Group Insanity

By Patricia Lefave, Labeled, D.D.(P)

To those of you who are on the receiving end of this group insanity I have a few suggestions.

If you just think of this concrete group phenomenon as a one hundred and eighty degree ‘switch, ‘ making everything appear to be it’s opposite, all backwards, it will help you to make sense of it.

Concrete examples:
The people who are manipulating me and reality itself are calling ME ‘manipulative’ and out of touch with reality. They say that reality is the opposite of what I believe it to be. (I have proof that the opposite is true in my own case.)

Many of them have come right up to my windows to look in and see if they can see the ‘crazy’ woman. I now keep my curtains closed all the time as a result, even though I don’t live in a building which is right on the edge of a sidewalk anymore. Now, some of them discuss my closed curtains, wondering what it is I am ‘trying to hide.” They then follow this with some suggestions and spread some more rumours to others.

The university student tenants in my building meet each other in the back yard sometimes or out front so that I won’t hear them talking abut me having the strange belief that I still think that people are talking about me. So, you who are psychiatrized think of this as group arrogance, stupidity, denial and resistance to the obvious truth and you will begin to solve your own puzzle.

Psychiatry believes in, and reinforces, the delusional belief system of the group, of which its members are sure they are smarter, wiser, and saner, when, in fact, many of us understand this far BETTER than they do.
It is the group unloading its own collective traits which makes it all senseless.

“Sense” has nothing to do with this. The group, usually directed by one person with a hidden agenda (at least ‘hidden’ at first) is acting out of their own suppressed rage and contempt but, denying it while they do it.

If the truth was accepted by psychiatry, the reason the victim ‘decompensates’ would be obvious: group pressure on a person who is forced into isolation. The 'normal' people (half good an half evil; the Tricksters) defend their position even when it's wrong and they know it's wrong, by invalidating the victim/scapegoat's accurate perception of it. They use platitudes and aphorisms like a psychological blockade of intellectual pretension designed to stop all communication, not facilitate it. They often pretend to be interested in resolution when in fact, all they are really interested in is playing political games, power, control and and the avoidance of any introspection. Instead, they externalize their own traits and then claim the traits belong to their victim/scapegoat and not to them.

he group that has supported and enabled my own protagonist wants to believe that I am seeing something that isn't there and more, they want to believe that I have not seen them. In this way they will not ever have to know that they are all failing to see what IS there, and what has BEEN there all along. They are 'like sleepwalkers.'

Group dysfunction has had a lot of practise maintaining itself. Such groups always close ranks like a dis-ease protecting itself from any penicillin which may get in to cure it or eradicate it. But from inside the group, it seems like self defence, not resistance to penicillin. The members fear because they have no replacement paradigm. Even dis-ease fights for it's own survival.

When such groups have a sociopath as a leader, the group dynamic moves into the extreme zone, like with cults or fascists. Members of such systems are considered to be 'good' and 'superior' to any outsiders who don't belong BECAUSE they don't question the leader (Authority) or his system, and are viewed as loyal, dedicated and perhaps, even patriotic in some cases.

It is the FACT that they do not admit, or often even SEE that there is something wrong with their GROUP behaviour and the effect that is having on the targeted individual that IS the problem. Usually, they also deny it is having a destructive effect and blame the victim for his/her "faulty" perception and reactions to their behaviour and all it's consequences. They minimize the effects, claiming the victim's response is exaggerated, or the report of the group behaviour "fabricated" and deny responsibility for it.

In fact, what is often being fabricated is the group story telling and then the denial of the whole thing.

In my own 'fascinating case" I am the one who understands the most about what is (and was) going on and I am also the LAST one anyone involved is interested in hearing out. This is the effects of the switch between the identities of aggressor and victim and is the reason I was given the "prize' for coming in LAST in the race for power and control. A race I did not know I was in until after the damage was already done.