A wide range of institutions, including democracy, economics, religion, gender, technology and higher education, are showing signs of acute stress or outright failure. As Wendy Brown has highlighted, the very idea of democratic society itself has been weakened. From this psychologically informed perspective, democracy can be viewed as comprising a series of defences against dangerous psychopathic leaders. A strengthening of democracy and a re-imagining of additional democratic defences is therefore urgently needed. New spaces for citizens to revisit the meaning of democracy itself in our era of deep transformation is urgently needed to facilitate this.