http://www.drdouglassadownick.com/, http://www.askdrdougphd.com/

Affirmative Therapy, Los Angeles, CA (2025)

10/21/2024

I was living beyond my means in Los Angeles, working as a psychotherapist and professor at Antioch while raising a young person. Writers, as you know, don’t stop writing. However, perhaps some undiagnosed ADHD and other external limitations slowed my ability to package, no less deliver manuscripts tailored to readers' needs. I was stuck in the wrong mindset, believing my next book had to be BIG, approved by a proper agent and publishing house—like my first books, published 30 years ago. Don’t ask how much time I wasted writing book proposals.

Asking the unconscious for a dream is like taking a psychoactive drug while getting a Tarot reading from a witch—if you’re sincere. The “archaic torso of Apollo” told me, in its way, that I must change my life. A few weeks before my 65th birthday, during the April 8 Solar Eclipse, I drove to Palm Springs to visit a friend, but with a larger purpose. I looked at some apartments, feeling uninspired by the small, “nice” but underwhelming spaces. On my way back to LA, I received a call about an opening near the quiet, sacred mountains—two huge patios looking out at pure nature. For a boy from the Bronx, it was like going to the moon. “Go,” said Apollo's voice.

That set off a chain reaction. Among the thousands of pages I’d written was a lovely tale of working with four gay men in group therapy, confronting resistance around talking about s*x—the raw, x-***ed stuff. My clients needed a book about s*x, internalized homophobia, and our connections to the ancients. Mentors like David Groff and Michael Wolfe had set me on this path, and I had started building a large following on Substack. I turned to one of my dearest friends, Felice Picano, for advice about the four gay men. “Write a novel that’s secretly a guide for the perplexed,” he said. “Make the guys come alive, like in your therapy sessions. If you want to introduce the Eros from Plato’s “Symposium,” why not also take place with the four guys in your imagination?” I just finished that 120-manuscript book, which I can’t wait to share with you before the end of the year, just as “Sacred Lips of the Bronx” will be republished.

To jump-start my, I decided to self-publish a few things. I looked at some of the emails I’d written to students and clients over the years—questions about therapy, finding a therapist, dealing with insurance, and how therapy can be q***r, LGBTQ-affirmative, and anti-racist.

I made an E-book from it, titled How and “Why to Find a Therapist: A Guide to Navigating the Complexities of Mental Health Care and Transforming Your Life.” It’s a deal at $5.99! Two young social media whiz kids, Ally Noel, and Maziah Brown, helped me design the book.

It’s terribly practical, but if you buy it—and I hope you do, support your local author-therapist—you’ll find some nuggets about how I view q***r therapy as a form of social activism.

This is a shameless plug, but it’s not just that. As you know, I try to write forward-looking, deeply personal, practical, and radical things--even this simple e-book is anti-authoritarian. I also like the idea that I took back the reins regarding self-publishing. “MindMattersBooks,” baby!

My role models include psychoanalysts like Sandor Ferenczi, who believed that the fight against authoritarianism starts by altering the structures of oppression inside the mind itself.

10/11/2024

Adrienne Rich wrote this poem for Yom Kippur in 1984. It's really long, but relevant and beautiful.

What is a Jew in solitude?
What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid
far from your own or those you have called your own?
What is a woman in solitude: a q***r woman or man?
In the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert
what in this world as it is can solitude mean?

The glassy, concrete octagon suspended from the cliffs
with its electric gate, its perfected privacy
is not what I mean
the pick-up with a gun parked at a turn-out in Utah or the Golan Heights
is not what I mean
the poet’s tower facing the western ocean, acres of forest planted to the east, the woman reading in the cabin, her attack dog suddenly risen
is not what I mean

Three thousand miles from what I once called home
I open a book searching for some lines I remember
about flowers, something to bind me to this coast as lilacs in the dooryard once
bound me back there—yes, lupines on a burnt mountainside,
something that bloomed and faded and was written down
in the poet’s book, forever:
Opening the poet’s book
I find the hatred in the poet’s heart: . . . the hateful-eyed
and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them

Robinson Jeffers, multitude
is the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys
and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines
are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling its scrolls of surf,
and the separate persons, stooped
over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering skies of harvest
who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds have their various dreams
Hands that pick, pack, steam, stitch, strip, stuff, shell, scrape, scour, belong to a brain like no other
Must I argue the love of multitude in the blur or defend
a solitude of barbed-wire and searchlights, the survivalist’s final solution, have I a choice?

