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Exposed: The Psychological Source of Misery and Folly
Psychotherapist Peter Michaelson exposes and explains the hidden dynamics in our psyche that undermine our health and happiness. In Exposed, his latest book, he reveals the unconscious choices we make that plunge us into misery and folly. As we see the nature and dynamics of this inner process, we acquire the wisdom and strength to break free from needless suffering.
Michaelson, author of nine previous books of depth psychology, reveals 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 process these hurts through inner conflict. We have not been sufficiently aware of our readiness to jump into this old, familiar distress to jitterbug with the blues.
In vivid detail, this book exposes the 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 thoughts, in wearisome futility, debate our faults versus our merits. Even when entangled in such conflict, we seldom bring it into focus. We become entangled in the conflict, and we don’t see it objectively as a compulsive inner program that scoops up unresolved emotional content from our life in order to maintain itself.
This book is all about recognizing our inner conflict, understanding what fuels it, and seeing how to disengage from it.
Michaelson, author of nine previous books of depth psychology, reveals 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 process these hurts through inner conflict. We have not been sufficiently aware of our readiness to jump into this old, familiar distress to jitterbug with the blues.
In vivid detail, this book exposes the 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 thoughts, in wearisome futility, debate our faults versus our merits. Even when entangled in such conflict, we seldom bring it into focus. We become entangled in the conflict, and we don’t see it objectively as a compulsive inner program that scoops up unresolved emotional content from our life in order to maintain itself.
This book is all about recognizing our inner conflict, understanding what fuels it, and seeing how to disengage from it.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 26, 2025
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November 19, 2025
This book makes difficult to grasp psychological concepts easier to understand. Peter brings psychic chaos into sharper focus and maps a way forward. He injects humor and uses his considerable writing skills to make this an enjoyable and thought-provoking book. It’s not for everyone, but to anyone who wants to understand themselves and others on a deeper level, this is a gold mine.
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