Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast
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.
Episodes
August 7, 2024 • 83 mins
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...
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July 24, 2024 • 84 mins
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, pro...
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July 10, 2024 • 81 mins
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...
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June 25, 2024 • 53 mins
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 cro...
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June 12, 2024 • 62 mins
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...
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May 28, 2024 • 64 mins
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 ...
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May 15, 2024 • 48 mins
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 deve...
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May 1, 2024 • 54 mins
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 ...
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April 17, 2024 • 49 mins
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 discou...
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April 3, 2024 • 46 mins
In the premiere of season five, our host John Totten checks in with co-producer Mason Neely as they reflect on the last season of Between Us, the hiatus that followed, and the boundaries of the therapeutic purview. In a meandering conversation, John and Mason look inward at their own creative and family lives and forward to the upcoming season, a collection of dialogues and reflections that, in spite of an aimless production, emerg...
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June 9, 2021 • 72 mins
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 Blac...
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May 26, 2021 • 64 mins
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 p...
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May 12, 2021 • 61 mins
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 ...
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April 28, 2021 • 43 mins
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 learn...
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April 14, 2021 • 47 mins
This week we continue our conversation with Dr. Medria Connolly and Dr. Bryan Nichols on the psychological case for reparations. From white privilege and its deconstruction to the fantasy of American democracy, Dr. Connolly and Dr. Nichols shed light on some of our more provocative cultural issues, making it clear that we are not living in one America, that we have unfinished business as a society, and that even in their own academ...
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March 31, 2021 • 59 mins
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 extend...
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March 17, 2021 • 47 mins
It’s impossible to watch the news without witnessing the horrors sustained by people of color in America. The psychological traumas take a physical toll as well. Never has that been more clear than the covid-19 pandemic which has lowered African-American lifespan more than any other group of people. Ashley McGirt is a therapist and educator who works at the intersection of Black bodies and Black minds as a hospice counselor. Her ex...
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March 3, 2021 • 56 mins
Between Us returns with Dr. Usha Tummala-Narra, an author and professor of counseling at Boston College. Dr. Tummala-Narra is our first guest in a series of interviews that ask the question, “Does psychotherapy address what is happening in the news?” Psychoanalysis has not always welcomed issues of culture and diversity. She believes there are theories that need updating and makes the case for a deeper investigation into how cultur...
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May 18, 2020 • 32 mins
This is a repost of our fifth episode featuring filmmaker Lynn Shelton who passed away May 16th, 2020. Originally posted in January of 2017.
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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 Of...
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April 15, 2020 • 36 mins
We are back from a long break for a one-off episode in which our hosts, John and Mason, discuss therapy in the time of coronavirus- how it changes the practice, how it changes the collective conscious, and how it brings into focus not the modality or technique, but the relationship.
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