To wander far from your own or those you have called your own
to hear strangeness calling you from far away
and walk in that direction, long and far, not calculating risk
to go to meet the Stranger without fear or weapon, protection nowhere on your mind
(the Jew on the icy, rutted road on Christmas Eve prays for another Jew
the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street: Make those be a woman’s footsteps; as if she could believe in a woman’s god)

Find someone like yourself. Find others.
Agree you will never desert each other.
Understand that any rift among you
means power to those who want to do you in.
Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.
But I have a nightmare to tell: I am trying to say
that to be with my people is my dearest wish
but that I also love strangers
that I crave separateness
I hear myself stuttering these words
to my worst friends and my best enemies
who watch for my mistakes in grammar
my mistakes in love.
This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me?
If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud.

To love the Stranger, to love solitude—am I writing merely about privilege
about drifting from the center, drawn to edges,
a privilege we can’t afford in the world that is,
who are hated as being of our kind: fa**ot kicked into the icy river, woman dragged from her stalled car
into the mist-struck mountains, used and hacked to death
young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening walk, his prizes and studies nothing, nothing availing his Blackness
Jew deluded that she’s escaped the tribe, the laws of her exclusion, the men too holy to touch her hand; Jew who has turned her back
on midrash and mitzvah (yet wears the chai on a thong between her breasts) hiking alone
found with a sw****ka carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs (did she die as q***r or as Jew?)

Solitude, O taboo, endangered species
on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend you
In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can’t have:
your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant’s hand outspread
her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true

And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away?
have I traded off something I don’t name?
To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist?
What will I do to defend my want or anyone’s want to search for her spirit-vision
far from the protection of those she has called her own?
Will I find O solitude
your plumes, your breasts, your hair
against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird’s
singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song?
in the old places, anywhere?

What is a Jew in solitude?
What is a woman in solitude, a q***r woman or man?
When the winter flood-tides wrench the tower from the rock, crumble the prophet’s headland, and the farms slide into the sea
when leviathan is endangered and Jonah becomes revenger
when center and edges are crushed together, the extremities crushed together on which the world was founded
when our souls crash together, Arab and Jew, howling our loneliness within the tribes
when the refugee child and the exile’s child re-open the blasted and forbidden city
when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in multitude
in that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will solitude mean?

10/03/2024

Tonight marks the Jewish New Year, Erev Rosh Hashanah, and I’ll probably head to the Progressive Reform Synagogue here in Palm Springs, where I’m living from Wednesday to Sunday to get writing done. I wasn’t raised Reform in the slightest—I like my Hebrew raw, less cooked—but it’s where the g**s are.

Why synagogue during the "Days of Awe," if I’m supposed to be ambivalent about “faith” after the “age of reason” (I guess ambivalence—thank you, Freud—is a kind of Jewish religion of its own, haha). I can’t lie. Some strain of Judaism runs deep in my—collective unconscious, you could say.

As a kid, my mother, you know her, Penny, she really marveled at me as a teenager, laying Tefillin (I was into leather, even back then), and that she couldn’t talk behind my back in Yiddish because I understood at least 50 percent of what she was saying? (Meyn zun, der eltster, er farbrakht tsu fil tseyt mit gevise bkhurim, ikh bin nisht azoy zikher farvas). Penny, without fail, lit candles every Friday night and made chicken matzah soup. We kinda sorta fasted on Yom Kippur, and I went to a Jewish camp, and even attended a few Hasidic Seminary things (all the cute boys dancing together: way fun).

Being Jewish, American, gay, and q***r is, hell, complicated–what it means to be all about “tikkun olam” in light of the wars happening in the Middle East. As you’d imagine, I have a lot of Jewish patients—many are gay, but not all, and many are Israelis, some Ashkenazic, others from Arab countries. Some people are very pro-Israel, to the point where even the critique against the rightwing government seen in the Israeli press would strike some as blasphemous; others disillusioned with what they had learned was “Zionism.” Everyone’s hurting and to varying degrees of vulnerability and defensiveness. I’m so proud that I’ve learned, the hard way, how to avoid agreeing or not agreeing without sounding like a hypocrite. I honestly do believe that the issue of how one feels—about oneself, about relationships—that’s where the real damage has been done by the invalidating repressive societal, generational and familial abuse. And recovering from numbness and spliting off the feelings about oneself–that’s where the greatest peace may come, if it’s to come.

