Projection is one of the oldest defenses in psychology. When people cannot face fear, anger, or envy, they project those feelings onto others. The anxious manager blames a toxic team. The insecure student insists everyone is judging her. It brings relief, but no growth. Increasingly, our politics works the same way.
Now that Zohran Mamdani has won election as New York’s next mayor and prepares to take office, that mindset is shaping what New Yorkers expect from him. Politics has taken on the tone of therapy, and voters are responding as patients.
Mamdani is highly skilled at this. His tone is calm, his gestures deliberate, his cadence reassuring. He does not confront — he comforts. He tells voters what many therapy clients want to hear: Your feelings are valid, and someone else is to blame. The message shifts by audience, but the effect is consistent. People feel understood. Resentment begins to sound like moral clarity.
This style works because it taps into something happening across the country. Leaders are speaking the language of therapy. Hardship is framed as harm. Disagreement is framed as injury. And personal frustration is framed as injustice.
That is projection.
Mamdani gives voters permission to externalize discomfort and believe their struggles were done to them. In therapy, that moment can be useful if it leads to accountability. But in governing, it is a trap.
Life in the city is difficult. Housing costs rise. Streets feel rougher. Many New Yorkers feel they are doing everything right and still falling behind. Mamdani offers a simple narrative for that frustration: If you are struggling, someone else must have taken too much. It feels righteous. It also prevents progress. Therapy processes pain. Leadership solves problems.
The shift from frustration to blame is something I see in private practice. One client spent months convinced his boss was undermining him. The real issue was that he was avoiding risk. When he stopped outsourcing blame, his confidence returned. Cities face the same choice. Growth happens when discomfort is confronted, not reassigned.
Yet projection is becoming a dominant cultural script. Universities describe ordinary disagreements as trauma. Social media rewards emotional confession over reasoning. We have encouraged people to treat discomfort as evidence that they have been wronged. Mamdani reflects this shift. He treats grievance the way a pop therapist treats trauma, not as pain to work through, but as identity to embrace.
Projection flatters both sides. Voters feel heard. Leaders appear compassionate. But it does not solve anything. When politicians reward projection, they train citizens to see themselves as patients and the state as therapist. The result is dependency.
New York cannot afford that. We cannot ease the housing crisis by blaming landlords. Disorder will not fade because the city articulates its pain. Problems that require compromise and competence are being recast as emotional crusades. This approach does not simply stall progress — it drains budgets. It deters investment. It deepens inequality.
Real growth, whether in therapy or civic life, begins with acknowledging what we would rather avoid. Impatience. Limitations. Trade-offs. Hard decisions. Every city must decide whether it wants comfort or improvement, validation or responsibility, symbolic wins or measurable outcomes.
Mamdani excels at emotional mirroring. In therapy, this builds trust. In politics, it can create dependence. His fluency with feelings makes him persuasive. It may also make it harder for the public to tolerate difficult decisions. The question is not whether he can empathize with frustration. The question is whether he can govern through it.
New York’s investment in moralized grievance is most visible on the left, but the psychological impulse is bipartisan. Both sides have discovered that resentment is easier to mobilize than responsibility. Both have learned that healing language softens the hard edges of politics. Both risk confusing empathy with effectiveness.
The election is over. The emotional high will fade. What comes next is the harder part —translating shared frustration into functional policy. Turning collective pain into outcomes. Measuring progress by results rather than catharsis.
Cities, like people, cannot outsource their pain forever. At some point, the work must begin. Healthy leadership, like good therapy, does not shield people from discomfort. It helps them use it.
New York does not need a therapist. It needs a leader.
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist practicing in New York City and Washington and author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation.”
