It has been clinically proven that U.S. President Donald Trump is a pathological liar. If the clinical findings were limited to this, we’d be considerably happy. But, unfortunately, when a world leader, the most powerful leader at that, lies that much and his whole administration and several of his allies accept them as facts, then we have a problem.

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology, names this problem as a psychic epidemic. If you listen to him, we have an international situation, like the COVID-19 we had two years ago. Many authorities, like Dr. John Gartner, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University, keep telling us that Trump has crossed from grandiosity into full-blown psychosis. His delusions are now so dangerous, going through a manic spiral unfolding in real time, that he may harm himself or people close to him.

But Jung, a prolific author of over 20 books, illustrator, correspondent and academic, best known for his concept of archetypes, had with the founder of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud, not "a friendship between equals but as a bond of father and son.” (But Jung rejected Freud’s idea that psychoanalysis rests upon the theory of the libido, saying Freud was reducing whole science of psychology to sexuality and the two hadn’t say "hello" to each other after 1913. But this is another and very long story.)

Jung believed that "the collective unconscious, distinguished from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis, had a profound influence on the lives of individuals. We, the modern people connected with the phenomenon known as mass communication, Juns said, "live out the symbols of the collective unconscious and clothed them in meaning through their experiences.”

In other words, their collective experiences are more effective on modern people. Jung wrote, "Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”

A mass psychosis, in his words, is "an epidemic of madness and that occurs when a large portion of a society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions,” not a thing of fiction.

Two examples of mass psychoses are the American and European witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. During the witch hunts, thousands of individuals, mostly women, were killed not for any crimes they committed but because they became the scapegoats of societies gone mad. In the second event of mass psychoses, 6 million Jews, Romans and communists were killed in Hitler’s gas furnaces.

In his most famous quote, Jung said, "In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.” The fear starts in one man’s or woman’s dissociation of the personality, like neurosis, it spreads to a group, and then to a community, ending up in a collective unconscious complex.

Age of mass psychosis

This relatively autonomous "complex” (i.e., psychosis) has spread from Zionist fanatics in Israel, thanks to their unity of interest with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to a large segment of the Israeli people. Through him, across Trump and his relatively narrow circle, has spread this disconnect from reality.

The Zionists, religious fanatics such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and in the U.S., Trump and the Evangelical Messianic zealots, are now completely disconnected from consciousness, becoming the greatest threat to humanity. You still remember the real epic fury of the U.S. president when he declared that Iran's "civilization will die.”

A small but growing number of Democratic politicians in the United States called for Trump to be removed from office because he was threatening genocidal war crimes and being too dangerous to have the U.S. nuclear button in his hand. Trump’s own delusions (or "strong collars and leash Netanyahu bamboozled him into”) could (and still can) plunge America (and the world) into World War III.

Not only the president, but almost everyone in the administration, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of "War” Pete Hegseth were also accused of threatening the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, after they talked about the "tools that so far haven't been decided to be used.”

Trump playing God

Even Pope Leo XIV had to interfere and say that Trump’s threats directed at Iran’s population were "truly unacceptable.” The pope, who is American, has increasingly voiced criticism of the Iran war. As if responding to the pope, Trump put out this image on his Truth Social media account depicting him as Jesus Christ. People asked if Trump was putting himself "in the position of God.”

When Trump spun his story after an outcry, saying, "I thought it was me as a doctor,” several opinion writers in major media asked if the U.S. should be governed by a deeply delusional man who has lost all touch with reality.

The pope has shown us how to stand up to Trump. While some leaders have chosen to appease the bully, Pope Leo has shown the world that this blasphemous president has actually very little power and he can be silenced when strongly shouted at.

Yet, we understood that the people around him, from the graphic artist who created that shameless image, to the official and unofficial people around him who got his approval to post it on social media, thought that Trump was omnipotent as he is depicted in that gravure-like picture. But unlike many other presidents and prime ministers in their myopic submission or fearing his malicious instincts did nothing about it, the pope, without mentioning his name, urged Trump to stop the carnage he had unleashed on Iranians: "Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.”

Keeping our sanity

According to Jung, the greatest threat to civilization lies in our inability to deal with the forces of our own psyche. We are our own worst enemies, or as the Latin proverb puts it, "Man is wolf to man” ("Homo homini lupus"). "It is a sad yet eternal truism,” and our wolf-like tendencies come most prominently into play at those times of history when mental illness becomes the norm, rather than the exception in a society, a situation which Jung termed a psychic epidemic.

Is it indeed becoming ever more dangerous in our time because there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics? It was a collective detachment from reality, and delusions and paranoia caused the all-powerful totalitarian governments in countries such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea, China and Cambodia.

We should be grateful that the European Union, Russia and China stayed on the same side of the ideological divide. Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and several Gulf countries have made moves to keep the U.S. out of the alliance structures in the Middle East.

Who knows, after going to the brink of civilizational destruction, Iran might also see that those Arab countries have sought alliances with America because of their own belligerence in the neighborhood. Iran’s mullahs cannot claim that their belligerence is to protect Palestinians and Lebanese people. They can be better protected without seeking the total wipe out of Israel from the map.

What needs to be wiped out is Zionism. What we need is a total reconstruction of Israel and Palestine in accordance with the never-implemented U.N. 1947 partition plan. These targets seem to be achieved by the millions of people who took to the streets globally in support of Palestinians.

Jung studied the phenomenon of epidemic thoroughly and wrote that the infected individuals "become morally and spiritually inferior; they sink to the bottom of intellectual community; they become more unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic and unreliable.”

Does that description remind you of some people?