Episode 5: Aggression

Aggression rose to the top of our early episode list without us fully knowing why — maybe because, as psychiatrists, we see it almost everywhere. In its many forms, it's something we humans tend to deny, push aside, or bury deep — until it explodes, or quietly controls us.

So why does aggression matter, in America, in 2026? Most of us can point to reasons — from school shootings and war to our own homes and relationships. But aggression isn't uniquely American, and it isn't entirely bad. It's primal — think fight or flight — and it's protective. It tells us when something is wrong. And when channeled wisely, it can fuel creativity, leadership, and change.

The challenge for each of us as individuals, and for us as a nation, is to learn to own it. That means looking it in the face, even when we'd rather not, and manging it even when we like the feeling of letting it run free. It means taking the time to understand it, because it often hides another emotion — like fear or sadness. Like everything in this podcast, we're going here because a conversation this uncomfortable might be exactly the one we need to have.

Deeper Learning Points: 

• Obama Center Opening, Michelle’s Speech: "The truth of this country lies... in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us." 
• The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama
• "When they go low..." quote context
• “Best Boy” Syndrome: “It’s the idea that young, closeted men deflect attention from their sexuality by investing in recognized markers of success: good grades, athletic achievement, elite employment and so on. Overcompensating in competitive arenas affords these men a sense of self-worth that their concealment diminishes.” (NYT, 2013)
• Idiot Compassion: “ Idiot compassion is a great expression, which was actually coined by Trungpa Rinpoche. It refers to something we all do a lot of and call it compassion. In some ways, it’s what's called enabling. It’s the general tendency to give people what they want because you can’t bear to see them suffering.”
• The Gift of Violence by Matt Thornton
• Adler, Power and Tyranny: “Imagine a world where the most ruthless dictators, the most demanding bosses, and the most controlling partners are not driven by genuine strength, but by something far more fragile. What if their outward displays of power were, in fact, a desperate attempt to mask a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy? This is the unsettling yet profound territory explored by Alfred Adler, the often-overlooked pioneer of individual psychology, and the man who gave us a radically different understanding of human motivation.”
• Martial Arts and Aggression: “Traditional Chinese [martial arts] emphasizes the integration of internal cultivation and external form, balancing strength with flexibility. Beyond combat techniques, it embodies philosophical principles and cultural traditions, often incorporating moral education and the concept of ‘martial virtue’ (Wu De), which fosters character development and ethical conduct”
• Brene Brown and Vulnerability
• Why Sensitivity Is a Strength in Boys
• This Jungian Life: “...lively, sometimes irreverent conversations about a wide range of topics and dream analysis through the lens of depth psychology provided by Carl Jung.” 
• The Witch Trials of JK Rowling
• Rapprochement: “Mahler speculated that the normal developmental process of separation-individuation led young toddlers to experience ambivalence when needing comforting contact with a caregiver. She labeled this period of characteristic ambivalence the rapprochement subphase of the separation-individuation process, roughly spanning the developmental period from 15 to 24 months of age”
• Violence Before and After COVID
• The King Archetype, The Tyrant Archetype: “Unlike the King archetype which creates and blesses others, the Tyrant seeks to destroy and tear down. Plagued by narcissism, he really does think that he sits at the center of the universe. The Tyrant wrongly believes that power is finite; he has a scarcity mentality. He doesn’t understand the truth–that power and influence actually increase the more you share it with others. Thus the burden of maintaining his fragile illusion of absolute power makes him very insecure; any threat to his authority and supremacy enrages him and causes him to lash out with abuse–physically, emotionally, or mentally.”
• Scott Galloway and Masculinity
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Stanford Prison Experiment 
• Philip Zimbardo TED Talk: The Psychology of Evil
• Stanley Milgrim: “Contradicting the predictions of every expert he polled , Milgram found that more than seventy percent of the subjects administered what they thought might be fatal shocks to an innocent stranger. Collectively known as The Milgram Experiment, this groundbreaking work demonstrated the human tendency to obey commands issued by an authority figure, and more generally, the tendency for behavior to be controlled more by the demands of the situation than by idiosyncratic traits of the person.”

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:05

I'm Sarah. I'm Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And I'm Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

We're three psychiatrists, military bats, and friends. And this is Drinking America.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Where we put America on the couch.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Aggression rose to the top of our early episode list without us fully knowing why. Maybe because, as psychiatrists, we see it almost everywhere. In its many forms, it's something we humans tend to deny, push aside, or bury deep until it explodes or quietly controls us. And the moment we sat down to record this, well, we found ourselves doing the same thing. We didn't really want to talk about it, thought about delaying the recording, and sort of danced around the topic at a distance. Once the discussion really got going, it was hard to stop. So why does aggression matter in America in 2026? Most of us can point to reasons from school shootings and war to our own homes and relationships. But aggression isn't uniquely American, and it isn't entirely bad. It's primal. Think fight or flight. And it's protective. It tells us when something is wrong. And when channeled wisely, it can fuel creativity, leadership, and change. The challenge for each of us as individuals, and for us as a nation, is to learn to own it. That means looking it in the face, even when we'd rather not, and managing it. Even when we like the feeling of letting it run free. It means taking the time to understand it, because it often hides another emotion, like fear or sadness. Like everything in this podcast, we're going here because a conversation that's uncomfortable might be exactly the one we need to have. A quick note before we dive in. We do get into some controversial territory in this episode, and we spent real time in the editing process asking ourselves whether we handled it with enough care, and how much of our own opinion should show through it all. In a clinical session, we'd hold back almost entirely. But here, we want to be real people as well as psychiatrists. So you may hear things you agree with, things you don't, or some of both. We hope we've examined our own thinking carefully enough to keep you listening, and maybe even left you examining some of your own. One more thing, our show notes. We cover a lot of ground in our podcasts and don't always fully wrap every thread up. Sometimes we get things wrong and need to fact-check ourselves. Our show notes hit the key points and link to resources on topics worth exploring further. Revisiting and diving deeper into everything we discuss is part of the fun for us, and we hope it will be for you too. Now let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Weirdly, I don't I haven't been feeling a lot of aggression recently. I I think it for me it passed. Like there was a point that I was, I think coming back from Europe, seeing the whole UFC thing on the lawn, like I that brought up some, and of course, like it's a sign, it's like a mascot of aggression, right? And then, but to be honest, what's shifted, I think a lot of it is the Obama center and seeing how Michelle Obama reacted to that UFC fighter calling her a man. And the their tone seems different now. Like it's no longer like they go low, we go high. It's now just like, no, we we're gonna set appropriate boundaries. Like if you're gonna act like a child, then we're gonna set the boundaries that you need. And so from what I read, I don't know how true some of this is, but that she immediately just filed a defamation lawsuit. The money that he was gonna make from the 250th anniversary is being held up now. So he's not getting the money from that UFC fight. And when she likely does win this defamation lawsuit, she will donate all the money to black women. So it's kind of just a good, I feel like it was just such a great example of channeling that anger and frustration that somebody would act so juvenile for attention and just saying, absolutely not. Like if you can't be the adult in the room, I will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

It's like when you go low, we block your shit and then we go high. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

She talks a lot about that.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

What's that? Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

That's what the going high to me is, is helping other black women who she says have have had to face this before. You know, men, men saying things about their appearance and, you know, saying that they're trans or, you know, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

