POLITICAL SPIRITOPSYCHOPATHOLOGY AS A LENS TO UNDERSTAND WESTERN DOMINANCE.

MPEKE-NTONGA METILA ME NYODI-ALPHONSE MPEKE (c)2025

POLITICAL SPIRITOPSYCHOPATHOLOGY AS A LENS TO UNDERSTAND WESTERN DOMINANCE  

Political Lying as Soft, Harmful Spiritopsychopathology

By Mpeke-Ntonga Métila Me Nyodi-Alphonse Mpeke. Founder of Coafrwology and the IEMAC/ICAWS-Institute for Contemporary African World Studies. This 22/08/2025

In contemporary public life, state lies—often propagated by Western political leaders—take the form of Spiritopsychopathology: a subtle pathology of the mind and collective consciousness that acts gently yet deeply on populations. These lies are not mere rhetorical mistakes; they produce invisible wounds, creating a climate of doubt, mistrust, and psychic disturbance.

A recent example is President Emmanuel Macron. In a recorded statement, he claimed that France does not possess gold reserves obtained through expropriations or spoliations in Africa. Soon after, a video surfaced on YouTube contradicting his statements, fuelling cognitive dissonance among citizens: whom should they believe—the head of state, supposedly the guarantor of public truth, or documents presenting another reality?

These discrepancies between official statements and documented reality generate a subtle psychic violence. They contribute to the construction of a world where official truths constantly collide with lived and verified realities. Here arises the troubling spiral of cognitive dissonances: people oscillate between the desire to trust reassuring words and the pain of being betrayed by evident falsifications.

The problem extends far beyond France. Globally, mainstream media amplify these official narratives, legitimizing partial or biased accounts. Collective suffering in the face of this dominant state lies manifests as global psychic fatigue: citizens are exhausted by the constant tension between promises of integrity and evidence of deception.

Spiritopsychopathology as a Key to Reading Western Dominance

Spiritopsychopathology does not only analyse political lies as instruments of soft but toxic domination; it also illuminates a global system of psychological and spiritual control.

For centuries, Western power structures—political, religious, and sometimes occult—have exerted profound influence over Africa and its elites, combining:

·         State lies (e.g., denial of colonial plunder or falsification of economic accounts, as in President Macron’s statements on France’s gold reserves);

·         Moral and psychological harassment through certain religious and ideological apparatuses, maintaining spiritual and cultural dependency.

·         Historical concealment through truncated or manipulated narratives, preventing people from constructing a healthy collective memory.

The 21st century—and especially the digital revolution—radically changes this paradigm. Citizens, now connected globally, can cross-check facts in real time, confronting official statements with archives, videos, and testimonies. Lies that once blended into the background are now exposed, compared, and debated on a global stage.

This new relationship with information intensifies collective cognitive dissonance:

·         On one hand, the official voice of governments, amplified by mainstream media, continues to deny or minimize spoliations.

·         On the other hand, populations see documented evidence revealing contrary realities.

This constant collision between discourse and reality is precisely what Spiritopsychopathology allows us to conceptualize: a diffuse pathology that attacks not only individuals but the entire social and spiritual fabric.

Contemporary societies thus suffer not only economic or military domination but subtle psychospiritual aggression: a mixture of moral manipulation, historical falsification, and public denial. It is this invisible violence that exhausts, frustrates, and enrages collective consciousness.

Methodology and Research Perspective

Studying Spiritopsychopathology requires an interdisciplinary methodology, combining:

·         Historical case studies of Western interventions, colonization, and economic spoliations.

·         Media analysis of mainstream narratives and their divergences from documented evidence.

·         Psychological assessment of collective trauma and cognitive dissonances.

·         Comparative cultural studies on the impact of spiritual and moral manipulation.

Research perspectives include developing frameworks to measure the intensity and consequences of Spiritopsychopathological influence, and to design interventions that restore truth, historical memory, and collective agency.

Conclusion

The stakes are clear: it is urgent to establish a new interdisciplinary field—political Spiritopsychopathology—to analyse the psychospiritual impact of institutionalized lies and moral harassment on populations. Lies are not merely communication strategies; they act as repeated collective trauma, undermining trust, eroding social bonds, and generating existential fatigue.

The solution lies in a therapy of truth and lucidity, enabling populations to stop enduring dominant lies as inevitable and regain the power to write their own history and shape their future.

Main references

1. On lies and truth in politics

1.                  Arendt, Hannah. Truth and politics. In: The crisis of culture. Paris: Gallimard, 1972.

2.                  Ricoeur, Paul. Yourself as another. Paris: Seuil, 1990.

3.                  Foucault, Michel. The order of the speech. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

4.                  Foucault, Michel. Truth and legal forms. Paris: Gallimard, 1994.

2. On cognitive dissonance and the psychological effects of lying

1.                  Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957.

2.                  Tavris, Carol & Aronson, Elliot. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

3. On symbolic violence and the media

1.                  Bourdieu, Pierre. On television. Paris: Liber, 1996.

2.                  Chomsky, Noam & Herman, Edward. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon, 1988.

4. On political and collective trauma

1.                  Fanon, Frantz. The wretched of the earth. Paris: La Découverte, 1961.

2.                  Alexander, Jeffrey C. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

3.                  Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Negro Reason. Paris: La Découverte, 2013.

5. On African Thought, Justice and Renaissance

1.                  Wiredu, Kwasi. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

2.                  Gyekye, Kwame. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

3.                  Nyerere, Julius. Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968.

4.                  Asante, Molefi Kete. Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Chicago: African American Images, 2003.

5.                  Diop, Cheikh Anta. Civilization or barbarism: anthropology without complacency. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1981.

6. On crimes and genocides linked to political lies

1.                  Lemarchand, René. The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

• Des Forges, Alison. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999.

• Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961.

Bibliographie indicative

Arendt, H. (1972). Vérité et politique. In La crise de la culture. Paris : Gallimard.Asante, M. K. (2003). Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Chicago: African American Images.Bourdieu, P. (1996). Sur la télévision. Paris : Liber.Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.Diop, C. A. (1981). Civilisation ou barbarie: anthropologie sans complaisance. Paris : Présence Africaine.Fanon, F. (1961). Les damnés de la terre. Paris : La Découverte.Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Foucault, M. (1971). L’ordre du discours. Paris : Gallimard.Mbembe, A. (2013). Critique de la raison nègre. Paris : La Découverte.Mpékè-Ntonga MMNAM (2007-2025) Coafrwology : A new Panafrican Science. London: AM Publishings

Mpékè-Ntonga MMNAM (2025) Spiritopsychopathology: Diagnosing the pathologies of Western  domination

Wiredu, K. (1996). Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.