Dan is a qualified mental health nurse. James is an undergraduate human but qualified Master in Radio. Private Practice Podcast distils the big ideas in psychoanalysis into something you can use to start to understand yourself and your behaviour better. We’re not Carl Jung and Melanie Klein resurrec…
It's that time of year again; summer in Australia. The kangaroo testicles are on the BBQ, Santa has pulled off his top to show you his beach body, and the Sack Game Down Under is complicated with everything falling out, since Australia is upside down. Releasing episodes out of sequence with a last-minute switcharoo, we present the Private Practice Podcast Christmas Special, full of existential philosophy that's tediously related to our ongoing saga into the work of Carl Rogers. If you want to hear about James leaving Casablanca and arriving in Melbourne, you'll have to wait for the next episode, which he incorrectly insists was just recently released before this one.Due to the phenomenal success of last year, everything is kept the same for this year, including Pigs in Blankety Blankets and The Nightmare Interpretation Before Christmas. The Christmas Quiz is loftier and more abstract than before, and yet with the intellectual cop-out of multiple choice answers, Dan manages to win points and will surely impress half of the listener. As you would expect, Unconditional Positive Regard is plentiful from Santa like it is from Carl Rogers, except when it comes to the ludicrous Sack Game, which will unnecessarily leave a taste in your mouth sourer than a rancid sprout that's gone mouldy in Dan's highly contaminated living environment. You haven't got much time to listen to this before Christmas is over, so cancel everything now and play it loud enough to drown out the sound of Meghan and Harry more effectively than Her Majesty ever managed.
We jump back into Carl Rogers this week with a discussion of the idea of congruence between the internal and external worlds. Dan is back and recording from a hotel room in Hitchin because he is on a business trip; his small talk about this is so boring that it's an easy win for James with his witty and concise tale of a night out in Casablanca. But small talk is not a competition and so there are no prizes. How fortified is your inner world? Do you pride yourself on being able to scream with mean, defenestrating laughter at someone on the inside, but slap on a façade of faux compassion to get away with it? If so then you are objectively wrong and Carl says so. This is followed by skipping over Carl's introduction to Unconditional Positive Regard (because we have made whole episodes on this subject in the past) to ask the question, what is empathy? Baby don't hurt me. James refuses to stop judging Dan and Dan just wants to understand why.
If all this Becoming of late is becoming overwhelming, we take a break from On Becoming a Person to talk about a new film from New York, called Adieu, Lacan, featuring an interview with the director, Richard Ledes. The film is fictional, but the main character of Seriema, played by Ismenia Mendes (Orange is the New Black), is based on the real life of Betty Milan, a Brazilian woman who traveled to Paris for a series of analytic sessions back in the 1970s with the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, played by David Patrick Kelly (Twin Peaks). Dan was ill with no voice for the recording of this episode, so in lieu, as English-speakers like to say, is a French person, Sammy, who has many opinions—quelle surprise—on both Lacan and the film.The episode starts with an interview with the director, followed by a review of the film, a discussion of Lacan and his views on politics and relationships, and then a conversation about psychoanalysis around the world, the language of existentialism (and K-pop group BTS), and Freud becoming a totem in France. To watch the film, it's available now on many streaming platforms from www.adieulacan.com“Freud thought a film could never transmit what happens in an analysis... but I am quite sure if Freud saw this film he would fall in love with it... at last, psychoanalysis has reached the cinema”— Marco Antonio Cortinho Jorge, Corpo Freudiano do Rio de Janeiro
This is the third of our episodes on Carl Rogers' six fundamental life learnings, from his book On Becoming a Person. The ultimate introduction to his big ideas, and just the beginning of our odyssey towards the light of a sun that can melt your hand off. Small Talk is lost in favour of James having a production meeting with himself, before getting right into the topic suspiciously quickly. This incorporates the weighing up of right- and left-hemisphere interpretations of experience, allowing facts to flow, and remembering that the only child is not, in actual flowing fact, special. Fans of Flow will fondly remember that Flow is a verb, a doing word, and you'll be delighted to discover that the Flow activity of Becoming is a right Carry On. This concludes Part One of the book, and we'll be back for plenty more as long as we don't flow too close to the sun.
This is the second of a three-part mini-series on Carl Rogers' six fundamental life learnings, from his book On Becoming a Person. In friendship, war and family, Carl has something to say about how much your feelings matter, and whether or not they legitimise mass murder. If you like what we do on this podcast, you're in for a treat. Small Talk is back to forward your life clock, as James adjusts to a double time zone shift and leaves out not a single minute from the story (although he still gets the details wrong if you pay attention), while Dan has to deal with a decapitated rat. The life learnings this week involve the allowance of others to overshare, accepting others despite everything, and resisting jumping into other people's lives to fix them. It's hard to tell if this is a conversation about the megalomaniac child's rites of passage, or foreign policy and international diplomacy with psychopaths at very long tables. Either way, the nuclear reactor has some warm water for you to bathe in.
This is the first in our season of episodes swimming in the waters of Carl Rogers' On Becoming a Person, and the first in a three-part mini-series on his six fundamental life learnings. It was first published in 1967 and we'll be seeing if it still outshines the millions of words people have cobbled together since, to essentially describe what it is to grow as a person.Carl Rogers "baffled and annoyed" psychiatrists in his day, as he refused to accept Freud's analytical approach to therapy; he didn't like being told what to think. In this episode, Dan and James will happily baffle and annoy you, taking you through the first three of the six life learnings Rogers considered to be his most significant; being honest with emotions, accepting himself, and understanding other people's interpretations. With examples of the desire to murder grandmas in the supermarket and express rage in a job interview, we're bringing you a discussion about dilemmas that often remain as unclear as ever, half a century after the book's publication. If you want to read along with us, we thoroughly recommend the book, but if you just want the nonsense then you've come to the right place.
Oliver Sacks is known for his way of communicating ideas about neuroscience in the form of best-selling page-turners. He lived a life as interesting as his patients and he is also Dan's hero. We used this episode not so much to talk about the contents of his books, but the way he communicated how he saw people who were outliers in their neurological perceptions.The man who mistook his wife for a hat, trying to pick up her head and put it on his own as if it were a totally different object, is the most famous of Oliver Sacks' patients. He represents how human perception is not as black and white as to be thought right or wrong, it's more of a range. Yet the woman's head is a fact of physics; it's not a hat, and nor is it a social construct of the patriarchy, no matter what the American media tells you! We discuss how Oliver Sacks found a balance between objectivity and interpretation, studied interpretations scientifically, and simultaneously managed to treat his patients more like a psychotherapist than a research scientist.
