But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” - Anton Ego

Either we need to come to terms with a possibility that we are all in some ways a little bit mad, which is a cliche, or we need to consider a much more inclusive, less discriminating attitude towards experiences we do not share or understand.

This sort of gap between what a person says and what he makes you feel is not uncommon – think of the friend who rings you when you’re down, talks to you in an encouraging, supportive way, but leaves you feeling worse. The space between Matt’s words and the feelings he provoked in me was enormous. He was describing a life that was frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened for him. I felt uncharacteristically disengaged.

Like everyone else, psychoanalysts do get caught in the lawyer’s role; our job is to try instead to find a useful question. Our weapon against negativity is not persuasion, it’s understanding.

Then I made two other mistakes. One was that I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of simply provisioning traditional institutional reassurance. By asking and challenging everything, you create a lot of uncertainty, and that uncertainty can be debilitating to the ongoing functioning of the organization. I failed to appreciate that if you’re going to be questioning everybody and challenging everybody, you have to do a lot of reassuring in return. I didn’t say, ‘Isn’t Harvard great?’ If I had said that, it would have been much more reassuring.” - Lawrence Summers.