Deracinating Delusion and Malice

The Existential-Psychoanalytic Work of Walter A. Davis

Abstract

This essay introduces and analyzes the existential psychology of Walter Davis, one of the innumerable innovative academics who have made palpable (even radical) contributions to knowledge, but may not be household names. Davis dissects politics, religion, ideology, history, and violence with an incisive psychoanalytic scalpel, arguing that human beings are often deeply injured, that we weaponize our wounds, and invent phantasmatic religions and ideologies to deliver ourselves from the burden of independence while inflicting our fears and lacerations on others under the auspices of deities and justifications we create in order to justify such violence. We refuse existential engagement with the wounds and sufferings that impel our deceptions and disrupt our capacities to love. But history is a record of the subtle and gross atrocities committed with phantasmatic and self-deceptive justification. And we still inflict our deepest wounds with delusional disguises and sanctimony. In order to not inflict our own psychic injuries on others, we need to excruciatingly deracinate, or uproot the buried roots of our anguish and despair, and embrace impassioned existential engagement with that unseen torment