The Psychology of Human Aggression | J. D. Haltigan | EP 464

53m read

·Nov 7, 2024

Why do we see a generation growing up in the way they are with sort of an undeniable, um, I guess, less of an ability to regulate their emotions than previous generations? How much of it is due to their inborn temperament? How much of it is due to being differences in how they were reared? But also, how much of it is due to differences in the larger cultural milieu and how that's influencing, um, their decisions, perhaps consciously, to regulate or not regulate their emotions?

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Hello everybody, I'm speaking today with Dr. JD Haltigan. Dr. Haltigan is a developmental psychologist, uh, with a real interest in psychopathology, the study of mental illness and the manner in which it develops in relationship to such things as early childhood experience. And so, he's also quite a pronounced and courageous voice on social media, which is really where I first came across him.

There are a lot of crazy things going on in the psychological community at the moment, and so, uh, Haltigan is one of the few voices in the psychological community that are properly expressing dismay at the state of the culture and of the profession. And so, I've been following him, watching what he's doing, appreciating it, and learning more about his story.

You know, he's a pretty good researcher, certainly good enough so that he should have at minimum a decent academic job, and maybe good enough so that he should have an excellent one. But instead, he's working at a deli because he decided he'd rather have his conscience than his position, and, uh, that's, you know, impressive.

So, I thought I'd reach out to him and have a chat, and I know my wife has done the same on her podcast platform; that's Tammy Peterson. So, join us.

Hello, Dr. Haltigan. Thanks for joining me today. Very pleasure to meet you, Jordan, here on, uh, our call, and it was a very pleasure to see you here in Pittsburgh, and great to meet you as well here.

Let's start by talking about who you are and what you do. Just what, what we walk you—why don't you walk everybody through your, well, let's, let's go into your graduate education? We'll start there and walk people through so they get a sense of what you do but also what position you're in at the moment and why.

Sure. So, my, my academic trajectory was, um, my graduate academic trajectory started really after I did some, uh, residential treatment work in upstate New York, here in the States. And then I did my PhD in developmental psych at the University of Miami in Florida, um, and I was really interested—interested in that time in attachment theory.

And, uh, the adviser I worked with there was doing some early-stage autism work, so I kind of looked at attachment in the context of early risk for autism. And then subsequent to Miami, I did a couple of postdocs, one of which at the University of Illinois was with an advisor who was fairly prominent in the attachment literature.

Um, and I trained on things like, uh, you know, measures that are kind of, um, conventional for the attachment developmental tradition, like the adult attachment interview and the strange situation. I can discuss those later, but I did that, and then I kind of kept doing postdocs and trying to find the tenure track position in academia and psychology, and it was just so difficult.

Um, I ended up going to the University of Ottawa to do another postdoc, and that's when kind of things sort of, uh, transitioned. I was there for two years; taught some courses, and at the end of the day, was recruited down to, uh, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

And, uh, that's where I got my appointment at UFT in Psychiatry and was there from about 2016 to 2023. And that appointment ended, and that was kind of right around the time 2016–2023 when things were getting a little woke in the academy, and you know, I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with some of the research and how it was being conducted and what we were able to say about mental health and early development.

And came back to Pittsburgh, which is where I'm here today, and really trying to stay involved in academia in any way that I can and get through this period of, uh, what I consider to be, um, woke insanity for lack of a better term, and, uh, working some odd, you know, odd-end jobs, blue-collar jobs at a local deli to kind of make it while continuing to write about some of this stuff and to use my platform to speak about some of these issues like the gender stuff and other things that I've researched in my career.

Okay, good. Well, that's great grist for the mills. So why don't we start by having you explain to everybody well two things? Why don't you tell them what developmental psychology is broadly speaking, who the masters are in the field and what attracted you to it, and then zoom in a little bit more particularly on attachment theory?

Sure. So, developmental psychology is more or less a study of development across the life span from, from the cradle to the grave, which was one of the, uh, earlier terms that John Bowlby, the, the sort of originator of attachment theory, came up with. So across birth to, to death, and we look at how, uh, individuals develop, how they develop their cognitive skills, how they develop their emotional capacities, um, in particular, you know, the early stages of life and infancy, how the, uh, relationships with parents impact that.

The development of language, the development of, um, you know, a theory of mind, for example, and other, other things. Um, and some of the earlier, um, stuff that happens in adolescence, the crisis of identity, uh, is another big one. And then in aging, which is not really my focus, I was always early infancy to, um, middle childhood.

But in aging, you study the similar things: the decline of mental faculties, um, uh, emotional capacities in old age and, and so forth. I guess some of the big names that listeners might be aware of in terms of developmental psychology would be Piaget, maybe Bowlby a little bit less so, but if they're, if they're interested in, in developmental psych, Bowlby would be a name that would come up. Certainly, some of the old-school theorists, um, played a role in developmental psych as well.

I mean the tradition of Freud and so forth, um, definitely played a role in some of that, but I would say, Piaget is another one, the Russian psychologist who studied, um, language acquisition and how that impacted, uh, emotional development and cognitive mastery of the environment and the child's ability to, to learn. So those would be some of the, the people that I would associate, or would think that some people might recognize as developmental psychologists.

Yeah, so Freud, I mean Freud at least attempted, uh, taxonomy and a classification of developmental stages and, uh, you know, I think he actually made some pretty good contributions to our understanding of parental relationships in so far as they impact psychopathology. I mean, my sense, especially in modern times—I’d like your take on this—is that Freud's specification of the Oedipus complex was a major step forward in identification of, well, much of the pathology that characterizes the modern world.

I mean, it's a variant of really what Freud was pointing to in a rather oblique way because he tended to sexualize everything. Freud was very convinced that the fundamental motivating factor in human beings could be construed in a relatively unitary manner and that sex occupied that place, although he also was concerned with the impulse towards death. But Freud certainly pointed out that the instinct that mothers have to love and care for their infants was also something that, if it went wrong, could pose a remarkably pervasive danger to those same infants.

And the psychoanalysts, for example, posited that the good mother necessarily fails; and so, and that stemmed from the Freudian tradition—the idea that the mother was in this uncomfortable position of having to make a transition from the indefinite amount of care that has to be poured into a newborn who's completely helpless to the facilitation of the relative autonomy that a toddler requires.

