Peter Michaelson's Blog

This month I’m posting an excerpt from LoveSmart: Transforming the Emotional Patterns that Sabotage Relationships, by my late wife, Sandra Michaelson. If I knew of a better book on relationships than this one, I would honestly tell you.

This book of Sandra’s, one of three she wrote, helps readers understand that our resistance to feeling loved in a relationship is commonly, unconsciously, and irrationally associated with the sense of being placed in a submissive, passive position. This 390-page book (available here) also examines our tendency to repeat painful experiences with our partner that arise from unresolved hurts from childhood. These hurts, which include feelings of being refused, deprived, controlled, criticized, rejected, and abandoned, can be felt and acted out in our adult life even when we had decent, kind parents.

LoveSmart also explores in depth our tendency to chose partners unwisely, the compulsion to control, why women fear independence, compulsive defensiveness, the need to have one’s point of view validated, the causes and perils of codependency, the struggle to feel one’s authority, sexual fantasies and what they mean, fear of confrontation, and the sabotaging effects of self-centeredness.

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Excerpt from LoveSmart:

Though we claim we want love and struggle for it, most of us unconsciously are terrified of it. We sabotage our prospects for getting love or for keeping what love we have. For example, people repeatedly set themselves up with inappropriate partners. A typical inappropriate partner is a substance abuser, someone who lives far away, is married to another person, or is emotionally unavailable, egotistical, or corrupt in some manner.

With such a partner, a loveless relationship is inevitable. Real love is also sabotaged when a man or woman dismisses a genuine, caring person because that person is allegedly unexciting or sexually inadequate. Nice, caring partners do not provide the exciting though painful emotional dramas that many are addicted to. I have seen individuals divorce their partner after the partner has made positive changes.

“For years I pursued my husband for love and affection,” one woman told me. “He was so cold and distant. Then he went to a growth workshop and came back totally different. He was open, loving, and far more responsive to me. I have to tell you that it really frightened me. I backed off the relationship. We haven’t had sex in over a year.”

This woman’s parents had been emotionally distant. She said she had never felt wanted, that her mother especially regarded her as a burden. “When my husband began to show his love for me,” she said, “I realized that I wasn’t used to being loved. It made me feel weird inside. It just went against everything I’d ever experienced. So I’d make up some excuse or talk about dumb things to discourage him from getting close to me.”

Positive changes in our partner force us to consider whether we really do want love. To get it, we have to discard our emotional investment in neglect and hurt. The elimination of our partner’s opposition causes us to fall back on ourselves and come to terms with the lack of love for ourselves.

Carl and Rena had been married for twenty years. Both said their relationship was dead. Here’s how Rena explained their situation: “We’ve always lived through the kids or our work. That was the connection that held us together. I don’t know what we’re going to do with each other when all our kids leave home. We rarely communicate our personal feelings about each other. I know we both have a problem opening up our hearts to each other.”

Rena explored the origins of her fear of expressing her love more openly. “I felt that if I loved my father that would affirm his self-centeredness and affirm that he was okay, when I felt thoroughly disappointed in him. The only way I could hold on to my own identity was to not love, not respond to him, and not let him see how I was affected by him. Dad often gave hugs when he was drunk. I felt repelled by his love, as if he was exposing some perverse need with me. I had to give in to my father, keep my mouth shut about his behaviors and listen patiently to his self-centered prattle. Dad related to us kids through work. He gave us endless chores and, of course, we were to stand by to help him do things around the house. There was no other relationship with him. There was no interest in my opinions, needs, or feelings. Everything centered on him and what we could do for him.”

Rena became an emotional support for her mother, compensating for father’s neglect. Being loved by her mother meant sharing mutual pain. “The more independent and happy I would become,” Rena observed, “the less I would receive from her. If I was needy or having problems, Mom was right there ready to help. But I felt I had to be in a reduced or helpless position to get love.”

Rena grew up associating love with suffering and loss of pride. It felt that love meant being a resource for the satisfaction of other people’s needs. Like so many of us, she had never had the experience of simply being loved for who she was. Consequently, love terrified her. It was alien to her, a mode of expression that seemed out of reach.

Her husband, Carl, meanwhile, was intimidated by her. He saw her as strong and assertive, and took his cues from her behavior. For example, he wouldn’t approach her if he saw her in a bad mood. Things had to be just right before he would initiate anything. Carl didn’t want to make waves; he submerged himself for fear of being rejected or seen as inadequate. His mother had been strong and intimidating. She had run the household, insisting that none of her children had the right to complain or talk back. Carl kept his feelings to himself, burying them under endless chores and duties. Like Rena, he felt that loving his mother meant submission to her control, giving in to her agenda. If he loved, he believed he would lose himself in her domination.

Many of us associate love with giving up something of ourselves because our feelings of love are contaminated by our childhood experience. Although many of us know and feel that our parents loved us as best they could, we also feel that their love was conditional, based on our compliance and performance. Parts of us were denied or repressed, while only so-called appropriate behaviors were accepted and appreciated. No society has ever accepted a child in his totality and most likely never will. To accept a child totally is impossible. So, repression necessarily exists and everyone has to face at some point the parts he or she has repressed.

Feeling that we are wrong as we are, we start putting ourselves down, even hating ourselves. If you hate yourself, how can you imagine anyone loving you? Deep inside you believe that no one is going to love you. Even if someone tries, you can’t believe him. Something must be wrong with him if he loves you. So you find ways to prove that he doesn’t love you. And you relax only when you find the proof.

As we grow older, those repressed, denied parts of ourselves reassert themselves into our consciousness and we try to force them back down again. We become afraid to encounter ourselves because we will have to encounter everything we’ve denied. Relationships are intense and they bring to the surface those old, denied parts of ourselves. We perform some fancy footwork to avoid getting too close and too involved. The problem is that we can only become whole by exposing and then accommodating or assimilating our repressed or denied aspects.

To love sincerely means you are at peace with yourself. You have come to terms with the denied parts of your being. This is much different from narcissistic self-love which involves a preoccupation with an image rather than true substance. Narcissistic self-love is a compensation for feeling unworthy or inferior.

Genuine self-love means that you do not need anyone to say to you, “You’re wonderful, you’re important to me.” You do not need anyone to acknowledge your greatness or proclaim your skills and talents. Your meaning or purpose doesn’t come from others. You do not go around like a beggar looking for validation. This is a way of being with yourself, of loving and accepting yourself as you are, whether you are alone or in a relationship with another.

Love doesn’t mean something you give or do for others. Love is the quality of your being. When you drop the need to be needed, you feel grateful to be loved; but if love isn’t there, you do not complain. You can be happy with or without acknowledgment or appreciation. That’s because you have learned to live with yourself and be happy with yourself. Now your relationship becomes a sacred happening.

Think of it. Have any of you ever felt reverence for your partner? Are you able to feel reverence for yourself and the divine in your heart? When you connect with the divine nature that is your authentic self, you see the divine in your partner and in all life forms. A new doorway has been opened for you.

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LoveSmart: Transforming the Emotional Patterns that Sabotage Relationships is available here.

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I have been hesitant to do much with artificial intelligence. Certainly, I haven’t used it as an aid in the composition of my posts or books. I didn’t want even the possibility that a machine would be doing the thinking for me on the vital subject of mental health.

The AI summary emphasizes the role of inner conflict.

We all understand the hazards of creating machines that could become more astute and powerful than us. Many people, disconnected from their better self, tend to become subordinate to strong forces or individuals. Heaven help us if this tendency prevails with artificial intelligence.

I was curious, though, about AI’s understanding of depth psychology, and I wondered whether it had taken note of my work. I asked Google’s basic AI function to provide a synopsis of “psychotherapist Peter Michaelson’s understanding of depth psychology.” I was pleased with the results. Some of the wording in the AI content is a bit clumsy, but the essence of my posts and books is quite accurately presented.