I went to Israel last year to write about the protests against the right-wing takeover of the judiciary with a sense of hope for change—hope that’s since been shattered by the wars that followed.

I also happened to have been there for Yom Kippur, and my heart soared hearing Kol Nidre in an outdoor synagogue, an orthodox one, no less, where a le***an blew the shofar. I thought about how numinous it is to have a community to support that feeling of devotion. This Hebraic community connection around one’s sense of “godness” is very old. And yet, Gay Eros may be older, a lot older, a lot older! But, there have been too many inhibitions on that “intelligence” for a shared community vision to take off. I have the battle scars to show for my efforts haha (not so funny).

At the same time, I was having great difficulty with a staff person back in the States and had to call my clinical supervisor, Dr. George Bermudez, for emergency help when I came home from the shul. Neither he nor I could figure out a solution about “what to do!”. So he said, “Doug, ask your unconscious for a dream. I bet you’ll get some direction.”

Remember the story about Dorothy being taken by a twister and the house crashing into Oz, and even killing a witch? I won’t go into details, but the dream was like that. I woke up in a fright. OMG! Literally! It told me, whoever “it” was, how to proceed. And I proceeded accordingly.

That’s a new idea, even though they had dreams in the Bible. But the technology of how to work with our dreams as if they carried the greatest possible meaning independent of “reason” or “faith” in today’s world—that’s new.

Shanah Tovah. May we all find the courage to keep evolving wherever this next year (or the collective dream) takes us.

09/23/2024

Because one has been the other's ex, that terminology already suggests that the journey in life has had its ups and downs. Ruptures and changes in vision, however painful, would set two lads who had been twins onto their separate but necessary paths. Still, over the years, Tim has become what he always was: a witness. And I wanted to say a few words about the fact that Tim, one of the most important gay performance artists of our time—if not the most psychological and therefore the most important, and without question the hottest—is celebrating his 66th birthday today as Virgo turns its leaf to Libra.

My fateful encounter with this man came at the age of 23! It changed the course of my life and spirited me away from NYC. What might have been my fate as a q***r academic, well–that didn’t happen. Not unlike Dorothy, some terrifying but beneficial twister known as gay romance hurled me into the Oz of Los Angeles (via Whittier, California, from which Tim was proudly born—oy, a Jew in Whittier was something to behold). My recollections of this gay transformative meeting, one that lasted a good twelve years (?) and spanned the worst of the AIDS epidemic, will be told in a memoir called "Education of the Heart," which will come out next year. But a bit of memory calls to me to share today.

I met Tim when I was already in a five-year relationship during the first days of the AIDS crisis. I had, of course, fallen in love with him, but he wouldn't commit to me because I was with another man—a good and kind, but not terribly out, scientist-wunderkind, and I was a budding radical, so no DL for me. Tim proved to be a breath of fresh air. He took my hand in the East Village and proudly planted a kiss on me -- while rebelliously covering the walls of St. Mark's Place with posters promoting gigs at P.S. 122: f**k off, pigs, if you didn't like it.

Oh, did we fight--not over jealousy s**t so much, BUT IDEAS! I kid you not! At the time, I had been infected by a nihilistic brand of postmodernism that washed ashore during my journey from Columbia to my doctoral work at NYU. And well, Tim, being one of the most savvy people in the world, already knew the dictum perfected by psychoanalysis: that you can theorize all you want, but if the words don't connect to the body or the soul, they are just “bulls**t.”

But he was right. As one dear friend died after the other, and my studies insisted that all life was nothing “but the text,” the “discourse,” I realized that Barthes, Kant, and Lacan were only further leading to my already Askkenazic over-intellectualization tendencies. Talk about the death instinct.

