Psyche

In this solo episode, I reflect on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia—a film often described as dark or depressing, yet one I found strangely clarifying and alive.After briefly situating the film within von Trier’s long career, I offer a grounded overview of its structure and themes before moving into deeper psychological and philosophical territory. Drawing on psychoanalysis and existential therapy, I explore how Melancholia portrays depression not simply as pathology, but as a slowing down—a descent into depth in a culture addicted to speed, optimism, and surface meaning.Using the work of James Hillman, Freud, Lacan, and existential thinkers like Kierkegaard and Heidegger, I reflect on melancholia as a confrontation with truth rather than something to be rushed past or fixed. The episode considers what the film can teach us about despair, authenticity, and what remains when familiar structures of meaning fall away.This is an episode about staying with difficult emotions long enough to listen—about refusing easy reassurance in favor of depth, honesty, and presence.

What comes after  toxic masculinity?In this solo episode, I take a deep dive into Ben Almassi’s book Nontoxic: Masculinity, Allyship, and Feminist Philosophy—a work that has stayed with me both intellectually and personally. Rather than simply critiquing harmful forms of masculinity, Almassi asks a more difficult and necessary question: if masculinity can be toxic, what might a non-toxic masculinity actually look like?I explore this question by engaging three major tensions that many contemporary men—and clinicians who work with them—are facing right now.First, I offer a respectful but critical examination of the mythopoetic men’s movement (think Robert Bly and Sam Keen). While acknowledging the movement’s compassion for male suffering, I reflect on how its emphasis on an essential, ancient masculinity—often recovered in separation from women—ultimately reinscribes the very gender boundaries it seeks to heal.Second, I share my appreciation for Almassi’s central contribution: reframing masculinity not as an inner essence or fixed identity, but as a set of practices shaped through relationship, accountability, power, and history. This shift—from masculinity as something we are to something we do—opens up new possibilities for change, responsibility, and growth.Finally, I speak personally about my own ongoing struggle to define masculinity in a way that avoids both unhealthy patriarchal norms and the abstract ideal of androgyny that, while philosophically compelling, often fails to resonate with men’s lived experience. Almassi’s concept of feminist allyship masculinity—grounded in what he calls “the unjust meantime”—offers a way to stay engaged with masculinity without mythologizing it or erasing it.This episode is a slow, thoughtful conversation with a book—and with a question I don’t think has easy answers. If you’re interested in masculinity beyond slogans, purity narratives, or culture-war binaries, this one is for you.If you'd like to read the book for yourself you can find it here for free.

In this episode, I explore one of the most haunting and philosophically rich interviews ever recorded: a conversation between Ernest Becker and Sam Keen, conducted in a hospital room in Vancouver just months before Becker’s death in 1974.Becker, best known for The Denial of Death, understood this interview as a test of everything he had written about mortality, illusion, heroism, and the human condition. No longer speaking at a theoretical distance, Becker reflects on death while actively dying—placing his ideas under the pressure of lived finitude.Sam Keen, serving as more than an interviewer, presses Becker on the limits of tragic realism. Throughout their exchange, they grapple with fundamental questions:– Is culture an immortality project?– Why does the denial of death give rise to scapegoating and evil?– Can heroism exist without victims?– Is terror the final truth of existence—or is there also fascination, joy, and transcendence?In this episode, I walk carefully through the interview itself—following its arguments, tensions, and unresolved questions—while reflecting on what it means to think honestly at the edge of life.If you want to engage the original text directly, you can read the full interview here:📄 Read the full Becker–Keen interview (PDF):https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6452c81301e81c6a31e90407/t/65624e699537da6632dda560/1700941418443/Becker-Keen+Interview+transcript.pdfThis conversation does not offer comfort or closure—but it does offer intellectual courage, philosophical seriousness, and a rare glimpse of thought confronting its own limits.

