These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
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It seems the world is rapidly spinning out of control. On Sept 22nd 2025, the independent site Drop Site News, reported:
Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital and the Eye Hospital in Gaza City are no longer operational as a result of Israel’s military assault on the area, according to the ministry of health. The Eye Hospital was the only hospital specializing in eye treatment in the Gaza Strip (popn. 2.2million) while Al-Rantisi was the last functioning paediatric hospital.
In May, Israeli Reserve Maj.Gen. Yair Golan, fmr deputy chief of staff of IDF and leader of the Democratic Party in the Knesset (parliament), said:
A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement … The Jewish people, who have endured persecution, pogroms, and genocides throughout our history ... are the ones now taking actions that are utterly unconscionable.
Meantime, there is war and renewed famine in Darfur, war in Ukraine, endless fighting in Myanmar and Congo, and chaos reigns in dozens of other places, even as the world hurtles toward an unmanageable 2C rise in temperatures over the next decade. What’s going on? Why are our politicians spending their time plotting mayhem, making their fortunes and canoodling with paedophiles rather than dealing with the really important stuff?
A lot of people would say it’s because there are so many bad people in the world trying to harm us and we have to deal with them firmly. For them, we live in a Manichaean world of goodies and baddies, of the light and the dark side, and we can never let our guard down or they’ll do us in. As messages go, this doesn’t require much brain power and it’s comfortable, everybody knows which side they’re on and, by extension, whose side God is on. Of course, this doesn’t tell us anything about why other people are bad or why they would bother leaving their yirts, oases and kampungs to blow us up. As an account of human affairs, it is descriptive only with no explanatory value, but a lot of people like it. Religions fill the gap with some sort of Force for Evil, known to Christians as Satan, although I must say I’ve never found this very convincing. It seems to me that humans are quite capable of evil without outside assistance.
Then there are people who say it’s all due to capitalism, people taking more than their fair share and plotting behind the scenes to get the last few pence off the widows and orphans just because they can. This has a sort of explanatory value as it says greed is the cause of all disorder. It doesn’t explain why humans are greedy but it has a reassuring simplicity that appeals to the have-nots as it removes blame and justifies feeling angry over the unfairness of it all. Capitalism’s other side is the notion that, in the Darwinian struggle for survival, people who get ahead are obviously superior types and deserve to win, while stragglers are losers because of their innate weakness, either genetic or moral but probably both.
Social Darwinism, as this doctrine is called, is immensely popular among the wealthy and privileged classes, but is also popular on the fringes of major religions. Energetic preachers sell the story that God favours certain people and makes them rich; conversely, being rich says you’re in divine favour so if you donate a dollar to the preacher, you’ll get two in return. Prosperity gospel, as it’s known, appeals to the greed and/or desperation of the unsophisticated poor and satisfies the greed of a small group of megarich pastors. As it’s marketed, prosperity gospel is a heresy. Beside the name and a few rituals, it has nothing in common with the principles laid down by the prophet of Nazareth. Since the pastors themselves are regularly toppled by scandals, there’s always a great deal of jostling among the rising generation of god-sellers to see who gets the biggest share of the apparently inexhaustible cake called human gullibility. As an explanation of human behaviour, it stops at the notion of greed.
Given that greed is so powerful, what is it? Is it just a form of evil, as most religions say, a moral failing that must be trained out of us early in life? Do we need to be trained to be generous? If charity begins at home, it seems a lot of people either don’t get the message or gleefully throw it out later. Over thousands of years, philosophers have had a lot to say about greed but I don’t think they’ve settled much. The English physician and philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), regarded private property as a natural right but believed it had to have limits. In particular, he said anybody could own anything they liked as long as it it didn’t go to waste and it left enough for everybody else, because they also have a right to property. The unbelievable levels of inequality in the world today would fill him with horror, although he seemed to have a lot of contradictions. For example, he believed in natural rights for all humans but was also involved in companies trading slaves to the American colonies. Anyway, if private property is a natural right, we need to sort out what that means.
My view is that the concept of private property is simply part of the more or less universal, biologically-based survival drive called territoriality. Most animals show some form of territoriality, the notion that “This is mine and I’ll fight you to prove it.” An animal’s territory is the area in which it alone is dominant and in which others of its species will actively avoid conflict. It isn’t limited to an area of land or water, it covers resources and, very often, the animal’s offspring. It’s not just mammals, as wasps have territories, spiders guard their egg sacs and crocodiles are fiercely protective of their eggs. This tends to imply that there are biological limits to territoriality, essentially whatever one individual or group can defend. This has a very strong base in biology, specifically the testosterone economy.
