Peremptory Ideation
Specifically, we wish to offer an intriguing model of intra-psychic processes first presented by George Klein, an eminent researcher and theorist who brought together psychoanalytic theory and cognitive psychology (producing an integrative perspective known as “ego psychology”). Many years ago, Klein (1967) described a process he called Peremptory Ideation. In essence, Klein proposed that in our internal world (psyche) we create a specific idea or image that begins to “travel” around our psyche (head and heart) picking up fragments of unconsciously held material (memories, feelings, and thoughts). This ideational train operates much like an avalanche (and other forms of what chaos theorist often label “strange attractors’). This train becomes increasingly rich and emotionally powerful.
At some point, this ideation begins to pull in material from outside the psyche. External events suddenly take on greater saliency (more emotional power and vividness)—and it is because they are now connected to the internal ideation. Klein suggested that this ideation now takes priority with regard to what is valued, attended to and remembered in the external world. It assumes a commanding (“peremptory”) presence. A positive (reinforcing) loop is created, with the external material now joining the interior material—all clustered around the original (often primitive) ideation.
Catching the Train
While Klein focused on the internal dynamics of the peremptory ideation, we propose that this internal ideation might find alignment with a similar external ideation that is coming for various media sources and political leaders. We can envision the internal ideation “hooking on” to the ideological “train” that is passing by outside ourselves. Hitching our own train of thoughts and emotions to an external train.
Particularly irrational and anxiety-saturated external ideation can be particularly attractive, given that the internal ideation is likely to be quite primitive. The internal ideation is often swirling with ghosts and goblins from our own childhood and the collective (unconscious) heritage of our ancestors and culture. With this powerful alignment of internal and external, we become victims of collective peremption. Attention is demanded by this new coalition: we are obsessed, closed-minded, passionate and driven to action.
It can be a quite dangerous condition when the train is drawing in the peremptory ideation of many people. We find that societies in which these is a history of collective trauma (such as the holocaust, slavery, war, famine, ostracism) will produce what is now called the “societal unconscious” (Weinberg, etc.) A common set of fearful images are held by members of this traumatized society. Citizens often report similar trauma-related dreams, as well as similar bouts of anxiety that are easily triggered by events that in many other societies produce only mild stress.
Anxiety can be produced by a potential loss of confidence in a chosen leader, or by mild public protests regarding some social ordinance. It might very well be that the “social unconscious” material shows up in our internal peremptory ideation. This being the case, then one can imagine that the alignment with external images being carried by an ideation train is likely to be quite common. Both the internal psyche and external ideological train will be holding the same social unconscious material. A “perfect” storm of prejudice, intolerance, fear of the “other” and (eventually) violence is created. One final point, it is more likely that this ideational train will be fully operational and pulling on external images when we are tired and overwhelmed. Such a state is not uncommon when living in the world of VUCA-Plus.
