The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior--and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage

by Martha Stout

Years after September 11, 2001, we’re still scared. And why not? Terrorists could strike at any moment. Our country is at war. The polar caps are melting. Hurricanes loom. We struggle to control our fear so that we can go about our daily lives. Our national consciousness has been torqued by trauma, in the process transforming our behavior, our expectations, our legal system.

In The Myth of Sanity, Martha Stout analyzed how we cope with personal trauma. In her national bestseller The Sociopath Next Door, she showed how to avoid suffering psychological damage at the hands of others. Now, in The Paranoia Switch, she offers a groundbreaking clinical, neuro-psychological, and practical examination of what terror and fear politics have done to our minds, and to the very biology of our brains.

In this timely and essential book, Stout assures us that we can interrupt the cycle of trauma and look forward to a future free of fear only by understanding our own paranoia—and what flips the paranoia switch.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Social Science, Politics

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 4, 2007

About the author

Author and Ph.D. in psychology.

Reviews

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: obviously, there were reasons unrelated to 9/11 that I was interested in reading this book just now. I have decided that, all things considered, I'm going to avoid pointing any of that out, and just take this book on its own terms, as a discussion of the post-9/11 national paranoia. Comparison to any other topic whatever is left as an exercise for the reader.

Dr. Martha Stout is a psychologist, with experience both as a practicing therapist and as a member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She has counseled victims of domestic abuse, in some cases while they were still living with their abusers. She is a person who is very fully aware that there are people out there who are capable of doing bad things to others. Written in 2007, this book is pretty clearly aimed at the post-9/11 eruption of Patriot Act-style paranoia. While she never actually names George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or any of the other political leaders of that time by name, it is also pretty clear that she is not happy with the manner in which she feels national fears were played to.

The basic thesis of the book, if I can summarize a bit, is this:
- 9/11 was a traumatic event, for most Americans, even those not directly impacted in any way (which was most of us)
- the recovery from that trauma was slowed, or even stalled entirely, by the manner in which our fears were played on by politicians and the newsmedia
- there are non-trivial parallels to the ways in which a domestic abuser keeps their victim in fear, in order to control them; by breaking down their self-esteem with abuse, they simultaneously cause them to believe they need a protector, and that their abuser is the only one who is willing to perform that role
- to recover mental health, we need to put the danger of terrorism (real, but many others in our lives are just as large) in perspective, and take courage
- we should not support any political leader who wishes us to be constantly afraid, even if the threat is not imaginary

The stories of domestic abuse are, of course, infuriating, although she gives us only enough detail to know what kind of abuse she's talking about, and doesn't (thankfully) spend chapter after chapter steeping in it, or I would have ground my teeth until my jaw muscles hurt. We also hear about several other times in our nation's past when popular fears were manipulated for political ends, especially the fear of Japanese invasion after Pearl Harbor, and the fear of Communist revolution in McCarthy's time.

There is some discussion of the role of our newsmedia in this process; for example, we see a long list of newspaper headlines regarding Japan that appears in late 1941 and early 1942: "Japan Pictured As A Nation of Spies", "Representative Ford Wants All Coast Japs in Camps", "New West Coast Raids Feared", "American Japs Removal Urged", "Japanese Here Sent Vital Data To Tokyo", "Lincoln Would Intern Japs". I get the impression that Stout mostly believes that the press would have behaved better if they had not been influenced by politicians who were trying to use fear of Japanese-Americans as a cover for their own failures to prepare for the attack on Pearl Harbor. It may simply be that politicians fall more naturally into her analogy to domestic abusers (who occupy a position of power), and a newsmedia that profits from stoking our fears does not have as obvious a counterpart.

Regardless, it is a well written book, and she makes a number of good points. For example:

"...in the months after 9/11, tolerance, and any value placed on unity, deserted us. The dividing line between right and left, conservative and liberal, red and blue became unworkably emotional, humorless, and deeply demoralizing, for both sides. At the moment in our history when it was arguably most crucial for us to work together, instead we fell apart into mutually suspicious "sides", and later discovered that much of the important work had been left undone."

...or...

"Excessive fear in a person, and certainly a chronic orientation of fear in a group of people, creates unpredictable psychological and social aberrations. Fear that is extremely great, or that hangs on indefinitely, with no safety signal in sight, can easily push our thoughts and our behavior over a line..."

