Emotions Make History - a summary

of the interview with Luc Ciompi about affect-logics, war logic and peace logic for young readers and for anyone with little time to read

Photo: A view of the river Aare in Bern. The interview with Luc Ciompi took place in Bern.

This is the shortened version of our conversation with Luc Ciompi. The full version can be found here.

Luciano “Luc” Ciompi was born in 1929 in Florence, Italy and grew up in Switzerland. He was a professor of social psychiatry in Bern, and was best known for his research on schizophrenia and for founding the Soteria Bern residential community for people in acute psychological crises. From the interviewer’s perspective, his most important contribution—one that extends far beyond psychiatry—is the concept of affect-logics.

In his book „Emotions Make History“ (2011), co-written with German sociologist Elke Endert, Ciompi examines how feelings or emotions not only shape our personal lives but also influence history. Feelings or emotions affect how people act and why wars break out or peace becomes possible. The book made him well-known far beyond academic circles. In 2025, he received the WinWinno Prize of the International Federation for Mediation for his life’s work.

For the interviewer, it is a crucial matter that knowledge of his work be spread, particularly in the context of war and peace.

What does “affect-logics” mean?

The interviewer begins by asking Ciompi to explain the term.

“Affect-logics” may sound complicated, but at its core it is quite simple: emotions and thinking always work together. Human beings do not make purely rational decisions. Even when we believe we are completely neutral, emotions are always operating in the background.

Ciompi explains that feelings such as fear, joy, anger, or sadness act like filters. A fearful person perceives danger everywhere. An angry person finds endless reasons for annoyance. A relaxed or happy person sees beauty and has open thoughts. And feelings are not only fear and joy—subtler nuances and moods such as irritability, serenity, or curiosity are part of the spectrum.

American psychologist and Nobel laureate in economic sciences Daniel Kahneman demonstrated in his famous book „Thinking, Fast and Slow“ that our “rational” thinking is often strongly influenced by unconscious feelings or emotions. Ciompi goes further, showing how this influence operates not only in individuals but also in groups, societies, and history itself.

How Ciompi came to affect-logics

The interviewer asks about the origins of his theory.
Ciompi’s concept is the result of decades of work. His professional path took him through many fields:

• He first worked as a psychiatrist, influenced by psychoanalysis, in which emotions play a central role.

• He later trained in systemic family therapy to better understand complex relationship networks.

• He was also inspired by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who studied how thinking develops in children.

• From chaos theory, he learned how complex systems—such as societies or human thought—can sometimes suddenly change state when tensions become too high.

After his retirement, he researched the evolutionary roots of emotions and thinking at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg near Vienna. All these influences came together in his theory: emotions and thoughts are always intertwined.

Emotions as energy

Ciompi describes emotions and feelings as a form of energy. Fear drives us to avoid danger. Anger motivates resistance. Joy draws us toward things we like. When emotional tension rises sharply, sudden shifts can occur—love can turn into hate, uncertainty into panic.

These sudden “bifurcations”—a term from chaos theory—occur not only in individuals but also in entire societies. Examples include the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the “Arab Spring” in 2009, or the storming of the US Capitol in 2021. In all these cases, collective emotions had built up over a long time and then erupted suddenly.

How emotions shape our thinking

Emotions not only influence our actions in the moment; they also shape our perceptions over the long term. Situations in which we experience strong emotions are stored as feel-think-behaviour programs in memory. These programs are reactivated in similar situations.

Over time, “individual world images” emerge—emotional filters through which we see everything. These individual world images can differ greatly. Two people may experience the same event entirely differently, depending on the experiences and feelings they bring with them.

From individual to collective affect-logics

The interviewer asks whether there are also collective emotions — a collective affect-logics.

Ciompi stresses that affect-logics operates not only in individuals. Whole groups, societies, or states can develop shared emotional world images.

Early sociologists like Émile Durkheim and Georg Simmel had no problem speaking of collective emotions. German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, however, rejected the term, arguing that emotions are individual. Ciompi disagrees: emotions spread through communication, media, and symbols—and when many people share the same feelings, collective emotions arise.

These collective emotions can be focused like a laser. This can generate great energy—sometimes positive, as in peacetime, when trust and cooperation grow; sometimes negative, when fear, anger, or hatred dominate, creating prejudice and enemy images.

