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Reading Diamond's (2022) book in 2025, which he wrote during and completed after Trump's first presidency, felt challenging to me, because the “perils” that Diamond speaks of are now being put into action, and at a fast pace. The democratic framework of the U.S. government is in the process of being dismantled; constitutional and human rights are being ignored at a large scale, that is, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents storming apartment buildings and abducting families in the middle of the night, to name but one example. Being written for psychoanalysts, scholars across disciplines, and political activists, Diamond's book conveys a strong desire for the containment of what he refers to as “destructive populism.” Framing his reflections with two personal dreams in which Trump visits his psychoanalyst's office, Diamond not only shares with the reader an insight into his own internal process of thinking and writing; he also expresses hope for a more democratic future. The second, more benign and hopeful dream that concludes the book was reported from 2021—the author “felt compassion and an unbidden empathy for this man who was clearly so fragile and broken” (Diamond, 2022, p. 146). In addition to Diamond having worked hard at containing raw and unmetabolized affect in himself—not the least activated by the subject matter—he might also have expressed a sense of relief and hope that was felt in a broader section of the (U.S.-American) public: Trump had just been defeated in the presidential election of 2020, and in early 2021, the first round of vaccines against the virus of COVID-19 had become available to the public.
“Ruptures in the American Psyche” is written from the perspective of “our liberal democracy” (Diamond, 2022, p. 27) and under a psychoanalytic lens. Its aim is to shed light on the destructive, regressive, large-group dynamics at play in what Diamond (2022) termed “Trumpism.” The objective is to furnish “conceptual tools that might lead to g