In contrast, my work has been attempting to constitute a counter project (counter-hegemony) to the fear psychology and its fascist ideological structuration, and personality-character--individually and in social systems. I love how Reich takes this on front and center unlike any other of the psychoanalysts in history that I know of. That's what gave him the dark excluded and vicious reputation amongst others and especially from the mainstream and its leaders. That's another story about his excommunication. He called fascism a form of a deeper "emotional plague"-- and says there are none in society of the West (at least) not infected by it. Again, that's similar to my 'Fear' Matrix concept, upon with the total operations of a fear psychology operate. Reich saw individuals and societies as "sick" on mass scale, and yet he was convinced that a lot of that was due to a sick authoritarian patriarchy that he was not afraid to call out.
My work on a fearlessness psychology [2] of late, is now making more sense why I want to call it that.
End Note
1. This whole book (1946 edition) is available free for download on the internet, which is quite an amazing read and so appropriate for our times today.
2. Fisher, R. M. (2019). Fearlessness psychology: An Introduction. Technical Paper No. 79. Calgary, AB: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.
