Taylor’s Totalitarianism: Psychologist Reveals 3 Controversial Insights into Swift’s Spellbinding Sorcery

Megastar isn’t strong enough; we need a new word to describe the power of influence that is Taylor Swift circa 2024.

The 34-year-old billionaire musical mogul, in the middle of her worldwide Eras Tour, was recently named Wall Street Journal’s Person of the Year. Her celebrity is exalted amongst celebrities, as 2024 Grammy host Trevor Noah joked, “As Taylor Swift moves through the room, the local economy around those tables improves”. My hometown of Melbourne, her current destination, spent however many million taxpayer dollars decorating Flinders Street station to celebrate her being there, and the multi generational hysteria amongst the public with her in the country is palpable. Not to mention it’s impossible to be on social or mainstream media without encountering a barrage of Swift sensationalism. If aliens landed here tomorrow, they’d be forgiven for assuming this is Taylor’s world and we’re just living in it. The magnitude of her present command is such that it seems imbued with an almost superhuman quality.

Now, through my training and working with people for so many years, I’ve developed a pretty good bullshit meter. One rudimentary rule in reading between the lines is that when you feel something is being shoved down your throat or too good to be true, alarm bells should start going off. I’ve had these opinions about Taylor Swift since her celebrity status first started kicking off in the 1989 days, but I’m putting them out now as it’s just getting a tad ridiculous.

Here are three of my very controversial opinions on the current celestial commander-in-chief to rattle some cages. Hold on to your panties, Swifties!

1. She is Autistic.

Although not possible to diagnose anyone without a proper assessment, my impression, based on clinical experience, is that Taylor is likely on the autism spectrum. It might not seem this way based on the stereotype, but girls and women with this diagnosis tend to present much differently to boys and men, which means they often go undiagnosed.

While autistic males are more likely to struggle verbally and appear emotionally aloof, females are usually more verbally skilled, empathic, and emotionally sensitive. However, they may struggle to manage and contain their emotions. Females on the spectrum are also often exquisitely sensitive to the human experience and the nuances of felt emotion, something Taylor puts to brilliant use in her music. The singer has spoken about using music to help her cope with overwhelming emotions and experiences. While boys on the spectrum are more likely to act out their emotional struggles, girls are more likely to internalize and suffer things like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Swift has spoken openly about her past eating disorder and references her struggles with depression and melancholy in her songs.

People on the autism spectrum also often have a special interest that becomes a hyper focus, which they hone and master. Taylor has spoken about her obsession with singing and fame that started at a very young age, to the point that she begged her parents to buy her a guitar and move to Nashville. She has relentlessly pursued her goal of making it as a country singer. Her music also suggests that boys and dating are a particular hyper focus within Taylor’s life. People on the spectrum can often have a childlike quality, and Taylor has undoubtedly garnered criticism over the years for continuing to act like a teenager. Though innocent and endearing, this quality can make people overly trusting of others and somewhat naive.

A common comorbidity of autism is synaesthesia, a condition where sensory stimulus involuntarily elicits an experience in a different sensory pathway, such as seeing colors as feelings or perceiving numbers in specific locations or events. Taylor has always spoken about her love for the number 13 and how it has been present in all significant events of her life. All her albums have been assigned a separate color. She regularly equates feelings to colors in her music, such as in the songs Maroon and Lavender Haze, and lyrics like “loving you was red”, “you showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else”, and “I once believed love would be black and white, but it’s golden”.

These two conditions may share a neurological abnormality of reduced neural pruning that results in sensory processing overlaps. Indeed, the brains of people with autism have been shown to process much more information per second than a neurotypical brain and to generate much more original information. For these reasons, some people consider the autistic brain as running advanced software. Many people with autism have the capacity to see links and connections between things that others do not, and to me, it’s clear that Taylor is a musical genius when it comes to her ability to extract data points from the human experience that others might miss, and then craft music that encapsulates those that sounds just like the emotions felt.

Another common comorbidity of autism spectrum disorders is hypermobility. In a 2016 interview for Vogue, Taylor appears double-jointed and revealed she could pop her elbow joint out as a party trick. Look up videos of Swift signing her autograph. She unusually holds her pen between her middle two fingers, indicating difficulty with finger extension common in hypermobility disorders. I’ve also noticed her curved spine and posture becoming more slouched as she ages. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor suffers from pain, digestive problems, thinning hair, and other things common with these conditions.

But most importantly, when I see interviews of Taylor, I see masking. Females on the autistic spectrum tend to be more adept at observing and mimicking human social cues than their male counterparts. They often imitate peers to fit in, even if the social skills do not come naturally to them. This suppression of autistic traits and copying of others is known as masking; it can be done consciously or unconsciously but requires a lot of energy and mental work. If the girl is highly intelligent, as Swift is, they can become particularly adept at this. They can become a social chameleon, able to read a room and present themselves however they feel would be most accepted. As the singer said in her songs Blank Space, she can “find out what you want. Be that girl for a month”, and Mirrorball “I’m a mirrorball. I can change everything about me to fit in”. Swift is also known for reinventing her image for each new album, from country girl, retro New York, dark and vengeful, cottage core, artsy, and everything in between.

It’s not uncommon to find women on the autism spectrum who are highly successful due to this skill. They can become so good at imitating that they almost do a better job at being whatever they are imitating than the thing itself. Celebrities and interviewers who meet Taylor often say they were blown away by how “normal” she is. I think that her life is so abnormal that it’s not normal for her to be normal. The fact that she comes across as more normal than most real “normal” people you’re likely to meet tells me it’s effortful. As Swift reveals in Mirrorball, “I’ve never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try”. The masking is evident to me when watching Swift speak, in her exaggerated facial expressions and social cues. 

Females with autistic traits can be so astute in their social observations that they can become masters at controlling how they are seen by others and eliciting the reaction they desire. In her song Antihero, Taylor talks about her fear that those close to her will leave her because they got “tired of my scheming (For the last time)”. This shows Swift’s awareness of her ability to manipulate situations, something she said lyrically that she “felt the need to confess” to in her song Mastermind with the lyrics “What if I told you none of it was accidental? … I laid the groundwork, and then. Just like clockwork. The dominoes cascaded in a line. What if I told you I’m a mastermind?”

In another prominent line of Antihero, Taylor asks: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism? Like some kind of congressman?” My PhD thesis explored the concept of covert narcissism, also known as vulnerable narcissism. Like all narcissism, it tends to come from a deep feeling of not belonging or not being good enough that a person subconsciously attempts to cope with by developing a false self. The false self attempts to strategically gain a sense of belonging. In the covert form, this looks like an attempt to make oneself needed by being a universally liked helper type who is often self-deprecating and self-sacrificing. The overt form, which most people are more familiar with, is when an individual attempts to gain admiration through control tactics and grandiose displays. Often, there is much overlap, too, depending on the situation. Both presentations are insecure, sensitive to criticism, passive-aggressive, have difficulty with long-term relationships, have a victim mentality, and have a history of emotional withdrawal. Indeed, these qualities could be said of Swift at her worst based on the history the public has been given about her.

However, people need to realize that narcissism, like all the other diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by clinicians (DSM-IV), does not exist as an absolute and discrete entity. All psychiatric conditions are subjectively diagnosed on a categorical checklist of symptoms when they actually live on a continuous sliding scale within the population. There is no objective point whereby someone officially has any of these conditions. The reason it is so relevant to know that Taylor Swift is likely on the autism spectrum is that many, if not all, of the psychiatric conditions you might have heard of, been diagnosed with, or spent too much time in an emotional TikTok spiral worrying you might suffer with, including narcissism, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit disorder, anxiety, depression, etc., have more in common with each other than they do differences. But you won’t be told this by the other mental health professionals. At the root of these is a phenotypical neurodivergence. This biological nervous system difference affects the processing of information, and focusing on this, rather than getting attached to any specific labels that can feel absolute or unchangeable, is so much more helpful, as a lot can be done about it.

For starters, I would love to work with Taylor on reducing neuroinflammation. In neurodiverse presentations, the gut is often compromised, which allows external invaders into the body, precludes adequate nutrient absorption, and causes systematic dysfunction, dysregulating the immune and hormonal systems. Many of these things can be addressed with dietary and lifestyle changes and vitamin and mineral supplementation, and this can have a significant impact on the degree of symptoms individuals experience psychologically and physically, sometimes even completely reversing the diagnosis.

There is also a common psychological consequence of growing up with neurodiversity that becomes a secondary source of symptoms and suffering, and that is the social exclusion that turns into internalized self-criticism. If I were talking to the singer or anyone who identifies with these lyrics, I would make sure they had a baseline of understanding about themselves. Swift has the following insight in her song Mastermind: No one wanted to play with me as a little kid. So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since. To make you love me and make it seem effortless”.

