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.

________________________________

*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?

_________________________________

*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.

_____________________________

*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.

____________________________________

*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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References

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

The last few weeks brought news of major verdicts against social media firms. Attorneys for an adolescent known as K.G.M alleged that several of these companies failed to protect her from abuse, used algorithms deliberately designed to addict her, and caused her emotional injury. TikTok and Snapchat settled out of court for undisclosed amounts. On March 25, 2026, however, a California jury ordered Google/YouTube to pay $6 million in damages to the teenager. Meanwhile, some 1,600 plaintiffs have now filed lawsuits of a similar nature in California, and 10,000 similar lawsuits from individuals and nearly 800 from school districts are in process nationwide.

Days before the landmark California decision, a jury in New Mexico held Meta liable for similar reasons. It ordered the firm to pay $375 million in damages. Unlike the California case that involved harm to a minor, the attorney general of New Mexico filed the lawsuit on behalf of the people of his state. That litigation alleged that Meta made design choices they knew enabled predators to target minors, ignored warnings from their own internal staff, and misled the public about safety measures. More specifically, the lawsuit accused Meta of knowingly allowing Facebook and its subsidiaries, to become "breeding grounds" for child sexual exploitation.

These verdicts mark the first time juries have found social media firms liable for harming the public. It is a turning point for public welfare, for placing the needs of the people above profits for these corporations. These companies can now expect to face grievances from individuals and governments alike—similar to what happened with Big Tobacco in the 1990s. In a recent interview with CNN, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, proclaimed:

There are more regulations for making hamburgers in New York City than exist for social media companies.

For the last two decades, these firms grew exponentially and malignantly. They are among the largest companies in the world, with Meta alone having a market value of $1.3 trillion, a dollar amount far exceeding the GDP of most countries. From a psycho-political viewpoint, these lawsuits will ideally begin to address four major threats posed by these companies.

First, these firms significantly contribute to the breakdown in societal norms. The anonymity offered by these platforms invites people to post cruel, sadistic, and sometimes life-threatening posts. They have created new phenomena, like doxing, in which people’s private information is disseminated to millions. The destruction of common human decency adversely affects all of us.

Second, partially because of anonymity, and even more so because they instantly spread information to millions, these firms cause psychological regression. Infants and toddlers tend to see the world in concrete, black-and-white terms, and they project these simple perspectives onto others. As individuals mature into adolescence and beyond, they develop the capacity to see the world in shades of gray. They learn to think more critically. Children often treat others selfishly and insensitively; mature adults do not. In like manner, many social media users harm others in ways they’d never treat someone in real life.

Third, unregulated social media fosters societal impairment of empathy. People forget that anyone else but them has feelings, can be hurt, or killed. Individuals come to see other humans as digitized objects rather than beings. French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1991) describes the modern human as an “object of information, never a subject in communication” (p. 200).

The objectification of us fleshy humans, us vibrant thinking and feeling subjects, adversely affects us in various settings, including at work. Consider the example of the profession of journalism. Reporters once only faced peril if working in combat zones. Because of social media, journalists’ work has become dangerous in all realms. Social media allows those who take issue with reporting to spread widespread online abuse, including coordinating harassment and making death threats. Women and minority journalists face disproportionate attacks, including sexual threats and AI-generated deepfakes designed to ruin their reputations. As a result, some journalists self-censor. Others abandon the profession altogether.

That same objectification naturally impacts the world of love as well. Most people find romantic relationships via online dating platforms. Many of these are safe. They use systems that strive to protect the privacy of the parties involved. However, other platforms invite pedophiles to groom victims or rejected lovers to post revenge porn.

Fourth, people increasingly sit at home, staring at computer screens instead of socializing in the real world. The trend only aggravates the social withdrawal already validated by the epidemic of loneliness in America. Some 30 percent of the American public now reside in single-person households. Fewer people interact socially in person. And if they venture into coffee houses or gyms, they typically retreat by locking their gaze on screens and plugging their ears with noise-canceling headphones. People are increasingly losing the capacity to interact outside virtual social environments.

Finally, these media have accelerated Lasch’s (1991) “culture of narcissism” beyond his wildest dreams. People post their pictures of their Saturday night drunken parties, the sandwiches they consume, the jeans they buy, the states they visit, the varieties of lip gloss they purchase, the way their cats play with feathers or their dogs do stupid tricks, their varied solutions for constipation, and so on ad infinitum. Why should we care? It’s difficult enough to feel attached to those we love without having our interactions contaminated by narcissistic exhibitionism or corporate parasitism.

Social media, like tobacco, is here to stay. Despite causing lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), many still smoke. Vaping remains a scary problem, particularly for the young. Social media is not entirely without benefits, but allowing it to proliferate without regulation will cause unimaginable social harm. Without guardrails, the trends towards rudeness, regression, impaired empathy, narcissism and social withdrawal will only accelerate.

