VIDEO
AUDIO
In this episode, Joseph, Lisa, and Deb explain why Corruption is not only a political problem, but a human one, why Power breaks trust long before it breaks laws, and why the most dangerous people are often the most certain. They reveal the core mechanism behind Corruption and Inflation: when unconscious drives flood the ego, making someone feel exceptional, entitled, and above ordinary rules. They unpack how Corruption escalates quietly, from small rationalisations and moral distortions to full-blown abuse of entrusted Power that destroys relationships, organisations, and communities. Joseph brings decades of clinical experience, including high-stakes psychiatric hospital work, where he has seen how quickly people can become less reflective while feeling more “right.” Lisa and Deborah add decades of analytic practice and teaching, connecting leadership research, brain science, mythology, and Jung’s warnings about the will to Power, certainty, and the loss of love and conscience.
We explain how:
• Power amplifies certainty, and certainty is the earliest warning sign that something is going wrong
• Fear narrows perception, creates straw-enemies, and locks groups into “us vs them.”
• The fantasy of purity forces splitting, supercharges the shadow, and drives scapegoating
• The real antidotes are conscious constructive Power, humility, feedback, and systems of checks and balances
If you think Corruption belongs only to bad people, this conversation is a wake-up call. Corruption grows through small compromises, it spreads through groups, and it accelerates when leaders cannot tolerate doubt, accountability, or the lived experience of the people beneath them.
HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:
I live on a little hidden lake that is surrounded by a forest, and in its center there is a small island. It was this lake that I was looking out upon from where I stood in my dream. The sky above was both stormy and brilliant, and the thought occurred to me that this spelled rainbow weather, and I absolutely cherish a good rainbow moment. I went outside to the south of my house and stood gazing out at the lake that seemed, in my dream, to be the size not of a small lake but of a vast ocean. It was draped in numinous mist, and the mist seemed to cloak numerous unexplored islands and secret inlets. Untold adventures lay hidden in this body of water, and above, the sky was becoming all the more dramatic in its symphony of storm cloud and opalescent light. I heard voices then, neighbors chatting beside the lake. I didn’t want this moment to be interrupted by others, so I hid amidst towering bean stalks that had sprouted up near where I stood beside the house. But as the weather continued to transform, I realized I would miss my rainbow moment if I didn’t emerge and have an exchange with my neighbors, so I decided to walk out and join them near the lone dock that, in my dream, was collapsing into the gentle lake water. When I did join my two neighbors, the conversation was fine, convivial, and not inappropriate for the miraculous happenings in the sky. Reverently, the three of us watched the sky as a colossal arc made of cloud, and not rainbow, formed in the west. I walked out upon the sunken dock without fear that it was collapsing into the lake and gazed upon the hidden immensities woven through the mist below this bow of cloud, waiting to see if it would begin to grow prismatic and refract light. Then I awoke.