And then obviously older children and adolescence, and Freud pointed out—highlighted, let's say—the fact that a mother who extended her concern for the infant past its due date could then pose a major threat to the developing psyche, and I think he got that right.

And then of course Jung and his followers followed that up, especially Erich Neumann, with their descriptions of the symbolism and mythology associated with the devouring mother. And I can't help but see in the pathologization of the current administrative environment, let's say particularly in universities and also in the K-through-12 system, all the hallmarks of a maternal instinct gone absolutely stark raving mad.

So that everything becomes an infant, and if it isn't an infant, then it's likely a predator. And that's a bad situation to be in if you're either the infant and/or the predator and you actually happen to be neither. So, um, any comments about that?

Like part of the reason I wanted to talk to you I think is because I've been following you on Twitter for a long time, and you're one of the very few psychologists—yeah they could probably be listed on one hand—who's willing to make a case for the developmental psychopathology that's associated with the current culture war.

And so I'm kind of wondering how you can that, and then we'll get back to some of these more fundamental developmental theorists.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Freud and how he kind of, you know, some of his contributions. Because I see Freud's work as mostly a cultural psychologist.

Um, I think Freud, like you said, he sexualized everything. People have dismissed him out of hand because that—and kind of, in some ways, rightfully so if you're a psychological scientist—but from a cultural perspective when you're looking at what's happening now in our culture, he was really indeed onto something.

And you mentioned the good enough, and that's kind of where I departed and where attachment theory departs a little bit from Freud, the object relations school, like, uh, Winnicott—Donald Woods Winnicott, who was the famous British psychoanalyst—and then Bowlby following from him, they kind of broke away from Freud.

In fact, Bowlby was excluded from, uh, the British Psychoanalytic Society because he focused on the environment—what was actually happening in the world and to the infant, rather than in some fantasy world.

And really, Winnicott's notion of the good enough mother was that she would fail, or the good enough caregiver would fail; in other words, they wouldn't suffocate, um, the infant or try to be too perfect.

And so that's kind of a critical concept that is really happening in, as I see it, in the world today—the sort of overprotectiveness or suffocation of, um, children's ability. Because children have to, you know, grow up and develop and master—cognitively master—the environment, and so if you constantly shield them from any challenges or impingements, as Winnicott might say, on the environment, um, you're necessarily going to restrict their ability to adapt to that.

Well, we should point out, too, what that failure of adaptation means is that, so, a child who's intimidated by a novel situation will turn—a young child will turn to their caregiver, their mother or father or substitute, to regulate their anxiety when a challenge confronts them, that their emotions indicate might be too large to master.

And so what the good enough parent does is replace that need for dependency on an external source with competence and skill on behalf of the child.

Now the problem with that, and I think Freud and certainly the Jungians as well got this right, is that for a mother whose status and sense of moral superiority depends on that relationship with her child—maybe her emotional dependency is there too—the fact of that child's dawning competence actually poses a threat to her psychological integrity.

And that I think becomes particularly relevant when we're discussing, let's say, cluster B psych mothers with cluster B psychopathology who are very, very immature and narcissistic themselves, like toddlers, let's say, and who are unable, in consequence, to attend to the child without putting their own emotional needs first and foremost—the need for status, the need for love, the need for security, the need for belonging—all those sorts of things that shouldn't be there twisting and dementing the child's pathway forward.

And so that also, I guess, gives a route into discussing developmental psychopathology in the relationship. I've read, for example, that up to 50% of mothers whose children progress with trans surgery, for example, have some variant of the cluster B personality disorders.

Yes, and I think, um, cluster B personality disorders in the attachment literature would track what we call, um, preoccupation with the attachment relationship. In other words, there's sort of some inability of, in this case, uh, you know, typically the mother, to extract herself from, uh, whatever she was dealing with in her own, you know, early childhood or around those sorts of relationships with her own parental figures.

And this preoccupation is a constant, uh, focus or hyperfocus, a hyper-affective focus, on aspects of the relationship. And so what happens is, is that they regulate—the parent regulates their own sense of, uh, satisfaction or affirmation through their child.

And so it's kind of exactly what you're suggesting, is that the child is basically placed in the position—a reverse position of providing the sort of emotional satisfaction for the parent that the parent would otherwise sort of seek to establish in the child a sense of competence, a sense of direction in the world.

And so it's kind of an inverted, um, what we call role-reverse relationship, and that's very toxic for, for a child who has to, in other words, to adapt to the environment, develop his own sense of mastery and competence. But when it's inverted like that, um, the caregiver—in most cases, the mother—will place that burden on the child.

And so that's kind of where you see that inversion. Of course, that leads to all sorts of psychopathology in the child. It certainly influences it in terms of a weak identity structure, an inability to regulate their own emotions, and the child's constant focus on pleasing the caregiver or the mother at the risk of, if they don't, they're going to lose that source of caregiving that protects them and is their source of parental love and authority.

Right. Well, and they face the additional problem, those children, that the parent, let's say most often in this case the mother—cluster B fathers tend to be absent—so cluster B mothers tend to be present.

And so we should outline for our viewers and listeners what cluster B consists of. So that's a, that's a grouping of statistically and symptomatically related pathologies of personality that include histrionic—

And that’s kind of the modern variant of the Freudian hysteric who's very dramatic and overemotional—narcissistic; and so narcissistic people with narcissistic personality disorder are always attempting to garner unearned social status and attention—psychopathic, which is callous and unfeeling, uh, very, very self-centered, very present-focused—and antisocial, and that's more associated with criminality per se.

That particular variant is more common among men, especially in its more violent forms. As I said, those sort of fathers tend to be absent. So now part of the problem, if you're a child and you have a mother with cluster B psychopathology, is that not only are you called upon to attend to her unmet emotional needs constantly, but there is actually no way of meeting those needs.

I mean, treating cluster B people is notoriously difficult and stressful for even a very practiced therapist who's only around some of the time. For a child, it's, um, filling a pit that is so deep that a lifetime of work would not be sufficient to, you know, fill it to the brim.

So let's, why don't you tell us a little bit about how let's tie that into attachment theory and how that develops? We can focus a bit on the multigenerational transmission of familial emotional pathology.

Well, yeah, I think it's important to consider that, uh, multigenerational transmission from both the sort of biological and the social perspectives. And that means that there will be some inherent dispositions on the part of, um, caregivers to be, you know, we all have our own baseline levels of emotional regulation.