These recently successful lawsuits, soon to be followed by thousands more as salivating attorneys line up to gather litigants, should at least reduce the power of these mega-companies. With billions of dollars to spend on lawyers, the social media firms will appeal these cases. Perhaps some of the damages will be retracted or reduced. But the game is now on. Hopefully, state and national governments will work to counter these platforms. Antitrust laws should lead to the break-up of the largest ones. These trends are crucial because, in truth, the phrase "social media" could be more accurately categorized as “social destruction.”

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References

Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage.

Lasch, C. (1991). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton.

A well-worn joke, common, if not that funny, goes:

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Are you paranoid because you think streaming subscriptions are being sneaky? Or, are they really trying to catch you off guard and exploit you? Initial offers, say, from Hulu or HBO Max, start out innocently with a free trial. But like other utilities, their goal is to make billions, and they do so by charging a relatively small fee to large swaths of people.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if their costs weren’t so slippery. You can unexpectedly find yourself paying hundreds of dollars for annual subscriptions, many of which you never use. Why would you remember to cancel the three trial subscriptions you purchased before they convert into paid ones?

Many of these firms deliberately make it difficult to delete the service. A few years ago, I had a print subscription to the Wall Street Journal. It was a cinch to obtain the subscription—paper, digital or both—using their website. However, to stop the newspaper from arriving on my doorstep, I had to call an 800 number, wait 15 minutes to speak with a person and hold my ire while the representative tried to talk me out of cancelling. Generally, it is easier to cancel streaming subscriptions, but these companies will likely place obstacles in your way.

So, have these deceitful practices made you paranoid, or is this just how capitalism works?

That question is, surprisingly, rather difficult to answer. On the one hand, it could be paranoia. According to the International Classification of Diseases - 11 (ICD-11) (2019), individuals with paranoid disorders feel distrustful and suspicious of others, have difficulty forgiving insults and tend to misconstrue neutral actions as threatening.

The deliberately manipulative behavior of these companies creates a sense of wariness, even suspicion, in everyone. Also, who would not feel insulted after spending hours on the phone with Adobe, Microsoft, Amazon or Apple (to name a few)? The allegedly “neutral” actions of these firms are, in truth, threatening us by efforts to deceive. Rather than a “disorder,” our societal paranoia is entirely normal. They are out to get us.

On the other hand, one could argue that these firms operate in highly competitive markets that justify outright manipulation to survive. The American mobile phone industry, for example, is controlled by a triopoly of companies known as the "Big Three:” Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. They desperately offer “deals” to persuade customers of one provider to switch to another. Intense forms of persuasion come rather close to persecution, validating the idea of societal paranoia.

In his book, Escape From Freedom, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1969) distinguishes between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” The former, which concerns emancipation from external restrictions, he calls negative freedom. People living in Russia, North Korea, Iran and other countries led by authoritarian governments necessarily struggle for freedom from such constraints. Their efforts to free themselves from governmental forces that bind them illustrate negative freedom.

We Americans, so far at least, and rather tremulously these days, enjoy freedom* to, the positive freedom to assert ourselves in regard to these utilities’ coercive tactics. Little can be done, particularly among the poor, when it comes to basic necessities like electricity or water. However, when it comes to luxuries like streaming services, engaging one’s personal freedom is crucial. You might feel paranoid that these companies intend to steal your money; you might consider them good capitalists who, nonetheless, want to separate you from your money. Either way, it behooves us to exercise our freedom to ensure we’re paying for services we want rather than services these firms bamboozled us into.

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*Our “freedom,” while considerable, still has many constraints that are easy to forget. Not only is a war being waged without congressional approval (by our representatives), but most of us take roads rather than rapid transit (because it’s not available), pay fortunes for healthcare (in premiums or copays because no form of universal health care is available), cannot afford houses like our parents (because of runaway inflation), have fewer choices about mobile phone services because of the triopoly (other services exist, but their coverage is not as good), and, as of late, we must pay a fortune for gasoline (when America should’ve been weaned off civilization-killing fossil fuels decades ago). As I noted in an earlier essay, we Americans are increasingly treated like commodities to be exploited rather than citizens to be protected.

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References

Fromm, E. (1969). Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt.

World Health Organization. (2019). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th ed.). New York: World Health Organization.

The inevitable ending of the dream-like bond between caregivers and infants elicits both lifelong anguish and motivation. We experience lasting anxiety related to that primitive separation, and equally, we continually strive for an elusive unity.

We begin our lives literally inside another human being, a mother. After birth, as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1960) rather coldly notes, we live within a “maternal-care–infant unit” (p. 589). The concept of “primary maternal preoccupation” is another key idea of Winnicott’s. He is referring to the “good enough” mother’s feeling captivated by her baby—throughout the pregnancy and around one year after birth. The caregiver’s attention, combined with the infant’s neediness, creates a mutual and exclusive fusion. Needs seem to be satisfied automatically.

