I am writing this on the weekend following the news of Charlie Kirk’s killing on 10th September 2025 at Utah Valley University. I wanted to write not about him as an individual, nor about the person who shot him, but about something that surprised me – people’s varied responses to his death, and my own reaction to those responses.
When news breaks of a public figure’s death – particularly through violence – we might typically expect sorrow, shock, or at least some period of reflective silence. What I did not anticipate were the videos of open celebration: people cheering, laughing, even dancing at the news. As someone who had not followed Charlie Kirk closely prior to his death, these reactions felt particularly jarring to witness.
As a therapist, I found myself wanting to understand both phenomena: why some people respond to death with celebration, and why my own response to their celebrations felt so viscerally uncomfortable. What might such reactions reveal about human psychology, collective trauma, and the moral frameworks we use to navigate complex social events? Rather than dismissing either response as simply right or wrong, I wanted to explore what psychological needs and processes might underlie both the celebrations and my own discomfort with them.
A Note on Perspective
Before exploring these dynamics, I want to be clear: I am not condemning those who celebrate, nor am I suggesting such responses are wrong. Celebrations of death may serve legitimate psychological functions, providing emotional relief for those who felt genuinely oppressed, creating moments of communal catharsis and solidarity, allowing honest expression of complex feelings, or helping people reclaim a sense of agency after feeling powerless. These responses have historical and cultural precedent and may represent adaptive coping mechanisms rather than moral failings. My intention is not judgment but curiosity – to examine the psychology behind the celebrations and my own reaction, and to explore how we might integrate the aspects of human nature that both celebrators and critics may be denying, repressing, or projecting onto others.
The Psychology Behind Celebrating Death
Projection and the Shadow: Externalising What We Cannot Bear
We all carry qualities we would rather not acknowledge – anger, greed, weakness, cruelty, even capacity for violence. Instead of facing these uncomfortable truths about ourselves, we often project them onto others, particularly public figures who become convenient targets. Carl Jung called this disowned material our “shadow” – the hidden aspects of ourselves we reject. When controversial people die, they often take with them society’s projected shadow material. People may celebrate as if those dark human qualities have been eliminated, when in reality they simply await another target.
This psychological mechanism serves a protective function. Rather than confronting our own capacity for selfishness, moral failure, harm, or judgement, we place these qualities externally and feel justified in our hatred. The death of someone carrying our projections provides temporary relief, a sense that darkness itself has been defeated. In therapy, I often observe how clients who struggle most with their anger become punitive towards others’ aggression, or how those who fear their own selfishness celebrate the downfall of those perceived as greedy. The scapegoat carries what the community cannot bear to see in itself, and their removal feels like purification, though the underlying shadow material inevitably resurfaces elsewhere.
Thanatos and the Death Drive
Freud’s concept of Thanatos (the death drive) suggests that alongside our life-preserving instincts, humans harbour destructive impulses. Civilised society requires us to suppress these impulses, channelling them into socially acceptable outlets like competition, criticism, or entertainment.
The death of a reviled public figure may provide socially sanctioned permission to express these normally suppressed destructive impulses. It becomes temporarily acceptable to celebrate violence, to express satisfaction at suffering, to indulge in what we might otherwise recognise as cruel or inhumane responses.
This phenomenon is particularly visible in social media environments, where the usual social inhibitions are already weakened by anonymity and distance. The celebration becomes a form of vicarious aggression, a way of participating in destruction without directly causing it. And in a sense, it seems to be a socially sanctioned way to enact it, too.
Disgust Psychology and Moral Contamination
Research in disgust psychology reveals how we often conceptualise moral violations in terms of contamination. We describe corrupt individuals as “toxic,” “filthy,” or “rotten.” This language is not just metaphorical, it reflects deep psychological processes where moral disgust activates the same neural pathways as physical revulsion.
When a public figure is perceived through this lens of moral contamination, their death can feel like a cleansing, as if the community has been purified by removing a source of pollution or toxicity. This taps into primitive psychological mechanisms designed to protect us from genuine physical contaminants; however, when it is applied to people, it can justify dehumanisation and celebration of violence at their demise or suffering.
Trauma Responses and Displacement
In my work with clients who have experienced systemic oppression, poverty, or violence, I have observed how they sometimes focus intense anger on symbolic figures rather than addressing the complex systems that perpetuate their suffering. This displacement serves a psychological function – it provides a concrete target for rage that might otherwise feel directionless and with no proper place to be aimed. It can also feel overwhelming when there is no proper ‘target’.
Communities experiencing collective trauma may latch onto particular individuals as the embodiment of their pain – to relieve the tension of aimless rage. The death of such figures can feel like justice or resolution, even when the underlying conditions that caused the trauma remain unchanged. This displacement mechanism protects the psyche from confronting the more complex and – importantly- the persistent sources of suffering.