But the actual social relationship of early childhood is critical to sort of fine-tune or to calibrate the ability to emotionally regulate. Um, so we have, we all have a baseline of the ability to regulate our emotions and so forth, but it's really that early caregiving relationship that kind of fine-tunes or calibrates it.

And if that fails, um, what you end up having is a complete failure and inability to regulate emotions, and that's kind of what we see, um, in some of the cluster B histrionic, um, um, preoccupied discourse or personality disorders.

And so when that continues generationally, it basically perpetuates itself and propagates itself from parent to child and child to, to the next generation.

So, um, I think it's important for listeners to understand that if, if there's a failure to regulate or to sort of scaffold the infant and child in developing their own regulations, that's going to persist until there is some corrective course, or it won't—there won't be any corrective course.

And I think that's kind of what we're seeing now is that a lot of these failures have sort of aggregated in the culture, and you're seeing that play out at sort of a more macrosocial level.

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So let's—I'm going to walk you through a very brief description of what, let's call it a summary of proper infant development, and then I'll let you comment on that and flesh it out or offer criticisms if you will.

So you could imagine this neurologically and practically. So an infant comes into the world with, uh, a few primary emotions which develop across time, a few primary motivations, and a few, um, wired up motor skills for action and perception.

So a child, very early—a very young child, an infant—can focus his eyes or her eyes on the face of the mother at about the distance from breast to mother's face—the sucking reflex. It's not precisely reflex because it's more sophisticated than that; the child's mouth and tongue are quite developed when the child is born.

You can imagine an animal like a, um, a deer or a moose—something like that—very soon after they're born, they can stand up and walk or even run. Human infants can't, but we do come equipped into the world with some hard wiring, and our lips and our tongues work pretty well, and so we can latch onto a nipple, say.

And, and, uh, it's partly also why very young children put things in their mouth, because the motor and sensory apparatus of the tongue and lips are there. The child sort of develops from that outward; it develops from the center outward. Um, the basic emotional structure is positive and negative emotion, but it works on a very, very short-term basis.

And it's very focused on the immediate needs of the child, and so, and those emotions are very intense and all-consuming and they can—the negative emotions can include pain. It's there at the beginning, anger—that's there very early, fear—that develops about when the child starts to become to be able to move—and on the positive emotional side, well, interest, uh, excitement, enthusiasm—certainly the capacity for love—those are all there.

Um, what the parent and the social environment is trying to do with that panoply of motivations and emotions is to further the skill development but also help the child learn to integrate its emotions in a playful manner with the family and then a broader social community.

And to facilitate that movement from egocentricity to thoroughly engaged social play, and rough-and-tumble play helps with that, and so does the more subtle forms of play that a mother might engage in.

And hopefully that gets to the point where by the age of about three, a child that would otherwise be egocentric and hyper-emotional is now able to take the dance of another person and start to develop the ability to play and to engage in turn-taking reciprocal friendships.

And then those friendships scaffold further development from the age of four onward. And the best evidence that I had come across—and I haven't reviewed this literature for a long time—was that there was something like a critical stage of development for play between the ages of two and four, such that if a more aggressive and emotional child wasn't socialized into proper play behavior by the age of four, it was very difficult for them to establish friendships and they tended to fall further and further behind and to be isolated and alienated and sometimes criminal for the rest of their lives.

So anyways, that's my memory of the developmental literature in a nutshell. And so elaborate on that, criticize that, tell me what you think about that as a model.

I think as a model that's kind of a broad generalized overview that's pretty on point. I would say our, our sort of understanding of critical points of time is still in a, is fluid; we're still looking at that in the literature. But I'm glad you brought up sort of the the basic instincts and D because I was just discussing this, um, the other day on another show that the best sort of analogy or best sort of, um, understanding to give your listeners would be there's a paradigm in infant research called the face-to-face still face paradigm.

And basically what that is is it illustrates everything you just said with remarkable clarity. Basically, the paradigm is this: It's a well-known paradigm in developmental tradition. Usually, an infant and a mother is brought into the lab, or in some cases, his father too—I don't want to emphasize the mother, but in most cases that is true—and you place the infant in a car seat in front of the mother or the caregiver, and you have them looking at each other.

They're separated by maybe a little bit of space. And the paradigm is this; you have three minutes of free play where the mother usually engages facially and communicatively with the infant. Then you have a two-minute period where the mother sits back, kind of like I'm doing now, and maintains a completely still face.

And then you have a follow-up three-minute period where they resume interaction. One of the best replicated effects in all of infant literature is during that still face, when the parent cuts off that social communication—those facial gestures, the infant's negative affect just rockets up.

And I've seen this in a lab myself—crying, squirming in the car seat, and so forth. And typically we call that the still face effect. And then in the reunion, once there's a reproach mall and the mother engages, typically— or the caregiver engages back with this emotional communication gestures—

Um, like you said, sort of social play, the infant is still highly negative in affective, but there's sort of a—a dead of that sort of towards a more positive affective tone. Typically, by the end of that three minutes, there's some sort of reintegration.

And that little encapsulated 8-minute sequence right there illustrates in sort of a tight way what's happening all across infancy and childhood. And so what we can see from that procedure is that if there's an inability of sort of the reunion effect, if there's still consistent negativity, you kind of get a window into how that socialization process sees maybe going, um, and so during the reunion.

What we typically see is that the caregiver will work to re-engage, you know, to lessen the negative affect in the infant. And so, um, that's kind of the basic sort of, uh, analogy to use. Even in later development is the—what the idea is that the parent is scaffolding in many ways that regulation of emotion, and as the child ages, that includes things like, um, letting the child explore the environment.

What if the child is out and playing, you know, on the street has a fall, um, they're injured? How does that process of seeking comfort work out? And how does the parent regulate sort of the need for autonomy from, uh, a need for, uh, closeness and some sort of protection as the child grows?

Right. Well, we should point out too that this is a very tricky business in the real world for parents to negotiate; not least because children vary widely in their intrinsic levels of negative emotion, and so there are children who are by temperament much more likely to become upset but also once upset are much more difficult to soothe.

And so how in the lab do you separate out—or can you at all—the competence of the parent in reestablishing that relationship and the intrinsic sensitivity or trait neuroticism of the child who’s involved?

Well, that's kind of what gets down to the heart of the methodology about some of this work that's been so degraded with the current insanity that we're living through in the academy is that we have these gold standard measures that measure infant temperament, which is essentially personality and infant.

And we have measures that we have, you know, coded observational protocols to look at, uh, how sensitive for example the parent is being towards the child in a free play setting or the still face—how much do they look, how much do they engage—and you can code all of that.

And then you can look at that in a multivariable, uh, analytic framework. Um, so that's one way to do that. But, uh, what you point out with sort of the basic instinctual drives, um, as well as the sort of social influence is crucial because now there's sort of a hyperfocus on the only reason that, uh, for example, an infant or a child could become, uh, screwed up in a way or maladjusted is from social influences.

There's never a proper accounting of the—that temperament does play. Some children are much more difficult to soothe, and that's why Winnicott and others beyond him emphasize that the parent's role is not to be perfect; they got to do the best they can to to manage those different levels of baseline negative affectivity and other sort of intrinsic characteristics of their child.

But there's become a constant hyperfocus in today's culture about this idea of perfection and the perfect child or the perfect environment. And I think that has led to a lot of the sort of the notion of the suffocation or the devouring mother that is actually, you know, antithetical to healthy development.

You might say as a rule of thumb that the combined influence of the mother and father should be about as positive and about as negative as the typical potentially social interaction that a child's likely to have in the world.

Right. So you can think of parents as caregivers, but as the child matures, the parents should also become proxies for the actual social world that the child's most likely to encounter.

So one of the reasons that disciplinary strategies are necessary with regards to the fostering of infant and toddler development is that parents obviously have to prepare their children to behave in the real world.

And that means that the child has to learn to integrate their emotions into a framework of behavior and attention that other people find attractive and inviting. And that the—see, when I worked in the developmental field, which was back in the mostly in the '90s, mid-'90s to say mid-2000s, the first decade of the 2000s, I was struck and hurt in some ways by the fact that the destiny of children who aren't well socialized between that age of two and four is pretty damn dismal.

And it really struck home for me the necessity of parents to do everything they could to encourage another instinct in their children, which is that instinct towards mastery and integration. You know, we talked about the instinctual basis of negative emotion and positive emotion, but there's also an instinct towards integration, which is probably associated with the transfer of behavioral control from the more primordial and immediate emotional systems to the more distal and social systems that are mediated by the cortex, which takes a lot more socialization, so to speak, to program.

And so the reason that parents need to regulate the emotions of their children is first of all so their children won't be suffering as a consequence of the domination of their negative emotion, but also so that other people can appreciate or even stand having their children around, so they'll play with them and educate them.

And so if you're at the beck and call of your infant constantly, and you're doing that in part because you can't tolerate any distress on the part of the infant, or you're covertly rewarding the infant's infantile behavior so that he or she won't leave, then you're absolutely devastating their—you're destroying the possibility that they're going to be able to have friends and thrive in the world.

And so why do you think—do you think there's any evidence that that developmental process has been interfered with at a societal level now?

Well, that's right what you said is right; completely a fair description of sort of this process of impulse control development and so forth.

And I think, you know, there's a lot of work that has been done regarding sort of broad-based trends and sort of helicopter parenting, um, or, you know, parental, uh, over-involvement. And I think that's exactly what's happening, at least at some sort of generalized level in the larger culture.

If there's an inability for the child to engage the environment because they're constantly dependent on the parent for whatever reason—either to fulfill the parent's needs of their own emotional satisfaction or to fulfill the child's need, who's never told, you know, you need to explore the environment—what you see is an inability to regulate the, you know, the impulses.

And that ends up in, uh, you know, down the road, a complete failure. And that's kind of what you see in the phenotype of some of this cluster B stuff we're seeing play out on the tent cities and these campus protests, for example, even in 2020 with a lot of the rioting.

Um, it's just sort of this completely emotionally disregulated, um, behavior, and that's downstream from the millennial generation being raised in sort of this different way than was, you know, 30, 40 years ago, where the child went out, they explored, they, you know, a lot of sort of commentators have noted, you know, you went and played it on the street till it got dark, and you came home.

That isn't happening anymore. And so what is the sort of effect, or can we sort of quantify in some way what that's doing? I think there's definitely evidence for this playing out.

There are definitely, you know, evidence for an influence of some of this overprotection, um, but in terms of—and this is one of the things that the ideologues in the academy will do—they want you to sort of mechanistically find grain measure this and make the case for it in sort of a mechanistic way.

And that's sort of the challenge that someone like me is faced with. We can see with our own eyes these trends playing out, but then how do we frame it in an academic methodological way to make the case?

And I think we—we are at that point, but there has to be room in the academy to investigate these questions; they can't be censored; they can't be, um, you know, allowed to be not asked. And so, you know, grant money needs to be funded for those types of things, but I definitely think there's evidence for these types of large trends that we're seeing.

I mean, we see in them—we see them with our own eyes, and sort of it's undeniable in the sense that you can look at something that's happening earlier, and, you know, you can see something that's happening now, and you can make the link.

But the challenge is really formalizing that in some sort of methodology.

Right, yeah. Well, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have been struggling with that and, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let me offer some, yeah, sociological explanations for this disregulation, because I’m always inclined to—well, you have to give the devil his due, and as you said, if you're going to consider multiple variables, you consider sociological and economic variables along with psychological variables.

So tell me what you think about these contributors. So, well, now we have older parents, often old enough so that under normal human conditions they would have been grandparents. And so older parents are more conservative, and they also tend to be richer, and they have far fewer children, so they have all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Plus, they’re more conservative, and they can also provide for their children in a way that makes, say, no to their wants dependent on the decision of the parent rather than the restrictions of their economic circumstances.

So those are three big changes, right? So now let's say the typical mother is 30, let's say, and and because she's 30, she's probably likely to be in more positive economic circumstances and therefore able to respond to the child's demands with the provision of material wealth.

Then we also have the fact that there are far fewer children in each family, and so that means each child doesn't have to contend in what's likely a beneficial way, at least under some circumstances, with a multiplicity of siblings with whom they have to share the attention and resources and learn how to get along, right, in that intense cooperative and competitive environment that characterizes a sibling relationship.

And then we also have the additional problem of single parents or parents with multiple relationships who've had disrupted familial relationships themselves.

Then we have the problem as well that there just aren't as many children out on the street. There aren't mothers watching them all the time like there were when there were neighborhoods full of children.

