“When the dictatorships have come to naught” 1 May 2026 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Patriarchy , No Comments “When the dictatorships have come to naught, human society will have need of truths, and precisely unpopular truths.” Early psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich wrote these words in The Function of the Orgasm (1942), a book that […]

Kill or be killed – the basic patriarchal equation 1 May 2026 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Ancestral trauma , Patriarchy , No Comments In 2020, In a blog called The 3 laws of patriarchy, I suggested that the basic psychological laws governing patriarchal societies were these: The Law of Masculinity—the masculine rules the […]

Humanity isn’t normal, it’s normalised 21 April 2026 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Ancestral trauma , Generational trauma , Patriarchy , No Comments We are not normal. We are normalised. Those four extra letters matter—a lot. Because what we call ‘normal’ behaviour—our anxiety, our compulsions, our quiet shame, our obsessions with fame, status, and […]

Pointing the finger – weaponizing shame 16 March 2026 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Patriarchy , Shame , No Comments Those staring eyes… that bushy moustache… that accusatory finger. It’s one of the most iconic posters in history. With the stark call to action Your Country Needs You, this poster encouraged thousands of young men to […]

Humans are three-centred beings 3 November 2025 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Patriarchy , No Comments In my journey towards wholeness, one of my early lighthouses was British psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who writes in The Politics of Experience (1967): “When our personal worlds are rediscovered… we discover first a shambles… genitals […]

The Authority Quadrant 16 May 2025 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Patriarchy , No Comments Some years ago, in a blog titled The spine of patriarchy – lack of inner authority, I described a lack of personal authority as one of the building blocks of patriarchal society. Patriarchy functions on the simple premise that […]

What is the divinity-mortality split? 3 December 2024 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Patriarchy , No Comments Michael Picucci, author of The Journey toward Complete Recovery, coined the term ‘sexual-spiritual split’ to identify “a deep psychic schism” endemic in human culture. I’d like to expand on Picucci’s vision by recognising another psychic […]

The missionary position is a trauma response 15 August 2024 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Generational trauma , Patriarchy , Sexuality , No Comments In Sex in patriarchy – how the past shapes sex today I describe the ‘3 M’s’—married, monogamous, missionary (position)—as the bedrock of modern sexuality. At the time, I attributed the […]

Normal – the non-existent patriarchal standard 2 November 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Patriarchy , 1 Comment When exploring feelings of unconscious shame and disgrace, it’s important to remember that these feelings always exist in response to judgment. Judgment, in its turn, is always against a standard. In our patriarchal society that standard […]

The god of patriarchy is an effigy of the Bronze Age nomadic warrior 1 September 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Patriarchy , No Comments The Book of Genesis tells us that “God created man in his own image” (1:27). The historical and psychological reality is diametrically opposite: man created God in […]