When we look at the news today, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the absurdity. We watch international relations—decisions that affect trade, stability, and everyday lives—devolve into petty disputes over the names of lakes and rivers. We see executive actions met with satirical videos of geese in wigs, AI-generated propaganda, and public spats over symbolic dominance.
To many, this looks like sudden, inexplicable madness. But if we look beneath the surface using the lens of deep psychology, none of this is new. It is simply the continuous rollout of a long-standing human pattern: **the projection of unresolved, internal hatred and emotional trauma onto the external world.**
The Roots of Misogyny and Political Scapegoating
Years ago, I wrote about how political figures like Donald Trump succeed not by offering real solutions, but by providing the exact scapegoats people desperately need to temporarily alleviate childhood repression.
As psychoanalyst Alice Miller observed in *For Your Own Good*, when children are raised in environments where their true feelings are suppressed and punished, they are forced to split off their inner pain and vulnerability. Unable to direct their anger at the primary authority figures—their parents, and particularly their mothers—they carry that repressed hatred into adulthood.
When women run for high office or assert power on the global stage, they become primary targets for this transferred hostility. The unresolved resentment toward the maternal figure is projected onto female leaders. People declare, *"Not that woman!"* without ever realizing that their intense emotional reaction has almost nothing to do with her policy or qualifications, and everything to do with the defenseless child they once were.
The Need for External Enemies
Leaders who operate through narcissism and grandiosity intuitively understand this dynamic. They offer the public a bargain: *Follow me, and I will give you permission to direct your stored-up rage toward an external enemy.*
Whether it is a neighboring nation, a political rival, or marginalized groups, the mechanism remains identical. By fixating on an external "scapegoat," adults who were never permitted to process their childhood pain get to discharge their anger collectively. The political theater—renaming bodies of water, posturing, and mocking opponents—is just a distraction mechanism designed to keep people from looking inward.
Breaking the Vicious Cycle
When we witness the endless cycles of competition, violence, and political absurdity, we must conclude that humanity will never change course.
True change doesn't start in political arenas; it starts within. As long as society continues to raise children through "poisonous pedagogy"—suppressing their feelings and demanding blind obedience—we will continue to produce adults who crave authoritarian leaders to stand in as symbols of their parents or childhood caregivers.
“If the repression stays unresolved, the parents’ childhood tragedy is unconsciously continued on in their children.”— Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, p. 23To build a world grounded in peace, collaboration, and genuine strength, we—and the generations that follow—must do what previous generations lacked the courage to do: face, and consciously feel, all of our feelings within the context of our childhood. Only when we stop running from our internal wounds can we stop projecting.
