I recently met Mattias Desmet, a professor in clinical psychology at Ghent University. He became famous during the Covid period for his work on the concept of “mass formation psychosis.” During Covid, massive populations got whipped up by the media into a self-destructive frenzy. People harmed themselves and their loved ones. A cloud of suspicion and paranoia descended upon the land. For several years, the most insane, neurotic behavior became “the new normal." People were induced to do things that were against their own interests. In this sit-down interview, I ask Desmet his interpretation of the events we lived through and his take on it as a clinical psychologist. Having now read many books on the madness of crowds, I was keen to hear his perspective.
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