MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and its Discontents (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1991 ed, p269).

"The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it. But
one can do more than that; one can try to recreate the world, to build up in
its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated
and replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes. But
whoever, in desperate defiance sets out upon this path to happiness will as
a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman,
who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his
delusion. It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one
respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world that is
unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion
into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this
attempt to secure a certainty of happiness and a protection against
suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a
considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be
classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who
shares a delusion ever recognises it as such."

Hmmm ...