In this episode, I take a deep dive into I Don’t Want to Talk About It by Terrence Real, a landmark work that changed how we understand depression in men.Male depression often doesn’t look like sadness. It shows up as anger, withdrawal, numbness, overwork, or a quiet collapse of intimacy. Drawing from Real’s insights and my own work as a psychotherapist, this episode explores how shame, emotional silence, and intergenerational legacies shape the inner lives of men—and why so many struggle without ever naming their pain as depression.I explore:Why male depression is so often hidden and misunderstoodHow shame becomes the core emotional wound for many menThe legacy of emotionally absent or unreachable fathersDepression as a relational injury rather than a personal failureWhat effective psychotherapy with men actually requiresWhy connection, dignity, and emotional safety matter more than “opening up”This episode is for therapists, clinicians, and anyone interested in men’s mental health, masculinity, and the deeper emotional costs of silence. It’s also for men who’ve felt disconnected, irritable, or unseen—but never quite “depressed” in the way the word is usually defined.If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t want to talk about it,” this conversation is an invitation to understand why—and what healing can look like when men are met with respect, compassion, and real relational safety.

In this episode, I explore a concept that immediately stopped me in my tracks: the otrovert.I first encountered this idea when my wife shared an article with me and said, “This feels like you.” The article introduced the term otrovert—someone who isn’t quite an introvert or an extrovert, but a person who can enjoy people deeply while still feeling fundamentally outside of groups.That moment sent me down a rabbit hole. I bought the Kindle edition of The Gift of Not Belonging by Rami Kaminsky, read it in a weekend, and then bought the hardcover because I knew this was a concept I wanted to stay with and think alongside my clinical work, my own life, and this podcast.In this episode, I slow things down and really unpack what Kaminsky means by the otrovert:– what it explains about personality and belonging– how it differs from introversion, social anxiety, or misanthropy– the quiet pain of being “other” in a joiner-oriented culture– and the unexpected gifts that can come from not being pulled toward group identityI also spend time carefully exploring how the idea of the otrovert might have a Venn diagram relationship with autism—without collapsing personality into diagnosis or difference into disorder.This is an episode for anyone who has felt socially capable but never quite drawn to belonging, who prefers depth over groups, or who has always lived slightly to the side of the herd and wondered why.Sometimes the right word doesn’t box us in.Sometimes it gives us room to breathe.

In this episode of the Psyche Podcast, I bring together philosopher Eugene Thacker’s In the Dust of This Planet and Junji Ito’s Uzumaki to explore a deeper, colder form of horror—one that isn’t psychological, symbolic, or easily explained.Thacker writes about the “world-without-us”: a reality that exists beyond human meaning, care, or control. In Uzumaki, that idea takes shape as a spiral—an impersonal force that reshapes bodies, infects a town, and quietly dismantles the assumption that the world is organized around us.This is an episode about cosmic horror, dread, and the unsettling beauty of patterns that exceed human understanding. We explore why Uzumaki feels so disturbing, how horror can function as a form of philosophy, and what it means to encounter a world that doesn’t offer reassurance or redemption.If you’re interested in philosophical horror, cosmic pessimism, or stories that linger long after they end, this conversation is an invitation to sit with discomfort—and listen closely to what it reveals.

In this solo episode, I introduce the work of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, one of the most important—and often overlooked—figures in the history of psychoanalysis.Trained in Freudian theory yet deeply critical of its limits, Horney helped shift psychoanalysis away from instinct and biology and toward relationships, culture, and anxiety. I explore her life and intellectual world, including her interactions with other major analysts and her complicated personal and theoretical relationship with Erich Fromm.From there, I take a deeper dive into Horney’s core ideas—basic anxiety, the three neurotic trends, the idealized self, and what she famously called the “tyranny of the shoulds.” These concepts remain strikingly relevant today, especially for understanding perfectionism, people-pleasing, withdrawal, shame, and the quiet suffering many people carry into therapy.Finally, I reflect on why Karen Horney still matters for contemporary psychotherapy and why her vision of healing—rooted in self-realization, relational safety, and compassion for our adaptive strategies—feels more timely than ever.This episode is an invitation to revisit a thinker who continues to help us understand what it means to lose—and recover—the real self.

