It is instructive to note that Dr. Freud didn’t just address the matter of Regret. He also brought in the matter of loss and the grieving of that which is no longer present in our life—such as the psychological security we gave up when moving from youth through adolescence to adulthood (our personal exile from Eden). For Sigmund Freud, the dynamics do not stop here. There is also the matter of anger. We are angry because we are left in a state of regret. We are angry because of our loss. And we are angry because we are angry. The Tragic Triangle of Regret, Loss and Anger can readily appear when we are facing major challenges in our life, especially when these challenges involve competing interests (dilemmas and polarities) (Johnson, 1996; Bergquist, 2025; Bergquist, 2026).
Most importantly, it should be noted that Anxiety resides at the heart of the Tragic Triangle. Anxiety is produced by the three conditions of Regret, Loss, and Anger. Furthermore, Anxiety will contribute to the emergence of Regret, the probability of Loss, and the intensity of Anger. Anxiety also ensures that these three conditions will be sustained. The ghosts of Regret, Loss, and Anger are found in the lingering anxiety in our life; these ghosts are even more pronounced when there is a collective anxiety (angst) about the troubling conditions existing in our contemporary world (Bergquist, 2026). One final point to which Dr. Freud pointed. Stubbornness and rigidity (einstellung) inevitably accompany anxiety. We get fixated on the current way of doing things and on our current perspective on the world as it now exists and should always exist. Under these conditions, it is hard to recover from Loss, reconcile Regret, or resolve Anger. Nothing changes. That is why this triangle is tragic.
Anger and aggression were always elusive and disruptive processes in a psychic world where Freud long thought was dominated by the life-giving and affirming forces of sexuality (Libido). It was only later in his life, after facing the grotesque, destructive forces of World War I and the equally grotesque antisemitic forces of Nazi Germany, that Freud reluctantly acknowledged (or perhaps manufactured) the counterforce of a drive toward death (Thanatos).
Our Dr. Freud of the 21st century would have full knowledge of multiple wars and multiple sources of discrimination and genocide; he would also be fully aware of the more deeply embedded alienation found in many contemporary societies. Several of his own followers formed the Frankfurt School, in which Freudian theory was blended with Marxist theory, yielding a social-critical perspective on modern (and postmodern) society. While our Dr. Freud might not be a social-critical life coach, he is fully aware of the Tragic Triangle and ways Regret, Loss and Anger become endemic to a consumer-oriented, alienating society. While he might not always be pushing his clients to leave alienating corporate jobs, he does seem to be encouraging Daniel to consider moving away from the potentially socially and environmentally destructive world of advertising.
Lesson Four: Committee of the Gut
Dr. Freud often directed Daniel’s attention to his gut, especially when Daniel was addressing emotionally charged issues. This is quite understandable since Sigmund Freud was a physician and often declared himself to be a biologically oriented scientist. This attention is even more appropriate given the recent attraction of psychoanalytically oriented theorists and therapists to findings in the neurosciences that support and amplify many of the often-discounted models of psychophysiological dynamics long proposed by those in the various schools of psychoanalysis. I invite Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull to the conversation. They interweave neuroscientific findings with psychoanalytic theory in The Brain and the Inner World (Solms and Turnbull, 2002).