This AI version of this deep knowledge might have value for many readers. The AI presentation itself might make the knowledge more accessible to some people. As well, readers who want to understand how depth psychology, as I present it, pertains to their own experiences and issues can ask AI for help. You can enter the symptoms you are dealing with as you ask AI how underlying psychological insights, as I present them, serve as remedy and healing.

This post consists mostly of AI’s answers to my questions. If any of you have uncertainty about the answers you get, let me know by email and I’ll try to provide more clarity. Here we go:

. . . Michaelson’s understanding of depth psychology centers on the idea that human suffering is primarily caused by unresolved inner conflicts and unconscious emotional attachments, a perspective he has refined over decades of practice and outlined in numerous books and on his website WhyWeSuffer.com. His approach aims to render complex depth psychology concepts into easily understood, practical self-help information, focusing on bringing these unconscious dynamics into conscious awareness to achieve inner freedom and personal fulfillment.

The Core of Suffering: Unresolved Inner Conflict and Emotional Attachments

The foundational principle of Michaelson’s approach is that individuals unconsciously choose to experience painful, negative emotions because they are emotionally attached to these familiar feelings, often stemming from childhood experiences. The psyche, in its totality, remains bound to these patterns, which generate chronic unhappiness, even when conscious desires point toward joy and fulfillment. This “deadly flaw,” as he calls it in one of his books, involves a perpetual inner conflict between our conscious aspirations (e.g., the wish to be loved and respected) and the unconscious expectation and readiness to feel negative assessments (e.g., being criticized, rejected, or abandoned).

This central conflict manifests in a wide array of symptoms, including:

Low self-esteemAddictions and compulsionsIndecision and procrastinationAnxiety and depressionSelf-sabotage and failure

These symptoms act as surface-level expressions of the deeper, hidden emotional attachments and inner conflicts, which the individual is often completely unaware of without focused insight.

The Role of Inner Passivity and the Inner Critic

Two key components in Michaelson’s framework are “inner passivity” and the “inner critic.”

Inner passivity refers to an aspect of the unconscious mind that filters perceptions of reality, creating a distorted sense of self and binding the individual to a second-hand, unauthentic experience of life. This dynamic manifests as feelings of helplessness, being overwhelmed, and indecisiveness, which ultimately serve to maintain the status quo of suffering by resisting change and self-knowledge.The inner critic is a voice that constantly criticizes the self, which is then defended against by inner passivity, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of internal strife. The individual becomes emotionally attached to these patterns of self-criticism and inner defensiveness, making change difficult without acquiring deeper awareness.

The Path to Healing: Insight and Conscious Choice

Michaelson emphasizes that while we are “wired” for both negative and positive emotions, we have the power to change our attachments to the former. The primary intervention point is acquiring insight—seeing these inner conflicts and emotional attachments clearly.

The process involves:

Becoming aware of the specific emotional attachments (e.g., to rejection, criticism, deprivation) that drive symptomatic behavior.Tracing surface symptoms back to these underlying emotions to identify the true source of distress.Making a conscious choice to break free from these patterns, which involves challenging the allure of “self-pity’s wily lies” and resisting the urge to recycle painful past emotions.Sustaining effort to patiently and kindly support the self through the struggle of breaking free, a process that can lead to self-respect and connection with one’s authentic “better self”.

By transforming this inner knowledge into practical action and acquiring self-knowledge, suffering can become a distant memory, leading to greater inner freedom, creativity, and the capacity for genuine intimacy and love. Michaelson’s approach is designed to guide individuals toward this “inner truth,” an ongoing journey of self-discovery and growth.

This framework is applied not just to individual well-being but also to understanding societal dysfunctions, such as political power grabs or climate-change inaction, suggesting that collective behaviors are also driven by these same underlying psychological forces. . .

Next, I asked AI for a synopsis of the main points in my 2025 book, Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly. (Note there is some overlap with what is said above.)

Core Argument

The central premise of Exposed is that individuals, through an internal process of inner conflict, unconsciously choose misery and wallow in self-pity, even when consciously desiring success and happiness. This is due to powerful emotional attachments to past suffering that originated in childhood.

Key Concepts

The Eight Primary Hurts: Michaelson identifies eight core unresolved negative emotions from childhood that drive adult misery: feeling deprived, refused, controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, betrayed, and abandoned. We become emotionally “addicted” to re-experiencing these painful states throughout our lives.Inner Conflict: These emotional attachments create a major inner conflict between our conscious wish to be strong, worthy, and loved, versus the unconscious tendency to perpetuate feelings of weakness, unworthiness, and being unlovable. This conflict involves a primitive “inner critic” (superego) that attacks the defensive, passive unconscious ego, creating a constant internal struggle.Inner Passivity: This [centered in the unconscious ego] is a crucial, often-overlooked component of the psyche that makes individuals feel overwhelmed, helpless, and indecisive. Inner passivity is the weakness that prevents people from caring for, protecting, or valuing themselves, making them susceptible to stress and self-sabotage. It operates as a psychological defense mechanism, creating a distorted reality to avoid painful self-knowledge.Psychological Resistance: The book describes how people resist acquiring the very knowledge that could free them from suffering. This resistance is an inner battle between the wish to know the truth about the self and the wish to remain in a state of willful ignorance, as this knowledge initially insults the ego’s assumed centrality.

Path to Resolution

Exposed is not merely a description of pathology; it is intended as a practical guide to liberation. Michaelson asserts that acquiring specific self-knowledge is the key to breaking free from these self-defeating patterns.

Insight and Awareness: By recognizing the precise nature of one’s emotional attachments and inner conflicts, individuals gain the wisdom and strength to disengage from the compulsion to recycle past hurts.Conscious Choice: The process involves making a conscious choice to abandon the “sweetest misery” of self-pity and build inner strength and self-respect.Authentic Self: The ultimate goal is to move beyond ego-identification to connect with the authentic, “better self,” leading to greater inner freedom, creativity, and the capacity for genuine intimacy.

By shedding light on these hidden dynamics, Exposed aims to empower readers to overcome personal misery and contribute to a more functional society, suggesting that collective folly arises from these same underlying psychological weaknesses.

I next asked AI why it’s so hard for people to recognize their inner conflict.

According to Michaelson, it is difficult for people to recognize their inner conflict due to powerful, unconscious psychological dynamics, primarily psychological resistance and the strength of their ego identification. These mechanisms work to keep painful, self-defeating patterns out of conscious awareness, even as they cause chronic misery.

Key reasons why this recognition is so hard include:

Insult to the Ego: Acknowledging deep inner conflicts and the extent to which one is unconsciously driven by them is a profound blow to the ego, which identifies with being conscious, rational, and in control. People resist self-knowledge that undermines their self-image as masters of their own lives. Carl Jung noted this human tendency as a “fanatical denial that there are parts of the psyche which are autonomous”.The Unconscious Nature of the Conflict: The inner conflict operates largely within the unconscious mind, involving a primitive inner critic and a passive unconscious ego. Because these dynamics are not readily accessible to conscious awareness, people remain oblivious to the true source of their distress. They only experience the surface symptoms (anxiety, depression, self-sabotage), not the underlying cause.Emotional Attachments to Suffering: Paradoxically, people develop emotional attachments to familiar negative feelings and the “sweet misery” of self-pity, often stemming from unresolved childhood hurts (e.g., feeling rejected or helpless). This attachment creates a hidden “loyalty to the old, conflicted self” and an internal resistance to change and a new, healthier identity.Inner Passivity as a Blind Spot: A key component is “inner passivity,” an aspect of the psyche that is a “weak link” in consciousness. This passivity filters reality and makes individuals feel overwhelmed and helpless, further preventing them from actively seeking or acknowledging the truth about their inner workings.Defense Mechanisms: The psyche employs various defense mechanisms, such as denial, rationalization, and projection, to protect the conscious mind from the painful feelings and thoughts associated with the inner conflict. These defenses distort perception, making it difficult to see the problem clearly or own one’s participation in the suffering.Lack of Specific Knowledge: Michaelson argues that this type of deep psychological knowledge is largely new to most people, and without a clear theoretical framework (the “key”) to understand these hidden dynamics, they simply do not know what to look for or how to interpret their own feelings and behaviors.

