“The spectacle is appalling” – Walt Whitman, American Vistas, 1871

So, we’re doing this again. Again, but worse this year. There might be little point in listing the daily bombardment of very real atrocities our government proudly justifies as part of the fantasied white hyper-masculine America being cosplayed from the top down. An uplifting message keeps slipping past me and I can measure my own lack of optimism by the amount of losing Powerball tickets I’ve used for bookmarks in 2025.

Before Trump ever came to office, Christina Weiland wrote in The Fascist State of Mind and the Manufacturing of Masculinity the fascist mindset is not solely, as it correctly appears on the surface, an immoral grab for power and drive for revenge, but an enactment of masculine anxieties and defenses against the wish for annihilation and a simultaneous return to an ideal womb where the world is all-nurturing to the leader and his followers. These wishes are disavowed and:

“…translated into the active wish for annihilating others and ultimately the self. Within a male fraternity and under a male leader, the newly masculinized mother, the fascist group achieves both the dissolution of the ego and the manufacturing of a new hyper-masculinity born through a worship of purity, homogeneity, violence, and war.”

Some Americans have never been surprised by the murderous projections of those in power, blaming the victims for the violence perpetrated against them. 

The poet Nate Marshall describes this understanding, growing up on the South Side of Chicago:

this is where i came from. whitefolk

violence isn’t hypothetical to me. it’s not historical

or systemic. it’s elementary school

like Pokémon or sleepovers.

My granddad can’t remember where

he grew up. i can. my nephew doesn’t

know his address yet. he’ll remember it soon.

In this country of purposely polarized world views, the work we do as psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, educators, and activists is meant to go deeper than that op-ed surface of moralizing and normalizing. Psychoanalysis began as a radical practice challenging societal norms and narratives with concerns not just about the individual, but about the society forming and informing the individual subject. 

In his paper, “Spiritual Misery and the Absence of Experience,” Carlos Padrón references this linking in his call for psychoanalysis to become a part of the public discourse. For Padrón, the psychoanalytic encounter, like the poem excerpted above, dives into the singular experience which intersects with history and social structures: 

“It is a setting that allows access, from within the structure of individual suffering, to the open totality or unbounded whole of a world in crisis; in this sense, symptoms, for example, may serve as entry points to the understanding of systems of power.”

Some Zen monks, from what I’m told, are instructed to leave the monastery and take their practice into the world where aggravations and obstacles are greater than that of birds chirping during meditation. Remaining isolated from the world can make things easier, but the practice isn’t whole until it becomes a part of daily life. We need theory as a place to hang our thinking, but our practice is how we enter the world of the patient and the community. 

Over the past few years CCP has expanded our frame a bit: partnering with ISPS-US for a monthly consultation group focusing on psychosis; beginning our Community Psychoanalytic Track Pilot which brings psychoanalytic training to community clinics via our Psychoanalytic Candidate Program; and our Racial Equity Peer Groups (sign up now) continues to build on last year’s readings of the Holmes Commission Report. 

Over the next twelve months we do expect more good news at CCP. And, even so, we’re left with the question of what to do with the spectacle of the coming year. 

In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee advises, “Never take your eyes off your opponent, even when you bow.” 

Maybe all we can do right now is bow to the coming year, not out of deference or acquiescence but with a readiness to fiercely engage with the world.

Thanks. Happy New Year.

Zak Mucha, LCSW
Board President
Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis