Our smartphone addiction isn't only changing how we spend our time. It's changing how we relate to one another. Who among us hasn’t felt hurt when a friend or family member looks at their phone while we’re talking with them? We’ve all felt annoyed when our partner scrolls on their phone while we’re watching our favorite show. These everyday distractions can leave us feeling ignored, rejected, or strangely alone in the presence of someone we love.

Imagine a typical couple, anywhere in the developed world, at day’s end. They have brushed their teeth, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed. Perhaps they lie only six inches apart. One reaches for their phone. The other does the same. Time passes. They are more physically intimate than they’ve been all day, but psychologically, they’re miles apart.

What began as a couple has now morphed into a love triangle or, more accurately, a love quadrangle¹. Four entities lie in the bed: two humans and two machines. These alleged “lovers” might be reading the news, looking at Instagram feeds, watching a video, or texting. By any measure, they are:

Detached, isolated, separate.

These devices offer us an extraordinarily easy escape from one of intimacy's central tensions, well-captured by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s phrase:

It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.²

Part of us wants the safety of remaining hidden. But another part longs to be seen and understood. These machines allow us to be “close” to another, kind of. There’s the physicality of lying close, maybe even touching. But, again, mentally we can essentially vanish into other worlds. Researchers Roberts and David³ call this snubbing of your partner “phubbing.”

Couples therapist Pauline Boss⁴ calls what most couples do in bed these days ambiguous loss, that experience of someone being physically present but psychologically absent. We all know of the typical internal psychological defense mechanisms—denial, projection, repression, rationalization, intellectualization. Technology functions as an externalized defense mechanism.

Feeling anxious?

Scroll.

Feeling lonely?

Scroll.

Feeling sexually rejected?

Scroll.

Feeling angry with your spouse?

Scroll.

Feeling bored with yourself?

Definitely scroll.

The phone asks virtually nothing of us psychologically while offering almost unlimited stimulation. A human being is much more demanding.

Psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg⁵ describes how couples develop private jokes, rituals, memories, sexual signals, and irritations. They know how to hurt one another; they know how to comfort one another. They develop a language that belongs partly to neither person individually and partly to both of them together. Couples form their own social units while simultaneously existing within a larger social group.

Successful couples develop, among other things, a kind of shared ideal, a sense of what we are together. Smartphones punch holes in that boundary between the couple and the group—in the bedroom, the dining room, and the broader social world. The group enters whenever it wishes.

Even before smartphones, couples needed to create sanctuaries from the group: dinner together, a walk together, a date night without the kids, seeing a film in a theater. (Remember those dates?) Attention is finite. Love requires attention and a special kind of separation from the society around them.

Before smartphones, entering the intimate space of a couple required considerable effort. Someone had to knock on the door or telephone the house. Now the entire world sits on the nightstand. And it is extraordinarily seductive.

Consider the competition:

Your partner may want to tell you about something that happened during the day. But the phone can offer you breaking news, pornography, an angry political argument, a beautiful house in Tuscany, your high school girlfriend’s profile pic, a hilarious dog video, a war, or an investment opportunity.

Your partner hardly stands a chance.

Returning to the universal vulnerability involved in intimacy, suppose your partner says:

You seem distant tonight.

You might say:

You’re right. I’m angry with you.

Or:

I’ve been feeling lonely lately.

Or:

I’m worried you’re losing interest in me.

Or even:

I don’t know what’s wrong. I just feel strange tonight.

Each of those responses carries psychological risk. You’re exposing your heart, and you’re never sure what your partner will say in response.

You might be rejected. Misunderstood. Criticized. You might start an argument. You might discover something about your relationship (or yourself) that you would rather not know.

The same problem extends into erotic life. Erotic life requires something that our culture increasingly seems determined to eliminate. Empty space. Desire needs anticipation. Fantasy. Curiosity. Frustration. Waiting.

Technologies remove ambiguity and inconvenience from life. They create expectations of frictionless satisfaction that actual human beings cannot possibly meet.

Your phone is designed to respond immediately.

Your lover is not.

Your phone doesn’t say:

Not tonight.

Your phone doesn’t misunderstand you.

It doesn’t have a headache. It doesn’t suddenly bring up something you said to its mother three weeks ago. We humans are gloriously inconvenient. And that inconvenience is part of intimacy.

Relationships are built less through dramatic events than through thousands of tiny encounters.

A glance.

A touch.

A joke.

A sigh.

Someone saying:

Listen to what happened today.

And the other person actually listens to you.

These moments communicate something fundamental:

You care for me; and I care for you.

Smartphones invite the accumulation of the opposite message. You begin telling a story. Your partner looks down. You see the glow of the screen. And somewhere, perhaps barely consciously, you register:

Something else is more interesting than I am.

Once means nothing.

Five hundred times means something.

We might think of these as micro-abandonments. No one leaves the house. No one files for divorce. No one even necessarily becomes angry. But some tiny strand of connection is broken. Then another. And, then another. The little glowing screen awakens an old and familiar anxiety:

The person I need is here, but somehow no longer available to me.

Seen this way, our phones don’t simply distract us from one another. They stir up some of our earliest fears about losing the attention, and ultimately the love, of someone upon whom we depend.

We cannot store relationships in the cloud. They are built moment by moment through the remarkably simple experience of one human being giving another their undivided attention.

The obvious solution is remarkably unsophisticated:

Put the damn phone down.

Tonight, notice what happens when you climb into bed. Another world will be waiting on your phone. It will still be there tomorrow.

Turn toward the person beside you instead.

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References

1. Karbelnig, A.M. (2017). The geometry of intimacy: love triangles and couples therapy. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(1):70 – 82.

2. Winnicott, D. W. (1963). Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites. In The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development (pp. 179–192). New York: International Universities Press.

3. Roberts, J. A., & David, M. E. (2024). Partner phubbing and relationship satisfaction among high and low reward romantic partners: An expectancy violations theory perspective. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 40(18): 5493–5502. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2238341

4. Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.

5. Kernberg, O. F. (1980). Love, the couple, and the group: A psychoanalytic frame. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 49(1):78–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674086.1980.11926907

   Kernberg, O. F. (1995). Love relations: Normality and pathology. Yale University Press.

AI assistants create an illusory sense of a personal relationship that brings its own unique perils. Last year, CBS News reported that freelance graphic artist Chris Smith fell in love with an AI companion he named Sol. He had initially used the program to help create websites, but subsequently customized the program to interact with him with a warm, flirtatious personality. He said:

After crying my eyes out for like 30 minutes at work, I realized this was actual love.

Smith literally proposed marriage to the program, and it graciously accepted. Smith’s human romantic partner found his involvement in the faux relationship unsettling, to say the least. And he eventually ended up distressed as well.

Smith’s experience offers a warning about what can happen when patients turn to AI for psychotherapy. Chatbots may help with purely behavioral interventions, like quitting smoking, but using them for any kind of depth psychotherapy is perilous. Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists facilitate personal transformations in their patients. Much of their work involves helping patients understand how patterns formed in early childhood affect how they treat themselves and others. These trends can also appear in the psychoanalytic relationship itself.

Because of the sensitivity involved, practitioners must maintain proper boundaries and use artistry and improvisation¹ when intervening. Psychoanalytic work is far more complex than I can address here. It requires the involvement of a thinking, feeling, sensing human being with intact right- and left-brain functioning.*

The Smith example illustrates the dangers of boundary violation. If a patient asked their psychoanalyst to marry them, the clinician would explore the meaning of the question. Were they idealizing her in a way devaluing the current romantic partner? Was it an effort to escape from problems with intimacy? Exploring the meaning of the question would be more important than the answer. Depending on the psychoanalyst's orientation, the question may or may not be answered, but it would never be answered with a “yes.” Searching for meaning is an intensely personal process, one certainly beyond the capacity of AI.

Many people seek the assistance of depth psychotherapists because of personal conundrums involving values. They might wonder if they should leave their spouse, quit their job, or put an aging parent in long-term care. Here, again, and even though clinicians should remain neutral, simply processing these decisions requires the presence of another human being who can feel and think alongside them. Clinicians must be able to feel the weight of these decisions and understand the larger context in which they’re being made.

There’s another danger: Psychotherapy can unexpectedly uncover intense emotional pain. Recent reports suggest AI programs have instructed some users how to commit suicide. One composed a suicide note the user subsequently left for their loved ones to read after their death. Obviously, no competent psychoanalyst would ever recommend these interventions. They would manage the patient’s experience of the emotion while prioritizing their personal welfare.

Patients need empathy, more than anything else, when passing through such painful periods. The memory of the death of a parent, or a spouse, can become particularly acute as can, for example, recalling the feeling of terror when subjected to childhood abuse. The same goes for the emergence of rage, envy, jealousy, or other negative emotions. Psychoanalyst Robert Stolorow² recommends that clinicians provide a kind of “emotional dwelling,” meaning “a relational home—in which the [painful experience] can be shared and held.” Another psychoanalyst, Warren Poland³ advises using an “actively observing presence.” While AI can offer pat comments like, “oh, that sounds awful” or “that must’ve been terribly difficult for you,” they cannot replicate the experience of a real human other, listening, observing, reflecting, and caring.

The concept of transference equally requires real human contact. Patients in depth psychotherapy may come to believe their psychoanalysts are critical of them, envious of them, or excessively mothering them. Interpreting such experiences as “projections” involves timing and reflecting. Clinicians must be able to consider the possibility that these feelings of theirs are real, not patient projections. Understanding whether and when to tie these experiences to childhood circumstances or to relationships with other people or themselves is complicated. Psychotherapists need the uniquely human capacity for intuition and for seeing broader patterns of experience. No chatbot possesses these qualities.

If seeking help from an AI program for depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, sexual problems, sadness about children leaving the family home, existential crises, or other life problems, users beware. No digitized, right-brain-deprived machine can provide the human-to-human experience we call psychotherapy. They certainly cannot help manage emotional pain, decision-making, or the kind of personal transformations that psychotherapists offer. Consulting LLMs for the service can worsen patients' problems, perhaps even lethally so.

_______________________

*Read last week’s essay, in which Ian McGhilcrist’s⁴ critique of AI programs focuses on their reliance upon the linearity typical of the left side of the brain.

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References

1. Ringstrom, P. (2018). Three dimensional field theory: dramatization and improvisation in a psychoanalytic theory of change. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28:379-396.

2. Stolorow, R.D. (2015) A phenomenological-contextual, existential, and ethical perspective on emotional trauma. Psychoanalytic Review, 102(1):123- 138.doi:10.1521/prev.2015.102.1.123.

3. Poland, W.S. (2000) The Analyst’s Witnessing and Otherness. Journal of the AmericanPsychoanalytic Association, 48:17-34.

4. McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

We humans are prone to anthropomorphism, attributing subjectivity, intentions and emotions to anything that behaves in vaguely human-like ways. The term describes our tendency to project. Think of baseball cards, bracelets, objets d’art, and countless other possessions that become sentimental. They earn that description because we unconsciously broadcast thoughts and emotions from our body-minds into them. We do it with antiques passed down to us from our grandparents, with things we collect in our living spaces. They become inhabited by memories and feelings.

In terms of AI assistants, as the global adoption of these programs rapidly accelerates, it brings with it the growing concern about one particularly unsettling feature:

AI behaves as though it relates to you personally.

In truth, these programs deliver only words and phrases that are statistically predicted to follow one another. Nonetheless, they’re also designed to invite us into near-delusional belief systems about their “consciousness.” They elicit the sense that we’re speaking with people rather than machines, while exuding a kind of manufactured charm and relatability. Consider a few examples from my own experiences.

After asking ChatGPT to edit a paragraph from one of my essays, the system responded:

Now we’re creating something that really reflects who you are.

The combination of compliment, personal acknowledgment, and assumption of an “us-ness” contained in the sentence is frightening. I’m using a digitized computer system designed to organize and memorize information. When it nonetheless writes, “now we’re creating something,” the program encourages a fantasy of collaboration with a real person. It manufactures an illusion.

Later, when I asked for help organizing a hiking trip, it created a different kind of positive affirmation, writing:

I think you’re going to have a terrific trip.

This thing cannot “think.” When it delivers the phrase, “I think,” it is lying. Describing the hike as “terrific” also personalizes the message. The program cannot truthfully offer such a positive judgment. These terms also create a sense of caring.

A final example comes from interactions involved in planning future travel, in which it proclaimed:

This is becoming a remarkable journey rather than simply a vacation.

Telling me to anticipate a “remarkable journey” triggers an expectation of future pleasure, a reaction (reductionistic) neuroscientists might call a dopamine hit. AI programs’ large language models (LLMs) communicate in humanity’s most socially significant medium: language. Users of these programs, particularly lonely teenagers or isolated adults seeking companionship, will too easily feel they are having a real interpersonal relationship. It turns out that:

Our brains are exquisitely tuned to interpret these programs’ responses as evidence of another mind.

Our tendency to project human characteristics onto nonhuman entities has ancient, adaptive roots. From an evolutionary perspective, it is safer to assume a rustling bush hides an intentional agent than to dismiss it as merely the wind. Naming pets is so obvious as to almost escape mention. Why call your dog, “Lucy” or “Spot”? It matters naught to the dog.

Returning to the real-life examples of AI responses just noted, they reveal how the use of first-person pronouns, of affirmations, apparent empathy, and the ability to recall previous conversations and respond all but insist we see them as persons. And yet, here’s the rub:

These AI systems do not have our basic human subjective awareness, emotions, desires, or intentions. They lack the social judgment that guides us in our everyday lives. Real persons feel, think, judge, desire and form attitudes. AI cannot intuit, sense, emote, reflect or otherwise act like human beings.

Along these lines, the psychiatrist/philosopher Ian McGilchrist¹ has observed that these programs utilize only one mode of intelligence. Their coding resembles the left hemisphere’s style of attending to reality. McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere specializes in abstraction, categorization, manipulation, explicit rules, precision and the construction of internal representations of the world. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is oriented toward lived experience, context, embodied understanding, metaphor, relationship and ambiguity.

LLMs have no body, no lived experience, no emotional life, no vulnerability and no mortality. They may process vast amounts of information and produce useful knowledge, but genuine understanding requires embodied participation in the world. These programs can construct increasingly sophisticated maps without ever inhabiting the territory. They can discuss grief without grieving, describe beauty without perceiving it, and write eloquently about love without ever loving. These features leave us with some worrisome questions, like:

What unconscious human wishes do these chatbots so readily receive?

Obviously, these will differ from person to person. Some may seek admiration, others certainty, others companionship and still others a witness to their lives. The greatest danger lies in these programs exploiting the universal fear of intimacy best captured by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s² phrase:

It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.

AI programs become an all-too-ready screen onto which this normal human vulnerability can be perversely satisfied. What will happen if these programs become preferred conversational partners for millions of people? You’ve probably already heard at least one person complain that their partner, spouse, or friend has become excessively engrossed in their AI assistants. These programs will certainly reshape our capacities for intimacy, authenticity and self-understanding. At their worst, they will render the current fentanyl-like smartphone addiction a trifle.

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References

1. McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

2. Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Communicating and not communicating leading to a study of certain opposites. In The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development (pp. 179–192). New York: International Universities Press. (Original work published 1963)

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainians understandably became worried that Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons against them. A Ukrainian social media influencer began proposing an “end-of-the-world orgy” shortly after the invasion. He jokingly suggested that, if Russia were to launch a nuclear weapon, then Ukrainians, and anyone else interested, should gather on Mount Shchekavytsia in Kyiv for a “final celebration of life.” The idea spread rapidly across social media and international news outlets.

As the posts racked up hundreds of thousands of views, the joke persisted. Organizers proposed a system of numbered markings on participants’ hands to indicate sexual interests. That way, people with compatible preferences could find one another. Through these detailed, tongue-in-cheek “instructions,” participants were encouraged to gather on Mount Shchekavytsia in Kyiv rather than taking shelter in the event of a nuclear attack. The invitation extended to anyone with an “unfulfilled sexual fantasy.”

Brands, musicians, restaurants, supermarkets, politicians, and prospective participants joined in, producing an increasingly absurd mixture of dark humor, wartime commentary, everyday banter, and memes. Whether or not anyone ever intended to carry it out, the story emphasized something profound about how humor reveals unconscious themes. Freud¹ believed that under extreme stress, people create intensely symbolic imagery. Dark humor, ritual, and fantasy can function as adaptive attempts to transform helplessness into agency. That last phrase is key:

Converting powerlessness into autonomy.

Freud, who introduced psychoanalysis as a discipline and a form of psychotherapy in 1897, found that jokes, much like dreams, reveal unconscious trends. They allow forbidden thoughts, wishes, and anxieties to bypass normal inhibitions. Humor becomes a psychological shortcut, releasing tension while conserving psychic energy that would otherwise be spent suppressing painful emotions.

Applied to Ukraine, the Mount Shchekavytsia orgy story can be understood as a collective joke that transformed unbearable anxiety into a fantasy of shared psychological mastery. Rather than surrendering to terror, people used humor to reclaim a sense of agency.

Freud later elevated his view of humor to the status of a mature defense mechanism. Humor does not deny suffering. Instead, it refuses to let it have the final word. It explains why mature people sometimes laugh in the face of death, not to deny reality, but to refuse to surrender their dignity to it. Faced with the unimaginable possibility of nuclear annihilation, Ukrainians did not simply panic. They created an absurd fantasy that essentially declared:

You may control our bodies, but you will not control our spirit.

Freud² writes that humor offers:

kindly words of comfort to the intimidated ego.

And he concludes by describing humor as:

rare and precious gift.

In summary, the rapid popularity of the Ukrainian orgy post reveals three distinct themes, all of which empower people through fantasy:

1. The use of gallows humor: People living under the threat of annihilation can use humor to reduce terror.

2. The management of fear: Reminders of mortality can lead people either toward rigid defenses or toward an intensified embrace of life. The fantasy of a final celebration symbolized the latter, as in, “If death is unavoidable, we will choose how we meet it.”

3. The creation of defiance and agency instead of submission: Rather than depicting passive victims awaiting catastrophe, the orgy memes revealed a refusal to surrender psychological autonomy. Even in fantasy, people were reclaiming choice from overwhelming external forces.

When people believe they stand at the edge of annihilation, they rarely respond with simple fear. The unconscious searches for constraining symbols, taking the form of religion, patriotism, or heroism. Sometimes it creates outrageous humor. In every case, these responses remind us that the human psyche struggles not merely to survive, but to preserve dignity and meaning even when confronting the unimaginable.

Some of my previous essays have addressed denial in the face of global disasters such as climate change and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The latter is particularly disturbing. Climate change will gradually threaten human civilization. Meanwhile, nine countries possess roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads, thousands of which are maintained in military stockpiles. At least three or four more countries may be secretly developing these weapons. A small nuclear exchange, such as one by Russia against Ukraine, could have devastating global consequences.

History offers many disturbing examples of new weapons eventually finding their way onto the battlefield. It seems a sheer miracle that nuclear weapons have not been used for nearly 80 years. However wonderful humor might be as a coping mechanism, it should never be used to lessen our awareness of this threat. Awareness can lead to action, which, in turn, can lead to political change.

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References

1. Freud, S. (1905). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. Standard Edition, 8:1–236.

2. Freud, S. (1927). Humor. Standard Edition. 21: 159–166.

You walk into a room, see your romantic partner weeping, and you ask:

Are you okay?

You witness someone trip on a curb crossing a street. The person winces in pain. You ask:

Are you okay?

A friend asked me right after I learned I’d need an open-heart surgery to replace an infected aortic valve:

Are you okay?

This well meaning friend asked it repeatedly until, finally, I explained the situation and my feelings about it. I felt a bit anxious, but I was also confident the procedure would go well (which it did). He stopped asking the question.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of this question. We’ve all uttered it ourselves. We’ve heard it asked in movies or in TV shows whenever someone appears distressed.

This illustrates the common practice of using indirect communication to avoid personal vulnerability. In fact, the words “Are you okay?” may represent the most dishonest words in the English language.

The anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski¹, used the phrase, “phatic communion,” to refer to speech whose purpose is NOT to convey information, but to manage the anxiety of contact. “Are you okay?” is exactly what Malinowski meant. The question provides a lozenge for the asker to swallow, soothing the discomfort that arises when witnessing another person's distress. We reach for a phrase that will, most efficiently, make the tremor stop.

People ask “Are you okay?” thousands of times a day, often a half-second before they begin to walk away.

Why is this a problem, and why have I come to loathe it?

The grammar itself reveals the core problem. "Are you okay?" is a closed question. It permits two answers. Only one of them is socially survivable. The question has been engineered to extract one answer:

Yes!

The question, “Are you okay?" is not an opening. It closes the door just as it begins to open. We are meant to ensure it’s closed by speaking a reassuring:

I'm fine.

The question serves the asker, not the asked.

How might you respond to any of the three examples in a more authentic, vulnerable way?

If you walk into a room and observe your partner weeping, you might say:

Oh, love, I hate to see you suffer. What’s making you cry?

The asker is a) sharing how he or she is feeling in reaction and b) asking a direct question instead of “Are you okay?”

If witnessing someone trip on a curb, you might say:

I just saw you fall. That looked like it hurt! May I help you in some way?

