Video summary
Jordan Peterson reflects on how fame has fundamentally altered his perspective, primarily through a shocking encounter with widespread misery and demoralization that he had not previously witnessed at such a scale. While working as a clinician dealing with difficult existential problems for twenty people weekly, the suffering was contained within specific structures involving research, family, and business interests. However, when speaking on a larger platform via YouTube, he realized the depth of cultural despair, particularly among young men, though recent data suggests young women may now be in even worse shape. This realization transformed his mission; seeing so many individuals psychologically dying for lack of encouragement made it imperative to offer positive words and support, which is why he and his wife Tammy tour constantly. Peterson notes a tangible shift in their audiences over the last five years: whereas early attendees were often ragged men coming alone, current crowds include well-dressed couples, indicating that the lectures are genuinely improving people's lives despite the intense online controversy surrounding him. The nature of this fame has been overwhelmingly positive for Peterson personally, even when facing regulatory scrutiny from his college in Toronto, which he describes as a preposterous annoyance rather than a defining crisis. He contrasts his situation with celebrities like Harvey Weinstein or Macaulay Culkin who were thrust into the public eye too young without an established identity, arguing that being ripped away from one's known world later in life is equally disquieting but manageable if one knows their own status and trajectory. Peterson emphasizes that he did not suffer a loss of professional footing because his university roles at Harvard and Toronto had always been positive; while some faculty friends moved on to other institutions, his deep relationships with graduate students provided him with a robust support network that remained intact even when external threats emerged in 2016 regarding his clinical practice. A significant portion of Peterson's career was defined by the tension between mainstream scientific materialism and his interest in archetypal ideas, neuroscience, religion, and psychoanalysis—fields often marginalized by behavioral psychologists trained at institutions like McGill where he studied. He openly admits to ignoring advice from well-meaning supervisors who warned him against discussing these topics during job applications, a strategy that ultimately led Harvard to hire him despite other rejections. This approach underscores his belief in the importance of authenticity; Peterson argues that telling people who you truly are allows genuine opportunities to open up, whereas presenting a seductive lie only results in others falling for projections rather than connecting with reality. His long-standing professional partnership and friendship with graduate supervisor Robert Peele exemplifies this dynamic, as they successfully collaborated for decades because both parties knew exactly what the other was getting from the relationship without any subterfuge or pretense.
Read the full video transcript
how have you found Fame change you
what's been impacted or changed due to
the the scrutiny and the surveillance
and the Adoration and the
criticism well the first thing that
changed I think was that I saw misery on
a scale that I hadn't really seen it
before you know I had worked as a
clinician for a long time and I worked
with say 20 people a week and I was
always in the realm of difficult
existential problems
wrestling with my clients's problems
alongside of them and I like that a lot
and then I had my research and I had my
family and various business interests
and so that misery in some ways was
contained and boxed in and I had a lot
of structure around that to be able to
function despite the fact that you know
I was neck deep in 20 people's serious
problems which I really liked by the way
when when I started speaking on a larger
scale and meeting more and more
people this scale of demoralization
really hit me I didn't know that I
didn't know how deep the demoralization
in our culture had become and I think
that was especially obvious to me at
that point among young men now it looks
like this is Jonathan Height's research
is indicating this that possibly young
women are even in worse shape but for
whatever reason most of the people I was
meeting at least to begin with were
young men I think it was probably
because most of them far more people on
YouTube are young men and so the it was
shocking and brutal to see how much
demoralization
how widely spread the demoralization in
our culture
was other than than that and that that
was a real shock and it it was very hard
on me I would say
um everything else about it has been at
minimum ridiculously
interesting I have an unbelievable
wealth of opportunity I'd be a fool to
be anything but abjectly grateful I mean
the misery that I saw was a shock and it
hurt me and it it was part of what made
ill how did that impact you did it
change the way that you see the world at
all
it made me understand more deeply how
important it was to offer people an
encouraging
word I could see that so many people
were
dying psychologically or actually for
lack of an encouraging word and so it
made being in the position to provide
that much more
necessary mean part of the reason that
Tammy and I tour
constantly is because it seems to be
good it seems to be a good thing you
know we've even seen changes in the
audience so five years ago six years ago
when we did our first tour a lot of the
people who came to the talks were in
pretty rough shape there were more men
than there are now like the proportion
of men to women was higher and the men
were generally there alone and they were
a lot of them were looking pretty ragged
around the edges and now five years
later half the audience comes in suits
like it's as if they're dressed for a
wedding most of the guys are there with
some woman um the the audience members
are doing much better and the lecture
events are extremely positive you know
if you looked at my life from the
outside you'd think that I was in a
constant storm of you know Agra ated
controversy but all of that virtually
all of that is virtual it's just in the
online world now it touches the actual
World from time to time because I am
being pursued by my regulatory College
inario yeah yeah yeah which is you know
mostly just an annoyance and a
Preposterous annoyance a Preposterous
expensive and time consuming annoyance
but apart from
that everything that's happened around
me has
been positive H that's a strange thing
too positive at such an intensity that
even that is
daunting you know you'd
think it's hard to imagine that you
could be in a situation where things are
so positive that you can barely stand it
but but I am in that situation and it's
quite something to contend with I I was
fortunate I suppose to some degree that
it didn't happen to me till I was old
because I've never really I've never
really got accustomed to it I've had a
