We put on a filter, close our eyes, switch off, don’t want to know, put on blinders, see only what we want to see - all these are forms of “denial”. Alcoholics who refuse to admit their addiction, people who brush off suspicions of a partner's infidelity, a wife who does not notice that her husband is abusing their daughter, they are all in a state of “denial.” Governments deny responsibility for atrocities and plan them to achieve “maximum deniability.” Truth commissions are trying to overcome oblivion and denial of the horrors of the past. Observer countries deny their responsibility for the intervention. Do these phenomena have anything in common? When we deny something, are we aware of what we are doing, or is it an unconscious defense mechanism protecting us from unwanted truths? Can cultures of denial exist? How do organizations like Amnesty International and Oxfam try to overcome society's apparent indifference to suffering and cruelty in distant lands? Is denial always such a bad thing, or do we need positive illusions to maintain our sanity? States of Denial is the first comprehensive exploration of personal and political ways to avoid or evade uncomfortable realities. It draws on a wide range of materials from clinical studies of depression to media portrayals of suffering, explanations of the “passive bystander” and “compassion fatigue.” The book shows how organized atrocities - the Holocaust and other acts of genocide, torture and political assassinations - are denied by the perpetrators and bystanders, those who stand by and do nothing.

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