Research Memo: March 15th, 2026

Dr. Katelyn Lehman riding horseback in Baguales, Chile.

There is a split in the American psyche, and my body of work is, in many ways, an attempt to suture a wound we increasingly suspect may be fatal.

The United States is now largely owned, operated, and directed by an increasingly delusional breed of narcissistic men — and by the co-dependent institutional systems that enable them. These are men who value power over others as the primary organizing principle of their identity. Their grandiosity, paradoxically, appears to show a strong inverse correlation with their underlying sense of self.

In clinical language, we might call this compensatory narcissism. In ordinary language, we might simply say: the louder the performance of dominance, the more fragile the self behind it.

I know, sister. It’s bad.

And yet the ordinary rhythms of life continue to hum along beneath these structural fractures. I have two baskets of laundry waiting to be folded, a lukewarm cup of coffee beside me, and a six-year-old son playing Minecraft on my sofa. From my veranda the afternoon light is soft and forgiving; the kind accompanied by grief and change. I would much rather sit here and write than face the tyranny of folding my hand.

“The larger the mob and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of unreason” — Francis…