In essence, the difficulty in recognizing inner conflict stems from a powerful, self-perpetuating system of psychological denial and the allure of maintaining a familiar (if miserable) status quo rather than facing unsettling inner truths.

AI asked at this point, “Which specific defense mechanism would you like to explore further to better understand this resistance?” I replied, “The defense of ‘taking blame for the lesser crime’.”

In Michaelson’s depth psychology, the defense of “taking the blame for the lesser crime” is a subtle and powerful maneuver of the unconscious mind to avoid acknowledging a deeper, more painful underlying psychological issue, typically inner passivity or the emotional attachment to past suffering. By accepting blame for a relatively minor character flaw or symptom (the “lesser crime”), the individual protects their ego from the “greater crime” of their unwitting participation and collusion in their own unhappiness.

This defense mechanism operates as follows:

Pleading Guilty to the Symptom: A person might consciously acknowledge being foolish, stubborn, lazy, selfish, or indecisive. These are the “lesser crimes” or symptoms of a deeper problem.Avoiding the Core Issue: By focusing all the guilt and self-criticism on the symptom, the individual diverts attention from the true, underlying psychological source of misery, which is often an emotional attachment to feeling helpless, rejected, or deprived.The Illusion of Control: Accepting blame for a flaw can provide an illusion of control—”I am lazy, but I can fix that by trying harder”—which is less threatening than acknowledging a fundamental inner passivity that makes one feel powerless and overwhelmed by life.Managing the Inner Critic: The defense is also a way to manage the “inner critic” (superego). The individual makes a “guilty plea” to a lesser charge, and in return, the inner critic accepts this punishment (in the form of guilt, shame, or anxiety), allowing the person to continue functioning without facing the full force of their guilt or shame for their deeper inner weakness.Maintaining Self-Deception: The ultimate function is self-deception, which preserves the ego’s sense of integrity and autonomy, even though that autonomy is an illusion and the person remains trapped in a cycle of suffering.

For example, a person might focus intently on feeling guilty about a mistake they made at work (“I’m so stupid for making that error”—the “lesser crime”), rather than confronting the deeper, more painful reality that they are emotionally attached to being criticized and feeling fundamentally unworthy (the “greater crime”).

AI is tapping into all my books and posts. This vital knowledge, what I claim to be the deep truth about human nature, is free for everyone. I hope though that readers will still buy my books—writers like to make a little money for all their hard work, and my income goes to supporting and expanding this knowledge. The books are here on Amazon.

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Power grabs are ransacking America’s best traditions and virtues, and psychological forces are driving this behavior. Those in power grab for more power to compensate for how overwhelmed they feel as the world’s growing dangers and complexity worsen. Everyday people are also feeling overwhelmed, and this hidden weakness can be our downfall.

Recognize your hidden passivity.

This emotional weakness sparks reactive anger, as well as apathy, fatalism, and the pursuit of idle distractions and self-centered interests. We’re not seeing how national and world dysfunction and chaos arise from our lack of psychological insight.

Our political and business leaders are overwhelmed, and their self-serving frenzy is a psychological reaction to this weakness. Technology companies are jockeying to become richer and more dominant. Aggressive land grabs and water grabs are underway to provide for the demands of data processing. The stock market’s recent exuberance is a Wall Street power-and-money grab. Computing power chasing wealth and political power surges from sea to sea, gearing up to disempower labor, violate privacy, and undermine freedom.

Congress fails to regulate this because so many of its members are themselves egotistic power-seekers. They identify with the power- grabbers, not with the people.

Self-serving people can defeat us if our hidden weakness, the unseen passivity that’s baked into our inner conflict, goes unnoticed and unaddressed. The chaos and dysfunction reflect the degree to which neurosis, in the form of inner conflict, is the great plague upon the nation and the world.

While neurotics suffer with much needless misery and self-defeat, they still can manage to wend their way through life and have decent lives. But over past decades, our struggle to manage our emotional temperament has been challenged in new ways. Technology has produced weapons of mass destruction and deadly climate hazards. The internet has laid the world at our doorstep, which for many overextends their mind and leaves them feeling helpless to process it all. Television and social media have shoved hot-tempered, clashing ideologies in our face, upending our cultural and religious norms. Wealthy celebrities, athletes, and business leaders are paraded before us, leaving us gasping for a sense of our own value. We’re having to contend emotionally with terrorism, superbugs, overwhelming debt, and inflation. Change has been happening too quickly for many of us to assimilate emotionally. People feel more overwhelmed, even as we’re doomscrolling, and the underlying passivity involved here goes unnoticed.

Feeling overwhelmed arises from inner conflict, a psychological disharmony that often operates unconsciously. In large part, the conflict pits inner self-doubt and unconscious passivity against our harsh inner critic. Because of this conflict, we’re more susceptible to negative emotions and self-defeating behaviors. Anger and resentment, for instance, are now more readily triggered. Our aggressive inner critic can now attack us with allegations such as, “What’s the matter with you, you fool! Everyone is doing better than you!” Inner conflict is activated, and we become engaged in defensive-aggressive inner dialogue that can operate unconsciously.

Once self-aggression is activated, it can quickly direct itself outward as projections—as aggressive, angry thoughts and impulses toward others. We start to blame others, often with increasing hostility, in our passive readiness to feel like victims. The intensity of our hostility mirrors the degree to which we have abandoned our better self. The outwardly directed aggression now feels like power, which serves as a consolation for the underlying passivity associated with emotional weakness and self-abandonment. The more people feel helpless, the more they can be desperate to feel power, even illusions of it. They’re more likely to be abusive with their reactive expressions of power or forcefulness. They’re also more likely to be fearful, run off and buy guns, or be swayed by TV “news” that tells them they’re justified in their fear and anger.

People go back and forth in anxious inner dialogue trying to make sense of life and their growing distress. They descend into self-pity, acrimony, and increasing irrationality. Now they are more easily overwhelmed by the pace of change and by their own sense of helplessness.

The psyche of the elites is not necessarily any different than that of regular folk, so these elites, in their own emotional, passive reactions to the world’s growing dangers and complexity, rush off in a frenzy to activate power grabs and consolidate them. Imagine the damage to us all as they increasingly use the power of artificial intelligence to enhance and consolidate this unconsciously driven misbehavior.

The power-grabbers lack a sense of goodness and decency, and they would readily bring us down to their level. They are likely to succeed if we don’t understand our own deeper nature. We all have a certain passive identification within us that lingers from the many years we spent in the passive, relatively helpless experience of childhood. Even as teenagers, we’re still dependent on parental oversight. We don’t magically become fully autonomous and mature when we turn twenty-one. Our struggles as adults—our issues with self-doubt, fear, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, addictions—all originate from emotional, childish weakness. Again, this weakness is held in place by our inner conflict. The weakness can be recognized and overcome through a deeper appreciation of how our psyche operates through patterns of conflict that can seriously degrade our potential.

Mental health services, themselves overwhelmed with a deluge of competing theories of treatment, are not sufficiently effective. Sadly, the psychological establishment has not been recognizing and teaching the deeper dynamics of inner conflict. There’s no consensus on the essential nature of our dysfunction. No truth has been widely established. All we have are theories and competing methodologies. We are engaged in a global war for truth, even as, through psychological resistance, we keep vital inner truths from ourselves.