She talks a lot in her most recent book about that quote and how she didn't expect it to become as big as it was, but also about I'm guessing she's been through her own journey of how to respond to what's happening now, because she talks kind of about what you're just describing her do, which is like feel the emotions, decide how you're going to respond skillfully. Because this is something we've talked about so much with certain parts of our society, political parties, like struggling to really match overt aggression with like an appropriately boundaried and assertive, and even maybe a little aggressive response, but not descend into the same kind of violent, unprocessed aggression. And that's a really that's a hard and sophisticated thing to do. And we'll probably talk about it. Uh so interesting to see her doing that like in real time and probably having reflected on okay, we were maybe a little bit too passive or accommodating or agreeable or trying to not be perceived as too aggressive during the time in our administration and now taking a different stance. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah. I think I think when they talk about their time in the White House or or Brock, like his just like meteoric rise to power, there was a lot of Jeremy, you might have more to say about this too, but like kind of like a best boy like type. Like they just do as the first black president, like had to do everything so perfectly. And I mean, they were just baptized by fire over and over and over again. And when I hear her talk now, which is really just through her podcast, it just strikes me that she is just like so confident in this is who I am. Like I have been through it. And like she's no longer performing or really like has to do that, you know, higher level thinking process of metabolizing ink or any. I think she just kind of does it automatically and also is just like just more comfortable and confident in in who they are and and are so practiced in that it's second nature for them.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah. But it they went to what I think, well, I don't know if they intentionally want here, but appeasement, sort of like don't do anything that could make other people upset and turn it back on us, but try to minimize the damage of the aggression of others did seem like a lot of what was happening understandably based on what you're saying, right? Like we have to like be unimpeachable and do nothing that could get a backlash. But that never that never works, right? Like when you're really up against evil or true anger or true unprocessed aggression or bullying, like that I can't think of of any great examples where just appeasing really like works in the long term. And maybe that's what they you wonder what what they think about what has happened in the past 10 years, like since their time in office.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Well, it was my first time seeing because she she mentions in her speech at the beginning, like she's like, Brock, you gotta look at me. And he's like, Nope, I'm looking down. And and you see him tear up as she describes just the vitriol he faced constantly and the hope he continued to espouse and hope for this country, you know, just I think their strongest answer, which they're coming to understand a little more, is their example. You know, it's just to hear these people talk so intelligently about their ideas for the future and their dreams for America, that in itself is an answer, you know, kind of to your point of appeasement. I thought a lot about like thinking of some of these families. I've been watching a show about a sociopath, sociopathic brother within the family. And, you know, how how do family dynamics support this? They don't really know what to do to stop him from, you know, some of the criminal behavior he's involved in. They're enabling him in in a lot of ways. You also think about that, I know it's not the same, but with addiction, that sometimes there are members of the family that are enabling the addiction. And at some point, it seems like people finally get to this place where they realize I just have to set appropriate boundaries with you. And you have to make the decision to get the help and support, you know, that's available to you. I can no longer keep giving you money or keep allowing you to, you know, use the family in this way, break, break through all of our weak boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah. I used the term idiot compassion with someone yesterday because I love it. I don't remember who it is originally. Pema Chourn talks about it really nicely. And she talks about different situations where people use compassion, but it's not actually compassionate. It's sort of like avoidance of having to set firm boundaries and ultimately like channel your own aggression, anger and frustration with a family member who has a substance use disorder, not wanting to create confrontation, not wanting them to suffer more or deal with what that would feel like for you. So you continue to enable when ultimately the really brave, hard, and maybe assertive, like a channeled aggression thing, is to set the boundary, to put up limits, to say, I won't do this anymore. That feels really hard for those of us who don't. I don't know. Those of us who don't want, like, what am I trying to get to? Like conflict, who have been conditioned to think aggression is bad, to top.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Well, who want to find empathy, you know, who feel empathy for the person and don't want them to suffer, but they don't know, you know, it empathy seems to drive us to just want to give, you know, and to to just be there and be supportive. It's interesting to think of empathy as a boundary-setting emotion, because a lot of times I think of anger and aggression in that way, where it is a lot of my patients, we've been talking about, oh, anger's coming up. What's it trying to tell you? And a lot of times it's, oh, a boundary's been crossed here.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Um and I need to take a look at that boundary and determine is this something that I reinforce and say, absolutely not. This is not a crossable boundary, or do I need to shift my boundary? Uh so using anger, and then I, by extension, aggression is these um just the emotions coming up as a guidepost, as a signpost. You know, what what are you telling me?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I can even hear your boundary voice going. Like, I can hear like there's an assertiveness of how you're talking that I'm like, that's how Jeremy sets a boundary. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

No, I think that is a good almost not even just marker of why anger comes up, but it's it's almost just like the definition of anger itself is that yeah, a boundary has been crossed. Like that that will elicit anger almost, you know, one for one ratio. And so I think that's important to recognize. And then also when I talk about boundaries, the other thing that I almost always say is boundaries are there to keep people in relationships. So we might think of it, associate it with anger, like, okay, and then you you want to recognize the anger, use the anger effectively, but you can still empathically set a boundary and and for both people involved, that's important. And that can keep people in the relationship ultimately. And and yeah, I mean, so I I think about it, and you know, and I think this isn't too far away from how we're thinking about what do we deal with the current state of America, but when a child is throwing a tantrum or when a child is transgressing boundaries, they need boundaries, consistent boundaries. They actually, and then that calms them. It actually does help them a lot to have to know where the boundaries are, to have them be consistent.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Interesting that we three, probably not super aggressive or violent psychiatrists, want to boundaries as like the thing. We've used a couple of words, boundaries, anger, but like boundaries is where we're going with thinking about aggression. Like, okay, well, when someone else does something to me that is a violation, I will set a boundary and that will be my way of being aggressive. But like, what there's more to aggression than just like this way of setting a healthy limit. Which is as far as we want to go with being aggressive.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

That feels like containing our aggression in some ways, right? Exactly. That's to set and support a boundary rather than moving past that into violence.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah. So there's another word that came up during researching aggression. So anger, violence, boundaries. I don't know if we've said anything else that are sort of words where we're like having coalesce around the idea of aggression, but other words that when we talk about aggression that we think of or situations.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

I was just thinking about the the framework of, you know, sort of frontal lobe aggression or violence versus like reactionary, you know, aggression or violence, which we're we're kind of saying anger can come up as a boundary transgression, and that's like the reactionary, you know, activated anger versus aggression when it is just more yeah, innate or or yeah, uh sociopathic, you know, limbic amygdala aggression is what I think of there, if we're tying it into the brain.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

And again, we went to the one that's like justified. It's justified to be angry or aggressive if someone has transgressed. We went to the one that's a little bit more like right, right.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Um there was a book, uh The Gift of Violence, that I honestly haven't finished, but I was I was starting to read it and it it was interesting in this realm where it it kind of touched on that you know, how violence really has been a large part of our history as a species, and that, you know, maybe looking at it in these black and white good-bad terms, that's not where it lives that that there's more to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

So that was one of the questions that came up for me was like, how do we think about violence and aggression in our American history, but also in human history? And Kyle, you said it with Limbic with children, like there's something very innate here. I don't know if we if we like segue there.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

That like touches my heart to watch to watch little kids just like with no prefrontal cortex, just sew in their emotions.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Um, I don't know what it is about that, but to just I maybe it's understanding the struggle and being grateful that you're not in that anymore. But there is something that I just it makes me smile to watch, like, you know, my nephews, just when they're in this moment of just such strong emotion, oftentimes anger or sadness, and but that they also just get to express it. Like it's it's socially acceptable for them to just express these emotions.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah. And they're largely not capable of doing huge harm, physical or emotional, with it. So we just it's it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Although some of the things they say at times gesture, I would argue are a bit harmful. Fair, fair.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

