The Power of Groupthink

By Patricia Lefave, D.D.(P)

The only difference between you "observing" me while pushing to control me, for ten years, and me "observing" you, while pushing for an admission and an apology, is the side of the point of the debate upon which each of us stands. The reason I am to give up an expectation of truth and justice from the University of Guelph, or Homewood, is because we all know you have the power to control me if I should dare to complain too much about you.
It's simple really. The expert is always right. The one he proclaims to be "mad" will be "mad." There is no talking back to "authority." I am to accept the intimidation and know my place.
I was at the library on Sunday, "hallucinating" conversations as I so like to do. A Guelphite woman assessed me for an employee there.
"Who would think that if she gets on the Internet for an hour a day, she's going to change the world?" (harumph!) This is a nexus statement like those who like to call me "Miss Einstein, "while standing three feet away. It is the beliefs of the speaker that makes the statement a positive or negative judgement. Same words. Opposite meaning.
The woman at the library didn't actually know me, so she doesn't know WHAT I think. But I will tell you in the hope that you will chain-gossip it back to her.
I "think" that if I manage to get even one person to stop standing a few feet away and spewing contempt and judgement at people they don't even know, as if they weren't there, the ripple effect WILL help to change the world for all labelled people, and start to get them out from under the weight of projected group madness and the later denial of it. By the way, the Library Staff also likes to comment on what I am downloading, and some of them just think the whole thing is "very funny."
Last night's little "test" by U. of G. Students:
Two of them went into their act, the male talking loudly in the usual baiting manner which I have seen often in the last ten years.
"She doesn't get mad; She just goes crazy. Maybe she thinks going crazy is better."(the fault is always found to be in the reactions of the victim , never the behaviour of the "superior" group or mob. Alice Miller understands the dysfunctional rule that keeps this recycling so well : "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware!") Around the "bait" line which is always let out by the "testers", trolling for a reaction from the "fish" they are trying to "hook", there is a discussion about the affect of the contemptuous remarks, upon the person they target. "Maybe it's not her. I thought it was her but she doesn't seem to be reacting. Maybe she's not the right one."

The Alpha And The Omega of Group Evil:
This is how dysfunctional family members do it too. I have watched this duplicitous split since I was about three years old. I used to wonder, "What do these people think they are doing?" When we ask them outright though, they won't tell us. But I know why now. They are proving their "superiority" to themselves by projecting their own split awareness onto us. It is self delusion, denied. They all decide for us, what we will, or will not, be aware of ,and then react to their own invention. It has zero to do with us, our awareness, or who we really are. In fact, they order us not to try to tell them, or we will be forced out completely.
From our point of view, their tests, their smirks, their amused eyes, and discussions about their tests, all look exactly the same, since the only difference is in their own minds. When a group does this, putting us through non-stop stress, it looks to us like they are trying to drive us insane deliberately. We can't imagine people could actually be that stupid or unaware. They are so obvious, it seems impossible. The fact is, groups of people ARE that stupid, that unaware, that insensitive, that angry, that judgemental and that arrogant. In oder to maintain the self delusion, they deny the awareness of their victim, claim the delusion is really originating within the victim, and justify the thinking and behaviour which makes them "superior." That is both the premise and the goal. That system of thought is now closed. When we really see the infinite loop of anti logic, the split minds of those creating and supporting it becomes apparent.
As I have told patient groups, diagnosed as "Paranoid Schizophrenics, " like myself ; "They are looking at us but don't see us. They are listening to us but can't hear us. All they see and hear is filtered through their own self delusion, and it is the group delusion that gives it all an alternate meaning. "
That's why we feel invisible. The dysfunctional group can "see" neither us nor themselves as we really are. We are far more conscious than them, not less. That reality reversal is the genesis of "insanity." The victims who are forced into isolation, are sacrificed to protect and maintain the group delusion. For we must not ever be aware that the generation before us is half mad. That would be "disrespectful and insulting" to our parents, who must never know their own error, back through the generations, all the way to Eden. That was the starting point of the reality reversal which generated all the chaos.
After all, if we don't want to feel alone, we are required to contribute to the creation of hell on Earth with the rest of the group. Then, and only then, will we will be allowed into the group which understands how to be "blameless."