Somewhere between 8 and 14 months of age, infants begin to experience a sense of separation from the caregiver. Simply experiencing a need, as occurs in infancy, no longer leads to its fulfillment. Some communication, even if nonverbal, must occur. That primitive kernel of identity, of a separate “you,” can no longer expect immediate satisfaction. Your need or desire requires another person, one separate from you.

The anguish over separation, brings with it a nagging drive, a wish for more, a sense of something missing. Whatever your particular need, whether for food, say, or for comfort, always falls short.

Why?

Because as Dutch psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe (1999) notes:

What you really want is the sense of unity that has been lost forever, the enjoyment of the totality that once existed. (p. 43).

Need satisfaction after the primal separation, therefore, always comes with an absence, a lack. You may get fed and comforted, but something is missing: namely, the “sense of unity.”

Subsequently, the lifelong string of fears arises — about illness, loss, displacement, the annihilation of civilization, and the like. These deserve separate attention. But, it raises the question of whether these later fears combine with the angst of that original separation or whether they are, in fact, distinct.

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The United Nations, which developed out of the ashes of World War II, intended to create a world order based on diplomacy and peace. It took shape in 1945, just as the war ended. The tragedies of that conflict drove the international community to strive for dialogue over discord. Paralleling such civilizational maturity, in 1949 the United States changed the name of its military establishment from the Department of War to Department of Defense (DoD). Deeming our armed forces “defensive” rather than “offensive” aligned with these conciliatory aspirations.

Contrary to these efforts towards rapprochement, Trump named the former defense department the Department of War last September. In doing so, he chose to express offensiveness rather than defensiveness. Soon thereafter, Trump single-handedly ordered US military forces to extract Maduro from Venezuela and, more recently, to attack Iran. He now eyes regime change in Cuba. Neither these active military operations nor the recent renaming of the defense department received the approval of our now-neutered Congress.

Trump’s actions impact the world order because, as it turns out, words matter.

The phrase drilled into us as children, namely, sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you, is patently false.

We humans unconsciously inhale the culture around us as it manifests in language. Jacques Lacan (1978, 2002), a French psychoanalyst and philosopher, called this obscure conglomeration of culture, law and social norms the Big Other (le grand Autre). It is an abstract, authority-driven structure that dictates how we think, feel and behave.

You would watch the Big Other in action if you were to observe babies as they transition into toddlers and beyond. They experience what Lacan calls the “symbolic order,” a system of language, symbols and signs that is part of the Big Other.

Trump’s emphasis on war instead of defense illustrates the power of words on culture as a whole. Consider any number of correlates in everyday life. You lock the door to your home, but you don’t put a sign on it reading, “If you try to open this door, I’ll kill you.” You activate your car alarm system, but you don’t have a device that sprays poisonous gas on anyone walking near it. You take vaccinations to prevent infectious diseases, but you don’t walk into public spaces toting guns to ensure no one gets within 25 feet of you.

Trump’s government broadcasts clearly threatening messages to the world well beyond a simple change of wording. Pete Hegseth, Fox News-commentator-turned-Secretary-of-Defense, vividly illustrates the new aggression in his recent public comments. Regarding the attacks on Iran, known as “Operation Epic Fury,”* he said:

We’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force.

Speaking generally about the new assaultive style, Hegseth declared:

If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world, as Iran has, then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,

adding,

We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.

Trump has joined with Putin who, by invading Ukraine in February 2022, broke the 75-year tradition of avoiding aggression between nations. Like Putin’s, our country also emanates an intention to fight, to kill, to destroy. We won’t just defend ourselves. We no longer want to play nicely on the playground; we want to scuffle. Trump, Hegseth and other administration officials regularly spout rhetoric typical of the strongman.

At the Minnesota State Fair in September 1901, Teddy Roosevelt riffed on an African proverb when he famously proclaimed:

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

The sentence reveals Roosevelt’s emphasis on diplomatic negotiation backed up by a military capability. Trump reverses the logic. His renaming of the American military establishment declares:

WE CARRY A BIG STICK AND WE’LL PROBABLY USE IT, SO WATCH OUT!

Trump’s communication of force, of dominance and of rejecting rules of engagement conveys unabashed hostility to the world. It threatens; it frightens. And, for those more interested in diplomacy than combat, it elicits shudders of pain and embarrassment. The antagonistic attitude may even cause some to feel humiliated by its impact on what it says about “being an American.”

_________________________________

*This phrase itself, standing alone, validates the new American pugnaciousness.