But uh I think it is a good place to start to talk about what is aggression or violence for humans. Like what function does it serve aside from this very like we respond to the aggression of others? Yes, that's a self-protective thing, but why do we have to figure out how to handle it as children? Why is it kind of innate? Because everything I read did talk about it being very biological, very innate, not surprising. So, what do we think about that?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I don't know how pro-social it is. I feel like that's where the balance comes in is if we're gonna live in a group in a society, you know, can we tolerate people just murdering each other over disagreements or arguments or, you know, just physically harming each other? Is that a world that we want to live in at this point? Because it seems like it probably was more common in our past, and we have a little insight, even though none of us have lived that way, into what that might have looked like.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Well, I think we are evolving increasingly as social creatures. Like our social genes have led us to, you know, the people who are the most pro-social end up being the most successful in passing on their genes. But I I I mean, that's kind of what I would go. I guess I'm just going like biological slash Freudian, and that like I just think about, you know, how do you how do you spread your your genes? You are animals are, you know, conquerors, you have to kill the other mate, you have to whatever. Like that is one strategy. Um, so there's the aggressive impulse, and then this like you know, it's that plus sex is what Freud talked a lot about, you know. And those are kind of our two most innate drives. But I think, like you're saying, Jeremy, the the social drive, our capacity to do that can TBD overcome, you know, that more um limbic, innate, aggressive drive. But, you know, I think that's that's what we've seen throughout human history is that we're constantly get drawn back into it.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Sakyle, you touched on two things that are pretty common in the like understanding of how why humans have aggression or what it serves, yes, sex and sort of like reproductive advantage and natural selection and um perpetuating your genes. But to both the point both of you are making, uh, what I found that was interesting, and of course, I think makes sense now reading it, is that aggression doesn't always mean violence, doesn't always mean murder, death. You can think about this in animals. I'd have to think of an example, but where there are shows of aggression that are about establishing dominance or hierarchy, but that rarely actually lead to real, real violence or lead to sort of like minor violence. But that does serve an interesting pro-social function of there kind of has to be hierarchy. We kind of have to know who's dominant, who's gonna lead, and who maybe has the best genes or who can be trusted in battle. So it's interesting to think where is that line? And uh if these are shows, and I want to think of an example of what humans do, shows of violence where it's like this kind of channeled, controlled. Like we know we could murder each other, but we're gonna kind of try to figure out like who's more capable of doing that before we get there. And then we're just gonna kind of sit with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Well, that this is also very advertising psychology. Adler was all about power, that it was the power drive, not Freudian sex or aggression. Um, and there's also a lot of more recent research on testosterone in that it's not necessarily about aggression, it's about uh your your place in the social hierarchy.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

And establishing that. I mean, when you were saying like, how do people do that now? Like I think of, you know, I think of straight men, first of all, in their big trucks, lots of tattoos, you know, guns, firearms become a sign. A lot of them are getting into jujitsu, sports, athletes, yeah, yeah. Martial arts, feats of strength. Which in in that book, the I can't remember what was called now, gift of violence and something like that. He talks a lot about channeling this into martial arts, where it's like, you know, actually it wasn't him. It was it was another uh guy that I was listening to about martial arts, but the power of working out that aggression on the mat makes him much less likely to ever really want to get in a fight.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

You know, in in real life. Uh so maybe even having an outlet for that.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

And so many martial arts have sort of an ethic around them or a code, or even have like a spiritual angle to them about like these are the ways we, these are the rules by which we play. This is kind of the the way that we behave as humans. There's like there are like some strict boundaries around how people engage with that because there's this sense of you have power, you you're getting this skill set, but with that comes responsibility and expectation of a certain kind of maturity and using it. I think a lot about like sort of Asian martial arts that can often be combined with spiritual traditions and they're like both practices simultaneously.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Um It makes me like I would be interested to hear what you two think about though, how this is demonstrated between women, because I think it's different than the really clear outward expressions that we see in straight men. And I would also say for gay men, it there is a different hierarchy, and people are signaling in different ways than with straight men, and I and my experience with other women too.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, I can comment on that, but I did want to just interject. It looks like, Jeremy, it's the gift of violence, practical knowledge, surviving and thriving in a dangerous world. Matt Thornton is the author. But yeah, I I think about that, how how women maybe ex express our aggressiveness. I mean, I I kept kind to kind of trying to interject sports. Like that is something we've talked about this a little bit before in our current wherever we are in in time right now, like that we that's available to us. That you know, women's sports are actually more celebrated probably now than they ever have been. So that venue has opened up a lot more to us, which is interesting. But yeah, the movie Mean Girls kind of comes up for me. Um and and that's all about social hierarchies and and sat status and that, you know, the burn book, all those things. And those are those are tropes. And what what is interesting is I like Amy Polar's podcast and all of these other I feel like I have so many examples now. Even female pop stars, like they are kinder to each other. They're not, it's not the mean girl trope that I think it was a lot. And I do wonder if that's because women have reached more status in the world at large, it we're not trying to we're not like, well, I'm the woman in the room, so we kick out all the other women, you know. So I don't know if those thoughts are too convoluted, but those are just some things.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

They're good because testosterone is in a lot of the research, like is associated with aggression. Testosterone in utero are early. So, like research, if you give female creatures testosterone too far into their development, it doesn't really create aggression, but it certainly does if they've been exposed to it earlier in utero. So there really is like a thing here about men versus women feeling different levels of aggression. And I think there's also a thing, Kyle, about status, trauma. Trauma, uh, power that might explain why women in the past were kind of working things out in crueler ways amongst each other. And there's some interesting, maybe I'll say it now, like even among men, having power and opportunity determines how they use their aggressive drive. So violence is more common if you feel like a frustrated man who doesn't have opportunities versus a man who is more well off, higher socioeconomic status, feels like you have opportunity, you can channel those into different kinds of aggression. So interesting, you're saying the same thing for women. Women, when they have been given status and don't have as much testosterone to drive overt aggression, maybe do become more pro-social, more community-oriented. Well, and of course that segues into what we're seeing in America now.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

I mean, exactly. Exactly. Surprise, right? Yeah. What if and and that's unfortunately it it seems like people will see it as a zero-sum game. And that if if one group is is elevating, quote unquote, in in their power or opportunity, then that must mean I am I am uh falling. And and then yeah, they feel under threat. And when humans are under threat, there it is. There's that impulse.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Well, and to yeah, to protect your resources. I mean, I a lot of what we're seeing with if you want to bring into environment, climate change, diminishing resources, people seeing through social media, you know, that the economic disparity that, you know, they may never reach what their parents did versus we have our first trillionaire. It leads people into this space of scarcity. And I think from scarcity, we do see a lot of aggression to try to protect what you have. There's a really interesting conversation with white straight men here that I feel like I kind of have to tiptoe around to be honest. But I there's just been, I I mean, one, I feel like they've been really the brunt of a lot of anger and aggression probably recently. And some of that's probably warranted, to be honest, you know? I mean, uh being being in a space of power and and people wanting to be able to achieve those spaces for themselves, especially if you're coming from a minority. And a lot of these younger men too are like, well, I didn't do anything. I wasn't a part of building. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Sarah, that's the point you made. Yeah. When when we were talking about this in in the first episode, yeah, that like we kind of per are personifying our country to be like, well, you know, didn't we go through this? Didn't we learn this lesson before? But the that was our grandfathers. Like exactly. And the same thing for for straight white men, like they didn't really do anything to to earn a lot of that, right? But they were born into it. And then they're like, well, why, why am I now the target of all this hate? You know, what what did I do? These weren't my ideas.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

