State propaganda channels people toward futile and destructive instincts
Among the central ideas explored by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler was the relationship between feelings of inferiority and superiority, and the psychological complexes that can develop from them. Every person experiences both. It is perfectly natural to feel inferior to others in certain respects while striving to excel in others. No one is completely fulfilled. We all feel that something is missing from our lives—whether material or intangible—and there is nothing unusual about trying to attain it.
These feelings become pathological only when they prevent people from functioning as healthy members of society and instead drive them to pursue goals that ultimately harm both themselves and those around them.
As a psychoanalyst, Adler traced the roots of such complexes back to childhood. What causes them to develop? He pointed to several recurring patterns: children who were excessively pampered by their parents; those who were neglected; those whose physical disabilities or imperfections became the focus of their own and others’ attention; or first-born children who initially enjoyed exclusive attention but were later, figuratively speaking, knocked off their pedestal by the arrival of a younger sibling.
Read also
Children raised under such circumstances often develop a strong need to control others. As adults, they may become domineering, prone to depression and consumed by self-pity and their own emotional suffering. Many, Adler argued, also turn to crime because they lack the courage to confront life’s challenges directly. Crime becomes a way of escaping reality rather than facing it. Criminals often imagine themselves to be heroes, when in fact they are driven by fear. In both inferiority and superiority complexes, feelings of inadequacy come to dominate a person’s life, pushing them into a futile pattern of existence that stifles personal growth. In that sense, inferiority and superiority are simply two sides of the same psychological coin.
Individual and social psychology are inseparable. Adler maintained that the individual cannot be understood outside society, because human beings exist and develop only within a social environment. Individual pathologies emerge, for example, when a child who has been the centre of attention suddenly loses that position and is forced to adapt to new social relationships, such as at school.
Social pathologies, in turn, arise when individuals are systematically misled and directed toward false goals. This is the logic underpinning the current Civil Contract government, which exploits the inferiority complex on a societal scale. For more than thirty years, generation after generation has been told—and continues to be told—that “evil forces” have deprived them of something that rightfully belonged to them. Their life’s mission, they are taught, should be to take revenge on those who supposedly deprived them of it, while calling that revenge “justice.”
As a result, perfectly natural feelings of inferiority and superiority have, for decades, been channeled into a pointless and destructive pursuit, transforming them into a social pathology.
This also explains why today’s state propaganda is built around appealing to people’s basest instincts—above all, envy. “Let’s confiscate Gagik Tsarukyan’s mansion, turn it into a nursing home, and live there ourselves.” Notably, the authorities encourage this resentment only against wealthy individuals who, to one degree or another, oppose Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. No one speaks of confiscating the home of “Tokhmakh Mher,” because, during the last elections, that controversial figure worked in favor of Civil Contract. Nor is there any longer much talk about “Sashik,” despite the fact that, before the change of government, his name dominated political rhetoric almost daily.
Rather than helping society overcome its inferiority complex, the authorities are deliberately reinforcing and deepening it.
“Ruben Vardanyan ended up in a Baku prison because of his own stupidity.” Anyone who says or writes such things suffers from a profound and incurable mental disorder. A disorder perfectly suited to what the authorities call the “Real Armenia.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
Aravot daily
30.06.2026