One day, having enough, I marched myself into "The New York Native" and demanded that esteemed editor Patricia Merla allow me to write my own column and cover AIDS. Why did Patrick consent? Who can say? I dropped out of my doctoral program, which should have been about English, or textual readings. Still, I became entirely theoretical, though not before doing a terrible disservice to Dorothea in my once-heartfelt but now Foucauldian deconstruction of Middlemarch—all to get my master's degree from the brilliant (and very hot) Perry Meisel.

These were our dark days. We lost John Bernd, Barry Laine, Stephen Corbin, Assoto Saint, Martin Riggs, Michael Callen (whom Tim and I took care of during the last year of his life, as detailed in Martin Duberman's book)—and thousands of others. I had not yet done enough therapy to distinguish my inner trauma and hypochondriasis from the fundamental themes and issues of the time and just was not quite able to function.

My suffering and my concern that there was so much hurt and rage in our movement (and in myself) led me to some hardcore f**king therapy and to some deep but challenging community associations (now that’s a whole other tale). This "next chapter" will also be detailed in my forthcoming writings. Tim would one day forgive me for how I had always been ideological about GAY IDEAS—my way or the highway, even as we worked together to create Highways.

Eventually, I would learn how even an excellent psychological attitude can be cloaked in lies and secrets.

Yet, all the same, I am deeply grateful that my informal marriage of true minds with this man rescued me from NYC, from my over-involvement with my family, from my detachment from my body, and helped me learn about the core themes, core issues, and core values of being gay that set me on a massive journey of healing and a new form of writing I am still working out. Heck, I even became a freaking performance artist! And that physicalization influence, as much as my psychological training, my clients can attest, gets us all faster results by moving s**t around.

Tim has changed many lives, and I would not be here today without him. He is a hero, and I will always delight that he would tolerate waiting for the express bus from Manhattan to the Bronx with my mother, Penny, as she inflicted one Jewish joke on him after another. If we had 30 minutes to wait, she had 30 minutes to entertain. And by the way, his mom, Betty, and my mom, Penny, though hardly cut from the same cloth, grew very close and came to love each other through their love for the way "the gay thing" ended up in their eyes, being a good thing.

09/22/2024

I was obliged to keep from her what I thought of her condition... She was not dead yet. But I was already alone."— Proust

I’ve been reading a bit of Proust every day, and today, this hit me like a ton of bricks. Walking along with his grandmother, he realizes she’s dying, but she’s still here—he’s already feeling the weight of her absence in their empty chit-chat. That feeling when you know someone’s still with you, but you’re already mourning them? That hit home for me.

As I head into fall, Libra season, with an eclipse coming, something about this passage feels like a reflection of where I am—this weird in-between space, balancing what’s slipping away and what’s still in front of me.

Life’s asking me to manage with better grace the messy stuff—loss, change, the things I don’t want to admit are coming, including the terror of good things (keep in mind, I’m Jewish). I have a few books that are coming out, and I feel the need to write a reflection on “Sacred Lips of the Bronx” and also some past s**t with groups; my mother is fading, memory going, Payton is turning 25, and am I a therapist first or an author first — can I do both with an equal heart? And not just the big things, but the small, everyday moments I’ve taken for granted until I realize they’re about to disappear. Is it possible to meditate on a moment that has been all but forgotten, the way one would try to run after a fleeting dream?

With election chaos, GOP controversies that don’t stick, pagers going off, birthdays around the corner, and all the things I can’t control, it’s easy to forget to reflect and widen the aperture. I need to read Peter Beinart’s new book, not out yet, “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.” But Proust always reminds me that I’m never in just once. I’m always holding the past, the present, and a glimpse of what’s next. Life is fragile, but in that fragility, there’s a strange beauty—like, this is the time to pay attention.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts from a guy who spends too much time each morning trying to read and write before life (and fear of the moment) take over as he gets ready for his weekly sojourn from his writing salon in Palm Springs to seeing patients in Los Angeles, Mondays and Tuesdays.

What do you all think? Have you been feeling the pull of fall too?

Mourning or Melancholia?

09/22/2024

"I was obliged to keep from her what I thought of her condition... She was not dead yet. But I was already alone."— Proust.

I’ve been reading a bit of Proust every day, and today, this hit me like a ton of bricks. Walking along with his grandmother, he realizes she’s dying, but she’s still here—he’s already feeling the weight of her absence. That feeling when you know someone’s still with you but already mourning them? That hit home for me.

