It’s Star Wars Day as i’m writing this, and I’ve been thinking about why this saga keeps rewarding clinical re-reading. The sci-fi is the trimming. Lightsabers are amazing. The story underneath is one we have to help patients understand, because it is the same story we are running with them in session: a young man with great talent meets a calm voice offering solutions to the problems that voice secretly created.
Palpatine is the master tactician. Anakin is fearful rage. As I said on the podcast: “Palpatine is pure unadulterated psychopathy. Anakin is fearful rage. There we go. That’s the master and the apprentice dynamic.” That is the relationship the entire nine-film arc is built on, and clinically it shows how political evil and personal evil colonize the same circuitry.
Let me walk through it the way I’d walk through it with a client. A more thorough, written essay will be forthcoming later, but for now, check out the podcast.
