On Personality Psychology
Some reflections on Jordan Peterson's popularity.
A. The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has begun to release several lectures online in order to market his Peterson Academy. After leaving the University of Toronto (and previously Harvard University), Peterson has decided to disrupt traditional institutions via his own digital platform. As part of due diligence it’s always helpful to carefully read the Terms of Use. Peterson Enterprises LP is structured as a limited partnership entity that is domiciled in Wyoming for privacy and tax purposes (which has benefits like Delaware).
One of these classes is Personality and Its Transformations. Peterson is at his best either when he is writing about his professional expertise (as a clinical psychologist detailing case vignettes or the case formulation process) or his academic expertise (in Judeo-Christian religious and Jungian informed imaginal, myth analysis that follows much of the mid-20th century Eranos circle that included Mircea Eliade, Henry Corbin and others). Peterson has some kind words about the post-Freudian psychoanalytic tradition which today is spearheaded by Nancy McWilliams and Jonathan Shedler who are currently preparing the PDM-3 for publication (the psychoanalytic equivalent of the DSM-V-TR whose committees are also preparing the forthcoming DSM-VI). Theodore Millon’s work in personality psychology is very detailed and influential.
In my own PhD dissertation research and prior MA work, I looked at John Horgan, Andrew Silke, and Mia Bloom in counter-terrorism, as well as the ego psychology work of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg which (along with James Masterson) was part of the first contemporary wave of clinical therapies to treat Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I found Martin Kantor’s work on various personality disorders also to be very useful for case study analysis of terrorist organisation leaders and mid-level members.
The other implication of Peterson’s free lectures is that with some research and a curatorial approach you can stitch together at low cost some resources for lifelong learning. Here is the first lecture from Peterson’s course.
If that’s not enough Peterson for you, also see the first lecture of his Maps of Meaning course.
B. My former Swinburne TAFE and Smart Internet Technology CRC colleague Dr Darren Sharp has written an informative LinkedIn post about what Australia’s Jewish community faces in the wake of the Bondi mass shootings and the continued rise of antisemitism. Dr Sharp is a leading researcher at Monash University on NetZero sustainability initiatives.
ASIO’s Mike Burgess was right to raise the threat level and the security intelligence priority to focus on antisemitism as ideologically motivated hatred. Countering antisemitism is a major focus of Victoria Police and of social cohesion policies that Deakin University’s Professor Michele Grossman (and colleagues) has advocated for and developed policymaker-oriented resources for. Identifying and prioritising an ideologically motivated threat is one thing; being able to operationally pre-empt, disrupt, degrade or destroy what are covert or clandestine attacks is very difficult (which I will further address over the next week).
Antisemitism historically rises during periods of economic instability (including the stagflation of dual rising inflation and unemployment) and during increased social stratification that is a structural catalyst for both in-group cohesion and (polarised) out-group hatred / heightened emotional salience. Recognising this, Lydia Khalil arranged for the radicalisation expert Dr Cynthia Miller-Idriss to speak at the AVERT Network’s recent annual research symposium.
Antisemitism themed agitative sociological propaganda (Jacques Ellul) is on the rise and can be found on many far right and reactionary digital platforms and in traditionalist small press publishers (often now using disguised themes such as science fiction imagery). The recent Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs To Know by David Harris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025) is a helpful primer.
C. Howard Bloom on the economy - talking about many of the themes raised in his book Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Visioning of Capitalism (New York: Prometheus Books, 2013).
D. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on The Film Experience, created by Professor David Thorburn.
E. Disinformation alumnus Nick Mamatas on his new novel Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest (Troy, NY: Clash Books, 2025) and how the publishing industry really works.
F. The 2019 PBS documentary Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies in full (to other people, not to you - of course).
G. The gifted Terence Tao on AI and mathematics.
H. One midcareer lesson is that to scale up a cumulative research program you will likely need to access suitable funders for larger team-based projects and competitive bids (such as for the initial startup financing of new Centres and Institutes). In the United States this often involves prestigious philanthropic foundations. Inderjeet Parmar’s Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie & Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012) is notably informative on the meso-level institutional trajectories and global networks that influenced Cold War era regional studies (in part to combat anti-Americanism and to be anticommunist) and their post-Cold War legacies.
I. Google co-founder Sergey Brin speaks at Stanford Universty on Big Ideas Begin Here.