For a culture struggling with extreme political polarization, moving toward a depressive position would mean fostering a collective capacity to see political opponents as complex, nuanced individuals rather than entirely negative or hostile figures.

To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for... See more

I am talking about holding on to one’s moral and ethical principles while replacing the rhetoric of right versus wrong or good versus evil with an approach known as relational ethics. Theorists like the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and the psychologist Carol Gilligan have described relational ethics as situating the self... See more