So there's a great, this is wonderful, because I don't know where I don't know where I read it before, but this idea that, yeah, the straight white man who is powerful, and it's like, most of them aren't. Most of them are just dealing with the same challenges. Many of them may have some of the same challenges as the groups who are attacking them and feeling like, why am I taking responsibility for the 0.5% of people who are largely straight, white, rich men? But I'm I'm not that. And yet I'm feeling the brunt of the aggression that is directed there because I'm the guy next door. There is a frustration-aggression hypothesis that aggression is often the result of frustration, but because of displacement, because uh, let's see, people experience a drive to be aggressive towards the object of their frustration, but this is often impossible or inappropriate. So the source of their aggression is displaced on something or someone else. So anger about the systems, the hierarchies, past ills that have been done to members of your group historically. Guess what? You can't take it out on those perpetrators directly because they're dead, because they're too powerful. So you take it out on the person who looks like them or the person who maybe has a little bit more privilege than you. And there's this like, we're fighting people who are really much more like us than they are different. Yeah, that's a that's a great, you guys are hitting so many academics.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

And it was Brene Brown, Brene Brown said, like, you know, ignore these men at your own peril. And and I also read a quote that really hit me too, where it was a woman, and she was, it was it was probably on Instagram, and she was describing, she was like, basically, somebody was saying something around, you know, does raising boys make you understand why why they turn out to be these, you know, the idea was like harmful men. And she was like, No, actually, like what I'm rageful about is I see how, whoo, this makes me emotional. I see how sensitive and loving these boys are, and I see how that gets destroyed in them, where they don't get to express these emotions in healthy ways. And they're they're not allowed to feel them. They're the the only emotion that that is typically socially acceptable for them is anger and aggression. And it's like, but you're watching them as little boys. I think of my nephews. Like, that's not all they're experiencing. You know, my my three-year-old nephew cries every single day, and I love the fact that he just is able to express that frustration and sadness, and nobody's telling him to man up or you know, push it away. I feel a lot of empathy for these men because I feel like they are in the most confined structures around their what it means to be a man in America. They don't get to explore a lot of things, and I think it makes a lot of them really angry at the end of their lives when they recognize what a bunch of crap that was that was sold to them. Yeah. You know, that to be a man in America, you gotta like these things and you can only do these things, and you know, you can never express emotion except anger and you can't cry and all of these things that ultimately you get to the end of your life. I'm like, it's like, what was that for? Yeah. You know, like you missed out on being able to explore some of the things that you probably would have really loved and would have brought a lot of meaning to your own life.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah. In anger, that this that our structures have not taught them how to handle anger, right? Like if you had just created pathways of development, a lot of cultures have sort of traditional rites of passage and mentorship for young men because they realize, oh my gosh, at a certain point this testosterone thing is going to kick in and it's gonna be a lot to handle. They don't have that. And so to feel angry about nobody taught me how to harness this, nobody taught me what to do with it, nobody told me it was okay to be like this and to be sad and cry and process it. Nobody taught me how to recover when I do something that is aggressive and maybe inappropriate and get back within bounds. Like I I I feel your emotion, Jeremy, and I felt that for years, even through the Me Too movement as a woman, thinking, my God, though, that we're like so oversimplifying this. Like, how do we have still empathy for for the people we're calling the aggressors and the people who have more privilege than us and more power than us historically? Like they too are suffering. And that doesn't diminish the suffering of other groups.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

But yeah. It's back to the original like empathy with boundaries type of thing. You know, like how how do we find that? I mean, is it a surprise that the first trillionaire in our world is a straight white man?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yeah, who doesn't seem happy.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

True. Probably uh I mean, from all accounts, maybe addicted to ketamine and channeling all of his emotion through a substance right now.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

May probably not the only way he's dealing with it, but I mean, some of his own anger is really coming out on X as well. And yeah, he's he's moved pretty uh uh let's say more extreme. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Well, one of the things that that this conversation is making me think of too is with America being such an individualistic society so much burden is placed upon the individual to set set the boundaries, learn about boundaries, you know, teach yourself psychology and so you can, you know, learn.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Well, we did the whole beginning of this.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Right. Instead of it being taught more in our schools or having parental leave, you know, so that there's not the so Sarah, I finally started listening to the Young this Youngin' Life podcast. Oh my god, where have I been? But the it's so good. I'm gonna try hard not to just replicate it completely, but uh maybe I should. It's a very good format, but but yeah, just just that idea came up when they had an episode on absenteeism or absentee fathers, and with the the idea too that absenteeism can can take many forms, even you can be very like physically present, but on your phone the whole time, right? Yeah. And so just thinking about our structures in America where, yeah, these types of things aren't modeled, not just for young boys where it's very important dealing with, you know, biological differences in the the testosterone. Yeah, but but for everyone. And one thing that they bring up a lot is this balance between the masculine and the feminine with each within each of us and how to reconcile those and channel those and understand those.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Kyle, I'm I'm glad you brought up the masculine feminine, because we've talked a lot about like biology and testosterone in the brain. But the idea that masculine and feminine are not just concepts of science and biology, they are also psychological concepts of sort of us of having uh balanced parts internally, and Jungian psychology talks quite a bit about it. It doesn't mean these are male traits or these are female traits, but we both have these parts of us that represent different things. And the masculine traditionally has that more aggressive drive, creative drive.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

So I think that's important to note that that's and and I think too in in diagnosing what what our serious issues are as a country, is this extremism, including extremes back to this extreme gender roles, you know, we don't embrace these two dialectics, right, within the within us. And I think bringing it back to aggression too, at some point when the system isn't working for us, that doesn't work for me. Is there room for me within this society? At some point, when we keep, you know, seeing these extremes of we have a trillionaire and then we still have poverty or parts of our society without, you know, available drinking water right now. Like, okay, is it time to channel aggression appropriately? You know, and truly, if we're like, you know, that I think that is such an important question. And I I I like hear myself even hesitating and sort of asking that question because yeah, when are we there? Do we we don't want to be a podcast saying we're just starting a revolution, right? But like at some point, I do think that's what our country is wrestling with is like this, this, these extremes are a sign of a broken system. Yeah. And how it's it's not necessarily an individual failing. It's not just straight white men. It is, there are lots of issues, systemic issues in this country that like we need some sort of activating energy to help us if we're gonna find our way out of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

So you said a couple things, which we kind of already alluded to, the idea of masculine energy being creative energy, aggressive being like a drive to do things, to fix things. Yes, that is the positive side of aggression, is like setting boundaries, taking action. And also, revolution is an interesting boundary to action. It's often in response to abuse or transgression or a feeling of, hey, like this isn't fair, this isn't right, we're gonna take action. And often it takes truly violent form. The other thing I was thinking as you were talking is like the the masculine and feminine, the more psychological constructs you said earlier, okay. Women, we've given them more ability to lean into their masculine balance. So they have the, they have femininity just kind of by nature, by raising, but now we give them the chance to work and to be more overtly aggressive. We've not, like you're saying, Jeremy, we've not done the same for men. So we not only have not helped them channel the masculine part that is more biologically driven in them, the real aggression, but we've not allowed them to lean into the psychological feminine and to find an outlet for that. And that's incredibly damaging. So I think that's exactly what we're describing is like, how do we let people be whole people? Women have gotten more opportunity to do that. And straight men really on both sides are stymied. They haven't been taught or given outlets or structures for their masculine aggression. And they certainly have not been taught how to access their feminine. Like, how can you expect people like that to be satisfied, happy, and to not kind of go off the rails without significant amounts of self-driven psychological work? How do we create a nation of Tom Holland's?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Well, you're talking about someone who's very creative and usually people in these creative aspects are are much more open to kind of exploring and living in some of that gray. I mean, the LGBT community, I would say, has been a good example in some ways of starting to challenge some of those roles and to explore living more in that gray. And you look at the huge cultural argument right now over transgender people. You know, it's it's people trying to go back to these really rigid ideas. There's also the whole trade wife, is that what it is, idea on Instagram, going back to these very like specific gender roles and then arguing against trans people who are living and and moving very fluidly through the middle of all of that.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