With humans, however, there don’t seem to be any limits to acquisitiveness. Our territoriality is based not so much on what we need to survive but on what feels good. We have an intense drive to dominate, it feels fantastic while being oppressed feels bad, and this has no limits. Most emotions, such as laughter, sexual arousal or even anger, wear off soon enough and the thrill of domination is no different. If we get to the top of something, it feels good but, after a while, it fades so we have to do more to get the same thrill, and then more, without limit. For hunter-gatherers, the natural limit was whatever they could defend but then we developed agriculture and cities, and then armies and … empires. However, as history shows, empires have to be defended and one day, it all falls apart and another group rises to dominance. Locke was of the view that the development of money changed everything as it could be stored indefinitely, it gave power over others who didn’t have much and if we wanted more, we could just steal our neighbours’ money. That one small invention freed us from the limits imposed on us by our biology, and opened a direct path to the previously ludicrous idea of world domination by one group or even one person.
So territoriality and domination go hand in hand. I’ll rephrase that: We can’t explain territoriality without invoking the drive to domination, and we have a good biological explanation for domination. This provides a tentative explanation for the otherwise bizarre human urge to build empires of one sort or another. Being in charge, having power over other people and things gives us a buzz, but it wears off so in order to get another dose, we have to dominate more, and more. That may be a good enough explanation for political and business empires (and academic, of course) but what about religion? Religion, in Richard Dawkins’ view, has four functions: explanation, inspiration, exhortation and consolation. Explanation of why we’re here and where we’re going; inspiration to lead a good life; exhoration to get back on the strait and narrow; and consolation in adversity. I’m not keen on that as it mixes creation myths with the concept of a good life but it’ll do.
Most religions seem to start with one person getting some sort of moral insight which, for whatever reason, convinces people to follow his teachings. Now if it stopped there, it wouldn’t be any trouble. People could listen to the message or read about it and decide for themselves whether to follow it or not, but it doesn’t stop there, it never does. In no time, the entrepreneurs move in, the salesmen and touts who see in the naïve chap from the bush the chance of a rewarding career path for themselves, and they take over. It always happens. What started as a gentle moral renewal campaign quickly morphs into a money-making machine controlled by a few power-hungry people who massage the message, milk the rewards and, crucially, muffle the opposition. If that means bumping off the competition, then so be it, it’s all in a good cause.
This is the natural trajectory of any moral movement. It’s starts with noble intent and then the crooks, crackpots and opportunists move in, just because the nice people who started it don’t understand what motivates the ignoble. They don’t realise that the greedy only respond to a punch in the face or, if they do realise it, can’t bring themselves to do it. This is how a moral regeneration movement gels into conservatism. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the original message, it’s what people do with it later, such as taking a text as the absolute and inviolable truth which must be implemented, brutally, if necessary. It’s all about control, all about telling people: “This is what you must believe, this is what you must do, and if you don’t, we’ll kill you.” The mainstream religion hardens into a repressive perversion of the original message, just another means of dominating other people. It may then generate renewal movements, such as Luther’s attempts to rid the Roman Church of its corruption or the forest monasteries in Thailand but, more often, it breeds further heresies where showmen use the religion to advance themselves at the expense of the gullible. Christianity appears to be in this late phase, with a boring, inert and often corrupt mainstream spawning one bizarre heresy after another.
Religion isn’t the only sort of domination, of course. Ukraine is a classic knock-‘em-down brawl between two heavyweights to see who gets to dominate the region. On one side, we have the Russian Federation, the world’s largest country with 135million energetic people sitting on incalculable natural wealth. Communism dragged them down, or rather, prevented them rising up the chain so that when the USSR collapsed in 1991, it was essentially a third-world country with an enormous nuclear arsenal. Since then, it has made huge progress and, on its trajectory from say 1995 to 2022, was set to become the world’s third biggest economy. However, the US was not happy with that and decided it needed to park its nuclear bombers and tank divisions right on the Russian border just to let the Ivans know who’s boss.
Granted, there were all sorts of verbal gymnastics to justify why the US was involved in Ukrainian politics in the first place but we don’t take any notice of them. As Trump has shown, the power elite in the US have zero interest in democracy, free speech and self-determination. All that counts is that they’re Number One in the world and can go where they like and do what they like to extract any profits they like. Since the Russian homeland was invaded five times last century, with devastating effect, the Russian leadership has different views. After World War II, they said: “Never again,” and that’s what they meant: Nobody will ever threaten us again. So, feeling threatened by what was happening in Ukraine, they are responding predictably.
There’s no point getting enmeshed in one of those silly “Who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong” arguments, the only thing that counts is to sort out who’s trying to dominate whom. The would-be dominator must back off because their target will respond predictably. Clearly, it is the US trying to dominate Russia so they should just pack up their bombers and piss off back to their side of the Atlantic. Why is the US trying to dominate Russia? Because America, but also in the long-standing hope that they can cause this vast, underpopulated treasure house to disintegrate and they can move in and loot the place to their heart’s content. And remember, what passes for a heart in the elite is never content. It always wants more. Greed, as a biological function, has no end.
