As a child of Palestinian parents displaced to Beirut, Karim Dajani became interested in psychoanalysis at a young age. These days, he’s justifiably interested in the field’s own exiles, particularly Trigant Burrow, who theorized as early as the 1920’s that the unconscious is structured in concordance with the social world, only to be expelled from the APA shortly thereafter. Dajani explains how the field has time and time again, invested in the erasure of the social unconscious, in a misguided effort to keep psychoanalysis pure. His disillusionment with the institution lies in the contradiction- that as a business of scholarship and truth-making, its leaders strive to suppress the understanding that culture is an antecedent force that was working hard on us back when we were simply fantasies. 


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


Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
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Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 53: What We're Born Into

This week we look at 587 B.c.-A.D. 70: On Several Regimes from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus.

Referenced Episode Links:

Isabel Millar: https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/isabel-millar-preliminary-materials-for-a-theory-of-the-bombshell?si=7f723501d19f48f187c1925cb1f40474&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Eugene Holland: https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/eugene-holland?si=9d88c58432324a7bb5e0117d82965957&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Henry Somers-Hall: https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/henry-somers-hall-treatise-on-nomadology-the-war-machine?si=0a6fb9a895c5419489de3fc3be3503bb&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

A Thousand Plateaus Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/sets/a-thousand-plateaus?si=5c7f74f291db4182813dba684a7eff5a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

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Twitter: @unconscioushh

Deleuze and Guattari - On Several Regimes of Signs

Lynne Layton joins us for our most political conversation to date. Layton’s concept of the normative unconscious, which addresses the myriad of ways we all strive to maintain the status quo, has been influential to those who believe that the mind is shaped by social forces beyond the family. Racism and sexism play a central role, but these bigotries, that work to separate us and dominate some, also work in tandem with economic and political forces that seek to make us all subservient. Layton discusses the influence Erich Fromm had on her work, her critique of the neoliberal regime through a psychoanalytic lens, and how the controversies produced by such inquiries, are very much alive and well in a field that is capable of crying in terror at straw men like “wokeism” and “identity politics.” 


Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 54: Everybody Stays Chill

Jay Bakker joins us live from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. As the child of the famous televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jay has always been surrounded by persistent narratives—even among therapists of every stripe. The pressures of life in the limelight from an early age led him to cope through addiction, especially after his parents faced a very public downfall. But when the Oscar-winning film The Eyes of Tammy Faye was released, Jay sought treatment once again—this time with a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. In a vulnerable conversation, in front of an audience of therapists, Jay shares how this treatment helped him better understand what his unconscious was doing to him, and how psychoanalysis has shaped his efforts to build a more hospitable theology as he strives to disagree well with those across ideologies.

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Engineering by Ian Knippel
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 55: Dark Knight of the Soul

Roy Barsness returns to the show to discuss his new book, which establishes a psychodynamic model of clinical supervision. Steeped in relational psychoanalytic values, this approach offers not only a new way of thinking about supervision, but also a recapitulation of how this theory informs practice in the treatment room—and life in general. By considering each case a muse for both therapist and supervisor, Barsness invites emergent subjectivities into each relationship. Supervision becomes the framework for a path of encounter, with contemporary figures such as Mitchell and Benjamin lighting the way. Roy emphasizes the personal journey of the therapist as crucial to this modality, while Mason reflects with John on his own journey home and the persistent question of to whom we truly belong.



Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 56: Reclaiming the Relational

Tony Bass is less concerned with building psychological metatheories than with how theory comes alive in the consulting room. From the earliest days of the Relational movement, he worked alongside Stephen Mitchell and others to shape a vision of treatment grounded in mutual influence, drawing inspiration from Ferenczi’s dialogue of unconsciouses—an approach Bass experiences as intuitive and “not so meta.” But whose unconscious is it, anyway? For Tony, the analytic encounter always points to interplay: between patient and analyst, healer and healed. In his view, psychotherapy is not the application of a fixed model but an ongoing improvisation, in which each subjectivity becomes instrumental to the unfolding of new meanings and unexpected revelations of both similarity and difference. 



Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ


Episode 57: What's Mine Is Yours

Today I’m super excited to present to you another episode from the Archives From this trove of 1/2 inch reel to reel tapes that we recently found mouldering in a storage facility near the Monterey Airport - a  1966 dialogue between Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy and philosopher Alan Watts and today is PART TWO— notable for being one of the only instances I've encountered of Michael Murphy conducting an interview himself. But hey, when it’s Alan Watts, all bets are off. 
So, first, who is Alan Watts? He’s born in England, but moved to the United States in 1938 to pursue Zen training in New York. Then he attended a Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, got a master’s degree in theology. became an Episcopal priest in 1945, left the ministry in 1950 and then he moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies. It was during the 1950s that he met Dick Price and Michael Murphy - both of whom were kicking around the Bay Area after their stints at Stanford, trying to figure out what the heck they were doing with their lives.  
It’s widely known that Watts represents this pivotal figure in the transmission of Eastern philosophical traditions to Western intellectual discourse. By the time this conversation rolls around in 66, he had long since established himself as a rather famous interpreter of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Hindu metaphysics for American audiences.
He’d had a rise to prominence in the 1950s which coincided with a broader cultural receptivity to Eastern philosophical frameworks. The Beats, early hippies, young people, intellectuals - they were all fascinated by Zen and the I Ching and Buddhism. At Esalen, where Alan Watts taught from the very first days in 1962 up until his death in 1973, he really found an ideal context for exploring the synthesis between Eastern contemplative traditions and this Western psychological inquiry which was coming to the forefront. 
And then the temporal context for this interview bears mentioning, too. This conversation occurs at a moment of considerable social upheaval: we’ve got an escalation of American involvement in Vietnam, and a pushback at home, we’ve got the emergence of several countercultural movements, including the civil rights movement and a rather new hippie/ pyschedelic culture. There’s a widespread questioning of established institutional authority. So it’s within this milieu that Watts and Murphy examine fundamental questions about human consciousness and the peculiarities of American cultural expression. 
And of course all delivered in that million dollar voice by Alan Watts. I mean, He could read a Denny’s menu and make it sound profound. 

To me, this is a treasure of a conversation - even though it’s historically situated, it addresses still-relevant questions about consciousness, about cultural development, and about humanity's place within larger systems. 
It also provides a lot of insight into the intellectual atmosphere that characterized Esalen's early years, when the boundaries between disciplines were very permeable and fundamental questions about human nature were approached with both rigor and imagination. 
Here's Alan Watts, interviewed by Michael Murphy, at Esalen Institute in 1966.

Alan Watts, interviewed by Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy (1966) - Part Two

Sue Grand joins us for a conversation about hatred and totalitarianism. A psychoanalyst who has spent decades studying trauma and the ways evil reproduces across history, Grand is interested in how introspection might protect us and others from our own perpetrator fragments. She challenges the assumption that traumatized people victimize others—most do not. The regeneration of harm, she argues, arises from a complex interplay between psychological defenses and social structures such as gender binaries and racialization. But how do everyday people get caught up in the fevered swell of fascist times? Can psychotherapy be antifascist? Grand examines the erotic lure of fascism, while John and Mason explore Deleuze and Guattari’s provocative claim that, on some level, we all desire it.


|| Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
|| Music by Mason Neely
|| Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
|| Website: www.betweenuspodcast.com
|| Contact: betweenuspodcast@gmail.com
|| Instagram: www.instagram.com/betweenuspod
|| Facebook: www.facebook.com/betweenuspodcast
|| YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pPUTf_wRjNxHcCsFJoSSQ

Episode 58: This Machine Kills Fascism

In this episode, Angelo talks with Dr. Nancy McWilliams about her new book "Psychoanalytic Supervision" (2022). Drawing from over 40 years of leading supervision groups, Dr. McWilliams shares her revolutionary approach to tracking therapeutic progress through ten "psychological vital signs"—a hopeful reframe that asks not just "Are they less depressed?" but "Are they more alive? More capable of love, work, and play?" Their rich conversation explores what makes group supervision uniquely powerful, how parallel process operates across multiple therapeutic relationships, and the art of creating safety where supervisees can present their most challenging cases. They also discuss the development of an "internal supervisor" and what it means to shift from symptom-focused thinking to tracking deeper capacities for human flourishing. Finally, Dr. McWilliams reflects on nearly five decades practicing psychotherapy and shares what gives her the most hope about the future of therapeutic work.

Links:
"Psychoanalytic Supervision" (2022) https://tinyurl.com/43tnbf9b

29. Nancy McWilliams

This week Cooper and Taylor discuss a short piece from Sigmund Freud: On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love. We focus on the implications on libidinal economy. We tie the piece to Deleuze & Guattari, Lyotard, Lacan, and Rene Girard. 

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Twitter: @unconscioushh

Sigmund Freud - Debasement in the Sphere of Love

"Voices of Esalen" features provocative, in-depth interviews with the dynamic leaders, teachers, and thinkers who reflect the mission of the Esalen Institute.

For more about the Esalen Institute, head to esalen.org 

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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.

Interested in Group? My name is Angelo, and I am excited to share these conversations that explore what it means to live and grow within groups - from our early lives to our professional role as leaders. In these episodes, you will hear from some of the key figures practicing and writing about group dynamics from around the country and the world. It’s my hope that these dialogues will inform and challenge - so that we can all learn more about the vitalization that can occur through rich emotional engagement in group.

New tracks tagged #Psychoanalysis