However, the scheming she keeps referring to would more accurately be called adaptive coping or self-protective strategies. They are not an inherent flaw in a person or a sign of evil or selfishness, but instead an inevitable human response to feeling outcast, which autistic children often do. Suppose someone can see that their undesirable behaviors or symptoms in adulthood are simply strategies they learned as a child in response to adverse circumstances, which the subconscious repeats as a retained reflex. Then they can embody the self-compassion required for healing.

In You’re Losing Me, Taylor describes herself as “a pathological people pleaser. Who only wanted you to see her”. This lyric reveals that while Taylor is aware of her dysfunctional approval-seeking behaviors, part of her still identifies as the victim who just wants to be seen. An adult longing to be seen indicates a wounding in early childhood related to a lack of mirroring. If kids are made to feel weird or wrong when they express themselves spontaneously, their true self goes a bit underground. They rightfully accept that they must perform a certain way to gain acceptance into their social fold. But they never lose the deep longing to be accepted for who they are. The awareness of this suppressed part is experienced as a felt sense of shame. In adult relationships, people with this pattern will likely be whomever they have to so as to be accepted by their object of desire. Yet, over time, resentment can set in as the false self grows tired of performing and feels that their partner is failing to adequately reimburse them for all this hard work with sufficient adulation. Swift has expressed this sentiment in her lyrics: “I know my love should be celebrated. But you tolerate it”. Their partners often tire under the weight of the pressure to make them feel special.

Of course, no external validation can ever be enough to scratch the old itch or rewrite the negative belief about not being good enough because it’s all been earned only by the efforts of the false self. The underlying shame intensifies, and more and more validation is needed to subdue it. The volume of work Swift puts out, and the magnitude of professional feats she has accomplished, indicates she is driven to work by a strong desire to prove herself. But it’s unlikely to ever be enough in work or relationships. It’s a cat chasing its tail, as the satisfaction will always be temporary.

Swift’s rage towards past lovers or friends who have wronged her is no secret — we all know most recent ex Joe Alwin better look out pending the release of her new album The Tortured Poets Department — and the cycle Swift has demonstrated over the years of first idealizing a person, then devaluing them when it is over, is common in this presentation. It indicates that Swift’s mental model of herself and others may be quite immature and in need of some updating, as is often the case for people on the autistic spectrum.

Maturity is taking responsibility for ourselves and recognizing that not everyone is going to understand or like us, but if we can understand and like ourselves, not for our accomplishments, utility to others, or public approval ratings, but simply for being our unique, flawed, but ultimately innocent self, then we develop integrity. This integrity can slowly displace the shame and become a guiding light. This is where the true sense of acceptance comes from that we have been looking for from others, and it allows us to genuinely show up in relationships without rigid expectations of self and others. For Taylor, this might look like allowing herself to disappoint others: to be jet lagged after a live show and plane trip from Japan before the Super Bowl, for example (Swift was heard claiming that jet lag was a choice following her appearance at the Super Bowl recently). It would also likely look like allowing herself to be vulnerable in here-and-now human interactions rather than just in songs after the fact, and acting in alignment with her own desires and needs without attachment to how others might respond.

Taylor’s professional output would likely decrease if she did this work, but I imagine she may cultivate more happiness.

So, if you relate to these things, you now have an invitation not just to use Taylor’s music to feel temporarily less alone or more “seen”, but thanks to her ability and willingness to communicate these subtle psychological dynamics through her music, you have the opportunity to go and do something to improve the quality of your own life moving forward.

2. Her fame is inorganic. Now, before an army of Swifties try and burn my house down with fire solely generated from their arduous loins and blown out of their massively out-of-joint noses, hear me out. I’m not trying to cut the woman down; I’ll repeat, I think she is a bona fide and indisputable genius of the highest accord, and I find her likeable. She also seems to work extremely hard and is intelligent in her career moves. However, I also know how our media works and things end up in front of our eyes for a reason. I don’t believe any talent alone is enough to achieve total media monopolization the way she has.

I’m saying, keep your head about you in all matters. Your love and appreciation for Taylor is fine and understandable. It’s great that you draw inspiration from her. But adult “Swifties” spinning in circles like a 4-year-old at their first Wiggles concert is cause for significant concern. When your respect and appreciation tip over into that crazed, manic, drop to my knees and start to hyperventilate at the mention of her name, hysteria that people are displaying more and more lately, that’s not a natural or helpful state to be in, at all, ever, period. And in my opinion, it’s manufactured.

We famously first saw this level of fanaticism, not dissimilar to what we see with religious or cult indoctrination, with the Beatlemania of the 1960s, whereby girls were fainting, rushing the stage, and generally losing their minds over the band to the point that onlookers questioned their mental stability, and studies were done into the phenomenon. Mass hysteria, also known as Folie a deux, describes the psychological phenomenon whereby the power of suggestion can be used to elicit hysterical symptoms or extremely irrational feelings or behaviors, which can then spread rapidly throughout a group.