thought about this observing what's
happened to you and you know the
Weinstein are a good example of this too
we often hear the Perils of getting Fame
too young the mcau Culkin of the world
the Britney Spears of the world you know
uh individuals who don't have any sense
of identity being thrust into a
non-representative experience of the
world and they're completely
unmowed but I think that there's an
equally interesting question to ask okay
and what happens if you think you know
who you are if you've spent decades five
decades six Decades of your life
understanding your place your status the
trajectory that you're on and then out
of nowhere you get ripped away from all
of the areas of reference all of the way
markers that you thought you knew and
now you're just floating in the air I
imagine that could be even more
disquieting in some ways
well when everything blew ble up around
me to begin with it was stressful I
would say because my job was on the line
my university job and I never thought
that would happen I
mean my when I worked at Harvard Anna at
the University of
Toronto that was all positive like I
really liked working with my graduate
students I had at least cordial
relationships with my with my fellow
faculty members at Harvard they were
more than cordial at the University of
Toronto most of the faculty members that
I started to develop friendships with
were also those who ended up moving away
and so and they were often people who
got offers from other places and you
know they they would disappear and so a
lot of the friends I developed at the
University of Toronto went elsewhere and
so I didn't get as tightly tied
in with regards to Friendship networks
among my peers as I had at Harvard for
example but I had great relationships
with undergraduates and with my graduate
students that was plenty like I loved
working with my graduate students and so
it wasn't like I was pining and alone
not at all and I had a good network of
friends and
um and so then that was threatened and
really disappeared in
2016 um and my clinical practice was
threatened and so that was
unsettling I think there were things
that continued though even when I was
teaching as a university Professor the
way I taught
wasn't typical
the things I taught weren't typical I
thought for decades you know eventually
someone's going to find out what I'm
teaching and and you know there's going
to be trouble I couldn't believe I was
allowed
encouraged to teach what I was teaching
um but you know the universities and
this was particularly true of Harvard in
the
990s that's how they were structured
what was so rebellious about what what
you were
teaching
well there wasn't really anybody who was
concentrating on the Nexus between say
archetypal ideas archetypal and
religious ideas in Neuroscience so that
wasn't a thing I mean there was a few
people Yak PP was one of them who a lot
of the researchers who were interested
in the Neuroscience of emotion became
interested in deep narrative because
they started to understand that our
emotional life is a story that's a good
way of thinking about it and that we're
guided you know we're Guided by our
emotional instincts and what our
emotional instincts do is put us into
certain stories that's what it means to
be in love for example is that you're in
a love story and it's not it's not uh a
particular balance of oxytocin and
endorphins that you are aware of it's
not broken down to its constituent Parts
no definitely not part of a narrative
that you tell yourself about what this
means and how this feels right right
well and it's interesting that the
Instinct manifests itself as a story and
so I was very interested interested in
narrative and story and I and also see
no psychologist study Carl Jung like
literally virtually none really now oh
yeah yeah oh definitely not I mean
psychology psychology really developed
in some ways as the materialist
antithesis to
psychoanalysis so Freud and Yung and
even Adler to some degree they were off
limits for for
scientifically trained behavioral
psychologists and that's what I was and
am like I trained at McGill there were
no courses in psychoanalytic theory at
Miguel I read Freud and Yung completely
on my own uh flying in the face of the
advice that I was getting even from my
well-meaning graduate supervisor who was
a great guy and who never got in my way
in the least quite the contrary but I
was warned for example when I went on
the job market not to talk about the
things that I was truly interested in
and I ignored that by the way and what
that meant was some places that I went
to apply for a job didn't want me but
then Harvard did so that worked out
quite nicely you know and that's one of
the advantages too also of being true to
your own vision is that you won't get
what you don't want see I didn't want to
go work somewhere where they wouldn't
want me I wanted to go work somewhere
where they wanted me so my strategy was
well this is who I am and if you don't
want me you know that's a drag cuz I'm
looking for a job but by the same token
I'm not going to pretend to be someone
other than who I am so I can work here
what a stupid way of starting your
career well that goes back to the truth
right telling the truth what are you
going to if you tell a sufficiently
seductive lie what is the best that you
can hope for right the person that
you're telling the lie to falls in love
with a projection right right absolutely
well when I applied to graduate school I
wrote a crazy admissions letter and I
basically laid out who I was flaws and
all and what I was interested in and two
people three people bit and the one that
I liked best partly because he was at
Mcgill and I wanted to be in Montreal
with my graduate supervisor Robert Peele
and he knew what he was getting and we
had a great time I still work with him
like I had one of the best relation
ships with Bob that I've ever had with
anyone in my life and it's lasted four
decades and it was because like Bob's a
very honest person we were very
different he's very practical he's a
very good administrator managerial type
although he's he's super smart he had an
exhaustive knowledge of the relevant
research psychology literature and I
came in you know flying on a mat of
psychoanalytic theory and philosophy and
religious ideas very very different
although we shared a real deep interest
in the practicalities of research and he
taught me how to fall in love with the
more scientific end of the research
distribution but the point I'm making is
that he knew he knew what he was getting
right from the beginning and so did I
and that worked like a charm there was
no re reason for any sort of subterfuge
and it turned out that our his talents
and mind dovetailed extremely well so
and we had a blast I loved working with
well like that's why we've been working
together for 40 years I traveled all
over North America with Bob because we
also started a business and uh it was
great it was
great the thing is you know if you tell
people who you are and an opportunity
opens up it opens up for you yes not for
this thing you've created this lie we'll
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