I recall the moment when I decided that my nation had, essentially, regained its sanity. On September 11, 2012, two U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were attacked by an Islamic fundamentalist group, and several Americans (including the U.S. Ambassador) were killed. Members of Congress attempted, repeatedly, to make the event a major political issue (in particular to criticize Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not increasing embassy security prior to the attack). The electorate, however, basically shrugged it off, despite increasingly strident attempts by the GOP to make it a campaign issue. The fact that the attacks came on September 11th, presumably not coincidentally, would have sent the nation into a repeating spasm of fear and poorly focused rage, had it happened ten or even five years before. But by 2012, I realized, the nation was prepared to see terrorism for what it was: one threat among many. The general attitude was something like: "huh, I guess they should beef up security at the embassies, especially in countries with a recent history of disorder and violence". In other words, proportional, and sane. Exactly when between 2001 and 2012 the nation had regained its sanity is, of course, debatable and any dividing line is arbitrary. But it was a welcome change.

If you're reading this book hoping to find a "switch" to turn OFF paranoia, sadly, there is not one (that this book can tell us about, anyway). The metaphor of the "switch" really only works for turning it on; turning it off seems to be more gradual. But, at the very least, recognizing that an irrationally extreme upsurge in fear and anger is neither unprecedented, nor permanent, is a welcome reminder, and reading some about the manner in which it works inside the human brain can't hurt.

[Cissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've appreciated Stout's insights and perspective in a couple of her previous books, and this one does not lack such. It is, however, somewhat muddled and repetitive.

Her hypothesis that the events of 9/11 caused a sea-change in the way Americans see the world is plausible- though there are data that indicate that many of the factors she puts here were in bloom well before that tragedy. And her analogies between the very personal terrorism of domestic violence, and the broader scope of more broadly-aimed terrorist acts, is an excellent one. I also appreciated her checklist of traits that fear-mongers display in their quest for power, though I think it could have been somewhat clarified.

It is also interesting that our current political mess can be described as a conflict between absolutists and contextualists... which seem to have a significant genetic component to them!

The problem is that Stout veers to and from these points in a way that I found both repetitive and frustrating. My guess is that this fairly slim book was written rapidly, and then published rather than being sorted-out and edited. (Obviously I could be wrong about this!)

So- recommended for various insights; I just wish they had been offered more succinctly and coherently.

[Brent Cope · Rating 5 out of 5]

This latest tome from one of my favorite writers gives some incredible insight on the topic of fear. Namely, how it is generated, transmitted, and how it can impact your behavior without you knowing. Dr Stout has over thirty years of practice working with survivors of trauma, and treating them, helping them along the road to recovery. She's pretty much seen it all; children, adults, memory loss, missing time, child abuse, incest, multiple-personalities, and her experience shows in her writing.

The Paranoia Switch deals exclusively with the politics of fear, and how fear-brokers use our own limbic systems against us. The limbic system is a part of the brain that deals with reading and transmitting human emotions. It allows us to comprehend, in a matter of microseconds, the feelings of another human being through body language, expressions, tone of voice and other subtle yet present markers. Stout writes:

Our limbic systems receive and transmit emotional information in wordless neurological "conversations," and within these exchanges, work hard to bring different brains together into similar emotional states.

The neurological process that enables us to sense the emotions of other people is called limbic resonance

It gives us our fundamental ability to empathize, sympathize, and thus share in one another's emotional experience. This is not without it's downside however, without careful self-observation we can easily succumb to powerful emotions of others, such as fear, anger, and hate and allow those emotions to dominate our psyche even though they are coming from an outside source.

This is a powerful phenomenon in mother-child relationships, and very important for parents to be aware of since they can unknowingly transmit negative emotions, such as anxiety, to their children. Stout gives a very good example of this exact phenomenon.

She continues, demonstrating how this phenomenon can effect entire societies, and has effected ours in the recent past. Using Pearl Harbor and the Cold War, as well as 9-11 as examples, she gives point by point analysis of how each event traumatized us as a nation, and thus triggered an internal 'paranoia switch' which temporarily disables rational, critical thought and instead engages our more primitive survival instincts.