It's not a surprise that that's become the cultural, you know, the cultural fire point. I don't know what I'm trying to say there. It also makes me wonder like, why do you think people are trying to move back to the extremes right now? Like what is it there? Is there safety? Does it, you know, in just knowing exactly where people are, how they're supposed to act, what they're supposed to like, where they stand. Like when you're meeting a person, you don't need to worry about knowing what their pronouns are. You know, let's be honest, there's some anxiety around that. And even in in some of my trans patients, like I love treating trans people. And sometimes I get anxious about wait, you know, am I using the right pronoun? I don't want to offend you. I want you to know that you're accepted. Umxity that comes in navigating with that individual person.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Some of that I think, because I I thought a lot about the the not trans movement, but there was a period when that was very much in the cultural consciousness. And there was a lot of aggression there. It was a really complicated topic of like cancellation and really judging people who got pronouns wrong or didn't understand. And it's like, I I thought a lot about what is appropriate in terms of aggression and how much is some of this aggression misused, unprocessed trauma. And yet you have a right to be angry and aggressive if you've been treated poorly throughout your life because of your gender status. But I thought a lot about that. Like, it is this counterproductive? Are the people with the loudest voices actually people who are using their aggression in really maladaptive ways that is not furthering their cause or really even what they say it is, sort of that displaced aggression? And that leads to the anxiety, right? Like I feel a similar anxiety. And I'm like, I don't think the average trans person would get super upset if a genuine mistake was made. But we all sort of have this fear. And that anxiety for a lot of people who are just confused and don't understand turns into aggression because they feel like I'm supposed to understand this thing that's brand new to me. If I don't say the right thing, I'm gonna get in trouble. And instead of just acknowledging this is this is like new and scary and confusing to me, it becomes aggression and a backlash, which is really what's happened more recently.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Well, I and I think that's a really good example. What comes to mind for me, probably not shockingly, is how J.K. Rowling got wrapped up in all of that. And it would just become each each camp became extremely defensive/slash aggressive. And there was a really interesting podcast that really examined all of that, the witch trials of J.K. Rowling. Probably the second time I've plugged out on this on her. It's a good one. Yes, but um the other thing that uh comes up for me, Jeremy, when you're talking about this anxiety and why are we going to these extremes, I I sent you guys that quote from that um paper on the hero's journey in therapy, and it made the point that we turn to narrative when there aren't clear answers, when there is ambiguity, uncertainty. So I think like gender roles, these these types of things, these different, maybe more caricatured things that we can go back to, it yeah, it relieves that anxiety. You know, it is a story you can tell yourself, I'm a man, so I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to go to work and whatever. That's my impression of a man, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

And how do we work? The question that comes up is how do we work through that anxiety? And the first part for me is you have to acknowledge it. You have to sit with it, you have to be aware that it's there. And then you work with it and and recognize, okay, I have some anxiety around this. The trans people in my life are more worried about you being worried about using now. You know, that creates anxiety for them. They're like, just talk to me. You know, I know you love me. Um, and I know that, you know, you're trying to figure this out in real time. As I've had, you know, maybe years in this transition thinking through this. Like this may be controversial to say, but some people that do get wrapped up into that camp from a psychological standpoint are people who who are still struggling with understanding their sense of self.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

And those are the people that I have come across and also entreating that were very angry about pronouns. They were, they would, you know, just create a lot of actually aggression around them with that. And oftentimes I will say some of those people detransitioned because they recognized they actually weren't trans. They were struggling and trying to figure out what their identity was. And it makes me wonder like if they had had more opportunity, fluidity to just explore who they are and what their authenticity is, you know, would that have been different for them? Because it almost became a, okay, well, now you fit in these three boxes. Like from a sexuality standpoint, you're either straight, gay, or you're bi. And it's like, well, now we're talking about a spectrum. And once again, gender, like, you know, you're you're either a man or you're a woman. And now we're starting to talk about, well, there may be a spectrum to that where you're just non-conforming. You're just you. And that can be okay too. But we have to face that anxiety around, you know, you may not really know this person or how to speak with them, or you have to put in the effort to really get to know them personally. Yeah. That you don't just get to put them in a box and start interacting with them based on how you know men or women typically interact.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Yeah, Sarah, was there sorry, if I can just ask quick, was there anything in um you were looking at that looked at like developmental stages and and when humans are most aggressive? Because that that does come to mind when there's so much question of identity in adolescence, you know, is that and there's so much anxiety around questions of who am I? Is that more of an aggressive because we're linking anxiety and aggressive?

SPEAKER_01 41:14

That's a good question because I don't, I didn't, I didn't find anything, but immediately I kind of wonder, huh? Like when aggressiveness and defenses or societal structures to manage aggressiveness are are like working simultaneously. So it probably differs by culture to some extent, like biologically, when does your testosterone hit its peak? I don't know, early 20s, I don't know. But the idea that you're not going to necessarily see, even if you're at peak aggressiveness, if you're in a society where that's been really well channeled, you've been really well taught how to manage it, you're in the military. I don't know. That I think that would really be individual dependent and context dependent, but it's a great question. It's a great question. Uh, Jeremy, to your last commentary, I think maybe this is this should be an episode because we went through training like as I I again, I want to call it an era or something. There was a period of however many years when when transgender issues were like a big part of the cultural context and certainly part of our training as psychiatrists. And I think what you're describing is right. I think we all had a bit of fear or confusion about knowing from a psychological standpoint, hey, some people struggling with this are struggling with something other than purely gender identity and may not end up fully transitioning or deciding they are transgender. But we can't really have that exploration, even though we explore almost everything else in our field. And that was really complicated. Like something about, and it I think it was that small number of very vocal people, it shifted the whole way we could discuss gender identity, maybe to the point that we hurt some people, right? We allowed people to sort of walk down that path too quickly because we didn't want to challenge anything. So that may be that that may be its own episode.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

I also want to say, too, just for the the trans people in my life, like I also don't don't want to say that you, if you're experiencing aggression, if you're feeling strongly about pronouns or something like that, that that means you're not trans. Because, you know, there is an element of anger that actually helps. I experienced this when I left the Mormon church. Like it's it's kind of the reproach mom phase where you the anger almost helps you to detach and move away. Uh reproach mop phase is like, you know, toddlers moving away from parents. You're looking back, you're checking to make sure you're okay. It kind of happens again in adolescence. But the anger helps testing your boundaries. Yeah. Those darn boundaries. Oh, bring it back to boundaries, Kyle. Great.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

That's where you are. I have boundaries to keep you in as you're It totally is that.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

