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Blood magic in the age of psychopathy, mass shootings and ecological catastrophe*

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Abstract

This paper is an effort to locate blood magic in the age of psychopathy. Taking as a starting point Michael Eigen’s observation that psychopathic tendencies can become cut off from balancing capacities and wreak havoc, we consider the ways in which practices of blood magic, including rituals surrounding menstruation have functioned variously across cultures to balance destructive tendencies and sustain relationship with the living surround. We argue that the lack of these practices and the attitudes fed by and feeding them has contributed to an upsurge in ultra-violent phenomena like mass shootings in our culture. Moreover, we consider the ways in which such phenomena are perverted expressions of a need for blood magic that, though twisted beyond recognition, nevertheless seek expression and wishes to be recognized in this age, which has as its backdrop an unrecognized, unfolding human-wrought ecological catastrophe.

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  • 13 April 2022

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Michael L. Melmed

  2. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 622 W. 168th, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Michael L. Melmed & Christopher Santiago

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Correspondence to Michael L. Melmed.

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Address correspondence to Michael L. Melmed, PsyD, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 622 W. 168th, New York, NY 10032. Email: melmed.michael@gmail.com.

Michael L. Melmed, Psy.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University. Psychoanalytic candidate, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Private practice, New York, NY.

Christopher Santiago, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Staten Island, The City University of New York.

*A version of this paper was presented to the International Psychohistorical Association in 2019.

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Melmed, M.L., Santiago, C. Blood magic in the age of psychopathy, mass shootings and ecological catastrophe*. Am J Psychoanal 82, 80–111 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-022-09343-0

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