Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast Episode 58: This Machine Kills Fascism
Sep 3, 2025
Sue Grand, a renowned psychoanalyst focusing on trauma and transgenerational violence, delves into the nature of hatred and totalitarianism. She discusses the misconceptions around traumatized individuals becoming perpetrators, emphasizing that most do not. The conversation highlights how societal structures fuel fascism and the seductive qualities it possesses. Grand examines the role of empathy and relational bonds as protective factors against abuse, advocating for psychotherapy as an antifascist practice and touching on the complexities of societal divisions and reparations.
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Road-Trip 'Top Ten' Game
- Sue Grand and her husband joked about naming ten people they'd eliminate to make the world better while on road trips.
- This lighthearted ritual revealed how fantasies of hatred can oscillate and intensify over time.
Fascism As A Syncretic Structure
- Fascism isn't a fixed ideology but a recurring structure that promises contradictory things to different groups.
- Its syncretic, anti-reflective nature draws people by offering belonging and simplistic action over complexity.
Desire Produces Fascism
- Deleuze and Guattari frame fascism as produced by collective desires, not only by individual lack.
- They urge promoting 'lines of flight' to expand becoming instead of channeling desire into rigid roles.