Beatlemania was understood at the time to have been a result of the introduction of television into people’s homes and the ability of the media to influence young people’s emotions and behaviors on a global scale. Beatlemania also occurred at a time in history marked by mounting political tension, with unsettling military interventions in Korea and Vietnam, atomic bomb testing, threat of nuclear war, and youth revolutions forming within opposing factions of society. So if not a deliberate distraction, the population was certainly primed for an emotional discharge. The current sociopolitical landscape could be considered equally tumultuous and it’s certainly possible that a viable political decision could be to distract and subdue the population and release a bit of tension with the blonde in a bodysuit. However, my suspicion runs deeper.

At this point, Taylor could tell people to chop off their pinky fingers and string them onto some dental floss to make a necklace, and they’d probably do it. I believe the media has intentionally drummed up this level of blind influence through continuous psychological manipulation and repetitive messaging to the point that it’s hijacked your subconscious into an emotional frenzy, which then separates you from your rational thinking brain when it comes to the concept of Taylor.

In the same way that you didn’t realize your ex was a bit of a jerk until years into the relationship, high levels of arousal, whether pleasant or unpleasant, cloud our judgment. Highly emotional stimuli activate our brain’s limbic system, which turns on the fight or flight response of the autonomic nervous system. This creates agitation in the body, which can be experienced positively or negatively. It also leads to black-and-white thinking and readiness for rapid action by reducing cortical function in brain parts responsible for higher-order thinking skills like logic, cause and effect, and pattern recognition. Anyone attempting to control or influence others will appeal to arousing their emotions first and foremost for these reasons.

The way the media has crafted people’s perception of Swift to garner veneration, including her interlude as the victim who had her award snatched by Kanye West and her masters seized by Scooter Braun and the Soros family, who then triumphantly rose from the ashes, has all been orchestrated and geared towards this moment when she stepped forth in all her glory, almost deified.

I’m inclined to postulate that at some point along the way, Taylor, being the insecure, naïve, beautiful, natural genius that she was, has been co-opted, used, and groomed, perhaps unbeknownst to her, by the entertainment industrial complex for a specific and significant purpose. If Taylor starts getting more political in the coming months and years, you might remember this article and wonder if I was on to something.

Swift has spoken out previously in support of Democratic candidates and the importance of voting, which caused unprecedented increases in voter registrations and inspired various legislation. Swift’s Wikipedia page calls this the Taylor Swift effect. It claims that while she is left-aligned, she is an anomaly in American culture, with approval ratings higher than both Trump and Biden, such that she can bridge the divide between left and right and draw various demographics to her cause. Journalists claim she could vastly influence the outcome of the upcoming 2024 election. I certainly can’t see it being a coincidence that her world tour is culminating in an election year. I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman ended up running for president herself in the not-too-distant future based on the sheer volume of effort that’s been put into crafting her image and building momentum for her by this machine.

The way Swift’s relationship with footballer Travis Kelce has been documented from start to finish in recent months, for those of us playing along at home, also feels unnatural. The way we have photos of their private events and coverage of every milestone in the courtship all over social media shows they are deliberately attempting to make this all very public, not just that they can’t be bothered hiding it. The relationship might be genuine to those in it, but it also smacks of marketing 101.

Kelce was purportedly paid 20 million to promote Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. It’s no secret that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer make big money, much of which is invested back into things like news advertising and political lobbying, which their marketing team would call “strategic communication”, the overt goal of which is to influence public opinion and decision making. Last year, Pfizer lobbied 12M to influence healthcare policy, legislation, drug approvals, and other industry-specific issues. The ties between politics, the media, the entertainment industry, and our health care system seem to run deep, but when it comes to this entertainment industrial complex, suffice it to say that a rising tide undoubtedly lifts all boats.

My advice to anyone offended by being likened to a frothy-mouthed four-year-old for liking themselves some T-Swizzle would be self-inquiry. Females are especially vulnerable to this type of emotional contagion and celebrity worship, as are those with mental health conditions such as anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and particularly those on the autism spectrum — which is comprising more and more of our youth each year. The actual invitation in this situation is to use all the passion directed towards Taylor for your benefit.