It's the biggest episode of Private Practice Podcast ever, stuffed with immature humour and games that illuminate the gargantuan fallacy of fairness like a brightly shining star. After last year's not-a-Christmas-Special, this year the fun and games with Dan and James are dialled up to induce tinnitus, as we bring you four new festive features, including Pigs in Blankety Blankets and Freud's Psychoanalytic Christmas Quiz. For Dan, the worst thing about this Christmas is the nightmare that James offers for some Freudian interpretation, closely followed by the twisted Oliver Sacks remix of the traditional Sack Game. For James, it's tidings of complexity and enjoyment all the way, because he knows how to pull up his Christmas socks and Flow. So pop on your furry antlers and take off everything else, get yourself into a warm bath for an indulgent time with the Private Practice Podcast Christmas Special, and let Dan and James drizzle their brandy sauce all over your moist pudding. Music credits: all from Archive.org
What is psychoanalysis in the 2020s? An expensive exercise in self-centred indulgence? For the first time in the place we call the Private Practice we discuss in a bit more detail what it is. Dan is a fully qualified mental health practitioner and has over 20 years' experience of therapy, and James is/has neither of those things, and so asks the questions to learn about a practice than can often seem mystical when rather the word is mysterious. Psychoanalysis was famously invented by Freud, but is not all about him and his penis obsession, at least not all of the time. Increasingly, however, people are ditching his field of thought and relying on CBT to solve their problems. Despite our deep-dive into this hall of distorted mirrors in our recent mini-series, we still think it's often just wallpapering over the cracks. And by "crack" I mean anything you want me to mean…Grab a cigar, suck on it like you mean it, and come with us behind the closed door of the Private Practice to have a more purposeful idea of why you would want to explore your unconscious.Mentioned in this episode:This Jungian Life podcast https://thisjungianlife.com/episode-184-does-analysis-work-a-conversation-with-jonathan-shedler-phd/The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy by Jonathan Shedler https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20%282010%29%20Efficacy%20of%20Psychodynamic%20Psychotherapy.pdf
In the stunning conclusion to our overwhelmingly successful Distortion episodes, we brilliantly look at how framing some information can totally transform how it is perceived. What a stunning and overwhelmingly brilliant way to start the description of a podcast about bias… As well as framing topics to limit the overall field of discussion (or James' lack of ability to do so in conversation), we also use confirmation bias to assert our views, hindsight to see James in a better light than Dan, and affinity bias to prove our devotion to the Jungian Gods. This week Small Talk is back, and Dan is really impressed with the progress James is making to be free and spontaneous in this skill, and for once, instead of concluding that you should pull up your socks and flow, James wonders if we should all scapegoat cats in order to manage the problem of bias in humankind. I could continue to ensure you're fully prepared for everything in the episode, but I've already done enough framing and indeed provided sufficient context, so it's time to stop feeding your cat and press play.
Can we all Viktor Frankl our way to self actualisation, in spite of everything? This week we look at the fallacies, not to be confused with phalluses, that might get in the way. If you feel like life is not fair, we're about to take away your sweets. The fallacies of control, fairness, changing people (leave it to the therapists!) and always being right, are thrashed around the Private Practice until our theory of socks and flowing is updated. And after all these episodes telling you to stop being so stupid and start rationalising your way out of all that nonsense, the question is begged; how much is too much rational thinking? Plus! Is Dan going to start a cult?
Don't follow your heart! But how do you know when your assumptions, your type-1 thinking, is distorted? James hasn't got a clue, so he asks Dan. This week we offer you a work out, comprised of jumping to all sorts of conclusions, stretching the truth until your feelings sound like facts, and running up accounts of value judgments with modal verbs. According to Beverley Knight, 'Shoulda woulda coulda are the last words of a fool', and we have a fool with many last words on the subject. There's no small talk at the start of this episode, so you might want to spend 20 minutes chatting to your neighbour before pressing play. But for those of you who like brevity, who will finally be satisfied that we get on with it at the start this time, the final third of this podcast more than disappoints. You'll have to wait until next week for a satisfactory climax. For now, there is a strong taste of the absurd as we explore the next cognitive distortions in the series and give you three more reasons why you understand nothing.
Reclining on the sumptuous Freudian couch or answering a tsunami of incredibly similar questions about your interpretational distortions in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? Just when your life is in chaotic meltdown, you have to evaluate this choice, as if you're informed and capable of making the best decision. This has been a theme to which we have wanted to return since our episode in season four, CBT vs Freud, in which we outlined some of the main differences. In the middle of the 20th century, Carl Rogers and the humanists evolved the experimental work of Freud and Jung, but their therapy was not analytical problem-solving. CBT, meanwhile, is more of an evidence-based formula developed later on, and it's undeniably effective and worth further exploration. But people like to use any old junk as evidence of what they're looking for, and you've listened to our recent episodes and come to the conclusion that the humanists, meanwhile, seem like a friendly gospel choir, without the bible getting in the way and yet less penis-obsessed than Freud. So, isn't the decision easy, get yourself a bit of that unconditional positive regard and just keep one eye out for psychopaths? Well now you have Dan the professional and James the provocateur to complicate things and walk you through the minefield of cognitive distortion analysis—over several episodes—until you don't know anything any more. Don't pretend that's not what you want. There are ten recognised cognitive distortions, and yes, James thinks there are five… PLUS! Was Machiavelli woke?
Now that even Prince Harry has a podcast about mental health, it's time for us to up our game and get serious. Except it was a hot summer's afternoon in Marseille when this recording took place, and James decided to steer the conversation into the waters of relativism and the Big Five personality traits, of which he insists there are ten. You can decide for yourself if you're thrilled or horrified to find that time has changed little; it's business as usual in the Private Practice. We are still lurking in the territory of Carl Rogers' humanist psychotherapy, seen in the context of a world with psychopaths and narcissists who may relish the opportunity to manipulate your unconditional positive regard for their own benefit. Many of these are people we know and love, and we certainly won't exterminate them all in a mass-genocide to solve the problem, so we need to live with them (or maybe I should say, you need to live with us?). As a new regular feature, James decides to test how much of a psycho Dan really is, behind the jolly facade of a mental health professional. It may seem like James is the obvious candidate for a narcissistic sociopath, but maybe a little bit of scratching at the surface can reveal the psycho where they're least expected. If you haven't listened to our 2-part episode on Carl Rogers, then probably start there.
Unconditional positive regard in the face of someone pointing a gun at your face? Or worse, a flatmate accusing you of making their mess in the kitchen. Isn't it time to face reality and bury Carl Rogers' cloud-cuckoo utopian ideas with him in his grave and dance robotically on it? This episode asks the question, what happens when a humanist philosophy meets Machiavellian power away from the therapy room?Although James tries to drive a Métro train into the ideas of humanist psychology, to balance the bucket of adoration we poured last week, it just makes him sound like the psycho who still has many issues to resolve (and he still has the audacity of suggesting at the end that this time you won't be able to compare yourself favourably to him like usual). Fortunately James steps aside to let Dan explain why you can regard someone positively without condoning their terrible choices or denying your EXTREME ANGER! Take a breath, pay attention, and spread some love as far as you can shoot it.