But the but the anger, it kind of because there is anxiety around leaving, you know, because it's the unknown. And the anger sometimes is a helpful driver in that way where it pushes you to go, all right, maybe I can't. I I'm angry enough that I'm gonna go face the unknown. And check back a few times and make sure I'm okay. So I it is very new. Normal, you know, and even as a gay man, like I there was a lot of anger that I felt toward all the years I spent trying to be a straight man, you know, and and feeling pushed into that role. And I needed that anger to give me license to explore my own individualism, my own authenticity. It was helpful there.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Yeah. No, I think like like you're saying though, Jeremy, like someone might be experiencing anger for they they might be just figuring out their their gender identity. And then so they're sensitive to boundary transgressions there, or just more identity confusion in general or at large. And so it can kind of still elicit that that anger, even though maybe it maybe it was a different question. You know, maybe it wasn't ultimately about gender that you aren't in the gender that that matches your identity or in the the body that matches your your gender identity. But I was gonna say too, Sarah, when you're bringing up, yes, like I think and I associate that time of kind of like this push to to loosen boundaries around hormonal replacement or or gender-affirming care around COVID. And yeah, we are linking anxiety and aggression so much, it it almost makes me wonder. I think, again, that was such a cultural experience of anxiety too, you know. And maybe I I wonder if there's papers on this one. And, you know, maybe it is like a correlation, not causation thing, but I mean, there was so much heightened anxiety around everything. And that does make me wonder if that was thrown in the mix. It's like this this questioning of I and also we're so much more online. You can be anyone you want to be online, so you're playing with your identity a little bit more, right? And have more rapprochement with that. Nice French accent.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Is that right, Sarah? Yeah, it's because we all practice.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

But uh social. Yeah. Um, you know, so then that makes me I I I I do this is not an area where we disagree. I I do agree, like I think we we kind of do need to find a balance of yes, letting people explore those versus like when are we going towards irreversible change, you know, of someone who was just exploring right.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

You guys are like truly reading my mind, or maybe that's how well you understand the subject matter, because you keep bringing up things that are stuff that I've read. So, COVID, one of the last things I was reading, and this this is a bit of a segue, but was looking into violence and like how violence has declined over time, but the world feels more violent, more aggressive. Big spike in in homicides and violent crime in America during COVID. A lot of reasons, and then came back down pretty quickly. And I was reading about the reasons for that. Yeah, right. And interestingly, they talked they, the, the experts, a lot we don't fully know, but the people who had opinions on okay, why did it drop so quickly? A lot of it was policy-based and putting a lot of money into policing and community stability and kind of just like making an intentional effort, which made me think a lot about government and how important it is that we and how quickly we can affect societal change and how important it is we decide and define our values as a society and then invest in them. So you were spot on. Some obviously a lot of things were going on during COVID, but they manifested incredibly quickly in aggression, right? Like societal violence. And this wasn't just like theft. I was like, okay, theft, economic instability. No, this is like murder very quickly. You also said, I don't, I don't want, I don't want to like go right back to this, but you said something about the hero's journey, and and there was an interesting quote or kind of like connection there. So if we don't get to it before we finish, I'll bring it in at the end. But um, so you are really reading my, you were reading my mind in terms of research I have done.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

I want to go back to the healthy masculinity idea when we were talking about the balance. Also, because this is a huge like it's a big conversation going around now. I I listened to a speaker. I am so bad at remembering who these people are. I apologize.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

It's the um Hawthorne effect or the overt window view.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Have you seen the Wikipedia page for that yet? I don't know what's correct anymore, so I hesitate to even say it. But he it's this conversation happening around like, what are what are healthy masculine drives? How do we foster those? And and they're settling on a lot of things like, you know, around protection, around providing support for the important people in your life. And interestingly, he talked about providing support for the trans people in your life. Like, how do you, how do you show up for them as their kind of a target of the cultural attacks that are happening, you know, oftentimes right now, or the women in your life, or I guess just kind of other minorities. So looking at the balance to me isn't just masculine feminine. It's also a range of healthy masculinity versus, you know, less masculinity that it that is just feels very limbic and raw and doesn't have a lot of the prefrontal cortex kind of working through uh what Kyle had talked about earlier, working through it.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

Mm-hmm. So there, yeah. I'm gonna talk about archetypes, which is back to young. Archetypes are like constructs that represent kind of important themes or um psychological concepts. The king archetype is often like considered the mature masculine, like the epitome of someone who is fully evolved. And they're like these sub-archetypes of less mature ways that masculine energy can play out. And this was unironically on the artofmanliness.com website. That's where this quote came from, but it's you can read about this a lot of places, and it kind of gets to our society. So, unlike the king archetype, which creates and blesses others, the tyrant, so kind of like an unevolved masculine archetype, seeks to destroy and tear down plagued by narcissism. He really does think that he sits at the center of the universe. The tyrant wrong believes that power is finite. He has a scarcity mentality. Someone of you said that earlier.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

It's a scarcity piece, yeah, in bringing violence, which also makes me think of COVID that you were talking about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Exactly. Yep. He doesn't understand toilet paper. Sorry. I did get the toilet paper, though. Sh he doesn't understand the truth that power and influence actually increase the more you share it with others. Thus, the burden of maintaining his fragile illusion of absolute power makes him very insecure. Any threat to his authority and supremacy enrages him and causes him to lash out with abuse physically, emotionally, or mentally. So one of them, there are other ones, but just the epitome of an immature ego, sense of cell, coupled with aggression that is just spread everywhere as opposed to healthy aggression, which is, like you said, protecting others, creative force, using that energy for good for identifying do we need revolution? Do we need social policy? So, yeah, really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

I think it was Scott Galloway, if I remember talking a lot about that. But yeah, it also narcissistic rage is coming up in that as you're describing that response, the tyrant and and feeling. I mean, we talk a lot about narcissism coming from a space of which it's not always, this is not always the root, but oftentimes we think about it, this was a lot of cohort's work on uh inadequacy and that lack of of self-concept, and then you know, creating this whole hyper hyperbolic uh extension of yourself to make up for that inadequacy. And when that gets challenged in any way, because you don't have that strong sense of self at the core, this rage, you know, comes out. And I I mean rage definitely displaced some other people, as you were talking about displacement before, but there's also a lot of internalized rage there that they know that they're they're truly not, you know. This brings me back to Trump and UFC and you know, these these are not people that I look at and go, oh yeah, those are strong men. You know, like it's the it's the leaders that I served under in the military that were good, strong men, that cared for the people in their life, that served this country valiantly, those were the strong men and are, you know, still and such great examples. Uh Obama to me is is one of those examples, you know, just all the vitriol that was coming out at him, and he had that sense of self to be able to contain it and to still work to, you know, bring the Affordable Care Act to support the people that he cared about and watching him support his family now. Like it's it's really moving for me.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

That's the king energy right there. And the military, to our point about like developmental paths, structures, um, rites of passage, is like one of the few examples I can think of on our in our American society where that is a place that men and women can go to channel their aggressive drive and have an ethic put around it and to see an example of of in some cases, mature masculine. And it's sad that that's the only way because that's not right for everyone. That's not the place that everyone needs to learn those lessons, but it is a place.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

This feels like a caricature of masculinity to me that's happening. Like it's like WWF, you know, like it's it's a caricature of fighting and violence and aggression. They're not even actually fighting. Yeah, you kind of get hurt in in some of the things they're doing, especially if you mess up the acting, quote unquote acting, I'm gonna call it.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

Well exactly. Again, they're they're going to this clear narrative because of the anxiety of their loss of stature in, you know, it it is interesting. Scott Galloway actually, you know, when we're trying to be toolkit oriented, I mean, I he is someone that is trying to prescribe certain things to help, you know, men right now who really are losing opportunity. I mean, if you look at college acceptance rates and, you know, other things like that that are overall health decline.

SPEAKER_03 53:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Right, right. Yes, it it seems non-intuitive to us because we grew up thinking white men have all the power, but in reality, like it we think in relative terms. Yeah, that's how we we think as as a species. And they are feeling under threat. They are having this anxiety, so they are going to these ex these caricatures and to uh aggression in general. Yeah. And so how do we how do we teach the king? You know, how do we how do we mentor them to become kings instead of tyrants? I don't know if I want them to be kings, but okay, young.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

What's the hero's journey answer there?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Because I know Okay, I'm gonna circle around that. I think we kind of answered your question that we loved hanging Jeremy, and just why why are people going to these oversimplified, like trad-wives, why are they shutting down? It's like, well, yeah, anxiety, fear, uncertainty. People kind of like go to something simpler and close off as opposed to sitting in the uncertainty. So yeah, I think we kind of answered that circuitously.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

But can I say nothing here too? The the thinking fast and slow concept comes up. What what was his book?