For example - how many of you knew Cat Stevens was deported from the United States on Sept 22nd, 2004? I missed it at the time. But was shocked when I discovered his chosen name, Yusuf Islam was listed on a government watch list. They diverted the plane, removed Yusuf, and put him on another back to London on the grounds of 'national security'. Yeah, you read that right: Cat Stevens was deported because he was a threat to national security.

She goes into a brilliant discussion of how our memories are formed, how they are given emotional context, and how we can understand future/present events given our stored history. She also explains how, during trauma, this system short-circuits due to an overload of emotional input and the event doesn't get properly stored. This allows future events that merely resemble the original trauma to suddenly bring back the intense emotional experience that overloaded the brain in the past. A common example she employs is the Vietnam Vet ducking for cover if he hears a firecracker or car backfiring.

She shows us our this 'paranoia switch' can be blamed for the internment of around 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII. McCarthyism is also a phenomenon directly related to our fear of 'commies in our midst', and even though McCarthy himself was exposed as an alcoholic with obvious issues with his sexuality, much damage was wrought from 1950-54 by people who actually believed the nonsense he spouted. People lost their jobs, their reputations, and their dignity because society at large was afraid of commies under the bed and willing to listen to a strong authority in order to protect themselves. Amazing how triggering survival instincts can cause a group of otherwise rational people to listen to a power-craving nut-job.

A Limbic War occurs when a group is traumatized and then individuals seek to use that trauma to push their own agendas. Stout lists the Six Stages of a Limbic War as guidelines for us to keep in mind. They're very enlightening so I'll include them here in brief.

1.)Group Trauma - A limbic war occurs after some form of national catastrophe. Most typically, this event is a war, or a single attack that is abrupt and brutal enough to generate nationwide fear. The disaster can conceivably be a natural one, but natural disasters are less apt to be starting points, since paranoia is less often induced by "acts of God" than by traumatic events brought on by our fellow human beings. Because traumatic memories remain in the brain as incoherent bits of image and sensation that together constitute a neurological trigger - a paranoia switch - the nation that has been traumatized is dangerously reactive to reminders or suggestions of ongoing threat, whether these cues by real, imagined, or contrived.

2.)Fear Brokers - One person or a handful of people use the public's fear to pursue a private agenda. These fear brokers are variously motivated. ...by far the most common motivators are ambition and a desire for power. Usually, regardless of their political affiliation or initial place in society, such individuals can be described as authoritarian, in the straightforward dictionary meaning of that word: "favoring blind submission to authority," or "favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people." Authoritarian fear brokers remind us, frequently and dramatically, of how much danger we are in, whether or not the remaining threat is significant or real.

3.) Scapegoatism - The fear-promoting leader can further heighten the population's anxiety and paranoia by contending that another group or race or people is to be blamed for the crisis.

4.) Cultural Regression - When there is a definite idea of whom to blame, the primitive lust for revenge can crystallize around it. And the idea of a self-righteous vendetta, once it is even whispered of, is a difficult thought for human beings to put away. With all the energy that great fear can generate, the designated out-group is persecuted, or interned, or attacked, and for a time, there is the gratifying sentiment that vengeance is being served.

Typically, encouraging an us-versus-them atmosphere impels a tidal wave of patriotism across the traumatized nation. The new fear-inspired emphasis on national fealty enables the authoritarian leader to divide the population psychologically into two groups: the patriots, who support his authority and his agenda, and the nonpatriots - the traitors, the conspiracy members, the subversives, the cowards - who do not.

Civil Rights are threatened. Humanitarian endeavors atrophy. The arts and literature lose their funding - and their daring. Protected now, intolerance comes out of its hiding places. The limbic war, the emotional manipulation of the people by their own leaders, is in full throttle.

5.) Recognition and Backlash - Of the McCarthy era, the playwright and accused subversive Arthur Miller has reflected, "Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

Fortunately, the evidence is not denied forever. Limbic wars come to an end, and their instigators are eventually deposed. In this stage, protests begin, small and uneasy at the beginning, growing larger and bolder as time goes on.

6.) Regret and Forgetting - As the original trauma-engendered fear begins to ease, often years later one, we have difficulty recalling why we allowed ourselves to be so easily co-opted into an authoritarian agenda. Many of us are left in a state of dissonance and guilt, and this uncomfortable condition promotes forgetting, a return to the internal denial noted by Arthur Miller. Thus, an experience that might have inoculated us against future problems is effectively lost to us, instead.

