Ask Yourself This: What’s Inside?

If you want to know what a person’s about, you can’t content yourself with just his outward appearance.

Joan Swirsky | Am Thinker | May 22, 2026

Image via PickPik.

Decades ago, I remember reading an article in Newsday, a newspaper based on Long Island and at that time the eighth largest daily in the country.  It was a first-person admission of the writer’s irresistible attraction to morbidly obese women.  After several family members and friends encouraged him to figure out his obsession by going into therapy, he assented and entered not typical once- or twice-a-week therapy, but five-times-a-week psychoanalysis.

In the article, he described the immense benefits he derived from his 20-year commitment to this form of therapy and how it helped his relationships with his parents, his job, and his self-confidence.  He relayed all the valuable insights he experienced over the years.

And then he ended the article by telling his spellbound readership that — um — he was still overwhelmingly attracted to morbidly obese women!

The Talking Cure

This story did not influence me to apply for a Master’s degree in psychiatric nursing, but it was significantly influential in my choice to specialize in behavioral therapy instead of the colossally endless amount of time that talk therapy takes — and often wastes — in a person’s life.  Not that talk therapy cannot be effective.  Even if you’re sitting on a stoop or park bench or long train ride and airing your feelings, fantasies, wishes, frustrations, or grievances to a friend or even a stranger, talking to an empathic person can be immensely therapeutic, even curative.

But when talk therapy turns into years of talk talk, talk…blame, blame, blame…act out, act out, act out, act out…and then you get older and maybe or maybe not wiser — why is it, so many therapy patients wonder, that they are still phobic about getting into an elevator, still suffering from pulling every hair out of their heads (trichotillomania), still counting every tile on their bathroom wall (obsessive-compulsive disorder), still salivating over morbidly obese women?

Yet, to be my own Devil’s Advocate, I know legions of people whose lives continue to be enhanced by the presence of a long-term therapist, who simply “gets” them and helps them navigate and analyze and even resolve the problems in their often complicated lives.

An Amazing Shortcut

I believe, however, that behavioral therapy usually works better.  It corrects incorrect thinking.  It challenges flawed and often preposterous assumptions.  It changes behavior, often in months and not in years or even decades of talking, blaming, and acting out.

But there is even a better way to comprehend human behavior.  Today, in the almost incomprehensible political world we live in, it can be the best way not only to understand what we are witnessing every minute of every day, to truly understand all the players themselves.

In 1998, I wrote a book called All About Love!: Finding a Relationship That Lasts Forever, published by St. Martin’s Press — now out of print.  In that book, I spoke about a concept I think I invented: The Vessel Theory.

What the Sage Said

In the book, I described a dejected young woman of twenty-three who sought the counsel of the town sage.  Weeping as she spoke, she told him that she had met a man and fallen deeply in love with him, and he with her.  She admitted that she felt somewhat wary at the beginning of their relationship because she once loved another man who had been a great disappointment to her.

She met her first love, she told the sage, when she was sixteen, and for four years, they kept constant company, meeting each other’s families and learning to know each other well — she thought.  But not long before their marriage ceremony, he lashed out in anger and hit her so hard that he bloodied her face.  Horrified, she broke the engagement, vowing never again to trust another man.

Now, a few years later, she was contemplating marrying her second love.  But he, too, had revealed a quality she found disturbing.  Quite by accident, she learned that he had stolen money from a family member to pay some of his debts.  The sage listened to her with great concentration.

“Come with me,” he said.  He led her to a shelf in his office and pointed out six vessels.  “Study these vessels carefully,” he instructed her, “and when you’re sure of which one you prefer over all the others, let me know.”  Then he left the room.

Alone in the room, she peered at the vessels.  One was quite beautiful, adorned with bas-relief drawings that depicted lovers in passionate embrace and spiraling leaves that wound their way to the lip of the vase.

The second was smaller but also pleasing to her eyes.  In brilliant enamel colors of turquoise, coral, sea green, and white, this one was so appealing that she could imagine a bouquet of brilliant spring flowers sprouting from its opening.

The third vessel was plain, of simple pewter, with gracefully curved arms.  The fourth was tall and elegant, of smoky glass and with a fluted opening.  The fifth was surprisingly unattractive, drably colored and bulbous in shape.  The sixth was large and imposing, with an elaborate design of trees and birds and butterflies.

The young woman quickly eliminated the fifth as too ugly, the last as too big.  It was more difficult for her to choose from among the others, but finally she made her choice and went to tell the sage which one she had chosen.

“Except for the fifth vessel, “she told the sage, “they’re all quite interesting and beautiful.  But I’ve finally decided that I’d like the second.  I can picture it with flowers, and I love its color and texture and shape.  It would be perfect for me.”

“What else can you tell me about the vessel you’ve chosen?” the sage asked.

She thought and thought.  “Nothing that I haven’t told you already,” she replied.

“This vessel, then, is yours.  But before you take it away,” he said, “let me show you something.”

The Problem

Beneath each vessel was a small dish.  One by one, the sage took the vessels off the shelf, pouring the contents of each into the appropriate dish.  The young woman gasped as their contents were revealed.

In the first, there was sludge.  In the second — the one she had chosen — there were the dregs of old wine.  In the third, there was acid.  In the fourth, there was honey.  In the fifth, there was spring water.  In the sixth, there was nothing.

“This is your problem with men,” the sage said. “You don’t look inside.”

And this is also the problem with all the modern “sages” — the media commentators, writers, opinion makers, influencers, think-tank members, talking heads, et al. — who attempt to analyze the words, the motives, the behavior of public figures, especially in the political world, but never quite score a bull’s eye.

Diagnostics

We all know that, among other things, X-rays visualize bony structures in the human body, MRIs visualize soft tissue, and PET scans actually detect disease.  I look at the Vessel Theory as a metaphorical PET scan that tells you everything you want to know about this or that person, particularly the pathology hidden beneath a polished image, protected by a slick public relations person, and concealing…well, let’s be nice and call it the Sludge Factor!

What comes to mind immediately are the attractive, articulate, seemingly formerly sane broadcasters, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly.

But tip these vessels over, and you can see the seething hatred and racism — particularly the hatred of Jews and Israel — that so effortlessly erupts from each of them.

Here is Carlson calling Israel one of the ugliest countries on earth.

Here is Owens obsessively blaming Jews for acts and events they had nothing to do with and were often the victims of!

And here is Kelly, defending the antisemite Tucker Carlson.

So forget all the words you read and hear that attempt to whitewash or diminish or rationalize or even excuse what is in plain sight.

What comes out of a person is what is inside of a person, plain and simple!

It could be stupidity or wisdom, naïveté or sophistication, sweetness or bitterness, goodness or evil.  That’s the Vessel Theory in a nutshell — ultimately, more reliable than all the other blather!

Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author.  Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.