Can you regard all humans positively? Carl Rogers was a humanist psychologist who believed so. He was one of the first ever researchers in psychotherapy since the emergence of the practice with the work of Freud, and this episode looks at the positive effects of his ideas, derived from pioneering experiments. He's one of the most influential psychotherapists in history, and Dan thinks he was a really nice guy. But nice is boring, and so we ask, what's the difference between humanist psychology and an average daytime TV presenter (specifically one who Dan has met, so he can vouch for her niceness).But if Carl Rogers' ideas were so influential and successful, then it's time to open the Private Practice Podcast freezer and pull out the question we always have oven-ready for situations like this: why are we not all enlightened humans by now? Well, the practical application of his philosophy in the face of reality is the subject next week in Part 2.
Conspiracy, the breakdown of trust, murder in the street, the Sack Game; the Private Practice Podcast Christmas Special has it all. And it's two thirds longer than last year! It's like all your Christmases have come at once. It's the time of year when people are inclined to believe in any old tosh, so leave your left-brain out for Santa to eat and invite your right-brain to the table for lunch. If the lizard people really don't want you to hear this, they'd have you listening to a greatest hits compilation of James giggling and Dan saying everyone is basically the same. But unless you believe that we're secret elves, delivering conspiracy to the foot of your tree in a weird-shaped package, the conversation you're about to hear should be a delicious feast of free expression. Music credits: all from Archive.orgDeck the Halls – Jingle PunksSilent Night – Dark Christmas Music
We could have made a breezy 'Top 10 Tips to Improve your Mental Health' summer special. But of course we didn't. We instead came up with our Top 10 psychoanalytical questions for 2020, because a totally neutral, satisfactory state of consciousness is necessarily hard work to achieve against the inevitable oppression of psychic entropy at the best of times, let alone in a global pandemic and existential cultural chaos. It involves trawling through giggles, news about France ('James Finds Himself, Again!' The sequel no one asked for…), the tradition of the Sack Game, and the following complex topics:SuicideThe empirical or subjective nature of sense dataPeak experiencePsychedelicsPhysical displacementThe problems with modelling mental dataWhat things can a psychoanalyst know?Thinking in words, pictures and soundsGiving and taking offence (hopefully you'll be offended by something we say, or else we'll have to try harder next time)…and a teaser of what we've already started recording for season seven: Carl Rogers vs the Psychopaths.You're welcome.Top 10 jazzy music credit:Disco Metropolis by Vyra (soundcloud.com/vyramusic)Creative Commons Attribution 3.0Sack Game music credit:The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, archive.org
Did you just say "sausage"? This week, every word counts in our concluding adventure in the unconscious forest of terrible things. You wanted some dream talk, and as the great philosopher Gabrielle noted, dreams can come true. Before exploring what seems like the utterly feral subjectivity of dream interpretation, we explore Carl Rogers' theory that all science is subjective, and then Freud's theory that all words freely associated with dreams are to some degree objective facts about the unconscious. In this light, dream interpretation is no more subjective than the theory of gravity. I, for one, have no idea if there are evil spirits in the core of the Earth, sucking things away from me, but I choose not to believe this because I want to seem wonderfully clever. Freud and Jung had different perspectives on the significance of dreams, and for once we give Freud the spotlight, starting with his patient who carried a giant pair of testicles on her head.What are the differences between simple and complex dreams? How do we perceive the world through value judgments? How many words does a picture paint? That's a trick question since there are no words in the unconscious. Don't bother doing your hair for this episode, we'll be turning your world upside down regardless. This is the deepest, darkest part of the forest, and yet just on the other side is the light of consciousness; WAKE UP!
This is the greatest podcast episode ever recorded, and if you don't think so then you're a discreditable source and we'll destroy you. This week in the forest of terrible things, we dig up some truly horrific defence mechanisms. And we examine them in more detail than we expected, which means that the holy grail of unconscious exploration, dream interpretation, remains tantalisingly out of reach in the upper canopy until next week. This episode is a beast, sniffing for truffles on the forest floor.Defensiveness might be an inherent aspect of childhood development, but does an adult have any reason to be defensive in their thoughts and communication? Why should it be exclusively the tiny number of people in formal therapy who unlock their repressed ideas and set them free in consciousness? The liberation is as cathartic as any in the material world, and the ability to identify defensiveness is accessible through paying attention.In our conversation this week, ornamental nut dispensers get smashed, Judge James stops banging his gavel at parties, and driving an electric car into a river makes for a transcendent social rite of passage. Just don't try it at home (but do try everything else). If you think we sound awful with our confessions, try listening to yourself.In the unlikely event that you find the discussion of childhood repression frustrating, see your therapist. Alternatively, repress it by skipping to the 39 minute mark where the conversation moves on, just as long as you feel bad about doing so, and you will. This episode ultimately climaxes in a forest clearing, nakedly exposed to Carl Rogers' idea of unconditional positive regard. A likely trailer for things to come on this podcast.
It's time to stop living your best life. Nothing can be said to be truly conscious, the mycelial-like network of unconscious knowledge stretches so deep that your logical left brain needs to take a minute's silence to consider the one thing it can know about the unconscious forest of terrible things; that it contains many ideas brutally repressed. You don't know what your best life even is if you pick it up off the shelf, so this week we look at Jung's list of things you don't know about yourself (and don't necessarily want to).We discuss the Jungian idea of two selves, or, how gruesome will the carpet look when you finally murder your boss? We ask, what does a "sane and sorted" life without therapy look like, when only consciousness has a voice? We turn to Carl Rogers for his view of mutually open therapy to allow access to the unconscious with the breakdown of defence mechanisms. And we were going to finish with a guide to common defence mechanisms, but got our feet wet in the mud beneath the lemongrass flower, in a discussion of psychodynamics. As future James writing this, I can however confirm that we do finally get round to this in a subsequent part in the Unconscious series. And that in the future, when we all live on Mars, the aliens really will be able to download your unconscious catalogue and laugh.The dark arts of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy each dress from different collections of arts and science, and a science-valuing society can repress the art of therapy in the back of the collective unconscious wardrobe. To be truly enlightened, come with us into the forest and we'll find the witch before you become her.Further reading:'On the Nature of the Psyche' by Carl Jung'On Becoming a Person' by Carl Rogers'The Communist Manif–' …only kidding!