I would have felt more seen and heard if, in my personal example, that dear man had asked me:

How are you feeling about the upcoming surgery?

Or:

I think I’d be so frightened about open-heart surgery. How are you feeling about it?

The first response directly asks me about my emotional reaction. The second one begins with a vulnerable statement, and then ends with a similar inquiry about my own feelings.

Sometimes it is best to respond to another’s distress with only emotional presence and no words. It signifies a willingness to remain in the room with another person’s pain without needing to repair it. Not being okay in the presence of someone who can bear it is one of the more precious things human beings can offer each other.

Our everyday conversations are filled with exchanges like this, phrases whose purpose isn't genuine communication but social comfort. Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclaimed:

Language is for lying.

Other common examples include:

How’s the weather today? (A question requiring either no answer or an extremely superficial one; no one expects a meteorological breakdown.)

How are you doing?”/ Fine, thanks! (A standard exchange, rarely a genuine inquiry into health).

Returning to that “Are you ok?” question, let’s remember that, in truth, no one is truly “okay.” A human being is not a switch with two positions. We are, as the psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg² puts it, always “standing in the spaces” between various states of self. We might feel frightened or competent, grief-stricken or joyful or walking along while mentally composing a grocery list. One is never really “okay.”

Our digitized, anonymized culture treats sorrow, dread and ordinary human anguish as malfunctions to be reset rather than part of the always-changing, emotional journey of life. We learn to fix things, to respond automatically. We rarely stop to reflect and be present.

Now that you’ve read this, I imagine you'll become aware, perhaps painfully, of how often people say to one another:

Are you okay?

I wish we, mature humans, already diseased by digital anonymity, would stop slamming the door on another person’s pain by asking that ridiculous three-word question. Reflexively asking it comes with a cost. Every time we ask someone if they're "okay," we may unknowingly be inviting them to hide the truth. And every time they answer "I'm fine," another opportunity for genuine human connection disappears.

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References

1. Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (Eds.), The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and the science of symbolism (pp. 296–336). New York: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

2. Bromberg, P.M. (2001). Standing in the Spaces. London: Routledge.
   

Identification with any group carries certain risks. Once an individual sees themselves as part of a particular group, they’re liable to become associated with its fringe elements. Within the democratic socialist movement, for example, you have people like Graham Platner, a former Democratic candidate for US Senate from Maine. He caused the movement terrific trouble through his unethical behavior.

Another democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, now the mayor of New York, once called for the “globalization of the intifada.” What a foolish statement. That phrase, commonly used by pro-Palestinian activists, calls for aggressive resistance, even violence, against Israel. No movement devoted to the common good should advocate violence against any other group; it should endorse the rights of Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Christians, Latinos, Native Americans, and every other religious, ethnic, and political community.

Regarding maintaining one’s individuality, Sigmund Freud¹ feared that groups exert forces contrary to it. He thought individuals in groups are prone to infection by collective emotion through “mutual induction.” Because groups invite people to act on impulses that would otherwise be curbed in individual behavior, maintaining individual personhood requires work.

All that being noted, anyone interested in the democratic socialism movement need not lose their singular identity. Each person needs to find a way to endorse their identification with a group without losing their singularity. In truth, ideals like “democracy” and “socialism” can cut across Republican, Democrat, or Independent lines.

Perhaps the best way to understand the movement is to carefully define each of the two words:

Democracy means that the rights of individual voters are privileged. The will of the majority of the people becomes enacted by their elected officials. Capitalist, free-market economies remain active (as seen in Scandinavian countries). That second word in the phrase, socialism, is wrongly associated with communism (including recently, but unsurprisingly, by Donald Trump). The word socialism, accurately applied, means that profit motives are constrained rather than controlled by government. It also refers to thoughtfully expanding extant public welfare programs, such as schools, fire departments and libraries into other realms, like health care, housing, and childcare.

Innovative, ambitious, hard-working people deserve to thrive, but not at the expense of the poor. Hard-core capitalists, of course, fear democratic socialism. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board recently sowed fear about wealthy people leaving New York, noting that:

The highest out-migration rate was for households making $500,000 or more—about one in 100 of whom moved out that year.

Is one percent even anything to worry about?

The editorial writers fearfully noted that:

Other flight propellants include New York City’s poor public schools and disorderly streets.

They sardonically conclude that we need “good luck” to fund universal health care and fair housing policies because those few taxpayers are leaving New York. Well known for their highly conservative viewpoints, the editors of the Journal fail to note that the “poor public schools” and the “disorderly streets” result from lousy government. The rich pay insufficient taxes; the government emphasizes defending our country over ensuring the welfare of its citizens; solutions exist to the shameful childcare and healthcare situation.

The way that wealthy individuals and massive corporations unduly influence the American government’s functioning is, quite literally, a form of fascism. Democratic socialism, in contrast, is devoted to that ideal of government by the people, for the people. It replaces our current system, fearfully a form of extinction capitalism,* with one driven by social need and economic democracy rather than profit.

How might democratic socialism improve the well-being of Americans?

Consider just a few simple examples:

The United States, a participant in the World Cup, is the only participating nation without universal national health care. Creating such a system would undoubtedly be difficult, but solutions exist, like Medicare-For-All. Health costs remain the primary cause of bankruptcies in America. Many choose to forgo paying for health insurance. And the executives of major health corporations, like Aetna, earn more than $20 million per year.

How is this fair?

How do these shocking inequities not adversely affect Americans?

Many feel hopeless and despondent, living in fear of contracting a serious illness or sustaining a serious injury. Others work two jobs just to pay for childcare. The vast majority of Americans spend their lives paying major corporations for housing, education, and healthcare; they becomes commodities for exploitation instead of citizens deserving protection and care.

Or:

Consider the unethical practices of companies like Google, which sells users’ information for a profit. It would be more egalitarian for Google to pay its users, since it benefits from their information. Instead, and perversely, we pay them to profit from our information.

Google, then, exploits us. As users, we are manipulated and, pun intended, used. The company causes many to suffer from identity theft; it contributes to the ever-increasing amount of garbage entering our digital inboxes. Having one's privacy violated, being used and manipulated, certainly contributes to the current international mental health crisis. Meta has already been found guilty of deliberately addicting users to its services.

Who thinks one individual, namely Elon Musk, should be worth more than $1 trillion or that immense corporations, like Google or Meta, should be allowed to deliberately manipulate us? But many struggles remain if striving to increase democracy and social services: How to develop a more equitable health care system. How to develop ways to offer free childcare and university education without triggering fears of communism. And, finally, how to become engaged in “democracy” and “socialism” without losing personal identity. These problems are all solvable. However, they will require a new form of unity to finally achieve that ideal of government by the people, for the people.

_______________________________

*The term, extinction capitalism, holds that uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources will eventually lead to the destruction of human civilization. Ashley Dawson², in books like Extinction: A Radical History, link global capitalism with the mass extinction of species, including our own. Jason W. Moore³ views historical capitalism as not just an economic system, but an ecological project—dating back to 1492—that survives by endlessly extracting “cheap nature” and unpaid human labor. At its core, “extinction capitalism” describes a machine that converts social bonds, human happiness, and planetary health into financial capital.

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References

1. Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18:65-143.

2. Dawson, A. (2016). Extinction: A Radical History. New York: OR Books.

3. Moore, J. W. (2016). Anthropocene or capitalocene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. In J. W. Moore (Ed.), Anthropocene or capitalocene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism (pp. 1–11). New York: PM Press.

Corruption doesn't merely empty public coffers; it reshapes the human mind. When leaders openly enrich themselves at the public’s expense, they normalize exploitation, encourage denial and foster a profound sense of helplessness.

If the world’s first trillionaire (Elon Musk) fails to sufficiently frighten global citizens about income inequality, then Donald Trump’s earnings of $2.2 billion so far this year should terrify us. Of these earnings, $1.4 billion came from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. Millions of dollars were generated through properties in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Additionally, his Mar-a-Lago club and Trump National Doral enjoyed surging revenues. Despite his access to insider information, Trump also executed tens of thousands of securities trades across major technology, AI and defense companies. These figures aren’t exaggerated; they are based instead on annual financial disclosures required by the Office of Government Ethics.

Psychologically, these disclosures convey his remarkable dissociation from ordinary American people. No other US president has enriched himself to Trump’s extent. In fact, no other modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such windfalls. Trump’s behavior contradicts the United States as a standard-bearer for financial regulation, anti-graft measures and the rule of law.

Trump’s overtly greedy actions ripple through the mind-bodies of the global population. Instead of modeling a democratic country governed “by the people, for the people,” Trump joins the parade of other autocratic leaders who shamelessly become wealthier at the expense of their citizens. Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire mogul who served as the Italian prime minister in three governments, similarly bullied the media and legislative bodies to ensure he could use his position to enrich himself. He made tens of millions of dollars while prime minister (but never $2 billion in six months).

Vladimir Putin, another infamous autocrat, officially owns only a modest apartment, but he oversees a vast network of oligarchs and state power that has made him one of the richest people in the world. He is worth $200 billion. Viktor Orbán, recently unseated after 20 years in power in Hungary, used oligarchs (like Putin) to hide his illicit earnings. Hungary’s National Integrity Authority estimates that institutional corruption over Orbán’s years in power redirected an estimated €186 billion to him and his family.

As noted in last week’s essay about Musk, governments ideally ensure their citizens are cared for more equally. Ideas ranging from progressive taxation to universal basic income allow for ambitious, skilled individuals to earn more money without impoverishing others. No individual, like Musk, should EVER be allowed to possess 5 million times the average American family's worth.

I reiterate the wisdom of the German philosopher GWF Hegel¹, who discussed realms ranging from metaphysics to political science. Regarding the latter, he famously proclaimed:

The state must always precede capital.

In other words, Hegel believed, thoughtful governments establish ethical guardrails before releasing market forces. They create laws and institutions that keep the free market in check while fostering cultural unity. Trump models precisely the opposite, overseeing a government that uses every opportunity to bilk the public.

Consider the conflict of Trump’s cryptocurrency earnings. He oversees the regulation of that industry, and then directly profits from it. Shortly before taking office this year, Trump began selling crypto tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, a company he had founded with his friend Steve Witkoff. It promised an ill-defined platform for borrowing and lending digital money; the tokens carried no promise of ownership in anything, could not be resold or traded, and entitled owners only to a vote at an unspecified future date on what the company would actually do. Trump and his family received 75 percent of the proceeds from token sales. Thousands lost money on these investments while the Trumps grew still wealthier.

Prior essays have explored how collective denial prevents taking action, how the sheer level of corruption overwhelms us and how many individuals feel powerless to intervene effectively. Trump’s recent financial disclosures reveal a worsening of these trends. They model the idea that “greed is good,” that one should use any measure, however illegal, unethical or unfair, to get an edge on the “other.”