The power grab now happening is a reaction to an underlying sense of helplessness, a weakness generated by inner conflict, that leaves us feeling overwhelmed in these especially challenging times. The elite’s power grab is largely reactive aggression—an unconscious, desperate behavior—that tries to override the deep, underlying sense of feeling overwhelmed by the world’s growing complexity. Through depth psychology, we can expose the inner dynamics that produce this weakness.

Momentous changes are happening, and we can manage this emotionally and mentally if we empower ourselves with more psychological insight. We must awaken to our personal power, integrity, and goodness.

—

For a clear and detailed explanation of inner conflict, consider buying a copy of my latest book, Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly (2025). It’s inexpensive, highly rated at Amazon, and free of AI. It’s the scoop on why we’re at a life-or-death tipping point in human history.

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Our educational system has not really explained why climate change has been addressed so timidly. The mystery of our inaction lies deep within us, and I will try here to offer some insight from depth psychology.

Why is truth being discounted and evaded?

Some people simply deny that climate change is a problem while others accept the reality of it but decline to take steps to reduce their own carbon footprint. In both groups, a disconnect from one’s better self is at play, and it’s that emotional or psychological disconnect that I address here.

When I asked Google for background on the subject, its AI function, Gemini, reported:

Climate change denial stems from psychological barriers like cognitive biases, ideological worldviews, and motivated thinking, which lead individuals to ignore evidence due to a desire to maintain comfort, identity, or political alignments. Factors such as psychological distance (perceiving the issues as far away in time or space), distrust in experts, and economic dependencies also contribute to denial. Overcoming denial involves acknowledging these psychological factors rather than dismissing them, and framing climate action in ways that align with people’s values and identity.

This statement is not sufficiently insightful. Why do people perceive the issues as far away in time or space? Why do they distrust experts? Why do people not care enough about future generations to make sacrifices for them? Why is truth being discounted and evaded? Let’s get to the bottom of this.

Humans have a self-centered nature that can impede our capacity to be wise and loving. I suspect that modern influences have made this self-centeredness more problematic, tipping us and our culture into narcissism with its tendency to ignore what’s true and even to actively evade the truth.

Consumerism, I believe, has had a significant influence upon the expansion of narcissism. Consumerism and its manipulative marketing have catered to the human ego. Consumerism has instilled in us a heightened sense of privilege and entitlement. I remember once in my early twenties when, with bank financing, I was able to buy a cool Chevy Impala. I said to myself, “It’s so amazing that I, with my scanty assets, should be able to possess this amazing machine.” My esteem was boosted artificially.

By the mid-1900s, technology had made it possible to defy the boundaries of nature. We were able to drive effortlessly at 60 miles an hour or fly from continent to continent in mere hours. Just fifty years earlier, such powers had seemed inconceivable. This rapid technological leap affected us psychologically, though that didn’t register consciously.

Also back at mid-century, celebrity worship was becoming more common. Movie and TV stars were being promoted as avatars of humanity. Movie star magazines were huge sellers. These celebrities mesmerized us because we saw in them a grandeur we so much wished to feel in ourselves. Movie screens flashed their faces ten feet high in front of us. Unwittingly, we identified with them and compared our circumstances to theirs, which made us more self-centered.

Now we can also kindle a narcissistic instinct when buying a lottery ticket and imagining ourselves being crowned among the “elite.” People can get this artificial boost in self-esteem by owing an assault weapon or a big gas-guzzling truck. With this mentality, we don’t want to be bothered by the needs of future generations. Our intelligence and rationality are impoverished by artificially induced desires and high-powered possessions.

Psychotherapist Alexander Lowen, author Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (1983), said in that book he was astounded by the degree of narcissism he began to encounter by the 1980s. This contrasted with the common repressed neurosis he had treated three decades earlier. Narcissism denotes an investment in one’s image as opposed to one’s self, Lowen wrote. “Narcissists love their image, not their real self.”

The narcissist (or someone far enough along that spectrum) is an evader of truth, both inner and outer truth. Narcissists shun certain truths, many vital to wellbeing, because those truths expose the poverty of their inner life. Sacrificing comforts for the common good feels to them like a dimming of their self-centered point of view and a risk to their self-serving agenda. They live by the self-aggrandizing slogan, “Get all you can for yourself.” That insular mentality ignores existing and impending climate havoc.

The narcissism feels so precious, like the sum of who we are. We feel much resistance to letting go of it. For old people, it makes it harder to die peacefully.

Narcissism seduces people because they feel comfort or reassurance in the sense of grandiosity. But narcissists are also susceptible to great misery when their grandiosity is not validated by others or even when their existence goes largely unnoticed. They become more desirous of possessions not so much for an object itself but as “evidence” of their significance and worthiness. Now they’re operating out of emotional weakness. They’re dependent on their assets or on attention from others in order to maintain a fragile egocentricity. Having a stable ego is all fine and dandy, providing we understand that our ego is the operating system of a limited, superficial consciousness. For many of us, an ego-centered sense of self is the best we can do, and with it we can live an okay life. But it is still an unreliable director of our best and highest interests.

With narcissism, critical thinking is diminished. When our mental powers are weakened, we’re more likely to be under the influence of echo chambers, groupthink, confirmation bias, propaganda, tribalism, and blatant disinformation. We’re not accessing the maturity and wisdom that comes natural to our better self. To deal effectively with climate change, we must be at our best.

For climate safety, the world likely requires the kind of heroic, focused effort that Americans undertook on the home front during World War II. But the extent of narcissism now makes such sacrifice improbable. It’s no accident we have elected a president who appears to have a narcissistic personality disorder and who adamantly discounts the threat of climate change. Our votes reflect our mentality. While only a small percentage of voters are narcissistic in the extreme, people will still vote for a politician who excites their deposits of that mentality.

I asked Gemini, “Is narcissism a factor in climate change denial?” Gemini replied, “Yes, narcissism, particularly collective narcissism, can be a factor in climate change denial. Research indicates a link between higher levels of national collective narcissism and lower acceptance of climate change.” (In this context, I’m giving AI credit for being accurate in its generalized assessments.)

I also asked, why do people who accept the reality of climate change still refuse to do anything about it? Gemini’s answer, a mishmash of mainstream thinking, spins us helplessly in circles.

People accept climate change but don’t act due to psychological barriers like short-term thinking and abstract threats, practical concerns such as lifestyle sacrifices and perceived futility, and political factors like ideological opposition to policy solutions. Inaction can also stem from misinformation, a lack of clear personal connections to the impacts of climate change, and the belief that technological innovation will solve the problem without major lifestyle changes.

Our understanding improves as we go deeper into the nature of our weakness. Narcissism makes us more prone to feeling overwhelmed, and thereby weaker, because it cuts us off from our better, stronger self. Narcissists, in fact, are overwhelmed by their egocentricity and inner weakness. They’re overwhelmed when, in possession of political power, they begin to take extreme positions. They’re being overwhelmed when falling under the sway of a neurotic, charismatic leader. They become irrational because their narcissism makes them less intelligent. They’re quicker to feel threatened, often simply from what their imagination is concocting. In their weakness, they’re desperate to feel certainty because they’re too weak to deal with uncertainty. Their certainty provides an illusion of power.

Dealing with climate change can legitimately feel like an overwhelming problem since our economic, social, and cultural systems are so dependent on carbon-based energy. Presumably, the challenge can be met successfully if we’re at our best. Salvation from climate havoc probably depends entirely on our psychological and spiritual growth.

Yet here we are, largely unaware of the dynamics of our inner nature. Those of us not plagued with narcissism can still be weakened by hidden inner conflict. With inner conflict, a passive weak side of us becomes entangled in a hidden dynamic with an aggressive, punishing side (the inner critic). Without our insight, inner conflict usually remains active and debilitating. It causes us to be thin-skinned, indecisive, and prone to self-defeat. It produces injustice collecting and self-pity.

