We are living in a time of profound division. But toxic polarization is more than intense disagreement. It is a psychological shift in which difference begins to feel dangerous, curiosity gives way to certainty, and disagreement hardens into contempt.

Don’t Talk to These People

In her recent article, (Kolod, S. (2026) Don’t talk to those people: Rhetoric, polarization, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 23(2), 279–293, https://doi.org/10.1080/1551806X.2026.2644069) psychoanalyst Dr. Susan Kolod examines polarization through a psychoanalytic lens. Dr. Kolod has also spoken with CPPNJ’s Social Justice Study Group, where she helped us think about these dynamics not simply as political or social phenomena, but as deeply psychological and relational ones. When we feel threatened, complexity can become difficult to tolerate. We may divide the world into opposing camps: us and them, good and bad, people who understand and people who cannot possibly understand. Those on the other side can become less fully human to us. We stop wondering what experiences, fears, loyalties, or losses might lie behind another person’s beliefs. Curiosity collapses into contempt.

Another Way of Thinking

Psychoanalysis offers another way of thinking. Our work asks us to tolerate ambiguity, contradiction, and uncertainty. It asks us to recognize that conflicting feelings can coexist and that neither we, nor the people we encounter can be reduced to a single position, belief, or identity. Perhaps most importantly, psychoanalytic listening asks us to remain curious precisely when we are most tempted to stop listening. Recent highly charged cases illustrate how difficult this can be. Allegations of sexual assault involving Cornell students have generated strong reactions about consent, accountability, and fairness. The Lindsay Clancy case has provoked similarly powerful responses around criminal responsibility and postpartum psychosis. These cases are very different, but both touch subjects that evoke intense emotion and can make uncertainty particularly difficult to tolerate.

In such moments, we may feel pressure to arrive quickly at certainty, to decide not only what happened, but what kind of person someone is, and what it means if another person sees the situation differently. The disagreement itself can begin to feel threatening. Instead of wondering how another person arrived at a different conclusion, we may experience that difference as evidence of something troubling about the person: How could you possibly think that? What does it say about you that you do?

Polarization v. Disagreement

This is where polarization becomes more than disagreement. Our certainty about an issue can become intertwined with our judgment of one another. Curiosity diminishes, complexity is lost, and the person across from us becomes easier to dismiss.
Remaining curious does not require abandoning judgment. It asks us to notice the pull toward certainty and to resist turning those who reach different conclusions into people unworthy of being heard. The capacity to tolerate complexity can deepen relationships and contribute to more thoughtful judgment. This does not mean abandoning our values or pretending that all positions are equivalent. Nor does listening require agreement. It means trying to understand another person without immediately reducing that person to an enemy or caricature. This may be one of the contributions psychoanalytic thinking can make beyond the consulting room. If toxic polarization turns difference into danger, psychoanalytic curiosity can help restore complexity and with it, the possibility of relationship.

At CPPNJ, we hope our new blog can be one small place where that kind of thinking occurs: a space for depth, curiosity, disagreement, and the willingness to remain in conversation when doing so is difficult.