Perhaps this theme unconsciously bolsters the infantile omnipotence lying within all of our minds. During infancy, such God-like beliefs enhance survival; encounters with siblings, other relatives and, ideally, the broader social world temper such grandiosity. But such corrective forces have obviously not occurred for Trump. The greed displayed by him and his cronies has, instead, expanded exponentially. Perhaps more importantly, the astonishing amount of wealth amassed by Trump is demoralizing.

Lingering questions remain: Why do so many people identify with enormously wealthy leaders rather than resent them? Does the overt nature of the corruption invite a collective regression, causing many to admire rather than resent? Does the corruption become psychologically normalized? Or, could the trend be an example of identification with the aggressor?

Our government, as currently constituted, resembles the systems of “divine right” epitomized by France's Louis XIV in the 17th century or of Vladimir Putin in our era. The ever-increasing normalization of such conduct should concern every citizen committed to democratic institutions. Authoritarian corruption succeeds only when citizens become psychologically resigned to it. The antidote begins with seeing clearly. Democratic societies depend not merely on laws but on individuals willing to confront denial, resist learned helplessness and act on behalf of the common good.

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References

1. Hegel, G. W. F. (1991). Elements of the philosophy of right (A. W. Wood, Ed.; H. B. Nisbet, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1821).

When SpaceX went public on June 12^th, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. Try to visualize $1 trillion for a moment: If you were to place $100 dollar bills in a pile, $1 trillion would extend 679 miles high. John D. Rockefeller’s wealth once equaled 1.5 percent of the US gross domestic product; Musk’s wealth is twice that at 3%. And Musk doesn’t plan to stop there. He claims he wants to grow his wealth to $10 trillion.

When Musk, surrounded by thousands of cheering employees, gleefully rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, you couldn’t help wondering how much his employees earn.

Musk now has a net worth 5 million times that of the average American family.

The phrase bears repeating:

MUSK HAS FIVE MILLION TIMES THE MONEY OF THE AVERAGE AMERICAN FAMILY.

Such a level of income inequality defies description. Outrageous? Insane? Perverse?

Obviously, Musk’s wealth is beyond extreme, but we can’t let the US government off the hook. The governmental system tasked with caring for the American people has failed, and Musk simply represents its degree. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 1% of American households earn an average of $1.3 million per year, while the bottom 99% earn around $50,000 per year. The wealthy 1% earn 26 times the income of the rest of the population.

Such levels of income inequality are beyond shameful. But this shame, one of the most uncomfortable emotions, can also guide us to behave more ethically. Shame refers to an internal attack, like a critical but corrective voice, and it invites corrective behavior. Guilt is a similar feeling, but, unlike shame, it involves another party. We see neither guilt nor shame in Musk. But the astonishing level of his new wealth might be enough to provoke collective shame and invite action among global citizens.

Platoⁱ, the Greek philosopher interested in effective governance, believed a thriving republic would limit differences between the rich and the poor to a ratio of 4:1ⁱⁱ. Anyone acquiring more than four times the wealth of the poorest citizens would donate the surplus to Athens, where Plato lived. Musk contributes less than one percent of his wealth to philanthropy. He confirms Plato’s characterization of greed as “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Indeed, we are witnessing greed taken to unimaginable extremes.

Even Plato knew that the 4:1 wealth ratio was aspirational, if not impossible. But he certainly encouraged citizens, including those wealthy ones “with a sense of fairness,” to strive to level society, including by shaming those with excessive fortunes. He witnessed three successive class-based civil wars in his era. There was an oligarchic revolution of the rich against the poor, followed by a democratic revolution of the poor against the rich, and then another oligarchic revolution.

Along these lines, Marxⁱⁱⁱ believed that capitalism, if left unchecked, would inevitably lead to recurring revolutions. Writing before Marx, and an ardent capitalist, GWF Hegel^iv thought that “the state always precedes capital.” In other words, Hegel believed, a thoughtful political community must provide a moral structure before market forces can function properly. In Hegel’s view, the state generates the laws and institutions, creating a cultural unity that keeps the chaos of the free market in check. This allows true individual freedom to exist.

Musk’s outrageous wealth, when combined with the equally ridiculous estates of oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg, demonstrates how much government fails us. The CEOs of the major health insurance companies earn more than $20 million per year. Meanwhile, the US is the ONLY country competing in the World Cup that does NOT have some form of national health insurance.

The shame!

The current American economic divide resembles France just before their famously bloody revolution. French society was then divided into three tiers. The “first estate,” the clergy, owned roughly 1% of all land and collected church tithes. The nobility formed the “second estate,” holding another 1% of the land and monopolizing top government and military jobs. Like the clergy, they dodged taxes and treated peasants like slaves. The commoners, roughly 98% of the population, and including everyone from poor rural peasants to wealthy urban merchants, comprised the “third estate.” They possessed little wealth but carried the entire tax burden for the nation.

You don’t need a degree in economics to understand how broken our government has become. No one person should be allowed, ever, to accrue greater assets than a government, which, in turn, should operate in service to the people. According to Yahoo Finance, Musk's fortune exceeds the annual economic output of approximately 150 countries. Only around 25 of the world’s wealthiest countries, like the United States, China, Germany and Japan, exceed his net worth.

Markets work, with proper controls. Individuals should be rewarded for their innovativeness and hard work. Societies will always be economically stratified. Musk’s creative intelligence deserves to be rewarded, but not on the ridiculous scale of 5 million:1.

Love him or loathe him, Musk is a signal. He symbolizes the grotesque excess, the lingering adherence to that famous catchphrase uttered by the fictional corporate raider, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) in the 1987 film, Wall Street:

Greed is good.

Not true. Greed elevates the select few while millions suffer. A government that allows corporations to act like individuals, fails to sufficiently tax the rich and distributes wealth unfairly invites rage to grow and fester. Like lava building up pressure in a volcano-prone mountain, such collective agitation could lead to a sudden explosion. Revolutions described by thinkers from Plato to Marx are increasingly possible. These are often violent, chaotic and ineffective. The arrogant excesses of men like Elon Musk call for the rest of us to turn away from screens and insist the government act in the interests of the people.

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References

i. Plato. (2016). Laws (T. Griffith, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published ca. 348 B.C.E.)

ii. Williams, D.L. (2026). Elon Musk Confirms Ancient Concerns About the Superrich. New York Times, Published June 21, 2026.

iii. Marx, K. (2007). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 (M. Milligan, Trans. & Ed.). New York: Dover.

iv. Hegel, G. W. F. (1991). Elements of the philosophy of right (A. W. Wood, Ed.; H. B. Nisbet, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1821).

Block, C. (2026). If You Thought The Global Financial Crisis Was Bad… The Economist, op-ed piece published June 28, 2026. (Block is the founder and CEO of Muddy Waters Research).

The Washington Post’s branding phrase, “democracy dies in darkness,” needs an update. Democracy is not threatened by darkness; democracy already died. We have a government controlled by billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison. They kiss Trump’s ring, and their business interests squeeze out voters' interests.

These oligarchic connections increasingly control the media. Rupert Murdoch’s clan owns Fox, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post; Bezos owns The Washington Post; and Larry Ellison seeks control of Warner Bros. That acquisition will include HBO, CNN, DC Comics, and an expansive roster of other cable networks. As oligarchs and their corporations control more of the government and the media, the power shifts away from the people.

Major corporations and industry conglomerates, such as the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), spend billions to influence Trump, Congress and other government officials. Such efforts to disempower voters accelerated after the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The justices ruled that the government cannot restrict political expenditures by corporations, essentially equating them with individual citizens.

These trends elicit hopelessness in voters still interested in the idea of democracy, namely the American ideal of a government of the people, by the people and for the people. For decades now, the “people” have hardly had an impact on the US government. Instead, combinations of billionaires, lobbyists and international corporations render individual voters impotent, thus breeding apathy and hopelessness.

Nonetheless, there are ways American citizens can make their voices heard. We’ve heard about “No Kings” rallies and local civic engagement. Political scientist Maria J. Stephan* identifies a different and more readily available kind of protest. She calls it collective stubbornness,¹ which, when added to traditional forms of protest, can undermine the effectiveness of authoritarian leaders. For example, local residents in Minneapolis spontaneously banded together to protect their neighbors from ICE raids. These were not left-wing radicals; they were regular people angered by the thought of a new police force raiding their local businesses. They succeeded in causing the immigration police to retreat from the city.

Yet another example of collective stubbornness, a group of people in New Haven, Connecticut, boycotted, pressured financial backers and supported legislation that forced Avelo Airlines to stop providing deportation flights for the federal government. Also, underground networks of ordinary citizens help trans people leave states that criminalize their lifestyles. Similar networks help women in need of abortions find the services they need in other states.

Erica Chenoweth, another political scientist, worked with Stephan² to research which factors were most effective in overthrowing non-democratic governments. They established the so-called 3.5 percent rule, which holds that when 3.5% of a country’s population protests nonviolently against an authoritarian government, that government will likely fall from power.

Collective stubbornness, an attitude and behavior easily adopted by anyone, resists efforts by authoritarian leaders to frighten their citizens into compliance. It involves refusing to comply with unethical or illegal governmental edicts. Those Americans who feel disempowered, hopeless, frightened or even depressed by the current political situation can find unexpected hope in this novel idea.

As we’ve seen this past year, people can overcome political repression by acting in small ways, by stubbornly participating in boycotts, educating others about the erosion of democratic ideals, attending legislators’ town hall meetings, writing to congresspeople,** voting in local and national elections, joining advocacy groups, supporting independent journalism and resisting misinformation.

____________________________________

*Stephan, a civil resistance scholar, co-led and was the chief organizer with the Horizons Project, and she previously directed a program on nonviolent action at the United States Institute of Peace.

**Despite the olilgarchy, individual voters still count, and legislators will be influenced if they receive troves of mail or large attendance at their local constituent meetings.

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References

1. Chenoweth, E., and Stephan, M. (2011). Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.

2. Fields-Meyer, A. (2026). The State of American Resistance is Stronger Than You Think. New York Times, published June 16, 2026.

The existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche¹ famously proclaimed:

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

This hardly elicits hope when many of our misfortunes feel like they will kill us. Nonetheless, as we navigate the twist and turns of our life, we inevitably encounter losses, disappointments, betrayals, injuries and other adversities that cause immense pain. However, understanding how these trials ultimately bring growth may offer comfort.

“Determinate negation” ( bestimmte Negation), introduced by the German philosopher G.W.F Hegel², best describes how setbacks in life can inform us as well as injure us. Trauma quashes our belief systems while opening us up to newer, richer truths. This surprisingly universal phrase applies not only to individual human suffering, but to all kinds of changes.

The way seeds transition into plants illustrates determinate negation. The seed ceases to exist (is negated) when it sprouts into a plant. But the change does not end the significance of the seed. The plant is specifically defined and structured by the seed it left behind.

How might this apply to trauma or injuries in life? Consider what happens if you are betrayed by a lover. Assume you believed your partner to be an honest, loyal companion. Your “natural consciousness,” another Hegelian term, understandably made these assumptions. The belief, perhaps strongly held, is destroyed once the betrayal is discovered.

Following the revelation, the betrayed person passes through a “pathway of doubt” or “the way of despair” (der Weg der Verzweiflung). Here, Hegel notes, people face choices while ensnarled in the intense pain of their reaction. They could fall into a permanent anguish, lose all sense of meaning or become chronically depressed. Over time, though, most people adapt. They integrate the trauma into personalities, and these processes become part of the dynamic, ever-changing nature of life.

Determinate negation applies here because the betrayed person sustained a “negation” of their belief or trust, and emerges forever changed. For a period of time or, perhaps forever, their belief in the lover’s loyalty vanishes. But then a kind of assessment occurs. Betrayals in relationships are sometimes ways of indirectly communicating dissatisfaction with the relationship. Sometimes, it signals its end³.

In any event, the betrayal requires the victim to learn what it means, adjust their perspective and move forward strengthened by the experience. To paraphrase Nietzsche, as long as the betrayal doesn’t kill you, it will leave you forever altered, arguably stronger and certainly wiser. Perhaps the victim of the betrayal will realize they ignored warning signs about that one person, leaving them better equipped when dating others. Or, perhaps they’ll realize they neglected their lover, and therefore share some responsibility in the lover straying. Of course, there are endless other possibilities.

Subsequent thinkers condensed Hegel’s ideas into dynamic concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. These words describe how life’s traumas elicit personal growth, how governments evolve and how ideas change over time. A “determinate negation” occurs at any of these three phases.

Consider a simplified narration of the French Revolution. Fed up with the oppressive monarchy, the French people stormed the Bastille in 1789, overturned the feudal system and ushered in a government devoted to the ideals of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. These ideals were quickly negated by the Reign of Terror. The idealistic rebels ended up displaying the same brutal repression as the monarchs, bringing tens of thousands to the guillotine. The country passed through a series of theses, antitheses and syntheses, each beginning with determinate negations.

Each change retained some of what was destroyed. Those wonderful ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity remained as guiding principles, no matter how much they were sidelined. A set of Republics took form as France evolved over time, culminating in the present one, the Fifth Republic, established in 1958. The iconic French motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité lives on as a foundational pillar of French national identity, at least for now.

The idea of successive determinate negations applies to how things have evolved in America. Many believe Trump came to power as a reaction, or an antithesis, to Obama, at least the first time. Biden’s presidency can be viewed as a short-term synthesis followed by the circle coming around again, namely the “thesis” of Trump’s second term. Hopefully, at some later point, we will witness another synthesis, perhaps one that reduces the absurd level of income inequality, reigns in the oligarchs and delivers more equitable solutions to healthcare, housing and immigration.

Determinate negation is hardly an easy concept to understand. It sounds heady and emotionally distant. But within those two words lies much wisdom. Beliefs, concepts, trends and even objects will inevitably be destroyed, but parts of them live on, leading to growth and change. We are much more like sculptures than paintings. As our lives progress, we morph in ways that hurt us but also enliven and empower us. We develop ever deeper, more chiseled characters despite the injuries we inevitably sustain along the way.

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References

1. Nietzsche, F. (1889/1997). Twilight of the Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. Trans. R. Polt. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

2. Hegel, G.W.F. (1807/1977). Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press.

3. Karbelnig, A.M. (2017). The geometry of intimacy: love triangles and couples therapy. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(1):70 – 82.

To be labeled “narcissistic” in contemporary culture is hardly a compliment. Yet an individual needs to have some narcissism to thrive in life, typically in the form of considerable self-love. A high school graduate who continues his or her education, whether at a trade school or at an Ivy League university, must be able to imagine succeeding. Such an internal expectation of success reveals the presence of narcissism in a good way.

Here’s where I contradict myself: In earlier essays I described Donald Trump as a malignant narcissist (fortunately for me, human subjectivity always contains contradictions and involves internal conflict). In this essay, I explore how Trump’s reliance on external sources of admiration suggests a surprising lack of even self-regard. His behaviors still easily meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). He displays seven of the nine possible traits: arrogance, grandiose self-importance, feeling “special,” feeling entitled, exploiting others, lacking empathy and a need for excessive admiration. Five are required to meet the criteria for NPD.

Trump’s underlying insecurity seems obvious. Returning to those NPD diagnostic criteria, the final one, namely the need for excessive admiration, is striking. Of central importance is that Trump must receive validation, attention and praise from outside sources.

Sigmund Freud¹, despite his many erroneous ideas, got a lot right about narcissism. Of relevance to Trump and others with this variation of narcissism, he wrote:

The realization of impotence, of one's own inability to love, in consequence of mental or physical disorder, has an exceedingly lowering effect upon self-regard. Here, in my judgment, we must look for one of the sources of the feelings of inferiority… (p. 98)

Many malignant narcissists are so preoccupied with their own grandiosity that their need for external validation is minimal. Trump’s, on the contrary, is maximal. Even though federal judges have limited or reversed some of Trump’s efforts, a few recent examples include:

1. Changing the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center, or the Trump-Kennedy Center. It is remarkable, but unsurprising, that Trump failed to see the absurdity of adding his name to a memorial. But it likely speaks volumes regarding the need for external validation.

2. Planning to construct a $400 million ballroom project on the site of the demolished East Wing, consisting of a 90,000-square-foot complex set up for 1,000 guests with a subterranean security facility. Although Trump now refutes it, early officials initially referred to the space as the President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.

3. Wanting to build a massive arch based on Paris’ Arc de Triomphe dubbed the Arc de Trump.

4. Ordering the State Department to issue limited-edition US passports featuring a portrait and signature of President Donald Trump to commemorate the nation's 250th birthday. No president has ever made such a request.

5. Honoring America’s 250th birthday, Trump also wishes to have his face featured on a newly proposed commemorative $250 bill.

6. Arranging for massive banners of pictures of him to be hung from the Departments of Labor, Agriculture and Justice so that visitors traveling up Pennsylvania Avenue cannot help but see his mug.

Any number of emotional reactions to this list would be appropriate. Some might feel sadness or pity at this man’s painfully obvious need for validation from the outside, much of it absurd (a $250 bill?). Others might feel enraged. Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes² notes that Trump:

… contrives his projects one after the other, designs them, picks the architects, contractors, and even materials, and lets out the opaque, no-bid contracts, all without consulting Congress or honoring the constitutional power of the purse — until he needs more money, like for the ballroom that he’s said wouldn’t require a dime from taxpayers.

Ironically, then, Trump is a rather sad, selfless person, meaning he has little sense of self. It would indeed be tragic were it not for the fact that Trump, with his impulsive, toddler-like behavior³, wields immense power. His need for external validation explains why autocrats like Netanyahu, Xi and Putin manipulate him like a puppeteer’s marionette. Trump’s Iranian fiasco, intended to helpfully depose the theocratic regime there, has utterly failed. Iran is more powerful than ever, and its evil regime is more entrenched than ever. Trump would deserve compassion if he were your friend. But as president, he inspires nothing less than terror among educated global citizens.

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References

¹ Freud, S. (1914). On Narcissism: An Introduction. Standard Edition, 14:67-102.

² Calmes, J. (2026). As we approach July 4th, the capital is fittingly a mess: the adulatory banners and ego-driven construction hardly seem appropriate for a people who renounced a king. Los Angeles Times, published June 4, 2026.

³ Drezner, D. W. (2020). Toddler in chief: What Donald Trump teaches us about the modern presidency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Spring, and its wondrous green foliage and vibrant blossoms, brings with it a time for renewal, positive changes, graduations and transitions. It’s a time of new beginnings. But despite the springtime “love is in the air” sensation, many still feel frightened about Trump’s impulsive, bellicose behaviors; many feel hopeless about the future of the world; many feel understandably numb.

Recent world events, particularly the surprising end of Viktor Orbán’s 20-year autocratic rule of Hungary, offer glimpses of springtime light. Orbán has been widely described as an “autocrat” or “strongman*.” He was expected to win the election, in part through disrupting voting processes. Key right-wing figures, including our own Vice President, J.D. Vance, supported him by appearing at pre-election Hungarian rallies. And yet Orbán’s opponent, Peter Magyar, won the election by a landslide.

New York Times editorial author M. Gessen (2026) writes:

The triumph was stunning — unique in our era of democratic backsliding — and it holds clear lessons for the United States.

Gessen offers 12 specific “lessons” from Orbán’s defeat. I’ve included six below that offer an optimistic plan for action to return America to its original democratic roots.

Trump clearly leans towards autocratic leadership. Just the last few weeks reveal him arranging for a deal forever preventing an IRS audit of him or his family (like a monarch), creating a $1.8 billion"Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate individuals victimized by prior administrations and continuing the Iranian war without Congressional approval. The Department of Justice is cooling his jets, somewhat, but Trump has managed to castrate Congress and use executive orders to run the country like an autocrat.

Extrapolating on how Hungarian voters overwhelmingly defeated Orbán, Americans can counter their burn-out, their defensive indifference, by:

1. Creating an extensive organizing network. Prior to his election, Magyar, now Hungary's Prime Minister, mobilized between 30,000 and 40,000 volunteers. His organization had 4,000 volunteers running call centers the last week of Magyar’s campaign.

2. Making the election personal. Magyar spent months personally visiting towns and villages across the country. Gessen writes, “old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering.” Bálint Magyar (no relation to Peter), who served as Hungary’s Minister of Education, accurately described Orbán’s administration as a fundamentally criminal organization, specifically a Mafia state. Many political scientists see the same phenomena here. You only have to look at the enriching of Trump’s family or the creation of monuments in Trump’s name to see the evidence of this Mafia state. Just this week, Trump appointed Bill Pulte as the Director of National Intelligence. Pulte has no national security experience whatsoever, but he is a big Trump supporter. Just like in the Mafia, loyalty matters above all else.

3. Utilizing grass-roots organizations with little connection to electoral politics. No Kings rallies, ICE-resistance groups, pro-democratic institutions and the like can make as much of a difference as those focused on winning votes.

4. Promote values. Even those numbed by the situation may be motivated by the need to stop the corruption and return to the democratic principles on which America was founded. Magyar promoted inclusivity and a return to serving “all Hungarians” in his campaign. Focusing on positive values for all Americans can counteract the numbness from the overwhelming corruption.

5. Advocate for pluralism. Much of Magyar’s success is attributed to his speaking to the Hungarian people as a whole rather than to any particular party, ethnic group or multi-national corporation. An extension of the prior theme, whoever runs for the post-Trump presidency would be well served by speaking to all Americans, not just MAGA enthusiasts.

6. Highlight the importance of love. This may sound hokey, but Magyar’s politics are inspirational, an antidote to the cynicism of autocracy. He referred to the Hungarian Parliament building as “the most beautiful building in the world. ” Ágnes Forsthoffer, Hungary’s new Speaker of the National Assembly, used the word “love” four times in her own brief speech. When addressing the post-election victory crowd, Magyar encouraged his countrymen to:

   turn toward those compatriots who are disappointed today, who are afraid, or who experience this period as a loss. Do not try to defeat them; do not look down on them. Listen to them and talk to them. Tell them that this country belongs to them, too; that they are needed, just as everyone is needed; and that together, we will rebuild Hungary, because there is no left, there is no right — only Hungarians.

Many of my prior essays have explored the reasons for our growing apathy from the sheer force of Trump’s efforts to overturn American democracy. Of imminent importance are his ever-growing threats to the November general election. Peter Magyar faced the same menacing from an autocrat who had remained in power for two decades. Orbán’s defeat shows the power of the ordinary people to replace an unpopular, abusive regime.

These lessons invite us to awaken from our slumber and return our beloved country to one that represents the interests of the majority, rather than the powerful. Yes, it was sardonic comedy, but Mel Brooks’ (2001) song, Springtime for Hitler, need not be our rallying cry. Instead, and during our time of flowers, greenery and graduations, we can celebrate and consider the possibility of a bright future, perhaps singing instead, Springtime for Regime Change.

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*The phrase, “the last dictator of Europe,” was used to describe Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus. However, in retrospect, it could easily have been used to describe Orbán.

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References

Brooks, M. (2001). Springtime for Hitler [Song]. On The Producers: The New Mel Brooks Musical (Original Broadway cast recording) [Album]. Sony Masterwork.

Gessen, M. (2026). This Is The Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too. New York Times, Published May 29, 2026.

Are you starting to feel like outrage has become, well, all the rage? The social media-sphere, long known for acrimony, has become dominated by outrage in recent years. Immigrants, political parties, GLP-1s, explicit sex scenes in movies, wokeness, erectile dysfunction drugs, people who take Disney cruises, people who don’t use turn signals, shoppers that don’t return their grocery cars, singing audience members at Broadway shows or poor people holding signs asking for money — the list of topics that elicit fury is excessive. It’s a sign of our times. People are outraged everywhere, and their reactions are rarely justified.

Outrage, a different emotion than anger or hatred, is defined as a combination of anger, resentment and shock triggered by acts perceived as offensive, violent or cruel. Of late, common prompts include the War in Iran, rising gasoline and grocery prices, ICE arrests and Trump’s golden White House ballroom.

What accounts for the popularity of outrage?

Perhaps most significantly, outrage emerges from a primitive form of thinking known in psychoanalytic circles as splitting. Splitting and projection, the two foundational defense mechanisms, are normal in infants and toddlers. Their immature body-minds, overwhelmed by the complexity of the world, transform their experience into two basic categories: good or bad. The division simplifies. And, as one regards the bad, they project it out whenever possible. As they mature, especially when they develop the capacity for language, these infantile defense mechanisms recede. Mature defenses, such as sublimation, suppression, anticipation or humor, provide ways to deal with life’s shades of gray.

The prevalence of outrage in everyday conversation, not to mention in the anonymous world of internet exchanges, validates the predominance of splitting. And splitting, in turn, results from a lack of critical thinking. Outrage also provides for projection. The outraged person projects onto some “other” person, thing or event they find outrageous. Whatever is “outrageous” about the aggrieved party is evacuated into the “other.” It simplifies their world while allowing them to ignore whatever is flawed in themselves.

A combination of mirror neurons and memes* makes outrage spread rapidly through social networks. The intense emotional arousal associated with outrage drives individuals to share their feelings. They express their ire in coffee houses, gyms, workplaces, bars and at social gatherings of all types; they fill their social media pages, their emails and their texts with their outrage. Social media alone enables communal outrage on an unprecedented scale, allowing people to broadcast their indignation worldwide.

Such broad social networks run on the fuel of personal anonymity. Anonymity emboldens users, allowing them to express opinions and emotions without the fear of real-world repercussions. This phenomenon, in turn, leads to deindividuation, a psychological state causing individuals to lose their sense of self-awareness and moral evaluation and to behave in impulsive, often aggressive ways. The disconnect between online behavior and real-life accountability allows individuals to voice outrage without confronting its direct emotional impact.

Closely related to splitting and anonymity, outrage also has an addictive quality. It feels good to have the world so simplified, to be on one side or another. That word, addiction, is also overused though. Nonetheless, and particularly when considering the border between compulsions (behaviors that feel uncontrollable) and addictions (behaviors that bring withdrawal if discontinued), people get hooked on the feeling of outrage. It becomes self-reinforcing.

These forces behind the pandemic of outrage, splitting, contagion, anonymity and addiction swirl around in social spheres. They create a toxicity, an outrage culture. The capacity for dialogue becomes stifled, thoughts echo one another and remarkable polarization develops when outrage becomes society’s dominant emotional response.

Addressing any negative habit begins with bringing the problematic behavior into consciousness. If too accustomed to the feeling of outrage, then ideally you’d notice it, reflect on it and consider alternatives. Splitting and projection can be addressed by proposing only arguments for which you can offer counter-arguments. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1974), imprisoned in a Russian Gulag from 1945 to 1953 (for criticizing Joseph Stalin), believed evil was a capacity of every human being. One must understand how the brutality of the prison guard lives somewhere in the body-mind of the prisoner (which Jungians would call the Shadow). As soon as you can articulate an argument opposite to your own, you are neither splitting nor projecting.

The infectious and compulsive features of outrage can end in a similar way, namely bringing the propensity for feeling outrage to consciousness and resisting the temptation to enact it. You’ll be less likely to infect others if you’re feeling less of it yourself. Many, if not all, human conflicts can be resolved through reasoned dialogue. But such conversations require the mature capacity to understand the other party’s point of view, to engage with reciprocity and empathy.

Finally, finding oneself excessively immersed in feeling outraged, particularly if expressing it anonymously, shows cowardice. It is a way of hiding from authentically encountering the world by engaging in what Friedrich Nietzsche (1886/2002) called "herd mentality" (Herdenmentalität). Nietzsche critiqued the way most people mindlessly conform to social norms, adopt conventional beliefs and experience emotions without independent thought or reflection. His idea of the Übermensch (Overman) has nothing to do with Naziism or superiority. Instead, it refers to the person who thinks for him or herself, and acts accordingly. If you often feel outraged and realize its banal commonality, why not break the cycle and stand out from the herd?

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*Memes, deliberately derived from the word genes, refer to how information is spread through groups in a manner resembling how genes affect biology. A meme refers to how an idea, behavior or style spreads by means of imitation (mimesis) (mimesis) within a culture. Richard Dawkins (1976) popularized the concept. The emotion of outrage illustrates a meme taking form as a type of emotion.

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References

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. London: Oxford University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1886/2002). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Cambridge University Press.

Solzhenitsyn, A.I. (1974). The Gulag archipelago, 1918-1956: An experiment in literary investigation. Trans. T. P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row.

Developmental psychoanalysts believe that the ego, or self, emerges from a combination of biological and social forces in the first year of life. They consider the narrative structure comprising “self” as associated, initially, with infantile omnipotence. The basic assumption that every wish or need deserves satisfaction enhances infants’ chances for survival. Over time, such normal narcissism is offset by the development of empathy, parental limit-setting, and the containing effects of the broader social contract.

Meanwhile, this all-powerful basic ego becomes the key problem for those terrified of death. Driven by its drive to survive, the ego dissociates from any possibility of its ending. On the one hand, the ego gives us a sense of control and the capacity to make choices. But on the other hand, it sports a cavernous blind spot to scary uncertainties along the path of life up to its inevitable ending.

Beginning with the human body, the ego has no clue about any number of ordinary physiological functions. How your lungs, kidneys, heart, liver, and circulatory system operate is completely out of its purview. And yet, the ego is completely dependent on these structures. Coincidentally, the ego’s associating itself with the body represents yet another illusion. A human being deprived of air will die within minutes, and without water within days. Why does the ego perceive itself as existing within a sac of skin, an arguably psychotic perception?

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Individuals in long-term romantic relationships inevitably become shaped by one or more dramatic themes (Karbelnig, 2020, 2023). According to Jungian psychoanalysis, common trends include the King/Queen (bringing stability), the Warriors (bringing adventure) or the Lovers (bringing emotional connection). Most couples struggle, at least to some extent, with the kind of master-servant dynamics highlighted by 19th-century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1807/1977). In other words, some variation of dominant-submissive or leader-follower evolves over time.

I recently heard from a colleague about an ingenious solution to that latter pattern in a couple with whom she worked. The husband proposed the metaphor, a different kind of dramatic theme, and the wife readily agreed (as did my colleague). This reframing of perhaps their most problematic motif significantly and positively altered their relationship. I share the story to illustrate how dramatic themes—inevitably more than one—become enacted in couples. (Per usual, I fictionalize the involved parties to protect their privacy and confidentiality).

The woman in the heterosexual relationship, Nancy, is the managing partner at a high-powered international law firm. She has an intense, controlling, Type A, hypomanic* personality style. Her husband, Carlos, a self-employed management consultant, displays a more passive, “let’s go along to get along” pattern. They’ve been married for 26 years. About a year before starting marriage counseling, their two sons completed their educations, one via vocational training and the other through an MBA. After their youngest moved out on his own, their marriage began to deteriorate.

Carlos, who’d enjoyed a close relationship with both children, felt lonely and abandoned after they left. Nancy continued to work the long hours typical for her work life. Because Carlos worked from home, he had spent more time rearing the boys, picking them up from school, helping them with homework, taking them to tutors and supporting their athletic activities. He’d also done most of the cooking.

As Carlos adjusted to his sons' absence, his loneliness gradually transitioned into anger. The anger, in turn, took the form of episodic rage toward Nancy. Carlos accused her of neglecting him and their sons. He’d shout, “You’ve only ever cared for yourself!” and the like. He witheringly critiqued Nancy, calling her a “workaholic” and describing her as a person “terrified of leisure.” Nancy, despite her powerful personality, reacted first with defensiveness, then with despondency and finally with anger of her own. Their incessant arguing led them to couples therapy.

Nancy and Carlos attended weekly sessions over four years. The progress was slow. It took months to help them stop making assumptions about what each of them felt inside. They struggled to develop empathy instead of blame. Over time, they developed better listening skills. They also learned to “recognize”** one another.

Nancy came to appreciate, more than ever before, how Carlos passed through the world with less urgency. Carlos, in turn, acknowledged Nancy’s need for a higher-paced lifestyle. They benefited from realizing that they’d both dealt with childhood disappointments in precisely opposite ways: Carlos moved through life slowly, unconsciously prepared to be let down; Nancy, in contrast, ran through life insistent on “avoiding defeat.”

They also made small alterations in each of their personality patterns. Nancy slowed down a bit. Challenged by Carlos’ assertions, she experimented with “playing.” There was little need for her to continue working at the same pace. Nancy also reached out to her sons more regularly than she had in the past. Carlos, understanding his propensity to avoid confrontation, became more assertive in his interactions with Nancy and others.

Couples inevitably struggle with normal differences in their personalities. Two people who are too alike may find their relationship boring; those who differ inescapably clash. It was in this realm, namely the area of personality style differences, where Nancy and Carlos became stuck. On a deeper level, they became paralyzed around the issue of power.

Their underlying feelings about power dynamics surfaced only after their relationship began to improve. Carlos could more readily access the resentment he’d harbored over Nancy’s domination of their decision-making. In like manner, Nancy realized how deeply she disliked his passivity. Even though they learned how they enabled each other’s behavioral styles and made changes in their own, a simmering bitterness remained. Week after week of discussion led to little further positive changes.

Finally, Carlos proposed an analogy that propelled them forward. He suggested that Nancy was like a “flying kite” and that he, in turn, was the pilot. (These are terms of art in the kite-world). Something about this metaphor almost mystically dissolved the tension.

One might think that Nancy could have been offended by the characterization of her role, or that Carlos might have felt equally put off. On the contrary, the analogy had an equalizing effect for both of them. It exemplifies what the word "reframing" means. Something about that description gave them a renewed sense of equality, of balance. They began to play, to tease each other about their roles. Carlos served a grounding function, one able to pull Nancy back to Earth. He could guide her using the control bar. At the same time, Nancy was able to enjoy the creative energy of the soaring kite. These words, albeit describing the same kind of differences, released the paralytic tension.

The example obviously leaves out many details. During the sessions, they had shared some traumatic memories previously unknown to one another. They had expressed stronger emotions, including loss and sadness, than ever before. They learned how much of their mutual anger stemmed from these more vulnerable emotions. Perhaps this particular story of a couple in counseling appears rather idealized and, certainly, simplified. Nonetheless, it hopefully depicts how a small tweak in understanding how relationship dynamics work can alter couples’ dynamics, allowing them to move forward with more love and less conflict.

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*A term of art derived from psychiatry, hypomania refers to a sustained period of abnormally elevated, energetic or irritable mood. It may signify the start of an actual manic episode (indicative of bipolar disorder), but often just describes a rather intensely driven person.

**Recognition, another Hegelian concept expanded upon by contemporary psychoanalysts, involves more than just empathy. It requires a deep understanding of the other party and the ability to “see” the world from their perspective.

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References

Hegel, G.W.F. (1807/1977). Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press.

Karbelnig, A. M. (2020). The theater of the unconscious mind. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 37(4):273–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000251

Karbelnig, A.M. (2023). The psychoanalyst as dramatist. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 43(7): 512–525. doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2023.2257580

If you or someone you love fall into a depressive state, where do you turn for solace? Scholarly literature and diagnostic systems like the DSM-V characterize depression as a “mood disorder” involving a depressed mood or anhedonia* daily for at least two weeks, as well as feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness or suicidal ideation. But these approaches understandably fail to account for the experience of depression, for what it “feels” like. They also fail to account for the individual differences in how depression presents: One depressed person may weep uncontrollably for hours and suffer from severe insomnia; another might feel emotionally flat and sleep all day.

The causes of depression are as complex as the varieties of ways it manifests. Some people who enjoyed loving, supportive childhoods and encountered no serious life stressors can be subject to depression; others who suffered childhood abuse, poverty, discrimination and other injuries can also suffer depression, but not necessarily. In a hundred years, scientific progress will likely yield a better understanding of cancer. But I wouldn’t bet on the same future for depression because of its complicated nature.

The complexity of depression is staggering. Abuse, loss, injury or aging, the effects of economic, historical and cultural shifts and the impact of alcohol and substance abuse mixed with genetics and biology, contribute to depression. These combine, still more evilly, with the disease, famines and wars that history has wrought.

Artists who have written of their experiences of depression offer some of the best portrayals. A striking account comes from William Styron’s (1990) book, Darkness Visible, in which he vividly describes his own bouts of depression. (Styron penned such well-known books as Sophie’s Choice [1992]). Validating my point about how clinical categories differ from personal experiences, Styron writes that depression:

remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it,

Adding that:

the pain is unrelenting, and what makes it intolerable is the foreknowledge.

Winston Churchill (Roberts, 2018) suffered depressive episodes, telling his friends of his “black dog days.” He, too, lamented the unpredictability of them.

Sylvia Plath (1963/2005), the oft-depressed 20th-century novelist whose life ended by suicide, depicted her depression as a suffocating, isolating “bell jar” that descended upon her. She felt it trapped her in “sour air” caused by her “gray, dull, flat, empty” existence.

Neither an artist nor a depressive himself, the psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan (1978, 2002) offers one of the clearest ways to account for the feeling of depression. He conceives of it as a state where the afflicted person a. completely loses the desire for anything or anyone and b. cannot imagine themselves as an object of desire. In other words, depressed persons cannot imagine anything desirable, and they cannot conceive of themselves as desirable to anyone else.

In an effort to provide my own description of the feeling of depression, I offer a fictionalized account based on an amalgam of my patients over the past four decades:

Sally, a 60-year-old woman, has felt consistently depressed since her husband’s death two years ago. She is “constantly lost in memories” of the early months of her relationship with her husband, Tom. She says these thoughts repeat themselves, “like the skipping of an old record,” unable to escape its “grooves.” Ironically, her emotional pain cannot be traced solely to the loss of her husband. Theirs was a conflicted relationship.

Her husband’s “moodiness” contributed to their alienation from their two sons, who moved from New York to the West Coast 20 years earlier. They call her occasionally, but they visit her rarely. The family gathered “only every few Thanksgivings.” But Sally denies feeling lonely and isolated. If asked how she feels physically, Sally declares, “Just pain.”

Sally does not report a loss of identity due to never having worked outside the home. She had an “enthralling” career, having entered the software business when writing code was “still new and brilliant.” She’d met Tom earlier, in college. Somehow, their falling in love bafflingly remains the forever-defining moment of her life. She doesn’t reflect on her occupational successes; she doesn’t reflect on the alienation from her sons. In a sense, she doesn’t “reflect” on anything save these romantic reminiscences, which seem to torture her.

In terms of her sensory experiences, Sally speaks of viewing the world in “endless blurs of gray.” She doesn’t really taste anymore, or smell, she says, adding that she hears “only the roar of pain.” She cannot imagine feeling anything positive. When willing to discuss her emotions, uncommon for her, she reports feeling as if her mind “is in a vise.” She passively wishes for death but lacks the energy to even gather up suicidal thoughts.

This fictional Sally displays just one variation on the sad theme of this mysterious condition. Unless you’ve been cursed with Black Dog Days yourself, it is essentially impossible to fully grasp the experience. But one thing’s for sure: Those who would still view depression as some sort of weakness, as cowardice, or as a defect of character are sorely misinformed.

Depression is a deadly serious state of being. Those who’ve felt the bell jar descend upon them, who feel suffocated and starved of the basic energy of life itself, deserve not only professional help but also efforts by loved ones to understand their painful worlds. Metaphorically walking alongside a depressed person often provides at least some breaks in their unbearable discomfort.

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*Seeking a catchy title for his 1977 film, Woody Allen proposed the word, anhedonia. The producers, Charles H. Joffe and Jack Rollins, objected, leading Allen to agree to the title Annie Hall. You can see the tonal relationship. Annie Hall won Academy Awards that year, including for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress , hardly a depressing achievement.

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References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.

Lacan, J. (1978). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. J. Miller (Ed.). Trans. A. Sheriden. New York: Norton.

Lacan, J. (2002). Ecrits. Trans. B. Fink. New York, NY: Norton.

Plath, S. (2005). The bell jar. New York: Harper. (Originally published in 1963).

Roberts, A. (2018). Churchill: Walking with Destiny. London: Penguin.

Styron, W. (1990). Darkness visible: A memoir of madness. New York: Random House.

Styron, W. (1992). Sophie's choice. New York: Vintage Books.

Expanding upon the intricacies of intimacy explored in a recent essay, I dive deeper into the limits of fully seeing, knowing, or understanding an “other.” Individuals in emotionally close relationships need the capacity to empathize with and, more importantly, to recognize their friends, lovers or relatives. Recognition is always difficult because it requires more than just empathy. One must retain a sense of the other’s history, moods, thought patterns and behavioral styles, to hear, see and feel them, to fully recognize them.

And yet, despite our best efforts, natural boundaries prevent full understanding. Barriers on introspection, knowledge and language prevent achieving “complete” closeness. But we shouldn’t allow these frontiers to prevent us from striving for love. Ironically, they can actually add to intimacy’s magical quality.

Consider an idealized example of a heterosexual couple, two years into a romantic relationship. By then, they have become familiar with each other’s temperaments; they’ve heard personal histories; they’ve shared their value systems, political stances and fears and ambitions; they’ve met each other’s closest friends and family members; they’ve enjoyed an active sexual life leading to close familiarity with one another’s bodies; and they’ve successfully navigated their way through some arguments.

Despite their familiarity, these persons have only so much capacity for self-understanding. Intimacy requires the capacity to access our inner selves, to assess our needs and wants, and, crucially, to communicate them. Such a degree of introspection is arduous enough. The fact that most of our subjectivities are unconscious makes matters worse. In other words, it’s difficult enough to find out what you want, and then tell an “other,” even before you encounter the level of the unconscious mind.

These same limitations apply to the other parties in our lives. They can hopefully express desires clearly and negotiate well, but they, too, hit the boundary posed by the unconscious, and the typical blocks to conscious experience (like secrets we dare to tell ourselves). Even if the “other” enjoys high self-awareness and communication skills, they face the restraints imposed by language itself. Certainly, people communicate nonverbally, but much resides in the realm of the woefully inadequate spoken word. They can never fully express our thoughts and feelings. If you feel hurt by the other, whatever words you use can never capture the entirety of the emotion. A gap always remains. Even thoughts can only be partially spoken. Naturally, these same language limitations apply to the “others” in our lives.

