As I walk through the halls of a major US medical center, I see eyes that divert themselves away from me as I pass. When we engage in our usual discussions on patients, the topic of COVID-19 vaccination brings a halting response: 'We don't want to talk about it.' I see fear, shame, and a never-ending cycle of groupthink that has been more contagious among physicians than aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 in a crowded elevator. Mattias Desmet, like a guided missile, has hit the target. The medical community is in mass formation and this led to a much larger penumbra that has enveloped the general population. In this book, Desmet has constructed an explanatory framework from which the cohesive fabric is suspended that clearly and concisely explains what is happening and what the next steps are that each and every one of us need to take to break the 'spell' and restore normalcy. A must read for our time."

--Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH; chief medical advisor, Truth for Health Foundation

Desmet is waking a lot of people up to the dangerous place we are now with a brilliant distillation of how we ended up here.

--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In this masterful book, Desmet asks how we have arrived at the doorstep of totalitarianism. Taking the reader on a wild, scholarly ride through history, science, and psychology, he delivers answers both necessary and unexpected.

--Heather Heying, PhD, evolutionary biologist; coauthor of A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century

Mattias Desmet is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. His work has been discussed widely in the media, including on The Joe Rogan Experience and in Forbes, The New York Post, Salon.com, and Fox News, among hundreds of other outlets. His interviews have been viewed by millions of people around the world. His previous books include The Pursuit of Objectivity in Psychology and Lacan’s Logic of Subjectivity: A Walk on the Graph of Desire. Desmet is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018 he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019 he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy.