From Helplessness to Power: Collective Phantasy and Politics in Contemporary Iran

What happens to a group’s collective internal world when it experiences itself as deeply helpless and lacking any power to affect its fate? Helplessness is not merely a lack of power; it is an affective state in which the subject experiences its capacity to act, protect itself, or change the course of events as fundamentally lost. In such a situation, collective life might generate phantasies that transform the vague and fragmented experience of vulnerability into a more graspable psychic scene: someone is harmed, someone is responsible for his harm, and consequently, someone must restore justice.

During this process, some historical, religious, or mythical figures are invested with meanings and affects appropriate to the group’s current psychic narrative, so that a group’s suffering, injustice, need for protection, need for revenge, or restoration of its lost power are condensed into a more graspable scene through which a group is then able to symbolically articulate the affects that are difficult to organize and tolerate.

Viewed from this perspective, it is interesting to note how—when a sense of collective helplessness becomes a dominant psychological experience—some historical and cultural figures are evoked in the space of a group’s psyche as phantasies in order to transform this helplessness into a desire for revenge and restoration of power.

In order to understand this process, the concept of “collective phantasy” might be elucidating. By collective phantasy, I am not referring to a group’s shared beliefs or conscious agreements about a person or an event; also, we should not take it as an equivalent of the Jungian “collective unconscious.” In a psychoanalytical sense, phantasy refers to an unconscious organization of relations, affects, and expectations shaping the subject’s experience of himself and the other (Klein, 1948). When such organizations are shared and reproduced within a group or a culture, we can talk about collective forms of phantasy; a concept taken into consideration in the context of the relationship between unconscious anxiety and social organizations within the tradition of group psychoanalysis (Jaques, 1955).

In this sense, a historical or religious figure is not merely an object of remembrance or worship, but can be turned into a figure of collective phantasy: a figure condensing a constellation of affects and relations, allowing for a complex psychic situation to be imagined, experienced, or even enacted through him.

In this sense, cultures do not merely transmit a collection of beliefs and symbols to the next generations; they also provide them with some kind of a “repertoire of collective phantasies” to turn to in various situations in order to make sense of the given situation. In this sense, a certain cultural or mythical figure can be associated with a certain affective conceptualization throughout history.

These affective conceptualizations and meanings are not necessarily static and unique, and the same figure, under different situations, is able to take various forms and meanings; also, different figures can be attributed similar meanings. For example, the image of Jesus Christ in the Christian tradition can be taken as a figure condensing phantasies regarding suffering, victimhood, innocence, and redemption, while several other saints might be associated with healing, protection, or intercession.

In this sense, every culture builds its own transmissible repertoire of figures for evoking and organizing certain forms of affective experience. This allows us to move from a universal level to the more precise case of contemporary Iran as a nation perfectly demonstrating affective states of helplessness, turbulence, and suffering resulting from its recent internal and external conflicts, and explore particular collective phantasy figures evoked by Iranians as a response to them and observe their exact psychic functions for the collective psyche.

This question becomes particularly important in contemporary Iran due to a rift between the state and its own ideological repertoire on the one hand, and people and their own collective repertoire on the other. Now, although both sides are ideologically contrasting, both experience the same affective state during recent years. On the one hand, the state experiences itself as facing a devastating external threat, siege, and invasion by the US and Israel, and on the other hand, parts of Iranian society experience a crushing and brutal crackdown by the state. Now, in both situations, the common theme is the subject’s experience of its own inability to protect itself from a threatening power, leading to affective states of helplessness, loneliness, and vulnerability. These complex and hurtful affects require a phantasy organization in order to be rendered tolerable.

In the official rhetoric of the Islamic Republic—the regime ruling over Iran—one of the most prominent figures evoked to conceptualize the experience of helplessness and vulnerability is Hussein, who was a grandson of Prophet Muhammad and the third Imam of the Shia branch of Islam, and was killed with his family and 72 companions in 680 during the Battle of Karbala by the Caliph’s army; an event transformed into a fundamental narrative about loneliness, helplessness, and martyrdom.

The importance of Hussein here is not merely as a historical figure, but as a figure of collective phantasy capable of organizing the experience of vulnerability in a familiar and graspable form. The Iranian state has experienced and conceptualized its own position against external threats and political tensions as the same as Hussein’s: being lonely and besieged; from representing the Iran-Iraq War as a “contemporary Karbala” (Khosrokhavae, 2023) to the official rhetoric on sanctions pressures placing Iran in an oppressed position against oppressing foreign powers. Even the death of Ayatollah Khamenei as a result of the joint American-Israeli attacks in 2026 was portrayed as a “Hussein-like martyrdom” by state media.

In this conceptualization—through evoking a collective phantasy figure—the experience of helplessness does not directly translate into defeat; rather, it is transformed into being oppressed. The subject might be in a seemingly poor and helpless position, lacking enough power to take control, but this inability attains a moral and historical meaning through the figure of Hussein. In this way, the experience of “I am unable” is transformed into a narrative of “I am oppressed, yet standing in the right direction”; a narrative which both renders the current suffering more tolerable and opens the possibility for a future in which this situation can be reversed.

But if Hussein provides a possibility for giving meaning and form to helplessness, the same religious repertoire of phantasies suggests the Ali figure as another possibility for engagement with the same situation: restoration of power to the subject. Ali, the first Imam in Shia Islam and a central figure in the history of Islam, is represented in the Shia memory not only as the father of Hussein, but also as a powerful and undefeatable warrior; a figure often associated with his famous sword (Zulfiqar), stories about his bravery in early Islamic wars, power, and victory.

In the official rhetoric of the Islamic Republic, the figure of Ali has been evoked repeatedly to transform the feeling of vulnerability into an image of power and potentiality for active response. For example, the state’s official rhetoric about rivalry with Israel, including references to the “Khaybar fort” (a historical fort belonging to the Jewish tribes of Arabia whose gate was reportedly dislodged by Ali during a military conflict between Jews and Muslims during Muhammad’s era) and slogans such as “Khaybar! Khaybar! O Zionist!” alongside the use of symbols of the Zulfiqar sword, places the contemporary enemy (mainly Israel and America) next to the same enemies that Ali fought against according to the Shia narratives; as if the enemy force that currently seems to be superior militarily and technologically—which ignites a feeling of helplessness—could be put against the figure of Ali as a symbol of power.

Here, then, Ali finds a function different from that of Hussein in the collective phantasy of the state: if Hussein functioned as a figure for comprehending helplessness and turning it into victimhood and being oppressed, then Ali provides the possibility of transforming this victimhood into potential power for action and revenge. In other words, the phantasy repertoire does not only provide the subject with the figure of the helpless, oppressed victim; it also provides it with a figure which—in the subject’s phantasy—reverses the subject’s passive position and transforms it into someone holding a powerful sword, attacking, and deciding the “other’s” fate.

If the official rhetoric of the ruling regime provides two different possibilities for organizing the experience of helplessness, a similar structure could be seen among a part of the political opposition; with the difference that the figures of this phantasy are extracted not from religious discourse—which is not very favorable for the opposition—but from monarchical memory and Iranian contemporary history. Here, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (the last king of Iran before the 1979 revolution) attains a function comparable to the figure of Hussein in some opposition narratives: both figures can be represented as the image of a lost power reduced to a situation of loneliness, helplessness, and rejection in the moment of defeat.

In nostalgic and pro-monarchical narratives, Mohammad Reza is often depicted not only as the last king of Iran, but also as a figure who was left alone, had to leave his country, spent his last years in exile, and finally died alone; an image which—in the minds of his supporters—associates him with themes such as betrayal, disloyalty by allies, people’s ingratitude, and being left alone by foreign countries. Various pictures and narratives about his forced departure from Iran, his momentary residences in multiple countries, and especially the photos belonging to his last years of life are used in this reconstruction as symbols of the fall and helplessness of a former powerful figure.

Therefore, just as the figure of Hussein makes it possible for the experience of inability to be comprehended in the form of “victimhood,” so too Mohammad Reza is able to organize the experience of helplessness and inability against the governing regime in the form of a story about a lonely, helpless figure oppressed by the external world. Here too, it is not only about remembering a historical figure; rather, a historical figure becomes a container for digesting a collective experience: “we are powerless, lonely, and oppressed against an oppressing ruling regime.”