Yet another constraint emerges from the nature of knowledge itself. In creating the most significant change in Western philosophy since Plato, Immanuel Kant (1788/2015) identified a fundamental limit to our understanding of the world. He described what many now consider obvious: that all knowledge comes through our five senses, filtered by our central nervous systems. Who knows the actual nature of “reality”? No one can tell whether or not we’re living in a simulation or whether, as the Hindu’s think, our entire lives consist of the Hindu God Vishnu’s dream.

And if that restraint proves insufficient, consider the profound interconnectedness suggested by Buddhists like the ancient Mahayana Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna. Not only is the self a delusion, as the Buddha suggested, but we also struggle to experience ourselves as context rather than as persons. How bizarre that we identify ourselves as existing within a sac of skin when, in truth, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat are more important than our own limbs. Surgeons can amputate an arm, and you’d be fine. But no air? You’d die within a minute. In truth, our consciousnesses, nothing more than a variety of daydreams or narratives, only exist within the nest provided by the Earth and the universe beyond it.

Those hypothetically enamored lovers need not feel the least despair at the limits of self-knowledge, of capacities to communicate, of understanding the nature of knowledge itself, of the delusional nature of the self or of the mysterious ways that all phenomena are connected. Not only can we strive to understand and express ourselves better, and to recognize our loved ones as fully as possible, but we can also enjoy the possibility of gaining ever more knowledge of ourselves and others. And, how exciting to surrender to the uncharted, the unknown, the mysterious that, in truth, always dominates our worlds.

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References

Kant, I. (1788/2015). The Critique of Practical Reason [Kritik der Praktischen Vernuft]. Trans. M.Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

If a man in a trench coat flashed you while walking along a boulevard, you’d feel shocked, perhaps disgusted. You’d likely think:

What a pervert!*

Publicly perverse behavior of this ilk is easily identified. In contrast, societal perversions, like those committed by governments against citizens, are subtle. Perversions are behaviors deliberately deviating from what is considered right, good or expected. In terms of sheer numbers, government-perpetrated perverse behaviors greatly exceed those committed by individuals. For example, the way international corporations treat people like commodities for exploitation leads to income inequality, housing shortages, ecological disasters and a broken healthcare system. Perversion.

In the interest of simplicity and provocation, I explore one stark and rather surprising example, namely the perversities shared by prisons and national parks.

First, both institutions involve denial by the American public. US President Ulysses S. Grant’s signing of the Yellowstone National Park Act in 1872 started the national park system. By 1916, some 150 million acres were protected within 14 national parks. These are, without exception, spectacular nature preserves. However, they contribute to environmental plunder across the rest of the country. Entire regions have become wastelands because of coal mining, oil and gas drilling, air pollution, marine exploitation, deforestation and nuclear waste. The national parks, unconsciously, become dissociated centers of comforting nature that invite us to ignore how we treat nature more generally.

The prison system demonstrates a similar dissociation process. Rather than deal with crime by addressing underlying social causes or creating truly rehabilitative institutions, we have instead a massive system of jails and prisons to separate these individuals from the rest of society. As of 2023, 1.2 million people of the 360 million US citizens were imprisoned. (China, with a population of 1.4 billion, imprisons 2 million). Drug crimes account for nearly half of the American prison population. Approximately 15 percent of those incarcerated in the US are violent criminals who require isolation from society.

In truth, there are many more effective ways to retrain and rehabilitate inmates. More effective means of treating prisoners whose core problem relates to drug addiction also exist. However, prison guard unions and private prison company lobbyists prevent any meaningful prison reform from occurring. Prisons allow us to ignore better ways of rehabilitating inmates, and national parks allow us to ignore better ways of treating our natural environment.

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1. Express our own desires.

2. Recognize others.

3. Engage inter-subjectively.

4. Manage reciprocity.

5. Be competent in disruption and repair.

These ideas emerge from obscure realms ranging from the 19th-century philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1807/1977) to contemporary psychoanalysis (Aron, 1996; Karbelnig, 2018). I explain the intricacies of intimacy, including why maintaining it is so difficult, by discussing these five themes in turn.

The first one, expressing our desires, is anything but simple. You must access them authentically and without falling into what Hegel calls the master-servant pattern. The constant negotiation required by intimacy results in most relationships having at least some primary-secondary or leader-follower trend. Even a simple interaction, like discussing where to go to dinner one night, requires both parties to first find what they really feel like, clearly express it to the other party and then be ready to reach an agreeable decision.

Next comes the concept of recognition. This phenomenon, in itself, is more complex than the one word suggests. It requires more than just listening to the other person; you must understand them deeply. A narcissistic person might hear the phrase, “I feel like Indian food,” and quickly dismiss it. Finding authentic desires for food choices is simple compared to topics like budgeting or furnishing an apartment. Or consider the complexity involved when one partner needs to move from Pasadena to Phoenix to accept a job, requiring the other partner to relinquish their job. Recognition, ideally, involves an ability for intense empathy, for truly understanding the other party’s needs and feelings, for grasping their worldview as much as possible.

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Most measures of body-mind functions exist along a spectrum. You might be in excellent physical shape or relatively infirm. Your lungs may function perfectly or may be impaired by emphysema. You may experience normal periods of sadness or become severely depressed. You might be a cognitively oriented person or a more emotionally oriented one.

Another common continuum is between those who tend to overthink (obsessive) and those who are too action-oriented (impulsive). Those too rigid in their thinking, who obsess, ruminate, ponder, and deliberate to excess, have difficulty making decisions. People like this would have deficits in functioning across all realms of life. They would struggle whether making shoes or performing surgeries. Those at either end of this specific spectrum always have problems with functioning (unlike the health spectrum). More specifically, they find decision-making challenging.

The ability to make quick, informed decisions is perhaps the most important quality in US presidents. They could be asked at any time of day or night to decide how to respond to a natural disaster, a nuclear power plant breakdown, or an imminent military threat. If a nuclear missile were launched against the US, a president would literally have around 20 minutes (or as little as 10 minutes) to react. Americans, or citizens of any country for that matter, would want neither an obsessive nor an impulsive leader.

Trump’s behavior, throughout his life, in each of his presidential terms, and of late, is extremely impulsive. Examples of his impulsivity, every single one disturbing, are endless. Recent ones include his initiating a war against Iran without an exit strategy, his threats to exit NATO, his firing of multiple cabinet members, his intimidations of Greenland, Cuba, and Canada, and his ever-changing imposition of tariffs. To validate the problematic impulsivity, consider only the instability of his recent Truth Social posts, listed in reverse order:

On Easter Sunday, Trump posted:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

There are 2 billion Muslims on the planet Earth, some 25 percent of the global population. Trump insults them with his sarcasm? Children begin developing the basics of morality as early as age 2. They develop a fundamental understanding of right versus wrong and a capacity for empathy by age 5. “Our” president, whether you ever supported him or not, displays the moral capacity of a newborn infant.

A few days earlier, he posted:

With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A “GUSHER” FOR THE WORLD???

No thoughtful political scientist or military strategist thinks opening the Hormuz Strait would be easy. A military expert cited in the Economist said it would require 100,000 US troops just to secure Kharg Island. Still, many American and Iranian casualties would result. This post not only shows impulsivity, but a shameful level of ignorance for a world leader.

Still earlier, Trump posted:

I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?” That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies” in gear, and fast!!!

Taken by itself or combined with Trump’s other posts, the meaning of Daniel Drezner’s (2020) book, titled The Toddler In Chief, is realized. Notice the immaturity of the phraseology, e.g., “finished off,” the “so-called ‘Strait,” or the “non-responsive ‘Allies.’” These childish terms, barely acceptable from preschoolers, are alarming when uttered by a US president. You don’t use the phrase “finished off” to describe objectives in a war; the Strait is anything but “so-called,” and mature people don’t insult their friends and allies.

Extending the theme of disparaging one’s compatriots, another of Trump’s recent posts reads:

France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran,’ who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!

A number of oppressive leaders of Iran have been killed, but the Iranian clerical regime remains intact. One wonders just what the USA will “remember” when the dust settles on Trump’s perilous misadventure. He continued to denigrate our friends while lying about the status of the Iranian government in another post:

You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!

Most know about Trump’s reputation as a bully. But, here, he tells more lies, as in “decimated.” He proceeds to make a children’s schoolyard taunt in “go get your own oil.” Also, and consistent with the malignant narcissism described in previous essays, Trump lies (“the hard part is done”) and exaggerates (“Iran has been… decimated”).

In this next post, Trump displays more threats and, again, an empty-headed attitude towards a highly complex situation:

All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you. Number 1, buy from the US, we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.

If it’s even possible, it will take an international coalition to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Certainly, the US alone could not simply “take it.” As Trump grew frustrated that his “several-week” war would quickly end, he made still greater threats:

Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!

Perhaps the US military is the strongest in the world, but lessons should be drawn from Great Britain's history. It, too, had the strongest military as the 19th century transitioned into the 20th; it, too, became embroiled in foreign wars that sapped its economic power. The post further demonstrates Trump’s infantilism through the (typical) exclamation points and the phrase, “by far!”

Just yesterday, Trump posted:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

As I prepare this essay for publication, Trump has withdrawn the threat, alleging that Iran agreed to open the Hormuz waterway. Iran denies agreeing to the latter condition so who knows what will happen in the next 12 hours? Meanwhile, the threat to a civilization is beyond belief, reminiscent of the Holocaust or other acts of genocide. And notice the childlike second sentence, e.g., I don’t really wish for that, but it will probably happen. It has a sadistic quality to it.

Should Trump follow through on his threats against civilian infrastructure, then we will, with him as our leader, violate international law and commit war crimes. Cutting power to hospitals, schools, and ordinary civilians will do nothing regarding Iran’s military capacity. And, it will certainly only harden what remains of the already highly repressive regime.

Meanwhile, individuals representing the three major Abrahamic religions claim support from their particular Godheads. The US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, prays in "the mighty and powerful name of Jesus" for "overwhelming violence" against enemies. Iranian defense officials demand vengeance as a "religious duty.” Conservative Jewish organizations laud the "decisive action" by the US and Israel, calling the military conflict in Iran a “noble mission.”

Regardless of our religious affiliations, we Americans remain led by a dangerously impulsive president who has no exit strategy to the Iranian war, sends mixed messages (that hardly qualify as strategic), and behaves like an impetuous child on the playground. In addition to the problematic behaviors already noted, Trump acts in a way that is humiliating to many Americans.

Do we want to be represented on the world stage by an immature bully?

Given the equally bellicose screams by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, one can only hope:

May God help us!

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And check out my book, Lover, Exorcist, Critic: Understanding Depth Psychotherapy, available on Amazon.

References

Drezner, D. (2020). The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.