The Permafrost is Melting
On Sunday, April 12, 2026, in Hungary, we experienced a stunning landslide that brought staggering joy and relief to millions of people in and out of the country. It buried not only a 16-year-long regime built on fear and manipulation, but the shame millions of us felt upon fraternizing with war criminals and allowing for the slow but steady erosion of democratic structures and human rights. 'Finally, I can feel proud again being Hungarian,' so many of us felt, including those living abroad. At once, watching politics with a bowl of pop-corn (in Hungarian: pattogatott kukorica) has become a source of fun. The epic celebrations on election night in Budapest, with a river of torches flowing alongside the water of the Danube, brought something back that was missing on people's faces for too long: radiant smiles. Overnight, the fearmongering posters of the old government were torn down, and the air became free of psychological toxins. All of this elation was showing that the tectonic movement occurred not only in the electoral landscape but in the collective unconscious of a nation.
As an old student of human nature, I have been asking myself both 1) how this spook could have lasted this long and 2) how it could collapse so rapidly.
On the night before the elections, I asked my mother, who did not seem convinced that change was desperately needed, how she could stand all those awful posters and billboards that perpetuated scapegoating, spreading fear and hatred. I recalled the time when I grew up with her in East-Germany... where the same kind of fear-based governance was in place. How as a little girl, I used to stand in the window, watching the sky, afraid of the "American bomb," from which "only the Soviet Union" could keep us safe. But even the old East-German "artwork" wasn't as ugly as these posters in contemporary Hungary were. "How can you stand being surrounded by them everywhere?" - I kept asking her.
On the night before the elections, I asked my mother, who did not seem convinced that change was desperately needed, how she could stand all those awful posters and billboards that perpetuated scapegoating, spreading fear and hatred. I recalled the time when I grew up with her in East-Germany... where the same kind of fear-based governance was in place. How as a little girl, I used to stand in the window, watching the sky, afraid of the "American bomb," from which "only the Soviet Union" could keep us safe. But even the old East-German "artwork" wasn't as ugly as these posters in contemporary Hungary were. "How can you stand being surrounded by them everywhere?" - I kept asking her.
The answer my mother gave to this question was very telling: "I don't even see those placards any more," she said. This is a typical reaction to abuse and trauma, suffered over an extended period of time. Trauma forces the victim to blot out the horror and self-preserve through selective awareness. When citizens are forced not to look at public events in order to preserve their ability to survive, it is a sign of abusive politics. When politics not only feels like a conspiracy or a shell game, but is considered normal to be so, the abuse has gone on for too long.
Trauma not only infiltrates individual souls, but also groups, collectives, and entire nations. It becomes part of the morphogenetic field - to use Rupert Sheldrake's term - that surrounds us all and shapes our thoughts, sentiments and energies. The trauma within the Hungarian soul goes back countless generations, fighting off oppressors from the Tatars to the Turks, from Empirial Austria to the Soviet Russia. During 1000 years of traumatic past, the abuse got internalised and finally repeated by some home-grown, domestic abuser, until now... until the possibility of healing has opened again. How?
Trauma not only infiltrates individual souls, but also groups, collectives, and entire nations. It becomes part of the morphogenetic field - to use Rupert Sheldrake's term - that surrounds us all and shapes our thoughts, sentiments and energies. The trauma within the Hungarian soul goes back countless generations, fighting off oppressors from the Tatars to the Turks, from Empirial Austria to the Soviet Russia. During 1000 years of traumatic past, the abuse got internalised and finally repeated by some home-grown, domestic abuser, until now... until the possibility of healing has opened again. How?
Gábor Máté, himself an inheritor of transgenerational trauma from Hungary, studied in depth the mechanisms of group trauma. Most fundamentally, healing begins with the telling and sharing of all the wrongs that happened. Knowing is not enough; trauma starts to shift when witnessed.
The current political shift in Hungary, in the spring of 2026, reads like a fairy tale. A trickster emerges from the midst of the ruling regime, exposes it, and shapeshifts into a charismatic leader. He publicly debunks all the political trickery, like the child who cries out in "The Emperor's New Clothes" and then stands atop the assured crowd. A euphoric energy is released that can indeed move mountains, yet...
... by itself, this gives little hope for lasting change. If left untreated, trauma would reverberate, causing the same patterns to repeat. Countries may change from one dictatorial leader to the next, just as traumatised individuals may move from one abusive relationship to the next. (After all, more than three decades ago, Orbán was the revolutionary who demanded 'Ruszkik, haza' - now, the slogan was still being shouted, this time against him.)
It is the complete and radical change in communication that makes the Spring 2026 events in Hungary a real-life fairy tale. The collective healing journey has begun through the országjárás, the extensive travelling around the nation, during which Péter Magyar and his TISZA Party visited multiple communities every day for two years, shared the trauma, witnessed the trauma that the state regime had brought upon the people.
in the form of open communication is the crucial
Real change will only occur upon if the individual, as well as the group, is willing to bring their psychological shadow content and work with it. That will require open communication
It is the complete and radical change in communication that makes the Spring 2026 events in Hungary a real-life fairy tale. The collective healing journey has begun through the országjárás, the extensive travelling around the nation, during which Péter Magyar and his TISZA Party visited multiple communities every day for two years, shared the trauma, witnessed the trauma that the state regime had brought upon the people.
in the form of open communication is the crucial
Real change will only occur upon if the individual, as well as the group, is willing to bring their psychological shadow content and work with it. That will require open communication
even the foundation of the Hungarian state happened through bloodshed, as the old pagans were killed in a domestic crusade.
. People suffer not only from fear, but also from a sense of disempowerment and cynicism. It spreads like a mind-virus, causing a sickness of the soul,
Paul Levy calls the Wetiko:
Paul Levy calls the Wetiko: