Dr. Bryan Nichols and Dr. Medria Connolly had collaborated for several decades when their discovery of Ta-Nehisi Coates shifted the course of their work to making the psychological case for reparations to the descendants of African-American slaves. As psychologists of color, they were intimately aware of the ghosts that haunt our society, even within their own field. What they discovered was a rich potential for healing that extends to Americans of all races, but not without the difficult confrontation of a vile history and the stubborn defenses of white America.  Part one of a two-part discussion. 

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Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 35: Rupture and Reparations...

As we investigate the role of the therapist-as-citizen, John pauses to interview his own therapist, Lane Gerber, about their relationship and what it means to be useful- useful to our patients, useful to academia, and useful to our interpersonal worlds. Lane describes his experience growing up in a community of Jewish immigrants, what it was like to rebel against his family’s plan for his life, and how he made use of his time learning from renowned theorists Carl Rogers and Heinz Kohut as a young psychology student. In our first instance of a patient interviewing their own therapist, we explore the dynamics of therapist’s disclosure and what it means to each member of this particular dyad. 

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Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 37: What Makes Us Useful

Dr. Jonathan Shedler is dissatisfied. As both a researcher and a practitioner, he is frustrated with the misinformation that permeates the counseling field, much of it promulgated by an academia with little clinical experience. His contrarian voice is best known for his deconstruction of so-called “evidence-based therapy,” its research methods, and his staunch defense of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Since a seminal paper, a decade ago, he has separated himself from the psychological establishment, to educate everyday clinicians and the lay public on the tenets of psychoanalysis, the importance of the working alliance, and how the therapeutic relationship doesn’t require an instruction manual in order to transform lives. 

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Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 38: The Empirical Wears No Clothes

Carlos Padrón personifies the concept of psychoanalysis as applied philosophy. As a Venezuelan living in New York, he has witnessed both the horrors of the pandemic and the projections of the immigrant experience. Both phenomena challenge our American fantasies of purity and pit us face to face with that which unsettles us as the uncanny takes form. In a broad-ranging interview recorded last summer, Carlos discusses the political potentiality of psychoanalysis, its invitation to new possibilities, and how it shatters the illusion of ahistorical origins. 


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Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 39: The Embodiment of the Uncanny

In the finale of our fourth season, John discusses therapeutic stance with Dr. Anton Hart who views openness as a key component of healing in the treatment room, especially in regard to societal trauma. Dr. Hart makes the case that foreknowledge is in opposition to curiosity and that curiosity is necessary to introduce new prospects to the therapeutic relationship. As a psychoanalyst, teacher and co-producer of the documentary Black Psychoanalysts Speak, Anton has a unique perspective on the usefulness of our language and how important it is to embrace complexity in a process that, when conducted with a posture of openness and curiosity, leads down endless paths of possibility. 

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Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 40: Radical Openness

For our first guest in years, John speaks with his friend Caleb Williams, a fellow psychotherapist in Seattle. Over dinner, they discuss Caleb’s affinity to the British psychoanalyst Neville Symington, their thoughts on narcissism and the neediness of masculinity. Less of an interview and more a study in the relationship of friend/colleague, John and Caleb reminisce about their own camaraderie and make meaning of the current discourse as two oldest brothers grappling with their own ambivalence. 


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Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely 
Music by Mason Neely 
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Episode 42: Brothers From Another Good Enough Mother

For Kj Swanson, an upbringing in Christian purity culture did not metabolize as trauma. It wasn’t until her queer awakening that she realized just how much it aligned with her identity. As an academic working in theology, Kj has always been interested in the heart of matters. This week, she discusses with John the various ways this commitment to meaning permeates her entire personality, including an emerging language signaling her place apart from compulsory sexuality.

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely 
Music by Mason Neely 
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 43: Ace Of Hearts

Mick Cooper is a British existentialist who is most interested in how humanistic psychology can play a role in social change. As a leader in pluralistic psychotherapy, he is wary of the monoliths we espouse even down to the most basic concepts that the relationship is curative. In this week’s episode, he discusses how research has made him more open to difference, the influence of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber, and his own development through therapy, ever closer to dancing in the proverbial rain. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 44: Towards A Plurality

Nancy McWilliams is a renowned psychologist with many foundational books to her name. Her work has been particularly groundbreaking to psychoanalytic psychotherapists in reshaping how practitioners all over the world think about diagnosis and personality. In an extensive conversation, she discusses the beginnings of her career, how her personal tragedies appeared in her own analysis, and the faith she has in this iterative process that can withstand change due to its unique capacity for making challenges into grist for the mill. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely 
Music by Mason Neely 
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 45: Grist For The Mill

Steven Kuchuck was taught by classical psychoanalysis that his subjectivity was an artifact to bury. However, through his interest in social responsibility he found a relational revolution, and a promising way for therapists to stay more alive in the room. As a dedicated guardian of the contemporary perspective, he speaks with John about the importance of examining the humanity in all of us, including the darkness that lurks in our dissociated corners and the supposed bad guys we lose when excommunicated from the psychoanalytic lineage. 


Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely 
Music by Mason Neely 
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 46: Dissociated Dark Sides

Lynne Jacobs joins us for our first ever live episode. In 2023, the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education hosted John in Pasadena to interview Lynne for the conference theme, “…but is it psychoanalytic?” As a therapist with loyalties both in psychoanalysis and gestalt therapy, Lynne has much to say about the use of presence and emotional process in the treatment room. This focus has been particularly useful to her in cross-racial relationships, where she makes the case that it is important for white therapists to lean into their own racialized shame. Lynne discusses with John the journey that brought her to this stance, including her own treatments and the experience of losing her analyst, Daphne Stolorow, in the midst of their work- a loss into which John now shares some insight. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Engineered by Ian Knippel
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 47: Alive and Present

Donna Orange is a foundational figure in the world of intersubjective psychoanalysis. A philosopher-practitioner who carved out her niche as the radical ethicist of the field, she discovered the work of Emmanuel Levinas to provide an alternative to mutuality. His description of the hierarchy of intersubjective space, in which the Other is always primary, became integral to her progressive ethos. As John and Mason explore the limits of symmetry and the Zionism of their favorite thinkers, Donna discusses how her own violent origins might have led her to the Holocaust survivor Levinas, the respect she shares for Martin Buber, and the importance of good, ethical fun. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 48: The Other Side of Symmetry

Avgi Saketopoulou’s work challenges our notions about trauma and much more. Her concept of traumatophilia asks us to consider not what we do about our trauma but what we do with our trauma. These theories are profoundly disruptive to our therapeutic sensibilities- the value we place on safety and the import of language. Favoring Freud’s earlier, frenzied model of sexuality, Avgi draws connections from the erotic to the violent, providing a framework for understanding sadisms and the horrors happening in the world. As John and Mason discuss political violence and its psychoanalytic influence, Avgi dares us to rethink our investment in containment, pacification, and repair itself. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 49: Frenzied Up Beyond All Repair

Orna Guralnik joins host John Totten in our season finale. When John discovered Orna’s show, Couples Therapy, it was a breath of fresh air as depictions of psychotherapy in media go. However, Orna’s presence as a protagonist who is not the main character raises all sorts of questions about disclosure and authority; the line between anonymity and transparency is curious territory for a televised analyst. Orna discusses with John her commitment to transference and the paradoxical places where her subjectivity shines through the analytic projection screen, including a particular confession of her Israeli heritage to a Palestinian patient. Fantasies abound here- of mutual recognition, of utopia, of separating ourselves from our violent collectives. And yet, while Orna lives in the tension between sovereignty and her associations, her work thrives when surrounded by those with incompatible histories. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 50: We Are Not Sovereign Individuals

In the premiere of season six, psychoanalyst Eyal Rozmarin joins our host John Totten to discuss the constitutive power of belonging. A native of Israel-Palestine, and an objector to his compulsory military service, Eyal has a unique take on the respective costs of belonging and its counterpart abandonment. From Oedipus to the superego, Freud is subverted here; Rozmarin posits it is not that society protects us from our own nature, but that belonging turns us into killers. Is it possible that our collectives are antithetical to the goals of psychotherapy and what is the implication for the treatment room? This and more is discussed in the first of a two-part conversation. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 51: Belonging Is A Double-Edged Sword...

This week, we continue our conversation with Eyal Rozmarin. If belonging is a powerful force compelling us to identify with groups, it follows that our collectives must imprint themselves on the foundation of our very subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, Rozmarin paints a portrait of personhood that is always in conflict between the warm acceptance of the State, and the terror of being cast out into the wilderness as bare life. But what if we were to transcend the Self? What does a liberated Subject look like? An ideology that positions the Self as always in transition would only echo what we should already know as therapists- that identity is transient, the Self is expansive, and that our borders, no matter how much we build walls, are permeable. 

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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Episode 52: ...The Self Is A Prison

Ro Reyes is a psychotherapist and an immigrant. On our inaugural episode, Ro and our host, John Totten, discuss alienation, psychological life, language, and Star Wars. 

Episode 01: Alienation

Doug Hansen is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and professor. In this episode, Doug and John discuss the origins of a psychotherapist: the forces that shape the mind of a therapist and how Doug has been shaped by his own grief and experience as a patient.

Episode 02: Origin Stories

After checking in with our co-producer Mason Neely, John sits down with Tony Fulgham, a filmmaker and musician, who has an unconventional yet profound relationship with his therapist.

Episode 03: Love

For our spookiest episode yet, John sits down with Brian Koch. Brian is an actor and a musician. Most notably, he is the drummer in the Portland band Blitzen Trapper. But he is also a devoted archivist of his own unconscious life through the recording of his dreams. We discuss his experience of dreams and his time in Jungian analysis.

Episode 04: Dreams

There is no better week to discuss the brokenness of humanity. Lynn Shelton is a filmmaker whose films such as Touchy Feely and Your Sister's Sister capture her unique vision of regular people and the ubiquity of psychological pain. She also directs television shows such as Fresh Off the Boat, Casual, and Master of None. She sat down with John following a shoot and discussed her experience of mind and how it shows up in her work.