By contrast, Reza Shah Pahlavi (father of Mohammad Reza and first king in the Pahlavi dynasty) can have a position in the memory and political phantasy of a part of the opposition similar to that of Ali for the Islamic Republic: the figure of a power that is supposed to be placed as the opposite side of a feeling of inability and helplessness. Pointing out this similarity, however, by no means is to claim that these two figures are completely identical, or to ignore all their historical or political differences: the issue here is about the similar phantastical function of two very different figures for the collective minds of two very different groups of people.

In Pahlavist narratives, Reza Shah is often depicted as a strong, decisive, organizing king who was able to restore political authority in the face of internal chaos, foreign intervention, and weakness of the state. In this context, the prominence of Reza Shah in the discourse of people who oppose the government lies in the possibility of evoking his figure as a phantastical reaction to their current helplessness against a powerful regime.

In parts of the opposition discourse and in protest slogans, the name and image of Reza Shah are repeatedly evoked and relived as a figure which is somehow able to reappear in a situation in which the subject feels himself to be lonely, oppressed, and powerless, and to reverse the order of power. The “Reza Shah! Peace be upon you” (Independent Persian, 2022) slogan in recent protests, a surge in posting and sharing his picture on Iranian social media, and recurrent references to—mostly made-up—stories about how he used to aggressively “discipline” mullahs in his era can be understood in this context not merely as historical nostalgia, but in a broader sense as a summoning of a compensatory figure; a figure who—in contrast to the Iranian contemporary subject—is not alone, has power, takes decisions, pushes back the enemy, and is able to take the necessary action on behalf of the passive subject.

In this sense, the figure of Reza Shah functions as a phantasy antidote for the helplessness already conceptualized and symbolized in Mohammad Reza Shah: hence, the experience of “we are lonely and defenseless against a power much bigger than us” is turned into a phantasy of “we are powerful enough to defeat them.” The vengeful side of this figure is also of importance here; Reza Shah is not only a symbol of order or authority, but in the collective imagination he comes to represent a power capable of reacting to the experienced humiliation, oppression, and injustice, and changing the position of the subject from a passive victim to a powerful oppressor of the opposing side.

In this sense, summoning Reza Shah is a similar mental act to that of summoning Ali in the official rhetoric of the state: both figures, located on opposite poles of a political rift, allow the subject experiencing feelings of weakness and helplessness to regain the lost power momentarily—through phantasy.

Here we are able to see the function of these four figures together: Hussein and Mohammad Reza Shah, belonging to two different political and cultural repertoires, provide the possibility for a conceptualization of the helpless subject, while Ali and Reza Shah provide the possibility of reversing the same situation. Hussein narrates the suffering and inability in the form of victimhood and moral resistance, just as Mohammad Reza Shah crystallizes the loss of power and rejection in the shape of a dethroned and lonely king.

Now, giving form to such an oppressed situation can ignite a desire for compensation, restoration of lost power, and revenge at the same time; as if victimhood—if it is not to be reduced to a mere feeling of helplessness—requires a complementary figure who is able to restore power and act on behalf of the subject. Here, figures such as Ali and Reza Shah enter the scene and function as phantasies of reaction, punishment, and restoration of lost power.

Therefore, what is important in the context of collective phantasy is not merely the historical similarities between each of these figures, but the ability of each one to organize a common affect in different forms. The primary experience can be one of helplessness, fear, humiliation, anger, or loss of control; but the cultural repertoire of intergenerational phantasies provides the subject with a collection of prototype figures and narratives in order to reconstruct this experience in a more tolerable and more meaningful form. A figure makes the subject able to say: “I am oppressed, but my suffering has a meaning,” and another figure enables it to claim: “I am powerful enough to regain what is taken from me.”

From this standpoint, a collective phantasy does not necessarily change external reality; rather, it transforms the mental position of a subject regarding reality. A subject unable to stop the attack, oppression, defeat, or loss is enabled at the phantasy level to place itself in a different relationship regarding the same reality: oppressed, yet just; weak, but potentially powerful. In this manner, the function of phantasy is not merely to “alleviate” the pain, but to transform a difficult and potentially disabling mental situation into a narrative in which one finds a possibility for agency, meaning, and future.