Unconscious: Part One – Your Brain is HotThis is the first part of our mini-series exploring ideas of the unconscious mind, in which we compare the conscious, subconscious and unconscious states, using Carl Jung's theory of psychodynamics from 'On the Nature of the Psyche' to allude to functions of the material world, as well as Freud's five characteristics of unconscious symbolism. We also ask, what do you really want to do with this jar of pesto?It has been more than 100 years since Freud tried to solve the puzzle of why he fundamentally desired to slaughter his father and penetrate his mother in service to Venus. Jung and others developed Freud's revolutionary insights into what is basically the practice of psychoanalysis today. The purpose of which is for an individual to integrate their unconscious ideas into consciousness. Not to accept who they are, but to become who they are. To enjoy life as an integrated self, newly able to feel a semblance of will and meaning.So why are we not all enlightened beings by now? Why are we still mostly the puppets of genes inherited from prehistoric fish, values internalised from cultures and parents that find truth so disgustingly repellent? Why is the unconscious mind still such a mystery? This unfalsifiable obsession of just a few individuals who call themselves therapists, or, "the rapists?" How can we know what is unknowable, and what would make you want to?But it's not all fishing for scary penis envy and displaced diarrhoea. The people who come out of psychoanalysis know the only thing they can possibly know for sure, that their conscious experience feels better after the process of integration. So if you have a drip of curiosity to discover that which is the core of your being, the controller of your life, so that you can use this knowledge in consciousness to become a person and not a puppet, unleash your only semblance of free will, then come with us into the dark, enchanted forest of the unconscious.Ludicrous epic music credit:Legends by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A taste of what's brewing in the darkness before it enters your conscious experience. Our new mini-series on the unconscious mind starts next week.Ludicrous epic music credit:Legends by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
As the great philosopher Belinda Carlisle said so profoundly, Heaven is a Place on Earth. This week we question how you can create that state for the entire duration of your life, instead of living in suffering, hopeful of the pearly gates that come with the divine release of death. It's the tenth chapter of Flow explored in more detail. But do you know what that's worth? If we count how much we ask of you for the conversation we provide to stimulate your transcendence, it's nothing more than an hour and a quarter of blissful pleasure in your ears.But pleasure is not enough; this being wisdom from Aristotle, a philosopher almost as inspirational as Belinda. How can your life have any meaning if you're dependent on pleasures, and distractions from the stuff you don't like? When you walk out of that concert that made you feel so good, you're just left with your miserable life, and a social media feed showing everyone else having it better.What am I talking about? The cosmos has no meaning! We are all just random humans, may as well just have fun, be kind and hopefully not die in suffering. Jeez. Well I'm glad you bring up Jesus. It looks very unlike humans are truly nihilistic as a species, at least that's how Jung interpreted his psychoanalytic insights, and this week we look at how the most inconsequential-seeming pleasure pursuits are loaded with meaning, which James will pod-splain to you with his Beyoncé aubergine principle. We're not pulling down the shutters on fun, we're just stuffing fun into the overarching sausage of life with a bit more meat than you might find on a night out (and we're both aware how much meat can be explored there, as well as how unfulfilling it can be).Once again, a ludicrous description of a podcast about improving the integrity of your mental health over time, rather than seeking moment-to-moment happiness. There's only one way to find out what it's really worth. They say in Heaven, love comes first, and we've shot a provocative load for you to swallow this week. Thanks to our friend Mathis for some complementary wisdom, and to the Internet Archive for music.
You shout at us, we listen! It's already time for excellent, complex critique from the sophisticated listener. Although when life gives you lemons, you just have to pull your socks up and let the lemonade flow, so in the absence of a sophisticated voice we navigate merely what is within our control. Why should you develop your concept of self, when it's a tiny toy sailboat being blown by the hurricanes of Mother Nature? We have answers, three of them. The first involves hypothetical quantum physics, the second is totally relatable, real and now, and the third goes back over 2000 years to Stoic philosophy, in order to explore how the problems you face in your life today are timeless aspects of the evolved human condition.The fundamental purpose of mindfulness, Flow, CBT, psychoanalysis and philosophy, is to make you "antifragile" when you face up to the thrashing forces of life throughout the awful burden of existence. These forces cannot destroy your inner citadel, the conscious experience that is all you can control, so we present some inspiration to help you fight the dragon of chaos.If you want to contact the show, sail your tiny boat to www.privatepracticepodcast.net and dock up on the ‘Contact Us' page. And if you're interested in learning about Stoicism, here are the sources referenced in the episode:'Happy' by Derren Brown (in spite of that title)'The Daily Stoic' by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman'The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science' by Jonathan Haidt'The Modern Stoic' series by Voices in the Dark https://voicesinthedark.world/modern-stoic/And if you're convinced that you're superior to a plastic cup, you can experience your beliefs blossom as you hit them with a copy of 'Antifragile' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
How do you cope with external chaos? Just be like James, he's doing fine with his divinely ordered consciousness in the current situation. Is that not helpful? You want better advice, you want more words? Well we have a treat for you!If you don't give a pack of fudge about the indulgent, pretentious, hippy nonsense of sitting down to pay attention to nothing but what is going on inside your head, while outside thousands of people are between the crushing loins of death, then we have some reasons why it's the best thing you can do for your wellbeing, that of everyone you encounter, and the wider world in general. And it transcends all external conditions, because consciousness is something you have to put up with every moment of your life; you can switch us off, but you can't switch off your mind until death us do part.PRACTICAL INFORMATION: The useful stuff about meditation starts at the 37 minute mark (obviously it takes us more than half an hour to get to the point; what do think this is, a meme?).We've previously looked at the Flow idea in detail, and next week we will be talking about Stoic philosophy, but this week we go into more detail about the most useful technique for coping with chaos in the external world by first addressing the internal space for interpretation and experience. We define external chaos as any time ever, except maybe the late 1990s. It's not just Trump and capitalism and coronavirus that cause suffering. As you've come to expect, we promise minimal hedonistic pleasure, maximal tough enjoyment. So fasten your seatbelt for a bumpy but thrilling ride into your hideously chaotic mind.If you want to try a meditation app but cannot afford a subscription, you can use the Waking Up app for free, using this link and scrolling down to the free subscription instructions (no bank details required): https://wakingup.com/We are not sponsored by Waking Up and many other services are available, but since most provide a financial barrier, or put an emphasis on "de-stressing" (which we think is naïve) we are removing that from our recommendation. This podcast is also free, with no sponsorship or paywall, so you can recommend this episode to anyone you know who may benefit from an introduction to meditation. Just make sure you prepare them for the only price they will have to pay, which is putting up with James and his… "personality."
Describe yourself. Things I couldn't guess from averages of humanity or that "outfit" you're wearing. Are you the kind of person who says, "I hate filling out the 'About Me' box on dating apps?" Well I've heard that one before. It seems you need to turn to the grandfather of self discovery.Carl Jung was a protégé of Freud until their conflicts of belief in the nature of sexual desire, among other things, caused Jung to part ways and develop his own theories of psychic energy, which continue to form the structure of much psychoanalysis today. In this episode we look at his book, The Undiscovered Self, which presents compelling ideas of the reasons why every individual's development of their self identity is so important for the wellbeing of society as a whole, to counter totalitarian oppression. Jung was writing in the aftermath of the Holocaust and at the peak of Stalin's tyrannical style of communism in 20th century Europe, but we look at how the ideas apply today as we approach, or are arguably already in, a world of advanced artificial intelligence. It's not just the despots like James, the self-styled, divine megalomaniac only-child that you should fortify yourself against; it's their robots that are coming for your mind!We also look at the differences between personality tests and the contents of the unconscious, and offer some helpful, practical tips for when alien life arrives on Earth. And James lets slip some revelations that you probably already suspected were true. Yes, Alexa, I'm talking to you (how can I not?). If you do take notes from this episode, don't follow the mistake of writing in pink on pink, and definitely don't store the notes on your phone. The brighter the light of your screen, the darker the shadow it casts.This misquote is for pun purposes only, we can confirm that turning down the brightness will not protect your psyche from totalitarian interference.
Mental health and self-development amounts to ineffectual, vulgar, bourgeois fluff. Political action is what makes a real improvement to the lives of the many?Well… not exactly.Anxiety is a contagious oppression. Anxiety is inevitable without individual action. You are no help to your community if you spread anxiety. For the luckiest, anxiety means irritation. For the unluckiest, suicide.But no one is a helpless victim. Not even the one who thinks they're unique, or the worst off. So who can you turn to? A shrink? Maybe you can't afford that. God? Here's a better idea… Private Practice Podcast!Free will may be an illusion but we are aware that our choices have consequences. So we're more than just puppets to external powers, or unchangeable zombies. If you don't have a sense of a purposeful self, however, it's inevitable that you will become a contagious anxious drone. Remember the studies of psychic entropy from the Flow season. But neuroscience has no proof of a physical self, so what even is self development? In this episode we talk about the reality of things that don't literally exist, like the ego, and how the consequence of acknowledging their reality changes your life from helpless to purposeful, your thoughts from anxious to ordered.We look at people who suffer brain damage. At what point are they no longer themselves? How many members of your family do I have to kill before the family no longer exists? If I blow your brains out and they're dripping down the wall, do you live on as gunge?Anxiety is inevitable if you do nothing. We've talked about how mental health is an ongoing action, a form of exercise. But the route out of excessive anxiety is often one of chance, and in this episode James talks a little (surprisingly concise for once) about the sequence of events that have determined his experience since the start of this podcast. But you can change that chance for someone else through self development, and talking about it to anxious friends who haven't stumbled across a way out of their internal oppression.So I guess listen to this episode or people will die. Something like that anyway. Maybe we should imitate the UK government's obsession with repeating three bullet points; BE SELFISH. REDUCE ANXIETY. SAVE LIVES.
What is a mental health problem and why do you need more of them? Like the Flow activities discussed in the previous season, any state of improved mental health requires a verb; practicing, questioning, paying attention, maintaining. There is no completion to the process, besides climbing into a pickling jar and hoping someone tightens the lid. In addition, can you think of anyone you know who doesn't have any issues with their personality? And what are the chances you are the only perfect, divine human who has got it all sorted and under control? If you're not James Hall and you've never levitated and glowed in the paradise of Montpellier, then we both know the answer to that one. To think that using your precious time and energy on your mental health is a luxury you can't afford, or a waste you don't need, is not just a rejection of your potential, but also a burden on any unlucky individual who has to put up with you. But the process requires actively looking for problems and finding them where you didn't necessarily realise they existed, and in a toss-up between this and Netflix plus ice cream, which one usually wins? Over the course of this season, we're going to give you some of the reasons why the seemingly ridiculous choice is a fantastic one to make, starting with overcoming the "problem" barrier. On the other side you will find the garden of discovery, where the peaches are ripe to pluck and Call-Me-by-Your-Name, the bright sunlight casts dark shadows behind the rose bushes, and the flowing stream of consciousness never stops gushing. The hard problem of how to be is not one to toss off, it's tantric. But you can still reward yourself with some of that ice cream afterwards, so long as you suck it off the spoon mindfully. There you have it, intro to season 6. Off you go then, get listening.
Enough of all this daydreaming and walking, it's time to do some work. But does this mean Flow is put on pause while you surrender yourself to the tyranny of oppression? Of course not, the Flow has only just be-go! This week cultural relativism is washed away by the currents of Csikszentmihalyi's value judgments, as we look at the case study of welder Joe and how he found Flow not only in the factory, but also at home with his extraordinary rainbow fountains. We look at enjoying work in the 2020s, with Dan dismissing James' comparisons of best and worst jobs. And we ask, who is to blame for dissatisfaction in the workplace? Who do you think... But don't worry, we'll guide you safely to the indubitably superior function of the autotelic worker. So stop faffing about and press Play; there's work to be done.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net (as long as you're not simultaneously welding) – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
How much enjoyment can you get out of absolutely nothing? If you assign some time to close off those sensory inputs we looked at last time and leave the brain to stimulate all content, just how high can you get? Wordplay, daydreams and memory are all "looked at" this week (whatever that means). We also condense the entire history of the world into one concise podcast. Of course we don't, we bring up the subject of history instead as an ordered Flow activity to look at personal history, or psychoanalysis. Everything starts to come together in this episode as we include the many ideas in psychoanalysis not just in terms of creating the conditions of Flow for other activities, but as an inherent Flow activity in… you've guessed it… in the moment. It's the coming together of Freud and Jung with Csikszentmihalyi and Yalom, not to mention Dan and James. That can be as sexually charged as your subconscious demands. This week we go well beyond Dan's cognitive ability and plunge him into the abyss of anxiety, questioning if our lofty podcast is not accessible enough for you, basic simpleton. Well you can make the call on that one, mapping it onto your own Flow diagram of challenge and ability.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions, and trying to store them in a complex memory palace.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
You'll never find the enjoyment of a complex and meaningful life without listening to this climactic epi-Flow-de. Quitting at last week's penultimate one will take you plummeting right back into the anxiety zone. It's Mihaly's bombshell at the 11th hour; enjoying isolated Flow activities in your everyday life amounts to nothing without an overall purpose, which you're definitely not given and won't just find if you hang around for long enough waiting! This week we start with cave people who didn't need much Flow, and whizz through time to aliens of the future who finally have free will in their planet-sized brains, and miss out most things in between because there were only 90 minutes of recording. So if you've enjoyed the Flow season and you don't require every tiny detail to be concluded, you will love the bumpy climax to our magnum Flow-pus.We take one final look at fascist Flow and compare this with Greta Thunberg Flowing across the Atlantic. We deliver the promised argument about free will, ending it long before it's finished (you're welcome); while Dan holds onto the comfort of choice reassurance, James uses the subconscious and limitations of consciousness to claim free will is impossible. We look at infinite choice in contemporary life, regardless of our free will or lack thereof to make our decisions, because either way the decisions cause Flow-obstructing anxiety and a likely life of perpetually augmenting psychic entropy. And finally we look at the four life stages of self-development proposed in the book. Can you guess where you're at? And where does James think he is..?It's the final chapter of our season reading the book of Flow. Find all previous episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your concluding-but-not-conclusive thoughts on the Contact Us page of www.privatepracticepodcast.net – not that you will, for which we are probably grateful.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