Her summary above is excellent and can be seen in virtually every trauma we as a society as suffered. Most appropriately, it can be used to describe the current national scene with the Neo-cons at the helm after the tragedy that was 9-11.

Stout continues, and demonstrates how a nation traumatized is similar to a battered-wife. She feels she needs protection (from the original trauma, perhaps child abuse) and so she seeks our a powerful defender (her husband/boyfriend) who will shield her from the evil world. The irony is that she only seeks out a new tormentor and he uses her paranoia switch, installed in childhood, to control her. Eventually, with help, these women can learn to protect themselves, and leave their abusers - however that is not always the case. Stout cites many incidents where women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends, and encourages us to take the message seriously and apply it to the national level.

The book continues with several anecdotes which are highly useful, but I cannot reproduce them here for lack of space. Given that the reader has already indulged me by reading this far, I'd like to wrap up this review with the Ten Traits of Fear Brokers left to us by Stout, briefly:

1.) Fear brokers speak to us of fear, dangerous people, and frightening situations. When addressing the public, he will raise subjects other than fear. These are often flattering topics, intended to showcase the people's superior bravery and nobility (that is to say, superior to those other groups of people). He may even use humor. But somewhere within virtually every address, there will be several references to danger, and to just how frightened people must not forget to be.

2.) Fear brokers are not limited by the facts; they use alarming "unfacts". Where terrorism is concerned, out-and-out lying may not be required. It is easy enough to fan public fears by giving alarming renditions of terrorist events that might happen in the future, and by speaking in imaginative detail about terrorist events that would have happened had they not been thwarted. When such "unfacts" are delivered dramatically, there is seldom any prosocial motive involved, only the intent to capture an audience and amplify fear.

3.) Fear brokers tend to accuse those who disagree with them of being unpatriotic and/or naive.

4.) Fear brokers look good. ...a scaremonger cannot afford to have shifty eyes or scary teeth, or any other seriously repellent feature... a broker of fear must be attractive. This is because, other factors being equal, and attractive person is perceived as smarter, more honest, and more trustworthy than an unattractive person.

Because we love the familiar, a fear broker who is not a natural head-turner can make himself attractive by looking as much like the people in his constituency as possible.

5.) Fear brokers behave like archetypal parents. They can make us feel the attitudinal equivalent of being patted on the back by a kind authority who tells us that he knows what we have been through, and that he is proud of us for being brave. The scaremonger can act comfortably omnipotent ... and that we must always rely on him. He demands we trust him. If he is a sociopath or, if he is delusional, he may even imply that he is in direct communication with God, who approves of his ambitions and plans.

6.) Fear brokers shame us over sex. A fear politician wishes to be viewed as the moral and literal rule maker where sexuality in concerned. Unlike a good parent, he shames us, and then tries to use that shame to exert control.

Of course, issues pertaining in some way to sexuality - sexual preference, same-sex marriage, birth control, abortion, certain types of medical research - are often discussed politically. The fear politician uses them manipulatively, as a distraction tactic. Matters of sexual morality are inherently divisive and highly emotional, and tend to divert us completely from whatever we had been thinking or discussing before.

7.)In a seeming contradiction, fear brokers praise us for being moral and heroic. In various ways, she or he tells us over and again that we, and only we, can take on anything, succeed at anything, and endure anything, in the service of what we know to be right.

Flattery always involves an intent to manipulate. Straight-forward, moral leaders almost never use extreme flattery. Listen for what are essentially come-on lines, and know that a person with no hidden agenda would not be speaking them.

8.) Fear brokers project personal infallibility. When you are evaluating a fear politician, look for moments when that individual is asked the direct question Do you feel you made a mistake? Invariably, the fear politician's answer will be reducible to one word: No.

9.) Fear brokers are secretive, and certain that other people, too, are keeping dangerous secrets. In general, paranoia is all about secrecy, one's own secrecy and that suspected of other people. The leader who advances cultural paranoia - who, as history demonstrates, may be moderately to seriously paranoid himself - is typically driven to collect information about other people, while at the same time withholding information about himself and his activities.