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Uh Kahneman's Kahneman's Yeah. It was thinking fast.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Daniel Kahneman, yeah. Where it's also, and I can't remember which is which, help me remember, but one of them, the I think it's the slow thinking, it takes it takes a lot of uh mental brain effort, energy. Like we're talking biological energy to engage in stopping and really thinking about some of these things in depth. And so when that anxiety is there, first of all, we already know limbic system gets active, prefrontal cortex pretty much goes offline. So your slow thinking pieces are already not working as well. And then you move over into maybe just the fast, quick, you know, everything fits into this box, and we move on. So yeah, I sorry, I just that no, that's a sorry, not sorry. I wanted to bring that in.

unknown 55:42

That's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

You can always bring Kahneman in. There's room for him in every episode.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah, on our show, Daniel Kahneman.

unknown 55:51

He died.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Yeah, I think he didn't he okay, real quick aside, we can cut this. Did I share this with you guys? He he um did whatever kind of euthanasia. Like he did he really Yeah, because he turned 90 and he was like, I am done here. Like, I've done what I wanted to do. I want to go on my own terms.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Didn't he not like only his partner got the Nobel Prize because he had just died? I think he I think he did. I th I think they won.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

I thought he got the the like some Nobel Prize for behavioral economics. No, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Okay, he got it in 2002. 2002. There was someone who Yeah, he won it for behavioral economics or economic sciences. But there was someone who maybe it was more recently, who who like passed away right before and you can't you can't get it if you're deceased. Human posthumously post. Thank you. Okay, the Stanford Prison Experiment. I kind of want to end on this.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

Ooh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Yes. Okay, Kyle, you may be able to give us a good synopsis because you studied psychology, and I think this is probably pretty core. Weirdly enough, like, did we ever even talk about this in residency in depth? I don't think we did. No, we just lived it.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

True.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

It's like right out the gate. It's really interesting. I I I I was thinking that like people don't realize how much psychology we don't necessarily get. Like we cover a lot of stuff in psychiatry residency, but there's a lot of stuff we don't go into. And this is one I was like, yeah, of course I've heard of that and maybe you learned about it in college. But do either of you guys want to want to give a quip synopsis or do you want me to of what what happened? It doesn't have to be perfect. So I'll try. A good enough synopsis. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Was it Stanley?

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Is that a Stanley? Stanford. Oh, it was Stanford. It was at you saying the researcher. Off to a great start. Yeah. I'm wondering this.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

His name is Zimbardo. Okay. Miles, my next guest. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Well, I didn't know Daniel Kahneman was dead, so I I guess we're all learning and growing here together. I did bring him on the podcast by mentioning him, maybe. So anyway, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

Okay. So they he randomly assigned, I forget how old the um subjects were that were a part of this spir experiment. Maybe college age? Okay. I guess that's why I was done at Stanford. But randomly assigned them to either prisoner or or warden, and essentially didn't give them many other directions apart from that, and just observed what happened essentially from there. And it just the the people who were assigned to warden or guard or whatever fell pretty quickly into that role and becoming like just, you know, totally believing in their power and what they could do. They had to stop the experiment, I think, early because it got out of hand how abusive they became towards these, you know, again, completely randomized prisoners who had not actually done anything wrong.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Not that that matters in terms of prison abuse, but no, that's it's like 100% it.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Nice, Kyle.

SPEAKER_01 59:07

Yeah, really good. Uh they were okay, funny, weird, interesting points. They they they were arrested in their homes. They got the local police department to actually go arrest the people the college students who are going to be prisoners. So they really like didn't bit. Like they really went for it. And yeah, terminated after only six days due to the extreme pathological behavior in both groups. So the guards abusing the prisoners, the prisoners becoming, and these are quotes from the website where I was doing research, becoming blindly obedient, allowing themselves to be dehumanized. And interestingly, the Zimbardo, the PI, the principal investigator, was the prison superintendent and probably waited longer than he should have to end the experiment because he had kind of gotten into the role. Um anyway, I went and watched a TED talk that he had done years later, because he actually became really continued his research in this area, maybe because of his experience, became quite invested in understanding evil. Interestingly, he stopped the experiment. A woman who became, who was on the staff who became his wife, was like, You gotta stop this. This isn't good. I came and stood up to him. The maternal role. Yeah. Right. Some and so he couple points. One is he gave this whole TED talk was focused on him talking about evil and saying that heroism is the antidote to evil. So you can just as easily teach people to use their aggression aggressively and violently and cruelly as you can condition them and teach them, hey, like being a hero and using your aggression to stand up for good and to be brave is actually more allowedable. He talked about how doing this in schools with children was like a way to kind of set that framework in their minds. He said, the very same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination in those who become perpetrators of evil can also inspire the heroic imagination in others of us or render most people passive bystanders and guilty of the evil of inaction. So he kind of says there are different ways to go. And he, the evil of inaction, he kind of gave some steps by how the slippery slope to evil that he talked about, which I think is quite apropos. Um mindlessly taking the first small step. So it's not usually like a giant leap into something evil, it's just a little slippery slope, dehumanization of others, de-individuation of self, so anonymity. And I did read about this other places that there are some theories on aggression that if if you can, if you're gonna get away with it, people are more aggressive than if they're actually gonna be identified, kind of speaks to road rage a bit, I think. Diffusion of personal responsibility, blind obedience to authority, which explains a lot about cults and certain kinds of political. Can I interject real quick in there, sorry?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Because I looked up my what I was conflating. So Stanley Milgram did the shock experiment. So speaking of blind, just following instruction of authority, that's what that was about. That that experiment was he basically had this fake, you know, shocking machine, and he was just like a man in a white coat that was just like, okay, shock them now because they got the wrong answer or whatever. Um, and and these these tet you know, subjects would just do the shocks. And even uh even with hearing the screams, would keep pressing the shock button just because this this random person in a white coat was telling them to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:18

Well, even to the point where they would stop screaming at some point as if they may have died.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

But yeah, that was also a little trip into my how my neurons conflated Stanford and Stanley with violence.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

I think Zimbardo shows those. I I can't remember, but I think it was in his TED talk that he shows the videos of that experiment. So you're actually not that these things are connected. Uh what else? Uncritical conformity to group norms and passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference, kind of like he said that third option. You can be the perpetrator, you can be the hero, or you can just kind of be the bystander who lets it go by. So I thought that was interesting, but the most interesting was you brought it up earlier, heroism, which is kind of like king energy. It's just a different way to channel that creative, protective, like there's aggression there, but it's the standing up for good aggression.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:07

Yeah. Yeah. Is it any surprise that, you know, Marvel movies have become just such a cultural phenomenon right now? And and even seeing our young boys, especially, but I also love seeing the young girls doing this, dressing up as these superheroes and starting to get to embody them a little bit. Um, Halloween, those, those types of opportunities.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

Yeah. Well, I think and the other one that keeps coming up too and is getting re-remade as well, is is Harry Potter. And and one of the quotes I love from it is I don't know the exact quote, but Harry is talking with Dumbledore with basically the message that you're never done fighting evil. Like these things do keep coming up, you know, and superheroes have been like, you know, in the hero's journey is is the ultimate trope, it is the ult ultimate monolith, because that is just so such a common human story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

I have such a resistance though to the evil aspect. Like, you know, it's interesting to me that in the research he he went to evil as the way he was describing it, because it is what we're talking about in just these extremes of black and white, good evil terms. And if anything, I think more so recently, like through Disney, we're starting to explore the dynamics of the villain, originally, yeah, quote unquote evil, and starting to come to understand there may have been more to the story here. Like once again, we're coming back to gray.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:35

That is what this TED talk was was the nature of evil. It was him talking about evil and kind of even defining it because, like, does it exist? Is it a real concept? And he defined it as evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm people psychologically, to harm people physically, to destroy people mortally. I don't know if that was supposed to be morally, or ideas, and to commit crimes against humanity. So he had his own definition that we may or may not agree with. And he does talk about the contextual stuff for that. Like that doesn't get to like inherent. Is there such a thing as inherent evil in people, or are there just evil actions? Are there circumstances that create evil? I think a lot of the stuff about aggression talks about context. And that was kind of his points about the slippery slope to evil. It's like so much of it is like the the right amalgamation of circumstances and that anyone is capable of it, which is sort of psychological in mind. We've all got aggression in us. And the question is, like the Harry Potter point, like it's not it's not a war you win at some point. Like you the more you access your own aggression and anger and violence and whatever, the more you realize I've just I will just keep working with this throughout the course of my life and it will look different for every person. And that's true as a society too, right? Like we don't ever get to the point where we've just absolute peace achieved, full evolution. Like we keep fighting the same battles, going through the same lessons.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

There's connections here is also with the Nuremberg trials. Abu Ghraib, similar, I guess, circumstances and arguments coming out of those. I think that's partially why they were looking at some of these experiments. And if it's true, the Nuremberg movie, it was Dr. Douglas Kelly that was the psychiatrist that was evaluating the Nazi leaders. They kind of made it, I don't know that much about his history, but they made it appear in the movie that that was his final argument was this. He was, he almost, it felt like he, I don't want to use the term crazy, but he like went to such an extreme trying to get people to understand that we have that, those innate capabilities within us.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

You know, to act in these ways. That's what he he started to see the humanity in some of these people, which was interesting, and then connecting it to himself. And interestingly, they I think they say that he died by suicide in the same way that um was it Garing the but it eventually became so identified with the fact that like he was like them and we in in some ways, like we all had that ability within us, was it seemed to be kind of one of his final arguments in evaluating those uh leaders.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:11

Yeah, I'm so I'm fact-checking you in real time, Jeremy. But yeah, it does look like he died by suicide in 1958 using cyanide. But like for me, that that's just so sad too, because I I feel I feel a little bit of almost a sense of just like acceptance in that, yeah, we we do have to keep fighting. And like it's it's the same thing I kind of see in my patients when they'll go through a depressive episode, come out of it, you know, and then and then it's just like there's almost like this double depression the next time because they're they're fighting depression again. And and Ina just put it in this, well, we are, you know, locked in this this never-ending cycle, but that is also that is just what this is, too. You know, we'll keep fighting it. I'm really sad.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:06

From so from a Buddhist perspective, it's interesting because you don't fight it. You accept it and you sit with it and you you come to know it very in-depth. And so I it I'm trying to find the the connections there for myself where, you know, I I think there is time for healthy anger and aggression. And and and and what we're talking about is fighting that part of all of us to try to keep it under control that that some of those experiments showed could just from a little nudge push us to keep pressing a button until we thought we were shocking someone to death. Yeah. You know, now not everybody did that in the ext experiment, but I I don't know what the percentages were, but quite a few did, you know. Um, and so where are we fighting against that within ourselves? Does sitting with it and coming to understand it and accept it in some ways, is that a way of fighting it so that you you know it so well that it can't take over and put you in that space where you're you're doing the evil as the definition of intentionally harming others.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

Yeah. Exactly. And that that kind of comes back to depth psychology in a lot of psychological schools where it's like you have to know all the darkness, you have to know all the badness, and you have to know both sides very well. And if you don't, what you don't know, what is unconscious, will drive you and define you, and sometimes with with very little frontal or conscious control and lead you to do evil things. Um, really interesting that Buddhism kind of talks about that. Like if if you are aware enough, can you get very intimate with something such that it's not that the feeling ever goes away? It's not that it may, I mean, maybe for some people they get to the point where they don't feel it. But I don't think that's really the goal is to stop feeling the aggression or the anger or any of the emotions, but it's that are you so intimate with them and so present with them that they're never going to get out of control? You're never going to act on them unthoughtfully, kind of circling back to Michelle Obama, right? The idea that she can feel and have all the reactions, but she can be very intentional about how she chooses to actually act with those.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:09

Yeah. And I guess that I appreciate that kind of exploration, Jeremy, too, or challenge a little bit, because I don't think I was necessarily in Harry Potter, he he is talking about literally fighting evil. But I I agree with our patients. Sometimes I really do am sort trying to help them accept their depression. And so I'm looking for sort of whatever the antonym to giving up is, you know, and persevering. Yeah. And and it is, it can be a sitting with. It can't, I I think I am trying to help reach acceptance. And sometimes, yeah, I think what you guys are saying, like there's so much dialectic in in Buddhism as well. Like I it's not that you're saying we don't have aggression. It's not that you were saying there aren't times to fight, but it's recognizing, like just having some sense of of of control over that and when when it's appropriate. Um and uh yeah, I guess I guess that is what you know what what I sense with a lot of my patients. It's it's like this is here. This this is a part of you know what what you deal with, what we deal with. And so we're gonna deal with it. And I'll be here along with you. But yeah, I feel like oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

Sorry, I keep throwing in randoms. We started so external with this, like, you know, everybody that people are aggressive and you need to set boundaries and appropriate boundaries, and now it's moved completely internal to where we all have this within us. How do we, how does each one of us do the work? Because is that what truly shifts us as a nation when we can finally recognize individually? Yeah, we all have a propensity to protect ourselves in times of scarcity, to attack others, to to cause harm. I mean, that was another common precept of Buddhism, you know, the that life is suffering and and we can create more suffering for ourselves and those around us. But how do we each do the work within ourselves so that collectively as a society we can continue to move forward rather than splitting into these opposite silos and you know, trying to go back to just uh maybe what we perceive as a simpler time or a simpler way of of thinking or dealing with life.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:35

Boundaries have shifted a lot. And I think a lot of us are more comfortable with where certain boundaries are, and then we have a where there's a lot of unrest though and uh disruption with that now. And I think I think we have to figure out where our country's boundaries are now again.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:54

I'm gonna wrap it up, and I think this, I think everything you've said is kind of where I'm heading. Kyle, I think you posted on Memorial Day a quote by Jung, and I think you posted a quote by Victor Frankel.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:05

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:06

So Jung's quote, I think, was kind of saying the we are all the collective, we are all responsible for the things. Um, to the point about Nuremberg, like we are all capable of this, and until we take ownership for we are a little part of what we do collectively, nothing will change. And it could be a toolkit item, what you just said, Jeremy, like each one of us doing our individual work, each one of us living with a little more mindfulness, thoughtfulness, awareness in our daily lives. If everyone were doing that, we'd be in a very different place. If we each just took responsibility for ourselves and our evolution, where could we get societally? So I think those both of those were very apropos. The other quote that it made me think of was a Victor Frankel quote that I think kind of encapsulates a lot of what we were saying here at the end. You probably heard this before. Between stimulants and response, there is a space. And that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And that feels like maybe it's more true for aggression than anything else. That incredible drive that could go many directions. And it is our power if we choose to use that effectively, mindfully, in alignment with our values.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:18

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