Psychobabble 2 March 2025

Caught in a bubble

‘We see the world not the way it is but the way we are’ is a quote I recall first reading as attributable to Dirk Bogarde, writing about seeing the world through the lens of your own perspective; and then, worded slightly differently, to Anaïs Nin. In other words, our own experience and belief systems affect the way we view everything else.

Neither, though, was promoting using this personal perspective as the way to understand and categorise everything and everyone else. Being able to step away from that perspective to better understand and work with others, is the supreme life skill. Therapists must learn to be careful not to let their own inner world influence their understanding of their clients. And Israel writer and thinker, Yuval Harari, argues and forcefully evidences that human achievement and advancement comes through cooperation, set out persuasively through his wonderful book/graphic novel, ‘Sapiens’, and subsequent writing.

That fixed personal perspective, taken to extremes, leads to exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished or missing ability to empathize with other people's feelings, forming a persistent, and inflexible maladaptive pattern of behaviour. Which is the definition of a narcissistic personality disorder.

We saw that at play in the excoriating presentation of Trump and Vance’s attack on Ukraine president Zelensky this week. They were like the playground bullies we see as children. Trump played the meeting like the game show host he once was, in “the Apprentice’. Gleefully firing people like Alan Sugar, except he’s president of the biggest ‘western’ nation. Vance, riding on his coattails, positioning himself already as his boss’ successor, doing his master’s bidding. And the lapdogs in his party cheer them on.

Any notion of a more objective view of right and wrong, is cast aside, as evidenced by the US voting with Russia and China at the UN. Trump acts as if to form his own caliphate, absorbing others – Canada, Greenland, Panama – like, well, Putin. To be ‘with’ him you have to submit. He’s been bullying every other world leader he meets, overtly or through carefully divisive undermining and conditional praise. Like he has always done, he lies as easily as he tells the truth – the Washington Post’s or Kevin Drum’s factchecking makes that so, so clear. All in the service of himself – as I have said before, Trump is most interested in simply winning and being in charge – making America great again, whatever that means, is a means to an end. I have no idea whether Trump himself actually believes what he says- when challenged by a BBC journalist as to whether he still thought Zelensky was a dictator, he suggested he did not say what he actually said. It might be a cognitive problem, but more likely just playing to the masses, picking out the most convenient fable.

And his followers clearly do not care what he says or whether he is truthful. With very few exceptions, his own party and voters applaud him like a Pavlovian dog. More objective and moderate observers have either bowed at his feet, like Zuckerberg or Bezos, at best seeing which way the wind is blowing; or continued to point out the lies and deceit, thankfully, but still without knowing if that will ever lay a glove on him – the arguments they make now did not stop him winning the election.

An ironic side-effect of this is to bring Europe, the UK and Canada closer together. Keir Starmer, thankfully, whilst not daring to say we should reverse the disaster that is Brexit, is embracing a pro- or with-Europe stance, taking a lead role when he can, and standing firmly with Ukraine. A democratic ‘west’ is undoubtedly stronger with the US at its side as it has been since the world wars, but has found itself needing to be able to map out a path of its own. I think America’s isolationist stance, effectively building a wall around the entire country, will in the end be its own inevitable downfall and I hope it eventually sees that.

But I am not confident it will, certainly under its current leadership. The lens it sees itself through just reflects itself back, an anodyne, deliberately limited darkness.

A very sad state of affairs.