ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that there is a psychoanalytic dimension to Hannah Arendt thought, notably in relation to the dangers and perfection of totalitarian logic. It shows how the capacity for passionate, mind-controlling and bewildering identifications cannot be assigned exclusively to 'other' cultures, but have also been at the heart of some of the most delirious historical moments in the West. The category of belief is at the heart of Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism. The propositions of Nazism, writes Arendt, had the status of 'sacred untouchable truths'. If such divine blather was aimed at the youngest cadets of the party, Hitler was also clear that only a few would be equal to the psychological task. For Arendt, the consequence of the system was a type of national and international mental pandemonium which also had a strict inner logic.