In this episode, I sit down once again with my friend Barry Taylor, and what begins as a check-in about life after loss unfolds into one of the most honest, surprising, and wide-ranging conversations we’ve had yet.Barry opens up about the recent passing of his mother—what anticipatory grief prepared him for, and what it couldn’t. We talk about dementia, family histories that leave their mark long after childhood, and the strange psychic shift that happens when both of your parents are gone. What does it mean to feel like an orphan as an adult? What does it awaken in us? These questions guide us into deeper territory about identity, childhood wounds, and the ways our parents’ unlived lives ripple into our own.From there, the episode widens into a meditation on originality, artistic risk, and the forces that try to shape us into echoes rather than voices. Barry shares stories from his upbringing—poverty, neglect, and that unforgettable school report calling him “original, but not brilliant”—and reflects on how those early experiences shaped his lifelong commitment to curiosity, nonconformity, and following the edges of things.We explore parenting, ambition, risk, the cruelty of imposed optimism, and the ways culture pressures us toward safety rather than authenticity. Barry talks about why he’s drawn to singers who don’t “fit,” why dissonance matters, and how discovering one’s voice is a lifelong unfolding rather than a singular moment.And, in true Barry fashion, the conversation moves fluidly into theology, mysticism, pessimism, and the philosophical terrain of thinkers like Eugene Thacker and Camus. We discuss the mystery of subjectivity, the limits of knowing, and how beginning from meaninglessness might paradoxically open us up to a more grounded joy.This episode is raw, intimate, wandering, and deeply human. It’s two people thinking out loud about how we become who we are—through grief, through rupture, through risk, and through the beauty of not fitting neatly anywhere.If you’ve ever wrestled with your past, your voice, or your place in the world, there’s something here for you.

In this episode, I explore how philosopher Eugene Thacker’s ideas about pessimism, horror, and “the world-without-us” unexpectedly illuminate the heart of existential therapy. Thacker argues that moments of dread, uncertainty, and limit-experience reveal the limits of human control and understanding—and these moments show up in the therapy room all the time.I talk about how existential therapy helps us sit with the mystery instead of running from it, and how confronting the unthinkable can actually open the door to clarity, growth, and deeper self-understanding. From anxiety and identity shifts to grief, burnout, and meaning crises, we look at how therapy becomes a place to face life’s vastness without collapsing into fear.If you’re curious about the intersection of philosophy, horror, and the therapeutic journey—especially with teens, neurodivergent clients, and adults navigating major transitions—this episode offers a grounded, accessible reflection on how we can live meaningfully in an uncertain world.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend and returning guest, Luke Grote, to explore one of the most intense, provocative, and fascinating chapters I’ve ever read. Luke recently sent me a chapter from his upcoming book — a piece he describes as the best work he’s ever written — and after reading it, I have to agree. It’s part theology, part philosophy, part psychoanalysis, and part prophetic critique, woven together with a raw emotional charge that grabbed me immediately.We talk about where inspiration really comes from, why the ego is fundamentally a distortion, and how most of us spend our lives sleepwalking inside an identity shaped by cultural conditioning, spiritual misunderstandings, and mimetic pressures. Luke explains why Kierkegaard is his model for doing theology, how despair is a universal condition, and why he believes the “self” we identify with is largely an illusion we need to transcend.We also explore the intensity — even the fury — in his writing. I ask him directly if this chapter was a kind of “manic rant,” and we dig into how his bipolar diagnosis shapes the way he sees the world, breaks from academic conformity, and refuses to internalize the “Name-of-the-Father” in the Lacanian sense. Luke talks openly about how this partial break from the symbolic order allows him to see through cultural structures most of us unconsciously obey.From there, we dive into the inseparable relationship between the personal and the political, the tension between detachment and engagement, and why Luke believes genuine social transformation requires a radical remaking of the self. We challenge evangelical moralism, progressive identity politics, and the idolatry of belief within Christianity — and ask what it means to wake up in a world where most people prefer to remain asleep.This conversation is dense, challenging, and deeply alive. If you’re interested in ego-transcendence, the New Being, Kierkegaard, consciousness, spirituality, political critique, or what it means to become who you truly are, this episode will have a lot for you.