Mattias Desmet is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. His work has been discussed widely in the media, including on The Joe Rogan Experience and in Forbes, The New York Post, Salon.com, and Fox News, among hundreds of other outlets. His interviews have been viewed by millions of people around the world. His previous books include The Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology and Lacan’s Logic of Subjectivity: A Walk on the Graph of Desire. Desmet is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018 he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019 he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy.
Mattias Desmet is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University (Belgium) and he works as a psychoanalyst in private practice. Desmet is the author of the international bestseller The psychology of totalitarianism. Since the onset of the coronacrisis in 2020 he became known as the world’s leading expert on the theory on mass formation. He was invited on numerous podcasts and talkshows, including Tucker Carlson Today.
Abstract: From the French revolution onwards, propaganda became increasingly important as a tool to govern society. Today’s global institution impose their ideological programs through a manipulation machinery which is unprecedented in history. The United Nations, for instance, recruited in 2021 over 100.000 ‘digital first responders’ to contradict, ridicule and criminalize each and everyone who raised a critical voice on the social media. Propaganda can only be countered by truth telling. In my presentation I will elaborate on the psychological characteristics of truth telling and on its potential to make people resonate with each other. Through its resonating qualities, truth speech leads to the emergence of groups of people in which, in contrast with a mass, every human being can manifest in its singular characteristics.