An extreme example is the mass enthusiasm in Nazi Germany. In his book “Emotions Make History”, Ciompi and Endert analyse how Adolf Hitler was at first insignificant whose speaker talent only became apparent when he captivated a crowd in Munich. From then on, speaker and audience reinforced each other in a spiral of emotions—a classic case of collective affect-logics.

Swarm intelligence

The interviewer asks Ciompi to explain swarm intelligence.

A special phenomenon of collective affect-logics is swarm intelligence. Ciompi illustrates it with jackdaws he observed from his mountain cabin in the Swiss Valais. When a flock of a thousand birds finds food, all react at once as if they were a single organism. When danger arises, they all take flight in the same instant.

Similar patterns occur in human behaviour. In a football stadium, a “wave” (Ola) can arise when emotional tension is high. On a train platform, a crowd can move instantly if the departure platform changes. People often react like a swarm—emotionally contagious but also collectively coordinated.

Positive leadership figures

There are positive examples of charismatic leaders who have guided societies toward a peace logic: Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to independence without violence; Nelson Mandela, who reconciled South Africa after decades in prison; or the Founding Fathers of the United States, who created a shared constitution. Ciompi also sees Jesus as such a positive leader.

The interviewer recalls a quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr that moves her deeply:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Luc Ciompi says it is a beautiful saying, a genuine piece of life wisdom. From the perspective of affect-logics, it shows us the limits of our thinking but also gives hope.

Peace logic and war logic

The interviewer asks Ciompi what he means by peace logic and war logic.

Ciompi distinguishes two basic attitudes:

• Peace logic means a relaxed curious and respectful relationship between peoples. There is trade, cultural exchange, and mutual interest.

• War logic means mistrust, fear, and hatred dominate. Everything the opponent does is interpreted negatively. Old resentments are revived, and the opponent is dehumanised.

These logics can change rapidly—a country can switch from peace logic to war logic in a matter of months. A current example was the emotional change in Germany after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022: from a predominantly pacifist stance to strong support for arms deliveries.

Applying it to current conflicts

The interviewer asks Ciompi to apply his ideas to current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In the Israel–Palestine conflict, Ciompi sees long escalation. Both sides have experienced injury, violence, and humiliation over long periods in history. The hopes of the Oslo Peace Process in 1992 were disappointed. Extremist demands—such as claiming the entire territory or destroying the opponent—and actions such as terrorist attacks or settlement construction have deepened mistrust. The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and massive Israeli reprisals are typical escalation points of war logic.

In the Ukraine war, Ciompi sees a similar pattern. Tensions between Russia and Ukraine go back far. The 2022 Russian invasion did not come out of nowhere but was the result of a long spiral of mistrust and fear.

Possibilities for de-escalation

Ciompi refers to the model of Austrian conflict researcher Fritz Glasl, which describes stages of escalation—from win–win (both sides still talk) to win–lose (one side hopes to win, wants the other to lose) to lose–lose (both lose, everything is destroyed). Each stage is accompanied by rising emotions.

He emphasises that peace is only possible if both sides leave war logic and return to peace logic—often requiring painful compromises.

For Israel and Palestine, he sees in the long run a shared secular federal and republican state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs—inspired by thinkers of jewish origin such as Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein.

For Ukraine and Russia, a compromise based on the current status quo could be possible: Russia forgoes complete conquest; Ukraine forgoes NATO membership and the reconquest of Crimea and Donbas.

A message to the younger generation

At the end, Ciompi addresses young people in particular. The world often seems threatening: wars, climate crisis, conflicts. But he reminds them that earlier generations also lived in difficult times. When he was 15, World War II was raging. Later, there were threats of nuclear war, economic crises, terrorist attacks such as September 11, 2001, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet humanity has survived—because it is adaptable.

“Life is resilient,” Ciompi says. And sometimes the seemingly impossible happens—like Franco-German reconciliation or the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What Emotions Make History means

“Emotions Make History” means that not only in the individual sphere but also in the great flow of history, the driving forces behind collective events are emotional in nature. This fact must be central to any attempt to understand or influence events—particularly in relation to war and peace.

Appeal to the readers

Dear reader—ask yourself honestly whether you are guided mainly by a logic of hatred, anger, and resentment, or rather by a logic of love. And if it is the former, are you able to recognise the spark of love hidden behind every hatred? Seeing it is not so difficult: you want to change and improve something—and that too is a kind of love, perhaps even love for the greater whole and for all of us. And with that, you can make a difference—even if at first it is only by infecting others with this spark of love.