There is a defense mechanism we all use called projection. Projection occurs when we unconsciously transfer our uncomfortable feelings, thoughts, or traits onto someone else. Whenever we strongly judge someone else, whether positively or negatively, the origins of this judgment are based on disowned parts of our own psyche. So, you can ask yourself, what is my feeling towards this person telling me about myself? For example, it could be very productive to ask yourself in what ways you are not owning your own greatness, voice, power, creativity, or whatever other qualities you are living out through the over-identification with Taylor. In doing this, we stop perpetuating the disempowering myth communicated by most of Swift’s lyrics that your salvation lies in finding the perfect someone with whom to form the perfect union and instead places the power back in your court in the universal pursuit of wholeness that Swift’s music so powerfully speaks to.

3. Her music is dangerous. Ahh, not the music! Is nothing sacred! Hear me out; I mean, you’ve made it this far. I enjoy Taylor’s music. I’m in awe of her ability to pump out these songs that are perfect little nuggets of human emotion. So, I can see why they have captivated the hearts of millions worldwide. But herein lies the problem.

Like any art, good music is meant to evoke an emotional response in us. It moves us. It makes us feel. We like to feel. We live in a world where doing is becoming increasingly popular, and feeling is becoming more difficult, so people are hungry for things that make them feel. But, when people engage with any external stimulus to either stop feeling numb or distract themselves from another uncomfortable feeling they don’t want to deal with, they indulge in avoidance. Avoiding ourselves will always lead to problems, for the individual and for society. This is what people use drugs for: to change how they feel.

Music is a drug, like any other, and should be treated as such. Studies have shown that listening to music affects our heart rate, pulse, mood, and discernment. In medicine, a quote attributed to Paracelsus says, “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison”. This refers to the fact that the harm or benefit of a particular substance is not fixed by its nature but instead by the amount of exposure to the thing. Something can be harmful in large amounts but safe or beneficial in smaller, controlled amounts. This is my suggested approach to music, particularly incredibly evocative or emotional music.

Music is extraordinary; it allows us to transcend ourselves and our circumstances, conjures joy, courage, and other helpful states, and brings people together through unifying emotions. But, traditionally, emotionally evocative music has been used ceremonially. Before music could be recorded and carried in our pockets, it was traditionally used sparingly, in the right setting, and with a clear intention. However, the way we engage with music these days, indiscriminately, often as a constant or necessary backdrop to our lives or an escape from our actual experience, makes it just as destructive as an over-reliance on eating, spending, or alcohol.

The body doesn’t know the difference between imagining something and that thing actually happening. Not only is the implicit messaging in Swift’s music that romantic love is the pinnacle of human experience problematic, but when we get to the point that on a 15-minute Monday morning car ride to school, the kids have experienced having their hearts broken, getting revenge, and falling in love, all before first period, we have a generation of people who are inevitably incredibly desensitized to feeling. Such desensitization can lead to or exacerbate disorders like ADHD and depression and generally saps people of their drive to lead meaningful lives. Their body believes they’ve already had a full and rewarding day, emotionally, so there’s no need to chase those experiences in real life. Everyday human interactions pale in comparison to the highs we feel through music. We lose interest or develop unrealistic expectations of others. Or, the chasing of real experiences becomes more and more extreme, and people end up doing things like cheating on their spouse or quitting their job on an impulse, which might seem like a good idea at the time but may create long-term problems for that person and can slowly degrade the moral fabric of society. It’s nice to be guided to feel different things sometimes, so long as we use it to help us lead richer lives in our here-and-now, which is easier said than done.

Swift’s music, especially, is smacking us right in the social engagement system, the part of the nervous system that turns on our relaxation response, making us feel safe and connected. It’s primarily controlled by tiny muscles in the inner ear which detect human voices. Elon Musk famously tweeted about Swift in 2023, saying, “Stay away from her”. “Her limbic resonance skill is exceptional”. He referred to Swift’s unparalleled ability to strike an emotional chord with listeners. It’s in how she uses her voice, the music, and the lyrics, and it’s happening very much on a biological level within the listener’s mirror neuron system. Much like parents speak to their babies in a melodious tone with exaggerated intonation and repetitive patterns, in what’s known as parentese, Swift’s music tickles our nervous system in a particular way that gives us a sense of being one with her. Musk recognized, as I did, the vulnerability of a listener in this situation. I agree that we must approach her music with specific conscious intention, restraint, and caution to avoid being desensitized or distracted from real social matters.

So there you have it folks. Taylor Swift is a genius autistic who has been co-opted by the power and profit-driven machine that runs our politics, business, and entertainment industries to produce an emotionally manipulative, covertly disempowering, and culture-shaping product that has people clamoring over each other to gleefully, and detrimentally, consume like candy.

Change my mind!