And so—and then—so that's in some sense independent of the psychological variables that we've been describing. And so what does the current literature in relationship to developmental psychopathology have to say about those longer-term sociological transformations?

Well, I think that's an excellent question and isn't really being asked in the developmental psychology literature, at least to the extent that I've seen it recently, with the developmental psychology literature tending to be heavily focused on sort of a mechanistic investigation of things in infancy or childhood, with less of a focus on those broad-based trends that you just mentioned.

And I think that's one area that needs to be improved in the literature. Um, obviously, single parenting has been studied, um, but the role of what you're noting—these more broad-based secular trends, for example, of older parenting, uh, fewer children—to my knowledge, at least, at least in terms of the literature scope that I have, uh, looked at that recently, those types of questions aren't being asked, because in part, I think the answer is not what the ideologues in the academy want to hear—that there is sort of evidence for some of the things that they don't want said.

So, you know, the role of younger parents and single parenting and older parents has to be all looked at with sort of an equal poise that is not really happening right now in developmental psych, and that's one of the limitations of developmental psych, because it's so fine-grained and focused on some of these, uh, more, um, fine-tuned interactions like I mentioned to you with the face-to-face still face, and they miss the forest by focusing exclusively on the trees.

And so I think we need to get back to some of these bigger questions, um, that are—that are asking why do we see a generation growing up in the way they are with sort of an undeniable, um, I guess, less of an ability to regulate their emotions than previous generations? How much of that is due to actual, um—three things really—how much of it is due to their inborn temperament? How much of it is due to being differences in how they were reared? But also, how much of it is due to differences in the larger cultural milieu and how that's influencing, um, their decisions perhaps consciously to regulate or not regulate their emotions?

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Okay. So, so we could add some additional variables there that need to be considered. So, Haidt has been making a strong case for the danger of, let's—yeah, um, well, yeah, but we could expand that a bit because it's—it's—I've talked to some of the leaders, let's say, of the social media networks about Haidt's concerns, and you know, they made some very interesting points.

It's social media to some degree and the intense competitiveness, abstraction, and backbiting that characterize those realms. But the thing is, it isn't obvious at all that children and adolescents are spending the bulk of their time on social media per se. It depends on how you define it.

So, they're also texting instead of interacting face to face, for example, and then they're also exposing themselves to other content online like pornography. But then there's something more fundamental, I think, that's often missed, which is that—see, when we had little kids back in the '90s, my wife and I were the youngest parents we knew with the oldest kids, even though we weren't that young. We didn't start having kids till we were in our late 20s.

Now, one of the things that would happen was that we would take our kids over to other houses that had children, and when we got there, the parents would put on a television show for the kids to watch, which I was never happy with because what should have happened was the kids were thrown into the basement, so to speak, and they— with nothing to do— so that they had to play.

And so they could watch TV, and of course they were quiet if they were doing that, but they weren't inventing their own dramas. They weren't interacting face to face in a manner that made them come up with the creative conceptualizations that characterized dramatic play, like playing house for example, that lay the bloody groundwork for future adult relationships.

Now, and that was TV that had nothing on screens because everyone was concerned about the detrimental effect of TV back then. But my God, now, you know, screens are absolutely everywhere.

So the screens have content, but they also interfere with child’s play. And so I'd like your opinion about that, and also one other thing that I've been thinking about—let me—tell me what you think about this.

You know, I watch all these strange identity issues that are emerging in adolescence and even on university campuses in early adulthood, this preoccupation with sexual identity, with gender identity, and the—and also the variant forms of even more imaginative play that are associated with that, like the furry culture for example, and the anime culture.

And what I see there is delayed dramatic play, right? So I'm wondering if what's happening to some of these kids is that they get away from this oppressive family environment where they're never allowed any freedom, they burst out at say the age of 17 or 18, and then they have to phonetically engage in a dramatic search for identity because they didn't do it when they were like three, which is when it really needs to happen.

We radically underestimate the significance of dramatic play. Then we have dramatic play on the part of rebellious adolescents, constantly, you know, as they protest in the streets.

That's right, 100%. You know, I've spoken with, uh, uh, Jonathan Haidt and others, and, and I've really been kind of, uh, engaged in the discourse about the role of social media, you know, and how that plays into the development of emotional regulation.

You're right; how do we define that? But I think your point about, you know, it's basically more broadly than just whether they're on TikTok or whether they're on Facebook or whether they're, you know, on Snapchat. It's looking at a screen rather than at another face.

And you see that wherever you go. I mean, even when I do work on a supermarket deli now on a part-time basis, customers will come in, they'll be looking at their phone or I'll be trying to look at my phone, and it's—it's a completely different world and landscape that we're now in that has sort of, um, taken away the normal face-to-face communicative, um, rough and tumble play where you're actually physically looking at somebody rather than at a screen, or your attention is not constantly looking at a screen.

So it's much more broader, and, and I think the other point, too, you said, well it's not just social media—you're right, it's social media combined with, um, a—increasing secularism that has basically—we've lost all sense of moral constraint.

So when there’s no sort of—when there’s sort of a—a weakening of all, you know, traditional classical religions and there’s no orienting structure, you get thrown into the social media world where you can basically create anything that gives rise to what we see as this complete, uh, inability to form, you know, an identity in early childhood.

Now they're on the screens where there's just basically a consumer market for identities, whether that's identities as furries, whether it's an identity as, you know, gender identity, or even like you say, um, I mean it’s a complete roleplaying world now that's happening on social media.

And one of the individuals who's done a lot of great work on this is Katherine D, who is Default Friend on Twitter; she's looked at some of this. And I think we're missing to a certain extent in all the discourse around the role of social media on mental health, you know, and the ability to establish strong identity is the fact that we're now moving into a different era where we're actually living online rather than in the world.

And that's why I've been constantly, um, stressing the need for athletic-based, um, programs or environmental programs where children are in nature to get away from this sort of movement to a world that's completely imaginary online because that leads to all sorts of, uh, limitless ability to establish identities that, while they may exist in this creative realm, when you get back into the real world, they're useless, they're dysfunctional really.

And that sort of what we see.

Well, they're— they're also not subject, as far as I can tell, they're also not subject to the constraints that are characteristic of the real world, like one of the things I've been very concerned about, I'd like your thoughts about that, is I think it was, um—what's the boxer's name? Mike Tyson, who so famously said that the problem with the virtual world is that it's made all of you all too comfortable with never getting punched when you deserve it.

Now that's a bad paraphrase, but he did actually say that, and I think there's something about that that's actually very interesting and very correct. You know, one of the—I don’t know how many comments I've looked at online, but it's tens of thousands, you know, and I've started to develop something like a troll taxonomy.

And you know there is a culture online they call "lulls" culture, and that's laugh out loud, or I did it for the lulls, and it's basically a culture of sadists and psychopaths. And this is actually quite well documented in the relevant research literature because there has been ongoing research into the personality structure of provocative trolls and their dark Tread types.

They fit into the cluster B psychopathology; they are, um, narcissistic, so they want unearned attention. They're machiavellian, so they use their language as a tool to manipulate rather than to communicate. They're psychopathic, which means they're predatory parasites, and that wasn't good enough as it turned out because that was the dark triad; they had to add sadistic to that.

And that's where the lulls element really comes into play because the 's' takes positive delight in the suffering of others, and that's really the nature of lulls culture, and it can thrive online because, well, people say things online all the time that would get them an immediate slap in the real world, like a requir—a morally required immediate slap.

And so they say things that—now this—the reason that concerns me, see, my sense is that we know the base rate of psychopathy across cultures is about 4%, which isn't that high, but we also know that there were historical epochs in which the cluster B personality types probably got the upper hand.

And I would suspect that happened in the French Revolution, I think it probably happened in the Russian Revolution; it probably happened during the rise of the Nazis in National Socialist Germany. You don't need that many people to be disinhibited in their psychopathy before your culture might be in grave danger, and that's particularly true if they can organize, which they can really do online.

And so I'm very concerned that the incentive structure online facilitates dark tetrad behavior.

Now, there's more evidence too, right? Because here's another problem—25% or thereabouts of online content is pornographic, so basically criminal, right? It's basically prostitution facilitated by electronic pimps, so that's not good, and then a tremendous amount of online activity is outright criminal, right?

I mean older people are just being scammed on a like an unbelievably constant basis, and so it might be that 50% of online activity is in the psychopathic antisocial and cluster B realm. It's very, very difficult to regulate.

And my suspicions are that that's spilling over in a really counterproductive manner into the actual flesh-and-blood world. And so, you know, I'm curious about your thoughts about that because one of the things that's odd about you on Twitter—in a good way—is that you are constantly drawing people's attention to the relationship between cluster B psychopathology and online and political behavior.

And so, um, what do you think about that as a hypothesis with regard to the pathological incentive structure of the virtual world? Right? Maybe it's a non-playable degenerating game—like it could be.

Well, I think in a lot of ways that's exactly why—and I know you're familiar with the paper that I wrote on this—is that social media is an incubator of all this cluster B type of stuff because on social media, um, you have this indirect communicative language-based amplification of all these traits, whereas male aggression in the real world, it doesn't scale.

You have an encounter; there's something said; somebody gets, you know, punched in the face, and that's it. What you have is on social media indirect aggression, and you have all these traits and antagonism and histrionic, you know, behavior that just basically gets amplified and emotionally resonates and resonates and resonates, and balloons out.

And it builds and builds and builds, and you know, one of the best examples of that is what we saw with Hamas. I mean, they filmed all their atrocities as they were going into—to Israel, and that was one of the most, um, you know, interesting—in a morbid way—kind of aspects of that incursion was it was just film. They were basically, in fact, doing it for the lulls regardless of whether you think on how much atrocities or what was the exact specific atrocities that were committed, they were filming them on GoPro for exactly that reason and to amplify that.

And so, you know, that is one way for a perfect example of how this is all spiraled out of control. And I will say for myself, you know, um, others have written about the cluster B stuff in terms of political ideology and how that's played out before.

You know the famous, uh, Lob Lki is one of them and others. So, but I just see it so clearly because when you look at the traits and you look at what's happening online, it's a perfect incubator for all these just to continue to amplify and amplify and amplify without any, um, mechanism that limits it, and it just spills out.

And then what happens is you have an event like October 7th, or you have an event like what you're seeing on these campus tent cities; all of that's mediated and amplified online, and then it gets played out with all this petulant and romer room behavior on campuses.

Yeah, okay. So let's dig into that two ways. So the first thing I'd like to point out—and you can comment on this if you would—is that, you know, you mentioned that male aggression doesn't scale well, and it doesn't work that well in the real world.

And that's definitely the case. I mean one of the things that my daughter was often perplexed about when she was growing up in her household with her brother is the difference in response pattern to aggression between boys and between girls.

So, um, my son and his teenage friends would not that infrequently have an altercation, you know; sometimes it might even come to brief blows, but—and that would end it. And that would often not only not stop a friendship but strengthen it, partly because they knew where they stood with each other.

Now this didn't happen that often, but the threat of it happening was always there. Now with the girls, by contrast, they could backbite and gossip and screech and moan and kill each other virtually online, and there was no limit to it.

And there was very—it was very difficult to limit at all. It's definitely the case that female style antisocial behavior is unbelievably difficult to regulate.

Now having said that, I'm not blaming the females for online pathological behavior, although there's certainly the female equivalent of that in places like TikTok, um, but what I do see happening is that the histrionic, narcissistic, and borderline—the men who have those traits can get away with that kind of female-type antisocial behavior online—that gossiping and backbiting and reputation savaging and you know outright malignant deception—with absolutely no consequences, or even worse, with a certain level of perverse reward.

Because attention is brought to it and maybe even amplified by the social media companies, so that's not good, to say the least.

Now let's add one more thing to that that people need to understand. So, you know, the conflict between Hamas, let's say, and the—and the People of Israel and the rest of the bloody world for that matter can be construed as a political or as a religious or economic battle.

But you put your finger on something that's absolutely vital. So the cluster B types, the psychopaths and the narcissists and the Machiavellians, they're unbelievably good at using proclamations of victimization to justify their aggression and also to camouflage what they're doing with a moral story.

And so, like when I think of violent religious fundamentalists, I don't actually generally think of the religion itself as a motivation, even though it can be. I think of the psychopathic, power-striving, narcissistic Machiavellian adopting the cloak of the religious.

That's what the Pharisees do in the gospels, by the way, and they're Christ's biggest enemy. They adopt the camouflage of moral virtue, religious, economic, or social, and then they pretend to be the good guys, while in fact, they're ravening—what did Christ call them? Ravening graves that would devour even the ancestors that they claimed to worship.

And so I think that as a culture, we're radically underestimating the perverse consequences of the intermingling of the cluster B psychopathologies with the hypothetically religious, political, and economic.

Right? We're making them primary when in fact the pathology, the cluster B pathology, is probably the primary problem.

So maybe when you see people involved in sectarian violence, the first thing you should ask yourself is, well, is that sectarian violence, or is that just an excuse for the canny narcissists to get the upper hand?

So what do you think about that?

I think that's exactly right, and I see the world from that— from that lens of looking at psychopathology as opposed to the background religion itself. You know, clearly there's definitely historical religious, uh, you know, conflicts that that motivate some of this.

But I see it much more from the perspective of how does this culture give rise to these macrosocial what I consider contagions of these cluster B traits. And you mentioned lying and, um, you know, moral virtue, and I think one of the things—and I just made this point a couple of days ago with regards to what's happening here in the States and sort of the lies that the mainstream media have told about Joe Biden—is that there’s lying that most corrupt politicians will do; many people lie, there’s white lies and so forth, and then there’s lying but moralizing that lie.

And moralizing that lie, in my view, is much more worse and psychopathic than just some lie that you beat some kid on the street the other day and it never happened.

And you see that's the strategy that they use. Um, they, they lie, but they moralize that they're the oppressed, they're the victim, so that gives them the currency to then create and engage in all sorts of atrocities or behaviors that somehow are socially acceptable.

Um, and you know you mentioned, too, the, the sort of male instantiation of these cluster B traits, and that's something I saw during COVID online too. A lot of the, the female scholars that I was, uh, you know, collaborating with at one point or that kind of grew to knew who were doing COVID work or pushing for the elimination of mask mandates or saying that lockdowns were harmful, they were getting attacked by these male narcissistic, you know, what I would consider trolls on Twitter who had credential degrees but they were constantly bullying these female, um, nurses or doctors and so forth in the most trollish way.

And so, that sort of manifestation was something that was very glaring that would have never played out in the real world. It was only made possible by the sort of milieu of the social environment of the internet and social media, and it was something that really bothered me.

And so there's this idea that you moralize that, you know, a few people might be harmed by lockdowns, but the majority of the population, uh, won't be, uh—and it's the majority of the population that were in fact harmed. The less your business spends on operations on multiple systems and on delivering your product or service, the more money you keep.

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Mhm. Yeah, so hey. So when you watched the Hamas atrocities and you said that what you saw first and foremost was the pathology, okay?

So I want to delve into that a little bit because one of the things that's really struck me about the peculiar times that we're in is the dissociation of atrocity from guilt. So one of the things that you had to give the Nazis credit for, so to speak, is that they were guilty about their crimes, and they tried to hide them.

And one of the things that I see at the moment that's so unbelievably pathological that I can hardly get my head around it is that the butchery on the trans side, for example, is trumpeted as a moral virtue, right?

There's no attempt to hide what's going on; in fact, it's brought forward as something that's positive. Now that's associated in a way with what you saw with regard to the Hamas massacres is that this is actually being reveled in.

Again, we're going to talk about this independent of the hypothetical reasons for the cause. I mean, people, you just think about it, man. The sadistic types want to claim victimization because they're also predatory parasites.

And if you're a victim, then other people have to cow out to you and take care of you. And we know that half of criminal lifestyle is a parasitical lifestyle, right? There’s the rule breaking and the actual crime, but the other part of it is living off the work of other people in an insanely unconscientious manner and coming up with a story to justify it.

You know, that the successful are just thieves themselves, for example. Or that nobody really works to get what they deserve; there's no really such thing as merit, there's only power.

And so since everyone's a thief, there's no reason not to get in there and get some of your own, you know? And so you watched the tapes with the eye of a psychopathologist.

And so what do you think you saw?

Well, I saw the valorization of sadistic behavior. Not just sexually sadistic behavior, but the killing and um, mass slaughter of people. It was sort of meant—it was meant to be propagated on the screen for that exact reason, um, to be seen as something to be glamorized.

And I think in part they sort of wanted to valorize it as somehow, um, in a way it was allowable for some sort of oppression that they had experienced at the hands of, you know, Israeli occupation or the situation in Gaza.

But you can also see that, like you say, in the trans movement online TikTok. Um, there’s a glamorization about this stuff that is that is sort of so widely discrepant from what is actually happening in the actual perpetration of, in the case of the trans stuff, the mangling and the confusion of children.

Um, and you know, other negative effects that this leads to, that it's almost something that they're trying to create an environment where it's seen as heroic to engage in these behaviors when in fact it's just the opposite.

And, and that's made possible by the social media landscape where you can click like and you can get all the retweets and shares or create these echo chambers.

But the—it's a parasitic lifestyle, which is exactly what, uh, Hare Kleckley, which who who really was sort of behind the—the original construct of psychopathy—that's exactly what he identified: this parasitic lifestyle, and they moralize that type of behavior as virtuous.

It's like virtuous victimhood, and it—it—it’s very toxic. Virtuous victimhood, valorizing sadism. You mentioned lying, there's—there's lying, and then there's lying that—that is—there's moralization of the lie. And I see the latter, moralization of the lie, as much, much worse.

And we see that just recently, I'm sure you're aware, if we had a debate here in the States and sort of the lies that the mainstream media has told about Joe Biden is that there’s lying that most corrupt politicians will do, uh, many people lie, there’s white lies and so forth.

And then there’s lying but moralizing that lie, in my view, is much more worse and psychopathic than just some lie that you beat some kid on the street the other day, and it never happened.

And you see that’s the strategy that they use. They lie, but they moralize that they’re the oppressed, they’re the victim, so that gives them the currency to then create and engage in all sorts of atrocities or behaviors that somehow are socially acceptable.

Um, and you know, you mentioned too the, the sort of male instantiation of these cluster B traits, and that's something I saw during COVID online too. A lot of the, the female scholars that I was, uh, you know, collaborating with at one point or that kind of grew to knew—who were doing COVID work or pushing for the elimination of mask mandates or saying that lockdowns were harmful—they were getting attacked by these male narcissistic, you know, what I would consider trolls on Twitter who had credentialed degrees but they were constantly bullying these female, um, nurses or doctors and so forth in the most trollish way.