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References

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. (B. Fink, Tran.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

The idea of attachment styles in adult interactions emerged from studies of mother-infant interactions in the 1950s (Bowlby, 1980abc) and has become increasingly popular with every passing decade. Contemporary psychoanalytic researchers have identified two basic attachment types: secure and insecure. Such dichotomous distinctions, like between introversion and extraversion, betray greater levels of complexity. In truth, capacities for intimate relating exist on a spectrum from competent at one extreme to inept at the other.

People with secure attachment (if they actually exist) feel comfortable with intimacy, easily trust others, and balance independence and dependence in relationships. The rest of us, victims of parental neglect ranging from inevitable to extreme, develop insecure attachment styles. These fall into three broad categories: anxious/preoccupied, avoidant/dismissive, and disorganized.

That first category, my personal favorite, features a high need for intimacy, a tendency to base self-worth on relationship status, and deep-seated fears of abandonment. Those with avoidant/dismissive qualities avoid intimacy, fear vulnerability, and tend to consider emotional dependency on others as a weakness. They prioritize autonomy and typically withdraw when relationships become too intense for them.

The third category, disorganized, is the most primitive. It results from significant childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. Individuals with disorganized attachment styles have extreme difficulty trusting others, suffer from mood instability, and fear emotional intimacy. In their relationships, they typically display a “push-pull” dynamic characterized by a paradox: They desperately desire intimacy but equally fear it. As a result, their relationships tend to be chaotic and unstable.

Before observing attachment styles in coffee houses, consider a few presuppositions:

First, and pathetically, we live in an era that enables, if not encourages, the avoidant/dismissive style. If observing behaviors in coffee houses since, say, 2010, you’d find individuals in isolation, with vision locked into screens, hearing blocked by noise-cancelling headsets, and other senses numbed. Technology invites us to avoid the universal dilemma poetically posed by psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott (1971):

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

That concise sentence captures our struggles with intimacy. On the one hand, we’d rather retreat, evading the judgment we fear when others see our vulnerabilities; on the other hand, we desperately need to be seen and understood, to have our lives witnessed. Difficult, second-by-second decisions, like determining whether we feel welcome or how long to maintain eye contact with strangers in social settings, vanish when we retreat into narcissistic oblivion.

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Given the recent killings of American citizens by masked unidentifiable law enforcement officers, few would disagree with Masha Gessen’s (2026) identifying a police state right here in America. An award-winning journalist reared in Soviet Russia, Gessen should know. In just the past two months, ICE agents entered hundreds of private homes without judicial warrants, detained US citizens (including a 5-year-old), sprayed tear gas over innocent bystanders, demanded to see persons’ “papers,” smashed windows of cars to detain their occupants, and committed extrajudicial killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Good was a 37-year-old mother protesting ICE activities. While turning her car to avoid an ICE agent approaching her, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots, killing her as the vehicle passed him. Pretti, another 37-year-old similarly protesting ICE, was killed by 10 shots fired at close range. He had worked as an ICU nurse. These actions, committed by ICE officials illegally wearing face masks without observable badge numbers, resemble brutal repression by the Soviet police, the Gestapo, and the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Lest you think the phrase “police state” an exaggeration, consider that ICE’s annual budget is $35 billion. The ICE budget exceeds the combined annual budgets of the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

The largest law enforcement agency in the US is ICE.

It is an institution tasked with deporting illegal immigrants, not fighting crime. Despite its immense budget, new whistleblower documents indicate that practical exams, and use-of-force and legal training courses, have been eliminated from ICE teaching curriculums.

Typical of the shock-and-awe tactics of the Trump administration, these police state horrors overshadow the equally alarming reversal of the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, a legal and scientific determination that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten public health. Under the related Clean Air Act, it established the legal basis for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

The deregulation eliminates dozens of climate change-reducing policies, such as setting vehicle, power plant, and oil/gas refinery emission standards. These boost the profits of the fossil fuel industry; they also invite the return and even increased production of coal.

Such policy reversals leave one to wonder:

What happened to the foundational assumption that governments protect the safety of their citizens?

As noted in the headline, ICE kills fast, global warming kills slow. ICE actions are as deplorable as they are terrifying. Meanwhile, ending government control of greedy petrochemical companies that care naught about the health of future generations will kill or displace millions of people in the next few decades.

Throughout the world, people already witness the unstable, severe weather patterns typical of global warming. Tornados, hurricanes, and droughts, followed by excessive rainfall, are already commonplace. A major snowstorm heads towards the East Coast of the US as I prepare this essay. Absent any meaningful controls on pollutants, we can now expect other threatening events, like derechos (fast-moving lines of thunderstorms) and firenados (which occur when swirling wind gusts combine with scorching air from wildfires).

These are not visions or fantasies arising in the minds of anxiety-prone individuals. On the contrary, they represent completely plausible and predictable climate disasters heading our way. Some studies predict the entire Southern California area will be uninhabitable by 2050. Cities like Miami, home to 12 million people, will become so flooded by rising tides that half the population will need to relocate.

Why have an institution called the Environmental Protection Agency when it fails to protect? Just what services does it provide now that the Endangerment Finding has been erased?

Climate change will affect all of our emotional lives, but consider its effect on the mental health of younger people. Britt Wray (2023) calls them “generation dread” because of the distress they feel about the tenuous future of human civilization. Clayton (2021), reporting the results of a survey of 10,000 individuals aged 16-25 in ten countries, found that 70 percent were “very or extremely worried” and 85 percent felt “at least moderately worried” about the climate. More than half the respondents reported reacting to the climate situation with sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness, and guilt.

If readers feel insufficient anxiety thus far, consider what Jern Bendell and Rupert Read describe in their 2021 book, Deep Adaptation. They anticipate growing levels of anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders as people around the world face what they call “climate-influenced societal collapses.”

Trump’s reversal of basic EPA policies rejects what had been accepted for decades by presidents of both parties, including Richard Nixon, whose top adviser warned of the dangers of climate change. President Barack Obama first signed the Paris Climate Accords in 2016. Trump withdrew from the treaty at the start of each of his presidencies. We are one of the few of the 198 nation signatories to the treaty to depart from it.

The takeaway is simple:

Short-term financial gains for massive corporations and personal enrichment of the Trump family matter more than the basic security of Americans.* Trump’s legitimate concern over immigration morphed into an overreaction reaching overtly racist and xenophobic levels. ICE stormtroopers continue to kill, maim, and illegally detain thousands; EPA regulations rendered meaningless will kill and displace millions.

Under the Paris Agreement, nations agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. That goal was considered crucial to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Scientists now expect the Earth to warm by an average of 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. As we watch for more immediate murders by ICE, we should be cognizant of slower killings coming our way due to reckless deregulation.

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*Trump’s 2024 campaign received nearly $500 million from the oil and gas industry. As a result, his administration makes it cheaper and easier to keep burning fossil fuels while throttling efforts to build cleaner energy sources like solar and wind.

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References

Bendell, J. and Read, R. (Eds.) (2021). Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos. New York: Polity.

Clayton, S. (2021) Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about
government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5-12: e863-e87.

Gessen, M. (2026). State Terror Has Arrived. New York Times. (Published January 24, 2026).

Wray, B. (2023) Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety. New York: The Experiment.

A professor of political science recently presented this dichotomy:

I think the judicial system will keep Trump’s authoritarian impulses in check.

On the other hand, she added:

History tells us that, in truth, we just don’t know. Many who initially considered Hitler a “clown” were shocked when he became a dictator in the 1930s.

Since the professor uttered these words ten days ago, the Trump administration has slipped further down the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insisted that technology companies, including Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta, provide the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other personal information about individuals protesting ICE activities. These requests bear a frightening resemblance to how overtly repressive governments, like the ones operating in Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, stifle dissent.

What might come next? The Chinese government maintains a highly sophisticated, state-monitored internet system known as the Great Firewall. It filters content, blocks foreign sites, and suppresses any dissent. The system employs AI-powered surveillance tools to track users involved in even minor anti-government activity, such as a critique mentioned to a friend or a discussion at the family dinner table. The Chinese government penalizes those who express even the slightest hint of opposition.

In the past year, we Americans have witnessed extrajudicial killings, masked ICE agents terrorizing people, illegal invasions of other countries (with threats of more to come), betrayals of NATO allies, subversions of elections, attacks on journalists, an insurrection, the firing of thousands of federal workers, the expiration of nuclear weapons treaties, and the rolling back of environmental regulations—to name just a few. And now comes the news that the DHS requests that tech companies identify protesters.

Why are large swaths of the American public ignoring these ominous signs, seemingly tolerating these autocratic behaviors? What more severe shocks will pierce our unconcerned bubbles? What will cause us to lift our heads from mobile phones, social media platforms, and streaming services to consider the welfare of American society?

Three psychological processes account for the passive response. The first, denial, is a mostly unconscious defensive system in which whatever is avoided, e.g., alcohol abuse, disappears from conscious awareness. The severe alcoholic uses phrases like “I only drink beer” or “I only drink on weekdays” to ignore their substance dependency. They are, in essence, unaware of their self-destructive behaviors because they banish them from their consciousness.

Disavowal, by contrast, lies in the netherworld between the conscious and the unconscious. The hypothetical alcoholic in this case is aware that they have a problem. However, they dissociate from it, creating a hidden mental compartment to distance themselves from it. It will occur to them at various times. They might worry upon noticing that they are falling asleep at 7 p.m. in front of the television or that they drink excessively while out with friends. Otherwise, it is ignored.

Finally, we Americans live in an almost constant state of distraction. Technologies such as the internet and the smartphone, highly useful tools, contribute to our lethargic response. They lure us into texting, emailing, and the various social media platforms that keep us narcissistically entranced, looking down. Also, they create informational silos and invite us to ignore what’s happening in Washington. The word “complacency” captures how most of us live in states of denial, disavowal, and distraction.

In an excellent novel about two Libyan friends living in exile in London, Hisham Mater writes:

The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and, although nothing does, we continue inside that dream. (p. 31).

We Americans, used to thinking that we’re “living the dream,” are slow to realize the dream has become a nightmare. We thought the American experiment in democracy would last forever. We lull about in that dream.

Trump, aided by a castrated Congress and a repressive Supreme Court, actively seeks to convert our admittedly imperfect democratic system into an autocratic one. His actions, enabled by figures such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and J.D. Vance, become increasingly dictatorial. An armada of naval vessels just arrived at the already-unstable Middle East. Trump issues still more severe threats of tariffs, including against Canada. He has already begun to sow doubt and misinformation regarding the security of elections.

Unless more Americans flood the midterms to insist on change or take to the streets by the millions, the second scenario presented by the political scientist cited above will occur. She reminds us of how a similar complacency predated Germany’s descent into fascism in the 1930s. Just what will it take for citizens to stand up for what’s right? Arresting journalists, killing students, state-sanctioned murders of dissenters, or the arbitrary detention or torture of them? Those invested in maintaining a democratic system must overcome the complacency engendered by denial, disavowal, and distraction and counter the greatest threat to America since the country’s founding.

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References

Frenkel, S. and Isaac, M. (2026). Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts. New York Times. Published February 14, 2026.

Matar, H. (2024). My Friends: A Novel. New York: Random House.

The fictional narratives we use to describe ourselves, tricky from the get-go, require constant editing. The process resembles an operating system upgrade. We crave stability, but our lives are constantly unstable. Our self-images ideally evolve as we age, relocate, develop health problems, gain or lose weight, become fit, begin painting, or learn ballroom dancing. And yet, altering how we view ourselves is more difficult than it seems.

The problem with updating identities begins with the tenuous meaning of words like “self” or "I.” Buddhists believe the self is a delusion they call anātman (in Sanskrit). We experience ever-changing thoughts, feelings, and physical processes. Such dynamism makes the creation of a single, enduring “self” elusive. Ergo, we walk around with self-images that are mere ever-changing fictions.

In describing calamities like World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic, W.B. Yeats captures identity’s elusiveness in the third line of his poem, The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. (p. 156)

The center of our self-narratives cannot hold, cannot be stable, because at their core, no center exists. Intensive observation of one’s self-concept, through meditation, depth psychotherapy, or psychedelics, reveals the lack of a center. If it were possible to completely live in the moment, one would encounter the no-self Buddhists call anatta.

Viewed from a Western perspective, we consistently strive to create nouns to describe ourselves when we are, in fact, verbs. In confirmation, the existentialist author Albert Camus (1956/1991) writes:

There is not one human being who, above a certain elementary level of consciousness, does not exhaust himself in trying to form formulas or attitudes that will give his existence the unity it lacks. (p. 262)

We risk exhaustion because no algorithm, blueprint, description, equation, or rubric can fully contain our identities. As if this weren’t difficult enough, it is difficult to keep our self-narratives up to date.

Academic psychologists and psychoanalysts agree that “mental health” or maturity includes consistency in self-description. Much of the terror that psychotics experience results from their lack of a stable identity. Those of us “normative” people, who enjoy (allegedly) stable self-descriptions, typically present them in superficial ways. At a party for their child’s class, someone might share phrases like:

I am a father, husband, and physician.

Or:

I’m a woman employed as a theoretical physicist who plays basketball on the JPL intramural team.

These trivial statements obviously reveal only the outer layers of self-images. Goffman (1959) believes we behave like actors in our social lives, managing impressions through “front stage” behavior that differ from “backstage preparations.” We hold the deeper features of our self-images in reserve. Interpersonal intimacy involves, at least in part, sharing ever-deeper layers of our self-images.

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Hysteria, a word derived from the Greek and Latin words for uterus, sounds terrible. A preferable term, histrionic, hardly flattering, better describes individuals with extreme emotional sensitivity. This personality style, along with its opposite, the paranoid one, offers another perspective on the difficulty of developing effective resistance to the rise of authoritarianism. Like quartz running through granite, our personalities have streaks along the spectrum of these styles. They lie on a continuum, with histrionic types at one end and paranoid ones at the other (Verhaeghe, 2011). Before delving into their relevance to politics, consider the remarkable contrast between them.

