[...] Our understanding of ourselves and how we function is a product of the study of the privileged – those wealthy enough or whose parents were wealthy enough not to be bothered by unwork or to be able to fully foist that burden on others, able to pay for therapy – and, on the other side, those folks on the desperate edge who can no longer get along at all in the society in which they live.

The overwhelming majority of people fall outside these two categories. We don’t fit into the society in which we live: we are made to perform the tasks that keep the society running, made to do these things through laws and prisons and weapons and entertainment and education, but we haven’t totally succumbed to these pressures. Instead we’ve learned a unique skill, a technique I would compare to the skill of a prehistoric human crossing a frozen tundra with a bundle of grasses and a burning ember inside them. We learned to keep the flame alive, the flame of our selves, our souls, despite the brutal demands of our masters. What our society calls “psychology” refers to an understanding of the inner lives of people with very few – if any – boots on their neck, or it refers to those who have crumbled. The other fields of psychology pertain to methods of manipulating us in cost-effective ways, often through implanting in us the means of self-manipulation and self-deceit. The majority of human experience lies outside these understandings.