I asked Gemini, “Is inner conflict a factor in climate change denial?”

Yes, inner conflict is a significant factor in climate change denial. Psychological research identifies several mechanisms by which internal distress and conflicting values can lead individuals to deny or dismiss the reality of climate change as a coping strategy. This is often a defense against feelings of guilt, fear, and helplessness.

Next, I asked, “Does the general population have a good understanding of inner conflict?” Gemini replied:

Most people have an incomplete, rather than a good, understanding of inner conflict. While they can recognize and describe their own internal struggles on a surface level, they often lack insight into the deeper, unconscious psychological dynamics that drive these conflicts. The general understanding tends to be limited to the conscious experience of indecision or distress, without recognizing the underlying motives and fears.

There you have it. These “underlying motives and fears” account for most of our personal and collective dysfunction. For a clear and detailed explanation of inner conflict, consider buying a copy of my latest book, Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly (2025). It’s inexpensive, highly rated at Amazon, and free of AI. It’s the scoop on why we’re at a life-or-death tipping point in human history.

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It makes sense to me that the world is in such a mess. I see the problem as the cumulative effect of all the neurosis that plagues humankind. My books and articles have tried to expose the nature of this neurosis, which basically consists of varieties of inner conflict and our unconscious determination to experience this conflict along with its negative reverberations.

Growing our awareness.

We are so resistant to seeing this conflict in ourselves because, through our ego identification, we hate to acknowledge the extent to which we are unaware of these important dynamics and so foolish as to allow this self-defeat and needless suffering to occur. Carl Jung expressed this human predicament in these words: “Our true religion is a monotheism of consciousness, a possession by it, coupled with a fanatical denial that there are parts of the psyche which are autonomous.”

The “true religion” in this quotation refers to our ego identification, which is monotheistic in our adherence to it, and which bestows upon us a dualistic, self-centered consciousness. The “fanatical denial” Jung mentions is our resistance, our refusal to acknowledge the degree to which we are not masters in our own house but very much under the influence of unconscious dynamics that shape our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.

I have a gripe with Jung because, as I see it, he didn’t grapple as vigorously as Freud with the dark side of the psyche. Jung certainly acknowledged the unconscious mind, saying for instance: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate,” and “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” True, but these aphorisms are not sufficient in themselves. I think Jung was simply baffled by the unconscious, aware of its importance but feeling it to be unfathomable, perhaps as a reflection of how he struggled with mixed results to uncover his own inner dynamics. In his book The Undiscovered Self (1957), he did however warn us that, with humanity’s state of awareness, too many of us would not even recognize evil when it covertly arose up around us and threatened our lives.

It was a New York City psychoanalyst, Edmund Bergler, who plunged into the psyche and got into the nuts and bolts of inner conflict’s shenanigans. He discovered in human nature our unconscious willingness, even determination, to experience ourselves and our lives through inner conflict. Holding this conflict in place, said Bergler, is a covert condition he called psychic or unconscious masochism. Basically, this predicament consists of our conscious desire to feel good versus our unconscious willingness to go on experiencing unresolved emotions that produce misery and self-defeat. Through unconscious resistance, we are loathe to acknowledge in ourselves the self-damaging aspects of this condition. In collectively acting this out, we keep the world in a state of peril.

The remainder of this post consists of excerpts from one of Bergler’s books, The Superego  (Grune & Stratton, New York, 1952). These excerpts show his determination to expose our dark side, despite our resistance to the knowledge.

In this first excerpt, Bergler rejects the common claim that we can be innocent victims of emotional trauma. Trauma can certainly happen, of course, but its effect can largely be determined by a person’s preexisting strength or weakness.

The idea, frequently met with, that some one experience is responsible for a neurosis is an attempt at simplification. If one examines such a supposedly “traumatic experience” through the microscope of analysis, one finds that thousands of little incidents have preceded it. Furthermore, a so-called “traumatic experience” is often only the culmination of these preceding incidents, and equally often real “experiences” have been misconstrued to suit unconscious fantasies.

A proof that traumatic experiences are not in themselves responsible for neurosis is the fact that often siblings, exposed to the same shock, react differently. In some cases, one sibling becomes neurotic, the other does not; in some cases, the two develop different neuroses; in still other cases, the “trauma” does not register because the neurosis is already established.

Moreover, the child may himself unconsciously provoke some psychic trauma, or misinterpret so-called real facts to fit into the child’s specific neurotic situation.

The decisive factor seems to be the elaboration of inner and outer facts by the unconscious ego. A neurotic mother may be equally disagreeable to each of her two sons; when they are grown, one will correct the experience by marrying a kind and loving woman, the other perpetuates the experience by choosing to marry a shrew who will soundly mistreat him.

Unwittingly, people can be willing to use real or imagined trauma as a defense, as the “reason” they are failing to fulfill themselves in life. In the next excerpt, Bergler points out the perils of such self-ignorance.

People indulge in many forms of self-delusion; one of the most dangerous is the mistaken belief that they can better their lot by giving up situations, positions or professions they “dislike.” No doubt, external circumstances may be unfavorable, and change beneficial, but these externals hardly affect inner conflicts, and by and large they are used as hitching posts for alibis or provocations. A neurotically querulous person will be querulous in any occupation; a neurotically incompetent person will remain a bungler, no matter how often he changes his position; a neurotic injustice collector will be “mistreated” here, there, and everywhere. Confusing reasons with results, however, people go right on changing their external settings, even when the decisive difficulty is internal.

This situation becomes especially tragic in the late fifties and early sixties. With a minimum of financial security, some people “retire”—from their troubles, they believe—by giving up work. What they fail to see is that the specific amount of masochistic self- damage which they unconsciously crave, and which previously they deposited in the difficulties of their external occupations, is deprived of its accustomed source by their retirement. Of course, they believe that getting rid of the “disturbing” profession guarantees contentment. Once more, reasons are confounded with results, and self-torture is but accentuated. Instead of inner peace, the effect of retirement is increased self-torture. In short, ignorance of the existence of the inner “torture machine” does not serve as a certificate of exemption…

This is undoubtably a better pill to swallow. People do not know that psychic masochism is part of their daily menu, and unchangeable without psychiatric [psychotherapeutic] help. Hence, they struggle against their destiny, fighting a shadow! This is a real human tragedy, and it is made even more poignant by the fact that neurosis is the progressive disease.

At one point, Bergler gives a definition of neurosis:

A simple yardstick for recognizing neurosis is a lack of ability to work (sublimation), to love (tenderly, and with normal potency retained), to have normal social contacts and interests, and to enjoy one’s hobbies. As long as there is relative contentment on that quadrangular score, there is no reason to become alarmed.

A lot of neurotic people would claim, as derived from the self-deception built into their neurosis, that they possess these abilities. I would add to Bergler’s definition the abilities to know and choose truth over falsehood, true strength over pseudo-aggression, authenticity over hypocrisy, and self-love over egotism. Unfortunately, the worst neurotics will lay claim to these abilities, too.

In this next excerpt (from the book’s Foreword), Bergler says more about resistance and our reluctance to come to terms with unconscious dynamics.

It is a typical emotional reaction to shy away from unconsoling facts, which is the reason most people prefer to ignore the established and highly uncomfortable fact that every human being harbors his worst enemy—an ogre self-created, to boot—within himself. To get an approximate idea of the “benevolence” of inner conscience [superego], one has only to imagine the terms of the relationship between a dictator—any dictator!—and an inmate of one of his concentration and extermination camps….