As we head into fall, Libra season, with an eclipse coming, something about this passage feels like a reflection of where many people I know are—this weird in-between space, balancing what’s slipping away and what’s still in front of us.

Life’s asking me to work with the messy stuff—loss, change, the things I don’t want to admit are coming. I have a few books coming out and online classes on LGBT psychology, and I feel the need to write a reflection on “Sacred Lips of the Bronx,” my mother is fading, Payton is turning 25, and am I a therapist or an author first — can I do both with my heart? And not just the big things, but the small, everyday moments I’ve taken for granted until I realize they’re about to disappear. I wish I could read Peter Beinart's new book ("Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning"). I like my new therapist, but she's pricey. I have some history I need to publish.

With election chaos, GOP controversies that don't seem to stick, pagers going off, birthdays around the corner, and all the things I can’t control, it’s easy to forget to reflect and widen the aperture -- and look around one's surroundings (inner and outer). But Proust reminds me: I’m never really in just one time. I’m always holding the past, the present, and a glimpse of what’s next. Life is fragile, but in that fragility, there’s a strange beauty—like, this is the time to pay attention.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts from a born on Shakespeare Avenue in the Bronx boy who spends his mornings thinking about life, death, and everything in between—as he prepares for his weekly sojourn from his writing apartment in Palm Springs to being a working man seeing patients in Los Angeles on Mondays and Tuesdays.

What do you all think? Have you been feeling the pull of fall, too?

09/16/2024

I was packing for my two-day trip to Los Angeles to see patients when I stumbled upon this mind-blowing YouTube interview—nothing short of revolutionary. The interview featured Dr. Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv, the Psychiatrist expert on violence who compiled Kelly's "owner's manual" on Trump and may have prevented nuclear war—brilliant. Please check this YouTube out on your own!

I went through the transcript and tried simplifying the discussion, but it was hard not to list every QUOTE. This woman knows her s**t! The analysis clarified why no one has been able to expose Trump so effectively until now. With her prosecutor’s instincts, Kamala Harris practically deployed techniques bordering on psychoanalysis. Her ability to handle him was no accident—it’s rooted in her deep understanding of dangerous personalities, the kind I’ve seen firsthand in my professional work with the court system. The problem is that the level of psychopathy Trump exhibits has been grossly mishandled for years. No one knew how to set the necessary boundaries, and it's been left to the criminal justice system to impose limits when this should have been done long ago. Harris’s approach wasn't just thoughtful—it was informed by psychoanalytic training that she must have had either covertly or overtly to become a decent prosecutor.

09/14/2024

Healing the Wounds of History

Recently, a young man in therapy, around 20 years old and coming out not as a “gay historian,” asked me many questions about what it was like to be around in 1989. He had found some articles I wrote for LA Weekly, covering the AIDS crisis. I was deeply moved by his concern—had I dissociated from this dark period in history when we lost so many beautiful young men? I broke down in tears.

Even when I recently returned to a new chapter in therapy, I hadn’t fully reclaimed this history—my history, yes, but also ours.

Part of why these memories resurfaced is that I’ve been invited by Jordan Peimer, Helene Schpak, and Irwin Rappaport to participate in AIDS oral histories. I also had the honor of interviewing our q***r intellectual leader, Sarah Schulman, about her AIDS novels. Revisiting two biographies of Michael Callen—Love Don’t Need a Reason by Matthew J. Jones and Hold Tight Gently by Martin Duberman—that spent time reflecting on my care for Michael during his last year, as he bravely entered therapy and processed his final days, reminded me of the souls we lost but still carry with us in our hearts.

I’ve also been revisiting my novel "Sacred Lips of the Bronx," which Rebel Satori Press is republishing for its 30th anniversary. Writing the Preface, I realized it’s an AIDS novel too—half about a passionate love affair between Bronx teens and the other half about life and love during ACT UP/Los Angeles.

So, I returned to my dusty archives from 30 years ago!
I covered the AIDS beat for 10 years for LA Weekly, writing hundreds of stories about AIDS and ACT UP. I should create an e-book or make these pieces available on my website.

Check this out—it was written in 1989 and details ACT UP’s sophisticated philosophical considerations.

If you’d like the full article, I’ll send it to you. Just email me at [email protected], and I’ll send it to you!

09/14/2024

I am so enamored with my dear colleague Dr. Mimi Hoang's work in our community. She taught for me in the Antioch University Los Angeles LGBT Specialization. She and I are cut from the same cloth; we are all about internal change and challenging psychic heteros*xism while also being community activists. Of course, this is for therapists, but I think we should honor anything Mimi does. Mimi is also a powerful bis*xual activist. I will list the RSVP in the comment area.

09/13/2024

THE DEBATE AND ATTACKS — “ON LINKING!” (My Boy, BION~!)

Where Freud’s work centered on the role of the unconscious and early childhood in shaping adult neuroses, and Klein focused on the internalized good and bad objects (like parental figures) that children navigate, Bion took these concepts further, focusing on how we think and feel in real-time, especially when anxiety or trauma overwhelm us.

Harris’s ability to push Trump on abortion, crowd size, and even trivial comments like "eating cats" wasn’t just about policy. It was about exposing the cracks in his defensive structure—revealing how he struggles to maintain coherence when under emotional and psychological pressure. Trump’s attack on linking—his inability to connect his thoughts rationally and respond to reality—mirrors how cultural figures like Ronstadt and Swift are playing roles in further destabilizing his public image, pushing him deeper into his psychotic defenses.

Trump's defensive reactions during the debate can be interpreted as a **psychotic process**, in which his capacity to think clearly and link his thoughts to reality becomes compromised. When Harris used **healthy aggression** to expose Trump’s inconsistencies, such as his shifting stance on abortion or his reluctance to commit to Ukraine’s victory, she essentially put him under psychological stress. Trump, already navigating a fragile ego structure rooted in narcissism, responded by attacking the links between thought and reality. Instead of addressing the policy criticisms, he became distracted by personal attacks or irrelevant details, such as the size of his rally crowds.

In Bion’s terms, Trump’s *attack on linking”occurred when his ego was unable to process the anxiety stirred by Harris’s pointed critiques. For instance, when Harris pointed out that rally-goers walked out on him, she struck at Trump’s **False Self**—the inflated image he uses to defend against deeper insecurities. Unable to maintain coherence under this attack, Trump shifted the conversation away from policy, attempting to re-establish control over his image rather than engaging with the issues at hand. His defense mechanisms, particularly **denial** and **projection**, further disrupted his ability to link thoughts together in a rational or coherent way.

This **psychotic-like disintegration** is typical when the mind cannot tolerate anxiety or narcissistic injury. Trump’s inability to engage with substance and his repeated derailment of the debate back to self-affirmation reflects a breakdown in **reality-testing**—a hallmark of the **psychotic process**. His mind, unable to tolerate the aggressive reality Harris presented, sought refuge in a **regressive** mode of functioning, where defense mechanisms like denial, avoidance, and projection took precedence over rational thought and coherent debate.

Harris’s ability to trigger this unraveling can be seen as a deliberate or intuitive provocation of Trump’s **psychotic process**. By continually pressing him with substantive critiques (e.g., abortion, Ukraine), Harris exposed the gaps between Trump’s actions and his narrative. Her jabs about his rally crowds abandoning him and his incoherence on key issues acted as emotional provocations, increasing Trump’s anxiety. The more she pressed, the more Trump retreated into **psychotic defenses**, making it impossible for him to maintain a rational link between thought, emotion, and response.

Harris Pressing Trump on Abortion, Crowd Size, and Eating Cats

During the debate, Kamala Harris used what Bion would call healthy aggression to expose Trump’s inconsistencies on key issues like abortion, crowd size, and his bizarre comment about eating cats. Each time Harris pressed him—whether it was about his unclear stance on abortion or his obsession with crowd sizes—she triggered anxiety in Trump. This anxiety prevented him from linking his thoughts together rationally, as he became more focused on deflecting or minimizing the attack on his public persona, his False Self.

For example, when Harris pointed out how his crowds had started to shrink and even walked out on him, she attacked not just his policies but the very image he projected as an influential leader. In Trump’s world, the size of his rallies is not just about numbers; it’s an extension of his identity. Harris’s challenge here wasn’t just political—it was deeply personal, creating a moment of psychotic disintegration where Trump could no longer hold onto his narrative and scrambled to regain control through defensive maneuvers, avoiding the core of her critique.

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