James Hall, ego extraordinaire, "privileged white man", enjoyed Flow in the paradise of Montpellier a year ago, and is now here to symbolically remind you that you don't stand a chance in hell of improving your life with Flow thinking, because you can't be James Hall. You've got so much on your plate just trying to get through the day, that finding Flow experiences is way down at the bottom of the to-do list. This podcast is just a vanity project for James, counterproductively showing off how his Flow is better and more abundant than yours could ever be… right?Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thinks not. And as Dan wisely observes, it's not all about James. If you enjoy our annual indulgence of feedback at Christmas then you're in for a treat; barely two months later and we're engaging with the rampage of our most critical listener. We start with Dan reading the Flow manifesto as Csikszentmihalyi puts it, which leads into a conversation about disabilities as catalysts for Flow, how symbolic profiling of skin colour and all other identity categorisation lends directly to Flow-obstructing chaos in consciousness, and other topics including the dissipative structure of the mind and finding order in consciousness with dementia. So come with us to overcome the psychic entropy of self identity, whatever yours may be, in the here and now. Can you Flow? Yes you can!Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts on the Contact Us page of www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions (neutrally whether you are another white man or if you are not).'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
Have you ever meditated while your neighbours were having noisy sex? Which of your friends provide you with the most complexity? How can you become more popular with friends AND win a sexy legs competition? Continuing from last week's introduction to this chapter of the book of Flow, we take a deep dive into the pool of complexity, taking off the armbands and achieving Flow where our selfish genetic programming has to share the lane with the most complex of all problems; other people.But first, we conclude part one with all the bits that didn't make it into last week's episode… Taming your mind involves both internal and external order, and with the example of Dorothy in the wild we explore how her approach can be applied in the city with just as much effect. It's the first post-Brexit episode of the podcast and James takes a moment to celebrate how the referendum prompted him into action, as well as how ordering consciousness can eliminate a lot of the hysteria surrounding moments of political chaos.How often do you enjoy Flow experiences with your family? The book offers both useful and outrageously entertaining examples to help you function better together (you may even develop an appreciation of fish). And when you spend time with your friends, how much effort do you put into that Flow diagram? When conversation starts to become predictable it's time to get out of the boredom zone. We finish the episode with what is quite possibly the ultimate highlight of the book, so stick around to the end if you really want tips on how to win at life.In the recording of this episode we took a substantial (and inevitable?) detour into the topic of free will. This is a subject too complex for an already packed episode (in talking about free will we used the example of picking flavours of yoghurt, such as fudge, and therefore it could be said we packed in some extra fudge). So a decision was (again, without much choice) made to better match our ability to the challenge, and to remove a hefty wedge of this obstacle. You'll hear Dan vote to move on, which originally followed approximately 30 mins of knocking out ideas onto the table. Chances are we'll come back to this subject in the more appropriate context of our discussion of chapter 10, when we conclude the season with, quite literally, the meaning of life. For now though, limit your excitement to finding Flow with other people.
Which is worse, having nothing but your own company, or putting up with other people? The next chapter is divided into two episodes, and in this one we focus on solitude, before turning our attention to the ordeal of other people next time. If only we had an only child who spent the whole of last year thriving in solitude, to deliver a masterclass in dealing with psychic entropy on your own. Great news, we have exactly that. As we know from previously, avoiding psychic entropy by watching TV, taking drugs or having sex to "kill time" mostly does not lead to Flow experiences, but how can you order consciousness to avoid the chaos of feelings of loneliness? We discuss meditation, and James' updated time walking it off in London. We also imagine how a mosquito has sex, when this seems tenuously relevant in the moment. Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your (ordered) thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions. 'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
Enough of all this daydreaming and walking, it's time to do some work. But does this mean Flow is put on pause while you surrender yourself to the tyranny of oppression? Of course not, the Flow has only just be-go! This week cultural relativism is washed away by the currents of Csikszentmihalyi's value judgments, as we look at the case study of welder Joe and how he found Flow not only in the factory, but also at home with his extraordinary rainbow fountains. We look at enjoying work in the 2020s, with Dan dismissing James' comparisons of best and worst jobs. And we ask, who is to blame for dissatisfaction in the workplace? Who do you think... But don't worry, we'll guide you safely to the indubitably superior function of the autotelic worker. So stop faffing about and press Play; there's work to be done.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net (as long as you're not simultaneously welding) – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
How much enjoyment can you get out of absolutely nothing? If you assign some time to close off those sensory inputs we looked at last time and leave the brain to stimulate all content, just how high can you get? Wordplay, daydreams and memory are all "looked at" this week (whatever that means). We also condense the entire history of the world into one concise podcast. Of course we don't, we bring up the subject of history instead as an ordered Flow activity to look at personal history, or psychoanalysis. Everything starts to come together in this episode as we include the many ideas in psychoanalysis not just in terms of creating the conditions of Flow for other activities, but as an inherent Flow activity in… you've guessed it… in the moment. It's the coming together of Freud and Jung with Csikszentmihalyi and Yalom, not to mention Dan and James. That can be as sexually charged as your subconscious demands. This week we go well beyond Dan's cognitive ability and plunge him into the abyss of anxiety, questioning if our lofty podcast is not accessible enough for you, basic simpleton. Well you can make the call on that one, mapping it onto your own Flow diagram of challenge and ability.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of thinking about your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions, and trying to store them in a complex memory palace.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
Happy Czikszentmihalmas, or if not happy then Private Practice Podcast wishes you a complex yet accessible Christmas this year. Mid-Flow through the season, we decided to increase the complexity of our traditional Christmas Special by challenging ourselves with more critical listener feedback than in previous years. Or rather, James made that decision and Dan took the blow. James also has some great news, we play the Sack Game, and Dan's suggestion of what to do with your Christmas tree will certainly make your yuletide gay. Feel reassured that our Christmas Special is full of tidings of complexity and enjoyment. While the pleasure outside is frightful, getting higher up that Flow diagram is so delightful, and since you've gone for a purposeful walk in the snow; let it Flow, let it Flow, let it Flow…Music credits: all from Archive.org
Happy Czikszentmihalmas, or if not happy then Private Practice Podcast wishes you a complex yet accessible Christmas this year. Mid-Flow through the season, we decided to increase the complexity of our traditional Christmas Special by challenging ourselves with more critical listener feedback than in previous years. Or rather, James made that decision and Dan took the blow. James also has some great news, we play the Sack Game, and Dan's suggestion of what to do with your Christmas tree will certainly make your yuletide gay. Feel reassured that our Christmas Special is full of tidings of complexity and enjoyment. While the pleasure outside is frightful, getting higher up that Flow diagram is so delightful, and since you've gone for a purposeful walk in the snow; let it Flow, let it Flow, let it Flow…Music credits: all from Archive.org