Once one accepts the fact that self-aggression recoils against the ego, accumulating in the superego, another incapable result must be added: the long maturation period of the human child, renders his aggression inexpressible; since it is inexpressible, it must turn against a child’s ego, for drives are like rivers—if the flow in all directions forward is impeded, the river must reverse its flow. Thus, every child starts life with a negative balance, with the dice heavily loaded against his chances at the “happiness-machine,” heavily loaded in favor of the “misery-machine” (Mark Twain). Inner conscience, the beneficiary of this rebounding aggression, does not ask, as the ancient gods did, for human sacrifice; as substitutes, it modestly accepts “conscience money” and human suffering….

Inner conscience is the master of the personality. The unconscious ego, in order to survive, must satisfy inner conscience by creating its double sentinel of alibis. We live by, and through, these twin alibis. Man’s precarious balance, dangling on the shoestring of twin alibis, is constantly endangered. At best, fifty percent of man’s psychic energy is unproductive expended in his attempts to ward off the constant avalanche of torture flowing from the superego. Man’s inhumanity to man is equaled only by man’s inhumanity to himself.

—

In my books, I present a comprehensive understanding of our psyche’s self-defeating dynamics. Go to my author’s page at Amazon to see a list of these books.

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The anxiety around dating—and finding the “right” partner—is a common contributor to unhappiness. The challenge is described in a recent article, “Mating Season,” in The New York Times Magazine. (The online version is titled, The Trouble With Wanting Men.”)

A competition for dominance is a major factor.

The article’s author, Jean Garnett, describes her anguish trying to find a man willing to commit to an intimate relationship. The article says women are increasingly fed up with men, to the point that male reticence or passivity deserves the recently coined psychological term, heterofatalism. That ugly word certainly gives a mean outlook on one’s mating prospects.

Garnett describes leaving her marriage, falling in love, and having an 18-month relationship with a man who “continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit…” From her research and talks with others, she concludes, “It seems to me, surveying the field as a dating novice, that this kind of studiously irreproachable male helplessness abounds.” Men who are superficially nice and sincere seemed unable, she says, to transform their sexual partnerships into intimate relationships.

Garnett struggles for answers to this apparent emotional impotency. She suggests that men may be overwhelmed by the cognitive effects of dating apps that “project a mirage of endless romantic possibilities across infinite timelines.” She notes that modern times are so unlike the culture of arranged marriages: Now she and the men in her life must deal with “the anxiety of choice.”

So much inner passivity and inner conflict are involved in all of this, with both men and women. People are hurting from disappointment, disconnection, and indecision. They’re reeling from not knowing their own mind, and from fears of making the wrong choice, not living up to expectations, and being held accountable.

The underlying source of all this misery and self-alienation are inner passivity, inner conflict, and the compulsion to replay and recycle the first hurts of childhood. (These first hurts are feeling deprived, refused, controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, betrayed, and abandoned). I have written a great deal about this, particularly in my two most recent books. The great tragedy here arises from our considerable resistance to acquiring the knowledge of our unwitting propensity for self-sabotage and needless suffering.

Garnett suggests that much of the dysfunction involves men and women’s competition for dominance. She quotes a psychoanalyst who advocates the need to “recognize and accept each other without competing for dominance.” The solution, the psychoanalyst suggests, involves the acceptance of a mutual surrender that is distinct from submission.

This is a vital point that requires more explanation. We need to recognize and work out our inner passivity, a biological heritage from childhood and a main element in inner conflict and relationship disharmony. This deep passivity in our psyche causes us to be easily triggered. Because of it, we tend to interpret challenging moments with our partner as if we are somehow being forced into a passive corner. This impression, however, is usually a false interpretation. Unconsciously, we go looking for the passive feeling because, as part of inner conflict, it remains unresolved in our psyche.

We can easily experience this unpleasant feeling of submissiveness even when our partner has no intention of being dominant or requiring us to submit.

Garnett says she finds it difficult to grasp the distinction between a surrender that is distinct from submission. Perhaps, she concedes, “I experience desire in terms of a struggle that someone must lose.”  She adds, “I am ready to cop to some unconscious masochism here.” This is a candid acknowledgment on her part. Indeed, we are acting masochistically in our unconscious compulsion to replay and recycle inner conflict and the first hurts of childhood. And that fine distinction between surrender and submission is hard to grasp when we’re lacking knowledge of inner passivity and inner conflict.

Read either one of my most recent books for a full understanding of all of this.

Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly (2025, 240 pages).

Our Deadly Flaw: Healing the Inner Conflict that Cripples Us and Subverts Society (2022, 316 pages).

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I’ve just published my latest book, and it may be my best effort yet in exposing and explaining the hidden dynamics in our psyche that undermine our health and happiness. It’s titled, Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly. This is indeed a bold name for a book, but its groundbreaking knowledge merits the title. (It’s here at Amazon.com as a paperback or e-book.)

This is my tenth book that plumbs the depths of our amazing psyche, and it packages all the others in an edifying 240 pages. This writing is hard work. It’s somewhat like writing code. A precision of language is needed to illuminate the pranks and capers of our unconscious mind. Precision is required to expose the unconscious sedition in our psyche that falsifies reality and betrays our conscious aspirations. Each word toils for traction and lurches for lucidity as it spins in our psyche’s turbulent underworld.

It may be the last such book I’ll write. I don’t think I can present this psychological knowledge any more clearly.

Exposed describes in detail how unconsciously—or as I often say, unwittingly—we make choices that plunge us into misery where we tend to wallow in mediocrity and self-pity. Our lack of self-knowledge makes us pushovers who topple into emotional suffering and behavioral self-defeat. Growing self-knowledge brings this weakness into focus. As we see the nature and dynamics of this inner weakness, we acquire the wisdom and strength to break free from needless suffering.

We recognize with new clinical intelligence our propensity for recycling and replaying, in everyday situations, the unresolved hurts that have lingered in our psyche since childhood. These eight hurts are feeling deprived, refused, controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, betrayed, and abandoned. Typically, we are unaware of our readiness to jump into this old, familiar dissonance to jitterbug with the blues.

These eight first hurts are processed through inner conflict that is mostly unconscious. This inner conflict is energized by a primitive inner critic (superego) that batters our defensive, passive unconscious ego. When our growing insight and invigorated intelligence penetrate this unconscious ego’s realm, we recognize the lack of consciousness there that has allowed the superego, an agent of self-aggression, to intrude so insensitively into our mind, stirring up irrationality and self-punishment. Now we see with liberating clarity how we have been allowing ourselves to be spooked, spoofed, and gaslighted by both the aggressive side and the defensive side of inner conflict.

As I say in the book, “We all deal with a major inner conflict between our conscious wish to feel strong, worthy, and lovable versus our unconscious tendency to go on experiencing ourselves as weak, unworthy, and unlovable. This conflict can heat up daily as our inner thoughts, in wearisome futility, debate our faults versus our merits. Even when entangled in such conflict, we seldom bring it into focus. We get personally entangled in the conflict, and we don’t see the conflict objectively as a compulsive inner program that just scoops up unresolved emotional content from our life in order to maintain itself.”

Inner conflict is an irrational, authoritarian system of government operating inside us. When we illuminate the source of our self-ignorance, we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of inner conflict. We also help the world to outgrow cruelty, stupidity and evil. Saving democracy, saving the world, saving ourself, it’s all the same thing—and it all starts in our psyche.

—

Again, the book is available here. Please consider leaving a comment or review.

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It’s time to rest my keyboard for the summer and bask in southern Michigan’s grand flora and fauna. Rabbits bound across my backyard, a cardinal perches on the brass tip of my deck umbrella, and the wild raspberries on the hill will soon be succulent.

Golly, summer’s fun!

Yet it’s hard to ignore the wildfire smoke overhead.

I’ll still be doing sessions with old and new clients, but this break from writing feels like vacation time.

Below are some of the best-read blog posts over the past year:

Our Compulsion to Self-Punish

Our Readiness to Feel Controlled

When in Doubt About Sexual Orientation

Problem Gamblers Are Addicted to Losing

Are You Overly Sensitive to Rejection?