A Therapeutic Self-Inquiry
As I reflected on my own visceral reaction when witnessing the celebrations, I realised that this response also merits exploration. What am I not allowing in myself that creates such strong reactions to others’ behaviour?
The Discomfort with Our Own Destructive Impulses
My immediate recoil from the celebrations may reflect my own discomfort with destructive impulses within myself. Most of us harbour fantasies of revenge, satisfaction at others’ failures, or relief when difficult people exit our lives. Perhaps my response to others’ celebrations represents a rejection of my own capacity for such feelings.
In therapeutic terms, this could be seen as a form of reaction formation – developing strong conscious attitudes that oppose unconscious impulses. My moral outrage at others’ celebrations might defend against acknowledging my own occasional satisfaction when those who have caused harm face consequences.
Moral Superiority and Spiritual Bypassing
There is also the possibility that my strong emotional response serves to maintain a sense of moral superiority. By positioning myself as someone who would never celebrate death, I preserve a self-image as more compassionate or evolved than those who do. This itself could be seen as a defensive mechanism, a way of avoiding deeper questions about my own moral inconsistencies.
In mindfulness-based therapy, we might call this “spiritual bypassing” – using moral or spiritual concepts to avoid confronting uncomfortable aspects of our own psychology. My response at others’ celebrations might conveniently distract from examining my own subtle forms of judgement, exclusion, or moral violence.
The Fear of Our Own Primitive Responses
Perhaps most unsettling is the recognition that under different circumstances (with different conditioning, different traumas, different cultural contexts) I, too, might find myself celebrating rather than mourning. This possibility challenges the comfortable belief that our moral responses are fixed and inherent rather than contingent and constructed.
Throughout history, public executions have been community celebrations, and I know that – experiencing sufficient trauma, deprivation, or radicalisation – most people are capable of responses that they would normally find uncomfortable, strange, or shocking. My recent response at others’ celebrations might represent a denial of my own potential for such responses.
Clinical Implications and Therapeutic Responses
Understanding these dynamics has practical implications for therapeutic work. When clients express satisfaction at others’ suffering, our response as therapists matters enormously. Moral condemnation rarely creates space for genuine exploration of underlying needs, traumas, or defensive mechanisms.
Instead, we might explore:
- What pain or powerlessness might underlie the satisfaction (or celebrations)?
- How might the person be projecting disowned aspects of themselves?
- What function does this response serve in maintaining psychological equilibrium?
- How might we help integrate shadow material rather than project or deny it?
Working with Polarisation and Projection
In an increasingly polarised society, these dynamics become particularly relevant. Clients often arrive in therapy with intense hatred for political figures, public personalities, or entire groups of people. While we must maintain appropriate boundaries around harmful attitudes, we can still explore the psychological functions that these intense reactions serve.
The goal is not to eliminate moral discernment but to help clients recognise when their responses might be influenced by projection, displacement, or unresolved trauma. This creates space for more nuanced understanding and, ultimately, more effective action in the world.
Moving Beyond Celebration and Condemnation
Celebrating death as well as condemning those who do ultimately blocks or hinders any chances of healing or justice. Both responses can function as defences against the more difficult work of examining our own shadows, processing collective trauma, and addressing systemic problems.
One way to do this might be what Buddhist psychology calls “holding space” for the full complexity of human experience. This means acknowledging that public figures who cause harm are still human beings whose deaths represent lost potential for growth, repair, or redemption. It also means recognising that those who celebrate such deaths may be expressing legitimate pain and powerlessness.
The Path of Integration
True healing (both individual and collective) requires what Jung called integration of the shadow. This means acknowledging our own capacity for harm whilst not being overwhelmed by it. It means recognising that the qualities that we despise in public figures exist within ourselves, whilst still maintaining ethical boundaries and working for justice.
In therapy, this might involve helping clients develop what Dialectical Behaviour Therapy calls “wise mind”, the capacity to hold both the emotional responses and rational analysis; compassion and discernment; personal reaction and broader perspective.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most profound insight from examining the celebrations and our reactions to them is how much they reveal about the observers. The public figure becomes a kind of psychological mirror, reflecting back our own unintegrated material, our own moral frameworks, our own fears and desires.
When I witness others celebrating death, I am confronted not only with their psychological processes but with my own. I must ask what this tells me about my own moral certainties, my own defensive mechanisms, my own disowned impulses.
The path forward requires neither celebration nor condemnation, but something more challenging – genuine curiosity about the human condition in all its complexity. This includes curiosity about our own responses, our own shadows, our own capacity for cruelty and compassion.
As people in a polarised and divisive world, we are more likely to heal and grow when we hold space for complexity whilst working towards justice, compassion, and the reduction of suffering. This is perhaps the most difficult therapeutic work of all, not just with our clients, but with ourselves and society.
How we respond to others’ celebrations may tell us as much about our own psychological makeup as their celebrations tell us about theirs. And in that recognition lies the possibility for genuine understanding, integration, and growth.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay