Unconscious War as Stage-Structured Organizational Regression: A Developmental Systems Formulation
Abstract
Psychoanalytic theories of war have emphasized instinctual aggression (Freud) or collective regression under stress (Glover). While illuminating the unconscious dimensions of mass violence, these accounts remain largely descriptive. This article advances a developmental systems formulation integrating regression theory with a stage-structured model of collective emotional organization and a formal Organizational Emotional Function (OEF) framework. Societal functioning is conceptualized along a gradient (Fear–Dependency → Anger–Detachment → Guilt–Reparation → Freedom–Independence → Empathy–Integration). War is hypothesized to emerge when external shocks elevate aggression beyond containment within institutional systems, triggering compensatory rigidity (splitting, projection, moral absolutism). Four interacting macro-emotional variables—aggression, containment, institutional coherence, and rigidity—model this process dynamically. An analysis of post-Versailles Germany illustrates how humiliation, institutional fragility, and escalating rigidity can drive regression from pluralistic organization to authoritarian mobilization. Extending Tavistock institutional theory through stage-structured pathways and conditional threshold predictions, the framework remains compatible with relational and group-analytic accounts of mentalization collapse. Rather than proposing monocausality, the model identifies patterned vulnerability conditions under which collective violence becomes more probable.