Seven Villains in a Sad Love Story

The Emotional Conflict Behind 50 Mental-Health Symptoms

My latest book is done. I’ll publish it in e-book format sometime this month. Here is a look at the cover.

Don’t forget to spread this knowledge around among your friends and family. The liberating self-knowledge found in this depth psychology is an answer for both our personal disharmony and the world’s grim troubles.

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Happiness oh happiness, be not so arcane, / Let us access your domain and make it our address.

The key to happiness has been discovered, say researchers in psychology. They claim that happiness is secured when we’re able to initiate and maintain trusted relationships and when we’re open and friendly with strangers. This claim is discussed this month in an article in The New York Times Magazine, titled “How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding.”

Of course, we feel happy about intimate friendships and being able to connect in a friendly, gracious manner with strangers. Yet this article gives the impression that good relationships are the answer in themselves. I say instead that our happiness derives primarily from our psychological health and secondarily from our relationships. To be happy, we must be relatively free of neurosis and inner conflict.

This is not to douse the benefits of relationships. We need these connections, however imperfect or flawed they might be. Fleets of friends and strangers passing by day and night help us to navigate this weathered world.

For most of us, becoming happy is a learning process. We learn to be happy by discovering how we make ourselves unhappy. We participate more than we realize in making ourselves unhappy. Primitive appetites, energies, drives, and defenses flood our psyche. These dynamics generate misery and self-defeat through hidden processes of inner conflict. When we recognize this disharmony within ourselves, we liberate ourselves from inner conflict with its accompanying suffering.

Inner conflict has us bouncing between feeling good about ourselves versus feeling bad or wrong. Consciously, we want to feel good, but unconsciously we are prepared (if not compelled) to plunge emotionally into feelings of being deprived, controlled, helpless, criticized, rejected, and betrayed. We feel happy in one moment and miserable in the next because oppositional inner dynamics, especially the strife between the inner critic and inner defensiveness, weaken and bamboozle us. We’re compelled to act out this disharmony with others.

What we “get” from a relationship certainly provides some happiness. Yet the richest happiness arises from the quality of the presence and integrity we give to others and get from others. In healthy relationships, we feel our integrity, and we give to others the best of ourselves from the richness of that integrity. Being at our best, we see the best in others, and we connect with that quality in ourselves and in them. When we’re psychologically healthy, we possess the inner power to align ourselves with goodness, justice, generosity, and inner peace. So, happiness arises first from this inner connection to our better self—and next from the sharing of this better self with others.

Our happiness resides largely in the quality of our relationship with our own self. Unfortunately, we’re highly resistant to seeing how we degrade this relationship through our unconscious collusion in inner conflict. We all have resistance to establishing a new, more evolved relationship with ourself, and it’s important to be conscious of this resistance. Through resistance, people are unwittingly engaged in the cover-up of our unevolved consciousness.

When we liberate ourselves from inner conflict, we discover our inherent value and better self. Now we don’t need others to validate us, to bolster our sense of self. We become grounded in a sense of value because, for one thing, we’re no longer absorbing self-denigration from our inner critic and identifying with the passive, defensive side of inner conflict. With this awareness, the pleasure and happiness we feel from connecting with others spring from within. Pleasure and happiness arise as we experience the strength, integrity, and generosity of our deeper, better self. Happiness also arises from our newfound ability, now that we’re breaking free of inner conflict, to avoid becoming reactive to (triggered by) the quirks and irritants that others might display.

What are these “triggers” that sabotage relationships? When entangled in inner conflict, we are overly sensitive to feeling hurt, and we blame others for depriving, controlling, criticizing, and rejecting us. Yet we ourselves are unconsciously on the lookout for these experiences. We’re often triggered by the slightest evidence that these hurts are being inflicted upon us, even to the point of experiencing these hurts through our imagination and our speculations on the future.

Through relationships, we’re unconsciously willing to recycle and replay these hurts. Doing so produces, through inner conflict, experiences of guilt, shame, moodiness, cynicism, victimization, and oppression. All the while we blame others for what we generate in ourselves. Or we blame ourselves, but for the wrong reasons. Other people dump their unresolved issues on us, and we dump ours on them. Now we are unlikely to make sincere, trustworthy connections with other people because our inner conflict sabotages trust and intimacy.

When we expose the dynamics of inner conflict, we begin to recognize any falseness that might pervade our connections with others. For instance, we might unwittingly be displaying friendliness or charm to cover up our repressed identification with unworthiness. The feeling is, “I have value and I’m significant because this person I am charming is impressed with me.” Our friendliness can now become an unconscious defense that goes like this: “I’m not willing to go on feeling a passive disconnect from my goodness and value. Look at how thrilled I am that this person is so taken with me.” This unconscious double-dealing is a major theme in romantic love.

The above-mentioned article notes that people experience “mood boosts” when they try—on public transit or in a coffee shop, for instance—to connect in a friendly way with strangers. But why? Why do we feel better? The article doesn’t say. The answer is simple: We’re connecting with our better self. We’re giving from an inner abundance that comes from a strong connection to our better self. As we overcome inner conflict, we feel our inner richness, and we’re inspired to share it with others. That produces not just happiness but also joy.

When we reach out to connect with others, we’re also being less passive, less identified with the passive side of inner conflict. Our assertiveness overrides the passive disconnect from self that most of us experience in varying degrees. Often the passive disconnect is itself a main source of unhappiness, particularly in terms of how the passivity creates an inner disconnect and makes us less able to deflect the incoming self-denigration from our aggressive inner critic.

Many people snap out of this inner passivity and function at a higher capacity. But this newfound strength might only be temporary. With deeper insight, inner strength becomes more stable. Lacking insight, inner conflict easily draws us back into weakness and disconnection. In our ensuing unhappiness, we can become desperate to connect with others, sometimes to have them “validate” our indulgence in victimization and self-pity.

In the magazine article, a researcher is quoted saying, “When I do an act of kindness, it makes me feel more connected to the person I’m helping, or just humanity as a whole … I would say that 95 percent of things that are effective in making people happy and that have been shown to be true through happiness interventions are because they make people feel more connected to other people.” Yes, people can feel more connected to others, but what if the connection is being used as a balm for one’s weak sense of self. The comforting effect is felt, but inner growth is missed.

Many of us are troubled by inner conflict that involves the conscious wish to feel connected versus the unconscious compulsion to recycle unresolved feelings of disconnection and victimization that go back to childhood. Our psychological defenses now kick into action to cover up the humbling realization that we identify with inner weakness and easily plunge into emotional convictions of victimization. These defenses can generate bursts of happiness as part of the process of self-deception. “Look at how happy I am to connect with this person,” the defense has us believe. “That proves I want to feel connected, not disconnected.” But feeling disconnected remains the old emotional identification that clings to us like barnacles. Relationships in themselves can’t solve this problem—unless the relationship is with a good psychotherapist.

In relationships, we often create an illusion of connectedness. Many of those with whom we “connect” are prepared to use us mainly for self-validation or as a sounding board. Or we ourselves are using others for such self-serving purposes. Any happiness derived from such superficial connections is going to be fleeting or unstable.

People often unconsciously choose romantic partners for the unhealthy purpose of recreating unresolved emotional issues. People often blindly, passionately “fall in love” with someone who, others can readily see, is psychologically unhealthy. This unhealthy person is actually the “best” candidate with whom to act out and recreate experiences that resurrect all the other person’s unresolved and painful issues. The old hurts are now going to be recycled and replayed. What started off in romantic bliss soon ends in misery, with the participants usually staggering away ignorant of these psychological undercurrents.

Relationships can’t save us from ourselves. Our best relationships might ease our suffering and provide much happiness, but we’re shortchanging the evolved person we can become if we try to make them the mainstay of our happiness.

—

My books provide the full scoop on how we unwittingly generate unhappiness.