The general rule in international affairs is that every country is entitled to a zone of safety around its borders, a cordon sanitaire in oldspeak. For a great power, that translates into a “zone of influence,” where they can lean on the locals to make sure they don’t do anything dumb, like invite the power’s opponents to park their nuclear bombers and tank divisions on their border, fueled, armed and ready to fire at a moment’s notice. That’s common sense. My neighbour is entitled to know that I won’t sit in my yard shooting beer cans and then aim my rifle at him when he puts his head over the fence to complain about the noise (for the record, I don’t own a firearm). International politics reduced to common sense. If a country is threatened, it must respond to defend itself or adjust to being a vassal.
As for the fighting in Gaza, which is not a war, by the way, wars are between states; don’t ask who’s right and who’s wrong, just answer the questions: Who is trying to dominate and who is trying to resist? It’s perfectly clear. Israel has decided to clear 2.2million people from their homes and has the bombers, tanks and bulldozers to make it happen. The objection “Oh but what about October 7th?” is stupid beyond measure. In fact, it’s not stupid, it’s sinister. Starting with the birth of the political movement known as Zionism in the late 19th Century, it has always been known to every member of the movement that there is an indigenous population in the area they called “Israel Eretz,” Greater Israel; that the Zionists wanted that land; and that the indigenes would resist. The original Zionists were European socialists; they envisaged the Jewish population owning most of the land, most of the Palestinian population would be removed and kept beyond an “Iron Wall” as one of the Zionist founders, Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), put it (essay, 1923) while the remainder worked on their traditional land as farm labourers for the new Jewish landholders.
Unsurprisingly, this did not go down well with the semitic Palestinian people. What has happened is that the original but superficially noble Zionist message has been taken over by ultra-extremists, religious cranks and opportunists and turned into a heresy. The political message of Zionism, as in a national home for the world’s Jewish population, has been fused with Judaism, with the (artificial) concept of a unique Hebraic race, and now with Israeli nationalism. As religion, Judaism has no political content; Zionism is a political movement with no religious foundation. Nationalism is nationalism, regardless of the country, it’s only ever about “We’re the best so you’d better get down on your knees.” It is a reflection of the biological drive to dominate and has nothing to do with facts. No race or nation is better than another: today’s downtrodden unfortunates are tomorrow’s winners, and today’s gorgeous empire is tomorrow’s forgotten diaspora.
Turning to the “Semitic Race,” yes, semitic races exist, there are lots of them but those adhering to Judaism are but a small part of them. It’s a silly term, the peoples inhabiting the Middle East and North East Africa are too diverse to be lumped together. If it weren’t for the term “antisemitic,” the notion would probably have died out. I’ve met Jewish people from Europe, from Morocco, from Ethiopia, from Iraq and from India. They actually looked like Europeans, Moroccans, Ethiopians, Iraqis and Indians and mostly spoke those languages at home and ate that sort of food. I don’t know their genetic profiles but phenotypically, they were completely different from each other, united only by their religion. As for what is called antisemitism, the distinguished British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, an ethnic Arab Jew born in Iraq, says this is entirely a European construct. He is emphatic and history confirms that there was no “antisemitism” in the Middle East before European Jews brought it with them (long but interesting interview here, section on European “antisemitism” starts 11.05).
Zionism has become an idolatrous, heretical cult based in the concept of an inherent superiority conferring supra-human rights on a select few. The whole thing stands in relation to the ancient religion of Judaism as, say, the Inquisition or “prosperity gospel” relate to the Sermon on the Mount, or ISIS relates to Islam and so on. Those who aren’t affected by it may applaud but we can predict with 100% certainty how those who are affected will react. Angrily. Don’t expect the neighbours to take kindly to being treated as second rate or “subhuman animals.” As Yair Golan didn’t quite say, “Thou shalt not kill” also extends to Palestinian children.
It has to be understood that what has happened to Zionism is not an aberration but is a normal socio-political evolution of an original but worthy idea. This is what humans do. Any successful social movement will be coopted by opportunists and/or scoundrels and will then be taken in directions that the originators never imagined. It is the success of the early movement that attracts them; they’re not interested in hard work, or selfless devotion or any of that soppy stuff, they just want the power and the glory – and folding stuff that goes with it, of course.
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My critical works are best approached in this order:
The case against mainstream psychiatry:
McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).
Development and justification of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.
Clinical application of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.
This is a fabulously rich and carefully explained description of what is the root of it all. We rarely dig this deep but it's the only way to grow as a species.
An incredibly powerful piece. So much there that needed to be said. Thank you for saying it.