The Failed Psychological Contract with the American People

The Psychological Contract represents the emotional relationship between our leaders and ourselves, between bosses and employees, between parents and kids. The earliest manifestation occurs soon after birth and continues on throughout our lifetime.  For the Psychological Contract to succeed requires a continuous process of renegotiation. The current political establishment, on both sides of the aisle have failed us, putting ideology ahead of the greater well-being of the American people.

Today as we sink deeper into a fiscal and psychological depression, sameness is now different. We have been abandoned, left on the proverbial doorstep, to fend for ourselves, and unable to do so. We are lost in a familiar place.

The financial crisis is every bit a psychological crisis, in our institutions, our government, our leaders and ourselves. We have given up emotionally on those we rightfully expected to look after us. No wonder the markets seem to be in a free fall, after all, we are in a massive emotional free fall.

Our institutions look the same, they are not. The mall is still standing and vacant. The many vulnerable among us are in despair. Our current leaders, demonstrate a pathological narcissism, caught in the myth of their righteousness, are grotesque caricatures of what leadership ought to be.

And now, we hang our fragile emotional hopes on one man representing the good-enough parent to a population of his children. Hopes riding on a new set of leaders. He will fail and so will we if we don't hold one another accountable. We will fail if he and we do not successfully navigate the treacherous psychological waters of re-establishing a new trust in this fragile time. President Elect Obama has suggested that we rise and fall as one people. He is right. Let us hope we look beyond our projected expectations of one man and administration. The hope springs from us as a people, not bestowed on us by our leaders. Let us remember we are entering into a new psychological contract as peers and equals.

Let us take responsibility for our successes and challenges by setting clear expectations of what is possible, one building block of trust at a time.