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Were Sigmund Freud around to muse on the man in the White House, how might he analyze the president and the people who support him?

Exposing the deeper nature of conflict.

Theories abound for why Donald Trump twice became president. These include the effects of culture wars, wealth disparity, politically biased news, and political dysfunction. Freud would say, however, that dysfunction in the human psyche is the key consideration. He would contend that a great many of the people who voted for Trump were unconsciously falsifying reality, mainly out of resistance to recognizing and overcoming their neurosis.

To develop this thought, let’s first visit the set of The Apprentice, the television show where Trump, in the decade before first becoming president in 2017, acquired national celebrity. On the show, he played a powerful business executive who judged the worthiness of job-seeking candidates.

The show was a big hit. Viewers loved to see people getting fired by Trump. He was compelling in this role, but not so much because of him personally. In his cold-hearted way, he stirred up in viewers their willingness to take wanton gratification in the downfall of others. The show’s viewers resonated emotionally with the passive helplessness of the job candidates who anxiously and fearfully awaited their fate, as dished out by Trump. Why would TV viewers find this cheerless situation so alluring? The answer is found in our passive relationship to our inner critic.

As Freud asserted, just about everybody has a hidden master in their psyche, called the inner critic or superego. It often operates with calculating cruelty, as Trump did on his TV show. The superego is a primitive drive in our psyche that discharges self-aggression and seeks punishment. It instinctively faults us and judges us unworthy. This self-aggression arises when natural biological aggression, blocked from being expended outward by the child’s physical weakness, turns inward against the child’s weak link, the developing ego. This dynamic usually lingers in adults and creates inner conflict.

The more neurotic an individual, the greater the inner conflict and the more this person experiences the world through dissension, victimhood, misery, and folly.

With inner conflict, the superego attacks and the unconscious ego defends. When active, this inner conflict has us bouncing emotionally back and forth between feelings of weakness versus strength, self-doubt versus self-assurance, and goodness versus wrongdoing in ways that make us moody if not miserable and prone to self-defeat. We get locked into the conflict and fail to acquire the knowledge that would free us.

In this light, let’s consider again what happened on The Apprentice. Dependably, Trump fired someone every week. He humiliated job seekers for presumably being unfit and unworthy. Watching this, viewers resonated emotionally with the job-seeking candidate at the mercy of Trump, just as they resonated unconsciously with the feeling of being at the mercy of their superego.

As an unconscious defense against this weakness, they claimed they identified not with the wretch who was fired but with the arbitrary power displayed by Trump. His cruel power provided them with this defense: “I identify with strength and aggression, not with weakness!” Their gratification in identifying with “strongman” Trump covered up their bittersweet resonance with the victim.

This way the show’s avid viewers could have their cake and eat it, too. Unconsciously, they could thrill to the feel of Trump’s power while passively enjoying the schadenfreude, the harm-joy of other’s pain and humiliation that mirrored the passive double-dealing that neurotic people have with their superego.

Trump is the poster boy for his followers’ refusal to see themselves objectively. This produces loyalty to Trump—or at least to what he represents. He’s a master of self-deception, and his followers take their cues from him. Still, they are loyal not so much to him as to their own egoistic bias, psychological defenses, and bittersweet taste for suffering. Trump is a leader of the widespread refusal to grow psychologically, morally, and spiritually. This resistance to self-development is visible in the widespread opposition to the current “Woke” ethos, the striving to become more conscious and more willing to know reality rather than to falsify it.

Let’s duck back briefly into this deep knowledge. The unconscious ego is largely passive (psychoanalysis has referred to it as the subordinate ego). Its defenses tend to be unstable and ineffective when it engages with the superego. Most people identify with this passive side of inner conflict, while tyrants, criminals, and psychopaths are the Frankenstein monsters of the superego, the aggressive side of inner conflict. The superego’s nature is the cornerstone of fascism, and we need our better self, enlightened by inner truth, to defeat this dark side of us.

Most people, in varying degrees, are unconsciously sensitive to (and fearful of) the superego’s intrusions. The superego is often the source of stress, tension, worry, and anxiety. Under the superego’s thumb, we feel persistently weak in certain contexts. We unwittingly allow life’s challenges to trigger this passive weakness. In daily life, many of us are quick to feel oppressed and dominated by certain people, institutions, and circumstances. Succumbing consistently to cravings and peer pressure are also everyday examples of the ubiquity of the passive side.

Consciously, we dislike feeling controlled or helpless, yet we’re often quick to react to situations, even benign ones, as if we are indeed being controlled and rendered helpless. We’re likely at such times to spin off into anger, self-recrimination, and self-pity. Unconsciously, we often experience feelings of oppression and helplessness in a bittersweet way, and we unwittingly recycle these feelings and indulge in the misery.

The ongoing inner conflict between the passive and aggressive sides in our psyche produces many symptoms, including stress, anxiety, procrastination, indecision, guilt, shame, timidity, and stupidity. (Stupidity arises from how, unconsciously, we scramble to falsify reality, employing psychological defenses that cover up our passive tolerance of the superego’s tyranny.) Meanwhile, most of us aren’t aware of how much we experience the world through inner passivity and fear.

Trump looks for weakness in others. Cunningly and instinctively, he weaponizes the weakness of his followers. He exhorts them to fight—but the real fight, of which he and they are unaware, is the battle to safeguard their idealized ego, even though this sacrifices their better self. They are fighting to deny their deep, unconscious willingness to remain identified with weakness, fear, victimization, and defeat. Their own self-alienation produces alienation with others. National disunity now feels more like the natural order, while anger, indignation, and an emotional affinity for raw power produce illusions of substance and rationality.

The Apprentice was “perfect” for Trump because it sustained his compulsion to focus on the supposed weakness of others and their “justified” humiliation (“Governor” Trudeau, as one of many examples). By fixating on the presumed weakness of others, he projects on to them his profound psychological disconnect from a better self. In this process, he represses his terror of being inconsequential.

Most people can at times feel some measure of unworthiness. Deep in the psyche, many identify with being an unworthy, lesser person, and they instinctively cover up this inner truth. As part of the coverup, they become desperate to feel superior to certain others: “I’m somebody—and you’re nobody!” Trump’s followers make immigrants “contemptible nobodies” who don’t belong here. Making the other “a nobody” hides a person’s repressed identification with being a nobody. We repress a lot of inner fear with doubts about our worthiness.

Trump is a profoundly fearful person, akin in this way to fear-of-his-shadow Joe McCarthy. Through his projections, Trump avoids self-reflection and fights off inner fear. Unconsciously, he greatly fears exposure (especially to himself) of the degree to which he is so psychologically and morally impoverished. This is why he craves attention and looks so often into news cameras during interviews. He needs attention, power, and wealth to compensate for his inner poverty and repressed fear of being a nobody. It’s no coincidence that he generates so much fear in the world. He casts out upon the world what eats away at him from the inside.

The chaos in Trump’s psyche compels him to be an agent of chaos in the world. His inner conflict has him swinging between the passive and aggressive postures in the psyche: He is passively bemused and easily influenced in some situations and vulgar and belligerent in others, mirroring the two poles of inner conflict. Right and wrong become incidental to being at the center of attention and power, all to deny the black hole inside. Meanwhile, loyal insiders who share his disconnect from a better self are there to identify with his power, to spotlight their importance, and to protect him and themselves from awareness of their inner plight.

Democracy is on tilt and mental-health trends are going in the wrong direction. Democracy depends on our collective mental health, yet modern psychology and psychiatry do not show clearly enough the nature of the dysfunction that undermines us from within. If we remain blind to our entanglement in inner conflict and unaware of our passive participation in it, we are more likely to lead ourselves and our world into worsening wretchedness.

—

My books describe the numerous ways we become trapped in inner conflict. They’re available here at Amazon.

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