10.) Fear brokers use language that pulls for primitive affect. For centuries, the word evil, in all the various languages of the world, has been on the lips of fear brokers and also war makers. It is an overwhelmingly powerful tool. In addition to conjuring fear, the concept of good vs evil has the advantages of

reassuring the people that they are on the side of good;
creating a division between "us" and "them" that has no gray areas;
and casting as evil all doubters and dissenters.

Another concept with ancient links to fear is that of revenge. Whether or not the word itself is used, a typical fear broker will communicate the primitively appealing notion that the people should have revenge, and also that they will have revenge, provided they are loyal to him. He may induce still more primitive emotionality by introducing the notion of cowardice. Via a series of nonrational twists, the enemies are cowards, and therefore being cowardly is not just shameful - being cowardly means a person is one of the enemies.

To conclude, Stout gives us several useful facts. Most importantly, is that the odds of us being harmed by terrorists are virtually nill. Much less then our odds of getting cancer, heart disease, or dieing in a car accident. Comparatively it seems almost silly to worry about terrorism, and in point of fact, doing so lets the terrorists accomplish their goal.

She also gives us a few short, poignant clues as to how we can recover our lost sense of safety. One of these includes writing out our 'worst case scenario' in as much detail as we can. Then, we symbolically tear it up and toss it in the garbage, or burn it, allowing us to discard those notions and reclaim our courage.

Overall her book is stunning. It allowed one, such as myself, to understand in scientific terms, why and how our nation has become the caricature it is today. How a noble, and idealistic race of people became paralyzed and twisted by their own biology, and thus it helped alleviate much of my frustration and anti-American angst. It's also a tome of healing, and can help pretty much anyone, who's on the question for knowledge, gain insight and understanding about our world, and why it is the way it is.

[Vee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is promoted as one thing and absolutely something else. I'm not American, so if I had known that 90% of this book would be about 9/11 and its impact on the nation (which I am absolutely not trying to downplay or dismiss) I would have never read it. I started this book having adored The Myth of Sanity and excited to read more by this author. I was excited to read about paranoia as that is the actual title of this book. Nope. I technically finished it but there was a lot of skimming involved.

[Kathrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by the author in 2007 in response to the trauma the US has experienced due to the 9/11 attacks. Stout is drawing parallels to the political developments after the Pearl Harbor attacks (internment of Japanese-Americans) and the increased influence of the USSR after WWII (McCarthyism). 10 years later this book is this relevant. The section about how to recognize fear brokers/ fear monger is eye opening!

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long on words, short on insight and solutions. This book should have been significantly tightened; it reads like a magazine article puffed out to book length, and readers will save time by finding any online article about this book rather than reading the book itself--almost certainly it will contain the key information at a much lower time cost.

This book was written in the years following 9/...[see the rest on my book review site.]

[Buck Wilde · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not her best, but definitely readable. Mostly about the sociological impact of fear of terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, like her earlier book The Sociopath Next Door. Dr. Stout clearly and forcefully explains the impact of deliberately induced terror on people, individually and collectively. Then she goes on to look at the effects of both the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 and the actions of too many of our supposed leaders since then, who have stoked and encouraged people's fears to gain and keep power, the same way a battering husband encourages his wife to live in terror, rather than try to help us adapt and overcome the fear.

Martha Stout for president...

[T.M. Carper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Focusing on 9/11's terror attacks and the aftermath of it and other events (World War II's repercussions for Japanese-Americans, the beginning of the KKK, McCarthyism, and the terrorism-induced fear of people of or similar to Middle Eastern descent). There is one interesting case study about a woman injured in a car accident who caused her daughter to develop an anxitey disorder.



More about terrorism than dealing with fears.



Read "The Sociopath Next Door" or "The Myth of Sanity" insted. Those are much better books by Martha Stout than this one.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting view on terrorism from a psychologist who has courage to explain a different point of view.

[Jennifer Weingardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very timely book as more and more information now reveals how U.S. government officials used fear to keep the American people loyal to the administration.

[Lisa]

The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior--and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage by Martha Stout (2007)

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had this book on my tbr shelf for years and this year seemed like the perfect time to read it. Even though it’s from the perspective of 9/11 it still parallels today’s current situation really well.