We're going to ask some of life's biggest questions in this girthy episode. What sex toys does Dan use? Does pain exist? Can lavender cure PTSD?The Body in Flow is the subject as we examine the senses, particularly sight and touch, to explore sex, art and walking as Flow activities. We look at "Flowing sex" in many positions, touching on some of the loose ends of our Perversion episode last season, but also considering monogamy as a Flow activity. James leaves the Private Practice Studio this week to take you on a walk somewhere hideous, to talk about aesthetics and to see if he should be changing the world or merely looking at it. We go on a tour of an art gallery to create order in consciousness, and question which other states of mind you can access by walking into them. There's a scientific conundrum about the existence of pleasure and pain, and an ethical one about how to interpret it. And if you're playing along with the drinking game every time Dan says "Flow experience" or "accessible" you'll be unconscious before we're even half way on our odyssey this week. It makes sense (at least one of them) to fully use your ears and concentrate on the stimulation (and titillation) of The Body in Flow.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of reading your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
We're going to ask some of life's biggest questions in this girthy episode. What sex toys does Dan use? Does pain exist? Can lavender cure PTSD?The Body in Flow is the subject as we examine the senses, particularly sight and touch, to explore sex, art and walking as Flow activities. We look at "Flowing sex" in many positions, touching on some of the loose ends of our Perversion episode last season, but also considering monogamy as a Flow activity. James leaves the Private Practice Studio this week to take you on a walk somewhere hideous, to talk about aesthetics and to see if he should be changing the world or merely looking at it. We go on a tour of an art gallery to create order in consciousness, and question which other states of mind you can access by walking into them. There's a scientific conundrum about the existence of pleasure and pain, and an ethical one about how to interpret it. And if you're playing along with the drinking game every time Dan says "Flow experience" or "accessible" you'll be unconscious before we're even half way on our odyssey this week. It makes sense (at least one of them) to fully use your ears and concentrate on the stimulation (and titillation) of The Body in Flow.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of reading your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
The Conditions of Flow, Chapter 4 in the book, looks at society and environment to see which external circumstances clear the Flow runway for take-off, and which ice it over to leave your flight, complete with all that emotional baggage, grounded at the airport. But it also looks at the individual, their personality, and what they need to do or understand in any conditions to achieve Flow (and pack nothing but pants and fudge in their case). This makes it an action, and not a mystical happenstance as Venus is aligned with Uranus and your chia seeds are in harmony with your feng shui.A lot is packed into this episode, including some singing and an audio graph, but when James gets the small allowance of fun out of his system the conversation moves onto the role of religion, tradition and cultural rituals which provide Flow experiences through order and complexity. We discuss how in many modern societies these have been well-intentionally blown up and created better living conditions for women and gays to find their Flow, but in the process throwing the baby out with the bathwater can cause some anxiety when society has no replacement rules or structure, and everyone has to create their own and compete to have them implemented.In looking at mushrooms and other hallucinogenic 'Vertigo' mind-games, we are unsure if the author does not believe they add complexity like other "mind-expanding" games, or if he is saying that there is a finite amount of information a person can process at any time, and so mushrooms merely shuffle this and 'expansion' is impossible on a linguistic level.Instead of finding Flow in Nazi concentration camps as a prisoner of war, this time the subject is the Nazi himself, demonstrating the need for Flow and yet the lack of its inherent virtue and quality. And from external to internal conditions; selfishness and self-consciousness can override flow, causing, for example, selfish people to only talk so they can go on about themselves, says James…Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of reading your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
The Conditions of Flow, Chapter 4 in the book, looks at society and environment to see which external circumstances clear the Flow runway for take-off, and which ice it over to leave your flight, complete with all that emotional baggage, grounded at the airport. But it also looks at the individual, their personality, and what they need to do or understand in any conditions to achieve Flow (and pack nothing but pants and fudge in their case). This makes it an action, and not a mystical happenstance as Venus is aligned with Uranus and your chia seeds are in harmony with your feng shui.A lot is packed into this episode, including some singing and an audio graph, but when James gets the small allowance of fun out of his system the conversation moves onto the role of religion, tradition and cultural rituals which provide Flow experiences through order and complexity. We discuss how in many modern societies these have been well-intentionally blown up and created better living conditions for women and gays to find their Flow, but in the process throwing the baby out with the bathwater can cause some anxiety when society has no replacement rules or structure, and everyone has to create their own and compete to have them implemented.In looking at mushrooms and other hallucinogenic 'Vertigo' mind-games, we are unsure if the author does not believe they add complexity like other "mind-expanding" games, or if he is saying that there is a finite amount of information a person can process at any time, and so mushrooms merely shuffle this and 'expansion' is impossible on a linguistic level.Instead of finding Flow in Nazi concentration camps as a prisoner of war, this time the subject is the Nazi himself, demonstrating the need for Flow and yet the lack of its inherent virtue and quality. And from external to internal conditions; selfishness and self-consciousness can override flow, causing, for example, selfish people to only talk so they can go on about themselves, says James…Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will enjoy the Flow experience of reading your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.
No pleasure. No happiness. Only enjoyment. Creating new order in consciousness is the subject of this episode, in which we reject the symbolic goal of happiness, pushed by the publishers of 'Flow'. We look at cancelling activities which provide only pleasure, most of which are found guilty of obstructing Flow, concentrating instead on the pursuit of complex enjoyment. Since the Flow experience is not inherently "good" and the super-ego is not always the dominant force in conflict with the shadow, we consider Mihaly's criminal friends and the enjoyment they get from robbing a house. Once Dan has dismissed all social media as mindless pleasure, James makes the case for a wonderfully flowing time there. And if you don't fancy a life of crime or phone addiction, why not try life-long education? Something for all the family. This episode was recorded with James in the Paradise Private Practice in Montpellier, in front of a large jar of jam, and Dan in the London Private Practice. Twenty minutes before the end of the episode Dan says, "So, to summarise…" and this is followed by James finally getting into what he actually wanted to talk about, so do stay to the end…Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will appreciate your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'. This episode is based on Chapter 3 of the book.
No pleasure. No happiness. Only enjoyment. Creating new order in consciousness is the subject of this episode, in which we reject the symbolic goal of happiness, pushed by the publishers of 'Flow'. We look at cancelling activities which provide only pleasure, most of which are found guilty of obstructing Flow, concentrating instead on the pursuit of complex enjoyment. Since the Flow experience is not inherently "good" and the super-ego is not always the dominant force in conflict with the shadow, we consider Mihaly's criminal friends and the enjoyment they get from robbing a house. Once Dan has dismissed all social media as mindless pleasure, James makes the case for a wonderfully flowing time there. And if you don't fancy a life of crime or phone addiction, why not try life-long education? Something for all the family. This episode was recorded with James in the Paradise Private Practice in Montpellier, in front of a large jar of jam, and Dan in the London Private Practice. Twenty minutes before the end of the episode Dan says, "So, to summarise…" and this is followed by James finally getting into what he actually wanted to talk about, so do stay to the end…Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net – I'm sure we will appreciate your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions.'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'. This episode is based on Chapter 3 of the book.