Histrionic individuals are emotionally insecure. Typically, they express their emotions through chaotic emotional outbursts or physical symptoms. They live in a state of doubt; they internalize conflict. Persons with paranoid styles,* conversely, operate with rigid, absolute certainty. They project blame outward, sometimes to delusional levels. Ironically, beneath their façade, they are just as emotionally unstable as histrionic people.

This continuum of traits makes sense when considering our inner worlds or, better, our “internal dramas” (Karbelnig, 2020). R.W.D. Fairbairn (1952), an object relations theorist, thought these traits result from abandonment or neglect, which is inevitable even in the best childhoods. Histrionic persons, in essence, blame themselves for that emotional injury. Any anger they feel regarding it is turned inward. As a result, they feel unworthy. Their emotional insecurity remains within the self.

In contrast, paranoid persons project the injury outwardly. They anticipate rejection coming from external sources rather than internal ones. The projection explains their suspicion of the outside world. The same process applies to their management of anger. Unsurprisingly, individuals with paranoia express anger outwardly.

These personality styles mirror one another in an unusual, almost mathematical fashion. Joining the list of other reasons, such as denial, complacency, and social withdrawal, the continuum between histrionics and paranoiacs also explains why we see little effective political organization to facilitate our return to democracy.

Histrionics, due to their chronic insecurity, look outward for an authority to reassure them. Freud’s (1921) work on group psychology suggests that charismatic leaders can provide the sense of security these individuals so desperately seek. Think of how Trump offers simplistic solutions to highly complex problems. You may not like him, but he is certainly a master salesman. Those on the histrionic end of the spectrum find his words reassuring.

Paranoiacs find comfort in Trump too, but for entirely different reasons. They identify with his paranoia, e.g., blaming the country’s woes on immigrants, on universities, or on NATO. Trump’s propensity to dominate resonates with them. Instead of projecting persecution, they project themselves onto the “master.” Trump fears the same things as they do. He will protect them from persecution.

When recently asked by a reporter if he recognizes constraints on his actions, Trump replied:

My own mind [is] the only thing that can stop me. My own morality.

The certitude reassures histrionics; paranoiacs identify with it. The inner insecurity that lies on both ends of the histrionic-paranoiac spectrum needs Trump’s confidence, and, therefore, leans towards supporting him. This neediness blinds them to seeing what’s really happening.

And this is what’s happening: Once the great experiment in democracy, America has already lost its characteristic checks and balances. Congress has been neutered, the Supreme Court enables Trump, and he garners ever more power. An armada arrives near Iran, ready to strike in ways rendering the Middle East even more unstable. Because artists are embarrassingly (for Trump) fleeing the Kennedy Center, Trump closes it for “renovation.” In brief, a childlike megalomaniac runs the country, essentially untethered.

Like other would-be dictators, Trump surrounds himself with a cabinet of sycophants who praise him and repeat his lies in the hope of gaining their own power. Billionaire CEOs from the petrochemical to the technology industries support Trump’s every whim. He, in turn, supports theirs.

NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2026) believes that dictators operating within such isolated bubbles ultimately fail. Because they cut themselves off from expert advice, they begin enacting their own plans, however insane they may be. Eventually, their behaviors overtly expose their incompetence. Ben-Ghiat writes:

The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.

Disillusionment with the leader is already evident. A recent poll by the Economist shows 56 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance, while 38 percent approve. Elites remain on the fence. Unfortunately, it is way too early to hope that Ben-Ghiat’s prediction comes true.

A much greater and better-organized resistance to his rule is needed. We cannot afford to wait for the allegedly self-destructive bubble to burst. Both histrionics and paranoiacs would find any dictator attractive: one obtains support from them, and the other obtains representation. Mature individuals, enjoying both inner security and a basic (if cautious) trust in others, want their voices heard and represented. They seek a representative rather than a master.

If we care about the future of America, we must combat not only rampant apathy but also the impact of these problematic personality traits. People at the extremes of the continuum support Trump, but for reasons more imaginary than real. Histrionics need to find strength in themselves and in others; paranoiacs also need to cultivate trust within themselves and in others. It is crucial that whatever the obstacles to social cohesion, whether complacency, histrionics, or paranoia, they must be overcome to stop the Trumpian march to dictatorship.

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*Narcissistic styles are but a variant of paranoid ones; they share in the projection of vulnerability or blame onto others.

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References

Ben-Ghiat, R. (2026). History shows Trump’s worst impulses may backfire on him. New York Times. (Published as a guest essay on February 1, 2026).

Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1952). Psychoanalytic studies of the personality. New York, NY: Routledge.

Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Standard Edition, 18:67-143.

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

Tracking the presidency: 379 days into Trump’s term. Economist, published February 3, 2026.

Verhaeghe, P. (2011). Love in a Time of Loneliness: Three Essays on Drive and Desire. London: Routledge.