Episode 05: Wounded Healers

Dr. Heide Island is a researcher and professor of psychology at Pacific University. Her research on neurochemicals and their relationship to temperament has been used by dating services to understand attachment and companionship. In this episode, she discusses the anticipatory effect of dopamine, the neuroscience of attachment, and how change happens.


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Episode 07: Neurochemistry

For the finale of our first season, we are joined by renowned psychoanalyst and philosopher, Dr. Robert Stolorow. Dr. Stolorow’s writing on intersubjectivity and emotional trauma has shaped the field of psychotherapy for forty years.  In this conversation, our host John Totten and Dr. Stolorow discuss a wide range of topics-  from his own experience of emotional trauma after losing his wife, to the role of delusion in American narcissism, and even how Harry Potter has helped shaped his concepts. Perhaps most notably, Dr. Stolorow makes his case for integration, especially of our own existential vulnerability.

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Episode 10: Finitude

One of two episodes about sex, our episode today is a reactionary one. Reactionary against the dogma that John and his guest, Leanna Ramsey, respectively grew up struggling against. What does it mean to be sex-positive? Our premise today is that a stance of curiosity is the only way to therapeutically address differing sexualities, and yet the field continually fails to approach the topic with such a stance. John speaks to sexuality and gender expert Sinclair Sexsmith about such a case. 

Season Two of Between Us is sponsored by MetaFi, a free download on iOS and Android. 

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Episode 19: The Kink Controversy

Dr. Galit Atlas joins us for the finale of Season Two. Her new book, The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and Belonging in Psychoanalysis, is a comprehensive study of sexuality and desire through her unique dual lenses of pragmatism and enigma. A renowned psychoanalyst, professor, and contributor to the New York Times, Dr. Atlas spoke with our host, John Totten, about the process of writing the book, some of her cases, and what happens when arousal enters a treatment.

Season Two of Between Us has been sponsored by MetaFi, a free download on iOS and Android. 

This conversation with Dr. Galit Atlas was sponsored by the Center for Object Relations at http://www.nwfdc.org/

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Episode 20: The Sex in Everything

What are the everyday tragedies you experience? From the universal affliction of aging to the specific harm of racism and sexism, our culture is talented at ignoring the daily trauma of human existence, and normalizing the grievous. In our episode today, John sits down with Dr. Karen Weisbard to discuss her process of waking up to these realities and what it means to occupy different spaces as a therapist- between the consulting room, the mountains, and even the tennis court. 

Find "Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast: Original Soundtrack" on iTunes today.

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Episode 22: Unsilencing the Normal

Dr. Adrienne Harris is a foundational figure in the world of contemporary psychoanalysis, both as a faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and as a prolific writer on the topics of gender, trauma and subjectivity. Several years ago she formed a consultation group with her colleagues Dr. Susan Klebanoff and Dr. Margery Kalb. The journey this group took together was unexpected and resulted in two books- Ghosts in the Consulting Room, and Demons in the Consulting Room. On this episode of Between Us, these women discuss this exploration of transgenerational and cultural trauma, the errands we strive to complete, and the answer to the question- How does a ghost become an ancestor?  


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Episode 23: That Which Haunts Us

Whitney Erickson is a young therapist who is constantly emerging into further layers of herself: from coming out as queer, to leaving the Mormon Church, to a recent epiphany about her own eating disorder- while working with clients who suffer from eating disorders. She takes the discoveries in stride with a sense of wonder about herself, her clients and the world around her. Principles of authenticity and integrity allow Whitney to trust the Universe and herself as she heals and sheds “maladaptive coping mechanisms”- especially the conflation of self-care and self-punishment that pesters her and so many others who have experienced spiritual harm. This week she shares her story. 

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Episode 24: Faith Crisis Management

What is it like to grow up the child of a therapist? Megan Griffiths is a filmmaker whose dark characters and tragic situations are undoubtedly influenced by her mother’s work as a social worker. Her latest film, Sadie, is a modern critique of the American culture of violence as it effects a young girl whose father is away at war. It is streaming now on Amazon Prime and available for rent or purchase on iTunes. She sat down with John to talk about the psychology of her films, her mom’s impact on her art, and working as a female filmmaker in the #MeToo era.  


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Episode 28: Social Worker's Daughter

Dr. Karen Maroda is an integral voice in contemporary relational psychoanalysis who has literally written the book on psychodynamic techniques. In the finale of our third season, she spoke with John Totten on a wide variety of topics ranging from current misconceptions of enactment, to when the therapist should withhold his expressions of love, and how we, as a community, are often ashamed of the anger we feel toward our patients. In this candid discussion, Dr. Maroda lays forth several challenges for psychotherapists in regard to both the importance with which we hold ourselves and the work ethic we bring (or don’t bring) to the job. 

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Episode 30: We Are Not Saints

Psychotherapists John Totten and Mason Neely bring you this psychotherapy podcast that explores what is happening between therapists and patients, from both sides of the relationship.

Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast

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