The conditions of consciousness and self-identity are the subject of Part 2 in our series on the book of Flow. While consciousness is an enduring mystery to neuroscientists, there are certain patterns of decision-making, free will (or lack thereof), and core beliefs which can be understood to some extent. These mental states are in constant conflict with the outside world and allowing the horrors of life to control psychic energy does not make for a happy bunny! So this week James slips into provocateur mode to talk about social class and bullying as a life-long exterior obstacle to inner harmony. The book takes as a given that people have certain intent to do things, which is to some extent an argument against free will, but it doesn't look at the reasons behind intent from the point of view of psychoanalysis. Therefore we have put more emphasis on core beliefs, and if you haven't heard our specific episode on core beliefs from last season, it's available from wherever you found this one. We also address the whimsical-sounding 'psychic energy' term to pack in a bit of extra scientific fudge. And throughout this episode we are both in the staring presence of a stuffed fox in the London Private Practice.Additional (optional) reading: 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The conditions of consciousness and self-identity are the subject of Part 2 in our series on the book of Flow. While consciousness is an enduring mystery to neuroscientists, there are certain patterns of decision-making, free will (or lack thereof), and core beliefs which can be understood to some extent. These mental states are in constant conflict with the outside world and allowing the horrors of life to control psychic energy does not make for a happy bunny! So this week James slips into provocateur mode to talk about social class and bullying as a life-long exterior obstacle to inner harmony. The book takes as a given that people have certain intent to do things, which is to some extent an argument against free will, but it doesn't look at the reasons behind intent from the point of view of psychoanalysis. Therefore we have put more emphasis on core beliefs, and if you haven't heard our specific episode on core beliefs from last season, it's available from wherever you found this one. We also address the whimsical-sounding 'psychic energy' term to pack in a bit of extra scientific fudge. And throughout this episode we are both in the staring presence of a stuffed fox in the London Private Practice.Additional (optional) reading: 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
We're starting a new season of the podcast with an introduction to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's idea of 'Flow' as a process of ordering consciousness. Having looked at a different idea in psychoanalysis in each episode of the previous season, this time we're taking more time to discuss one idea in detail, and gradually look at how it applies to the ideas of Season 4 as well as other real-life situations. There are 10 chapters in the book and we are looking at one chapter per episode. You can read along throughout the season if you wish, and details of the book are found below, but it is not a prerequisite.That's the sensible and informative stuff out the way, now some behind-the-scenes context. This episode was recorded in "The London Private Practice" in the summer. At the start, Dan assumed we were just making an introductory episode as usual, but James had in mind that it would be a full discussion of Chapter One of the book of Flow; you'll see how that pans out. It's business as usual in one sense; James takes multiple goes to make a point and just about gets there in the fourth or so! You're in for a comprehensive treat. We assume you come to us not for slick and concise self-help advice, because we make absolutely no promise to deliver that whatsoever. Much more enjoyable if you are so inclined, this is a Dan-and-James interpretation of one of the best-researched insights into the ordering of thoughts, in the context of a world that has changed substantially since the book was written. Welcome to the Dan & James Book Club, feel free to participate however you wish.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net (yes, the e-mail does exist now, I'm sure we will appreciate your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions).'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'. Enough of this, let's get the season, erm, flowing into your ears.
We're starting a new season of the podcast with an introduction to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's idea of 'Flow' as a process of ordering consciousness. Having looked at a different idea in psychoanalysis in each episode of the previous season, this time we're taking more time to discuss one idea in detail, and gradually look at how it applies to the ideas of Season 4 as well as other real-life situations. There are 10 chapters in the book and we are looking at one chapter per episode. You can read along throughout the season if you wish, and details of the book are found below, but it is not a prerequisite.That's the sensible and informative stuff out the way, now some behind-the-scenes context. This episode was recorded in "The London Private Practice" in the summer. At the start, Dan assumed we were just making an introductory episode as usual, but James had in mind that it would be a full discussion of Chapter One of the book of Flow; you'll see how that pans out. It's business as usual in one sense; James takes multiple goes to make a point and just about gets there in the fourth or so! You're in for a comprehensive treat. We assume you come to us not for slick and concise self-help advice, because we make absolutely no promise to deliver that whatsoever. Much more enjoyable if you are so inclined, this is a Dan-and-James interpretation of one of the best-researched insights into the ordering of thoughts, in the context of a world that has changed substantially since the book was written. Welcome to the Dan & James Book Club, feel free to participate however you wish.Find all episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your thoughts at www.privatepracticepodcast.net (yes, the e-mail does exist now, I'm sure we will appreciate your concise, considered and extraordinarily witty contributions).'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'. Enough of this, let's get the season, erm, flowing into your ears.
Wheels up in 5 mins, welcome aboard this internal flight to your ego, where the weather is currently calm and sunny, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. It's the Private Practice Podcast Summer Special, loaded with all your emotional baggage and featuring another shambolic edition of the Sack Game, as well as a follow-up to our Core Beliefs episode, where James burns some of his adolescent defunct beliefs on the summer camp fire. We had much less fun making this than you're going to have listening; you are welcome.We discuss:Travelling to escape, but making the mistake of taking yourself with you.The advantage of travelling alone.Letting go of adolescent beliefs with better information in later life.Belonging.Failure.Put your seatbelt on, there will be turbulence. Vivaldi's Summer and Jazz Gangsters' Bebop Jazz from archive.org. Season 5 coming this autumn.All episodes from this season can be found at privatepracticepodcast.netNEW! Contact us at privatepracticepodcast@outlook.com
Wheels up in 5 mins, welcome aboard this internal flight to your ego, where the weather is currently calm and sunny, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. It's the Private Practice Podcast Summer Special, loaded with all your emotional baggage and featuring another shambolic edition of the Sack Game, as well as a follow-up to our Core Beliefs episode, where James burns some of his adolescent defunct beliefs on the summer camp fire. We had much less fun making this than you're going to have listening; you are welcome.We discuss:Travelling to escape, but making the mistake of taking yourself with you.The advantage of travelling alone.Letting go of adolescent beliefs with better information in later life.Belonging.Failure.Put your seatbelt on, there will be turbulence. Vivaldi's Summer and Jazz Gangsters' Bebop Jazz from archive.org.Season 5 coming this autumn.All episodes from this season can be found at privatepracticepodcast.netNEW! Contact us at privatepracticepodcast@outlook.com
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