Fuckin' People

In which I introduce a new Substack section that is -- watch out -- merciless

As a psychotherapist of many years and, more recently, as a self-described psycho-coach, or someone who coaches teachers from a decidedly psychodynamic perspective, I fancy myself somewhat of an expert on assholes.

Assholes being, by my definition, people who act out in ways that relieve themselves emotionally on others. Like public urination. Assholes refuse to take responsibility for their impact, usually denying it altogether or, even better, blaming the person they acted out on or, even more better, accusing the person of doing what the asshole himself did.

Assholes are, in other words, truly Fuckin’ People. And they’re everywhere.

In this newsletter, the Being Better section of my Substack, I’m going to share thoughts about forging healthy relationships in a fairly civilized manner. In the Fuckin’ People section of my Substack, I’m going to go a little crazy. I’m going to write about certain categories of asshole with gleeful (and hateful) abandon — because some things, like assholes (or, more accurately, assholic behavior), are worth hating.

In keeping with my motto about Fuckin’ People — gotta hate ‘em; gotta love ‘em — I’m going to take some liberties with them: I’m going to make some guesses about what might be going on inside them. I am a psycho-coach, after all. I have found in almost 20 years of working with a variety of clients from all walks of life that making good guesses about assholes’ innards — that is, formulating an Inside Scoop — can lead to at least a feasible narrative, to provisional understanding. Which can lead to compassion (a really powerful place to be). Which can lead to effective plans of action, which can amazingly, miraculously, transform assholes into lovable human beings.

Which can save the world. And MY GOD. Our world needs saving.

Our Psychic Planets

When I deal with Fuckin’ People, which happens every fucking day, I rely on a helpful image of human beings as little planets. Like the earth. With layers of rock under and over boiling, bubbling magma.

We planets are fairly inert most of the time. We orbit about, trying to maintain equilibrium, managing our magma with our surface layer, let’s call it the crust, that makes us appear calm and functional.

But shit will out. Like so many of us, really, all of us, that internal magma still bubbles and burps. It is the ever-present reservoir of threatening emotions that arise moment-to-moment. They are free-flowing. Quiet one minute. Turbulent the next. Very responsive to events in outer space (the space outside the planet, extraterrestrial space). Responsive to internal events, too.

Under and around our magma is hardened rock that holds the planet together. This hardened rock is the sum total of our life-long emotional and relational experiences, the lessons that have stuck with us and have coalesced, like sedimentary layers, or like stalagmites, into a structure — a psychic structure — that determines how each of us perceives, interprets, and behaves in the world. Especially under conditions of stress. I call this structure the Emotional Bedrock.

When human planets collide with other planets or elements in their everyday lives, jarring the Emotional Bedrock, magma responds. It heats up and needs somewhere to go. For many people, their psychic structures can contain and process the magma. For others who cannot contain their negative emotions, it spews out. Public urination. Mixed metaphor (because planets do not urinate).

When magma erupts, we experience tectonic shifts. Cracks in our surfaces out of which our emotions can escape. Through our defenses: Denial. Projection. Regression. Omnipotent control. Intellectualization. And through assholic behavior.

To round out the planet metaphor, the core of the human planet is what my favorite psychoanalytic theorist D.W. Winnicott calls the True Self. Hidden beneath the crust, the magma, and the Emotional Bedrock. All curled up in a ball. Seemingly safe. Precious. Inaccessible to others, sometimes inaccessible to us. Crucial to a personal sense of authenticity, of “being real” (as Winnicott puts it). Counterposed to the False Self, which is a type of planetary crust that is devoted to pleasing others (because our earliest survival depended on it) and therefore keeps us trapped in a chronic sense of inauthenticity, unrealness, and, somewhere, corroding resentment.

Important point: Every single one of us can be an asshole under the proper conditions. Because every single one of us has emotions (even if we are good at not feeling them). And every one of us has a psychic structure that has developed over time (and is still developing) (because we’re not dead yet!) that, just like our biological structures, determines what we’re able to perceive, interpret, and do under dire emotional or relational circumstances (more on that in another post).

Another important point: Our Emotional Bedrock is, of course, a complicated collage of lessons. Ideally, there are positive experiences of care and competence, and there are positive self-beliefs, like “I’m a good athlete” or “I can fix anything.” And, inevitably, there are negative self-beliefs, like “I’m stupid or weak or invisible,” and fearful expectations of the world, like “I will not be loved,” “my needs will not be met,” or “chaos is just around the corner.”

In Fuckin’ People, I am not interested in the positive aspects of human planets. They don’t need to be transformed, do they? No, what I focus on are the negative aspects. They, after all, are what can cause lasting damage. They are what we need to hate wholeheartedly. And they are what we need to engage with and love — that is, correct caringly — so the world can be saved.

In short? Fuckin’ People is for those of us who want to save the world one asshole at a time. Welcome to the revolution.