And so that sort of manifestation was something that was very glaring that would have never played out in the real world. It was only made possible by the sort of milieu of the social environment of the internet and social media, and it was something that really bothered me.

And so there’s this idea that you moralize that, you know, a few people might be harmed by lockdowns, but the majority of the population, uh, won't be, uh—and it’s the majority of the population that were in fact harmed.

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Mhm. Yeah, so hey. So when you watched the Hamas atrocities and you said that what you saw first and foremost was the pathology, okay?

So I want to delve into that a little bit because one of the things that's really struck me about the peculiar times that we're in is the dissociation of atrocity from guilt.

So one of the things that you had to give the Nazis credit for, so to speak, is that they were guilty about their crimes, and they tried to hide them.

And if you're a victim, then other people have to cow out to you and take care of you. And we know that half of criminal lifestyle is a parasitic lifestyle, right? There’s the rule breaking and the actual crime, but the other part of it is living off the work of other people in an insanely unconscientious manner and coming up with a story to justify it.

You know, that the successful are just thieves themselves, for example, or that nobody really works to get what they deserve; there's no really such thing as merit, there's only power.

And so since everyone's a thief, there's no reason not to get in there and get some of your own, you know? And so you watched the tapes with the eye of a psychopathologist.

And so what do you think you saw?

Well, I saw the valorization of sadistic behavior. Not just sexually sadistic behavior, but the killing and mass slaughter of people. It was sort of meant—it was meant to be propagated on the screen for that exact reason, um, to be seen as something to be glamorized.

And I think in part, they sort of wanted to valorize it as somehow, um, in a way it was allowable for some sort of oppression that they had experienced at the hands of, you know, Israeli occupation or the situation in Gaza.

But you can also see that, like you say, in the trans movement—online TikTok. Um, there’s a glamorization about this stuff that is that is sort of so widely discrepant from what is actually happening in the actual perpetration of, in the case of the trans stuff, the mangling and confusion of children.

And that's made possible by the social media landscape where you can click like, and you can get all the retweets and shares or create these echo chambers.

But the—it's a parasitic lifestyle, which is exactly what, uh, Hare Kleckley, which was sort of behind the—the original construct of psychopathy—that's exactly what he identified.

This parasitic lifestyle, and they moralize that type of behavior as virtuous—it's like virtuous victimhood—and it—it’s very toxic, virtuous victimhood, valorizing sadism.

You mentioned lying; there's—there's lying, and then there's lying that—that is—there's moralization of the lie. And I see the latter, moralization of the lie, as much, much worse.

And we see that just recently, I'm sure you're aware if we had a debate here in the states and sort of—the lies that the mainstream media told about Joe Biden—is that there’s lying that most corrupt politicians will do.

Um, many people lie; there’s white lies and so forth, and then there's lying but moralizing that lie, and in my view, it’s much more worse and psychopathic than just some lie that you beat some kid on the street the other day and it never happened.

And you see that's the strategy that they use. They lie but they moralize that they're the oppressed, they're the victim, so that gives them the currency to then create and engage in all sorts of atrocities or behaviors that somehow are socially acceptable.

Um, and you know you mentioned too the—the sort of male instantiation of these cluster B traits, and that’s something I saw during COVID online too.

A lot of the female scholars that I was, uh, you know, collaborating with at one point or that kind of grew to knew who were doing COVID work or pushing for the elimination of mask mandates or saying that lockdowns were harmful, they were getting attacked by these male narcissistic, you know, what I would consider trolls on Twitter who had credential degrees but they were constantly bullying these female nurses or doctors and so forth in the most trollish way.

And so that sort of manifestation was something that was glaring, that would have never played out in the real world. It was only made possible by the milieu of the social environment of the internet and social media and it was something that really bothered me.

And so there’s this idea that you moralize that, you know, a few people might be harmed by lockdowns but the majority of the population, uh, won't be, uh—and it’s the majority of the population that were harmed.

The less your business spends on operations on multiple systems and on delivering your product or service, the more money you keep.

But with higher expenses on materials, employees, distribution, and borrowing, everything costs more. To reduce costs and headaches, smart businesses are graduating to NetSuite by Oracle.

NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform and one source of truth.

Over 37,000 companies have already made the move; why haven't you? By popular demand, NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks.

Head to netsuite.com/sjbp—that’s netsuite.com/sjbp—netsuite.com/jbp.

Mhm. Yeah, so hey. So when you watched the Hamas atrocities and you said that what you saw first and foremost was the pathology, okay?

So, I want to delve into that a little bit because one of the things that's really struck me about the peculiar times that we're in is the dissociation of atrocity from guilt.

So one of the things that you had to give the Nazis credit for, so to speak, is that they were guilty about their crimes, and they tried to hide them.

Again, we're going to talk about this independent of the hypothetical reasons for the cause. I mean people, you just think about it, man. The sadistic types want to claim victimization because they're also predatory parasites.

You know, that the successful are just thieves themselves, for example, or that nobody really works to get what they deserve; there's no really such thing as merit, there's only power.

And so since everyone's a thief, there's no reason not to get in there and get some of your own, you know? And so you watched the tapes with the eye of a psychopathologist.

And so what do you think you saw?

And that's made possible by the social media landscape where you can click like, and you can get all the retweets and shares or create these echo chambers.

But the—it's a parasitic lifestyle, which is exactly what, uh, Hare Kleckley, which was sort of behind the—the original construct of psychopathy—that's exactly what he identified.

This parasitic lifestyle, and they moralize that type of behavior as virtuous—it's like virtuous victimhood—and it—it’s very toxic. Virtuous victimhood, valorizing sadism.

You mentioned lying; there's—there's lying, and then there's lying that—that is—there's moralization of the lie. And I see the latter, moralization of the lie, as much, much worse.

Um, and you know you mentioned too the—the sort of male instantiation of these cluster B traits, and that’s something I saw during COVID online too.

A lot of the female scholars that I was, uh, you know, collaborating with at one point or that kind of grew to knew who were doing COVID work or pushing for the elimination of mask mandates or saying that lockdowns were harmful, they were getting attacked by these male narcissistic, you know, what I would consider trolls on Twitter who had credentialed degrees but they were constantly bullying these female nurses or doctors and so forth in the most trollish way.