psych up

We all know that this is a lot of locker room talk – no, not that kind – intended to psych up the team to go bash skulls with the other squad.

It is an argument that, at the very least, jibes with the person who greets each football player as he gets off the bus and who races onto the field to psych up the “polis.”

Wilson, another Ivy Leaguer, was a fine historian and a visionary president who became too remote and ineffectual to psych up the electorate.

Perhaps foolishly, this week I tried to psych up my son, who isn’t looking forward to returning to his state elementary school in Beijing and those new characters.

"As Freud said to Jung in Vienna, you can psych up too much for a darts match."