Several earlier essays discussed Donald Trump’s status as a malignant narcissist.* His behavior, of late, suggests a frightening regression into megalomania. A fairly rare subset of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), megalomaniacs display arrogance and grandiosity reaching delusional levels. They consider themselves to be specially chosen, even superhuman; they typically have a compulsive need to control.

Trump’s regression has three clear causes:

1. His advanced age (turning 80 in June 2026).

2. His appointing a cabinet replete with sycophants, unlike his first term where competent officials created guardrails.

3. His stature as president of the United States, a position of immense power.

Recent behaviors indicative of megalomania include:

1. Destroying the East Wing of the White House to install a “golden ballroom” to be named The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.

2. Adding his name to the Kennedy Center, formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. An action revealing megalomania by itself, the institution is now named the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.**

3. Establishing a Peace Board to resolve international conflicts (the UN’s job), naming himself as chair, and eliminating representatives from countries he dislikes, such as Canada.

4. Naively accepting the gift of Venezuelan activist María Corina Machado’s 2025 Nobel Peace prize offered in the hopes of him installing her as a leader of that country. (She obviously knows how much megalomaniacs crave flattery).

5. Linking his threats to seize control of Greenland to his failure to receive his arrogantly coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

6. Referring to himself as “the Chosen One” (one of the specific characteristics of megalomania noted above).

7. Installing the President Walk of Fame at the White House, wherein his rhetoric elevates himself and denigrates previous presidents.

The threats to the security of all American citizens by a megalomaniac serving as a US president are many. They include Trump’s endorsement of the recent injuries and murders caused by ICE agents who Gessen (2026) calls the new “secret police.” By causing ruptures in the world order in his relations with allies, Trump threatens the security of all global citizens.

The risks of having megalomaniacs in power has concerned historians from ancient to modern times. The premier Roman historian, orator, and politician Tacitus (116BCE/1996) predicted they would, at least initially, invite a “rush into servitude.” Great swarms of sycophants would embrace the “great man,” precisely what we see in the likes of ardent Trump aids like Stephen Miller. The flattery escalates and grows more fawning until every follower’s dignity declines and then vanishes.

Edward Gibbon (1776/1996), an 18th-century historian of the Roman Empire, describes how power aggravates such tyrannical behavior, writing:

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.

Will Trump succeed in requiring the submission of the multitude? Another historian of the same era, Edward Wortley Montagu (1759/2024), distinguishes between ambition and lust for domination. The former, potentially a laudable trait, can motivate people to serve the community, even if only to win public admiration. In contrast, the lust for domination, Montagu writes, causes us to:

draw every thing to center in ourselves, which we think will enable us to gratify every other passion.

The need to dominate, Montagu continues, “banishes all the social virtues.” The tyrant attracts only others who share his selfishness, who are eager to perpetually spread lies. J.D. Vance serves as a recent example. Previously calling Trump “America’s Hitler,” he is now a loyal admirer.

Post-ICE murder pronouncements by Trump and cabinet members like Kristi Noem, Vance, and Pete Hegseth represent precisely the types of lies these historians predict. Former Department of Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls for nothing less than a general strike as a preventative measure. In his January 25 Substack essay, Reich proclaims:

In memory of parents and grandparents who made the supreme sacrifice — in memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — we must bring down this regime. The first step is a massive general strike.

Trump’s committing extra-judicial murders, threatening Greenland (a NATO ally), detaining US citizens, intimidating protesters, encouraging defiance by lawmakers, disregarding judicial orders, refusing to accept election results, firing federal workers, and similar actions bring terror to the hearts of all Americans. Trump is, unequivocally, an untethered megalomaniac.

Denial and complacency run rampant. These defenses, these means of avoiding facing the immediate dangers to American democracy, must be overcome. The time has come for the types of strikes and protests that will lead to the fall of the Iranian theocracy. Let us hope they can lead to the fall of the autocratic dictatorship here.

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*Malignant narcissists combine traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPD), like grandiosity and entitlement, with those characteristic of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), like impaired empathy, manipulativeness, and sadism. Malignant narcissists display cruel, exploitative, and often abusive behavior, often deriving pleasure from others' pain.

**It was created as a memorial to President Kennedy. Does Trump not realize the incongruousness of a. inserting his name on an institution named to honor a former president or b. adding his name to a memorial while still alive?

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References

Gessen, M. (2026). State terror has arrived. New York Times. Published January 24, 2026.

Gibbon, E. (1776/1996). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (D. Womersley, Ed.). New York: Penguin Classics.

Montagu, E.W. (1759/2024). Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republics: Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain. New York: Lettel Books.

Reich, R. (2026). Sunday thought: Enough. Published January 25, 2026.

Tacitus, C. (116BCE/1996). The annals of imperial Rome (M. Grant, Trans.; Rev. ed.). New York: Penguin Books.