Furthermore, today (during the third decade of the 21st Century) we are finding a powerful force moving many countries toward authoritarianism that is directly related to our current pandemic (COVID-19) and that portends an even greater threat of rampant authoritarianism with future global outbreaks of highly contagious viruses. In the current essay, I reflect on the dynamics of authoritarianism and escaping from freedom, while in a subsequent essay I consider these dynamics as related to the current virus and future viruses.
The Scenarios of Escape
In seeking out some answers to the question about the re-emergence of these ghosts and the potential escalation of authoritarianism in many societies, I turn first to the insights offer by Erich Fromm many years ago about authoritarianism and the escape from freedom. Erich Fromm suggested that “once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are severed, once the individual faces the· world outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses are open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness” (Fromm, 1941, pp. 140 – 141). The one course is what Fromm defined as the twofold process of discovering true freedom. One first experiences what he calls “negative freedom”; this being freedom from specific societal restrictions. The next step is “positive freedom,” or the freedom to do something else and construct a new set of social institutions. These new institutions, in Fromm’s utopian vision, offer greater economic and political equity while also encouraging creativity and community.
Freedom and the Numinous
Experiencing the loss of constraint (negative freedom) and the challenge of making free choices (positive freedom) is frightening. In seeking to determine the nature and outcomes of this fear, we turn, briefly, to insights offered by another psychoanalytically trained social observer, Carl Jung. Borrowing from the work of Rudolph Otto, Jung (1948) describes the effect of unbounded freedom and the “awe-ful” nature of choice. In what some scholars identify as the first “psychological” analysis of religious experiences, Otto identified something he called the numinous experience.
In his now-classic book, The Idea of the Holy, Otto (1923) creates a new word, “numinous”, combining the Latin words “numen” with the word, “ominous”. Otto (1923, p. 11) writes about a powerful, enthralling experience that is “felt as objective and outside the self.” His numinous experience is simultaneously awe-some and awe-full. We are enthralled and repelled. We feel powerless in the presence of the numinous—yet we seem to gain power (“inspiration”) from participation in its wonderment.
