Testimony given at the September 24, 2026 meeting of Montana’s barbaric and retrograde Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission, where I was allowed one-and-a-half minutes to speak:

In nomine canis lupus

I am Dr. Joseph Scalia III, a practicing psychoanalyst, Co-Director of the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis, and a former President of both Montana Wilderness Association and Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance. I address you today in my capacity as a psychoanalyst.

There are two psycho-diagnostic types of wolf hunters and trappers. One is the sadist, by definition, incapable of changing their views and incapable of any empathy other than a showy and false one. The other is the neurotic, relatively healthy beings, whose failed empathy for the wolf is not an all-encompassing one; authentic empathy does show up in other areas of their lives. Yet, they have a reliance – though curable – on the false machismo of the sadist, from whom they borrow an identity as strong and admirable, incorrect though it be. It is this second group, likely in the majority, whose blindness to the sentience of the wolf I hope to agitate.

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