The Taproot Therapy Podcast - https://www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com

In 1960, two Harvard professors took psilocybin and accidentally broke the boundaries of American psychology. What happened next is the story of a road not taken. In Episode 4 of Psychotherapy on the Couch, Joel Blackstock explores the wild, lost era of the 1960s and 70s—a brief window when the psychological establishment dared to investigate the "unmeasurable" depths of human consciousness. We trace the divergent paths of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), the CIA's dark experiments with mind control (MKULTRA) and remote viewing (the Stargate Project), and the "horseshoe theory" of consciousness where neuroscientists and mystics face the exact same unsolved mysteries. But this era of exploration didn't last. We break down how the Reagan Revolution, the gutting of the social safety net, and the creation of the DSM-III brutally slammed this door shut. Discover how American psychology traded the human soul for strict billing codes, managed care, and the illusion of total, mechanical objectivity. If you've ever felt that modern therapy is missing a sense of meaning, spirituality, or depth, this episode explains exactly when—and why—we engineered those things out of the system.   #psychology history, timothy leary, ram dass, psychedelics in therapy, mkultra, cia stargate project, remote viewing, dsm-3 history, reaganomics mental health, history of psychiatry, psychotherapy podcast, consciousness, terence mckenna, mental health crisis, cognitive behavioral therapy, adam curtis style, sociology, cultural critique, taproot therapy, 

In Part 3, we look at the strange psychological reality of post-World War II America. The new suburban "American Dream" offered unprecedented material wealth, but it also delivered crushing isolation, atomization, and the constant, buzzing terror of nuclear annihilation. Instead of addressing the structural failures of this new lifestyle, the medical establishment decided to just numb the pain. Enter Miltown and Valium: the first blockbuster tranquilizers designed to chemically manage the despair of the suburban housewife. We break down the era of the "Comfortable Void." We explore how the metaphor for the human mind shifted from a steam engine to a computer, how the radical ideas of the 1960s Human Potential Movement (like Esalen) were stripped of their teeth and sold back to us as corporate mindfulness, and the dark, unforgivable reality of deinstitutionalization that turned American cities into open-air asylums for traumatized veterans. Finally, we look at how the desperate push to "re-scientify" therapy in the late 1970s threw out the body and the soul, leaving us with the cold, mechanical billing codes we deal with today. psychology history, postwar america, mental health podcast, psychopharmacology, miltown, valium, the cold war, cybernetics, human potential movement, esalen, deinstitutionalization, cognitive behavioral therapy, sociology, american history, taproot therapy   Find More information and resources on the blog and website for our Hoover, AL therapy clinic 

When the Great Depression wiped out the myth of the rugged, self-made American hero, the country was left with a massive psychological void. Right on cue, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis arrived in the U.S. with refugees fleeing Europe. Freud famously warned that he was bringing America a "plague," but America didn't catch it. Instead, we domesticated it. In Part 2 of Psychotherapy on the Couch, Joel explores how the deep, messy, and uncomfortable theories of the human soul were repackaged to fit American consumerism. We look at how Edward Bernays weaponized his uncle Freud's ideas to invent modern PR and advertising, how a bizarre 1940s contest to find the mathematically "average" person gave birth to the suffocating myth of Normalcy, and how the brutal logistics of World War II forced the military to create a standardized checklist for human suffering—laying the exact groundwork for the modern DSM. If you've ever wondered why we treat mental health like a checklist, the answer starts here. #psychology history, sigmund freud, psychoanalysis, edward bernays, the dsm, mental health podcast, history of therapy, sociology, american history, great depression, world war 2, taproot therapy, cultural critique, mental illness.   Find More information and resources on the blog and website for our Hoover, AL therapy clinic 

Why do we treat our minds like broken machines? In The Psychohistory of American Psychology traces the birth of modern American psychology back to its dark, industrial roots. Before therapy, Americans processed suffering through community, religion, and the union hall. Then came the stopwatch and the assembly line. This isn't a story about healing; it's a story about optimization. We explore how engineers like Frederick Winslow Taylor and behaviorists like John B. Watson systematically stripped away the "messy" human soul to build a more compliant worker. We also unpack the era's defining paranoia—the "Money Trust" and the secret banker meeting at Jekyll Island—to reveal that the true conspiracy to steal human agency wasn't hiding in the shadows. It was walking right out in the open on the factory floor. Psychology didn't emerge to cure the trauma of the 20th century. It emerged to make us function inside the machine. Listen to discover: What Americans used to make sense of suffering before therapy existed. How the invention of standardized "machine time" literally rewired the human nervous system. The dark truth behind John B. Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto. Why the paranoia over the Jekyll Island Federal Reserve meeting missed the real conspiracy of the Gilded Age. Find More information and resources at our Hoover, AL therapy clinic website. 

In this episode, I'm thrilled to share a very special preview with you all! I recently had a short story published in The Running Wild Anthology Number One, a fantastic collection of unique and captivating tales. Tune in as I read an exclusive excerpt from my story. If you enjoy this sneak peek and want to find out what happens next—as well as discover a whole bunch of other amazing short stories by talented authors—please consider grabbing a copy of the book! Get your copy of The Running Wild Anthology Number One here:

How do you know the blue you see is the same blue I see? We use the same word, but do we share the same experience? This ancient philosophical puzzle has become the defining crisis of our time. We're living through a moment where people use identical words and mean completely different things—where the same sentence can be a factual claim, a tribal signal, a joke, and a weapon simultaneously. In this episode of The Mirror World series, clinical director and psychotherapist Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, explores the "collide-a-scope"—the moment when parallel realities can no longer stay separate through reflection and begin grinding against each other like gears that don't mesh. Read the Article THE FUSED BRAIN What happens when you surgically connect multiple living brains? They synchronize. They reorganize. They form a collective organism. This thought experiment from qEEG brain mapping provides the perfect metaphor for what's happening to us now. The internet has wired us together into a vast neural network—and just like an individual brain can develop neuroses, this collective brain is experiencing profound cognitive dissonance. THE DUAL LANGUAGE OF THE INTERNET Media theorist Walter Ong predicted that electronic media would thrust us into "secondary orality"—combining the permanence of print with the participatory rhythms of oral culture. The internet meme is the ultimate artifact of this fusion: mythic archetypes paired with hyper-literal text, operating on two frequencies simultaneously. We have never before spoken different languages using the same words. THOUGHT AS A SYSTEM Quantum physicist David Bohm warned in 1994 that thought is not something we do—it's something that happens to us. Collective thought has become so automatic that our individual thoughts are increasingly controlled by the collective without our noticing. And that was before social media, before smartphones, before algorithmic amplification. The system has been turbocharged. THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE Guy Debord saw it coming: all that was directly lived has become mere representation. The spectacle isn't just entertainment—it's a social relationship between people mediated by images. It colonizes everyday life, structures our thought, captures even our resistance. You can know social media is manipulating you and still be manipulated, because the knowing happens within the spectacle. THE COLLECTIVE PATIENT Here's the radical claim: collective psychology now functions like individual psychology. Pathology, personality disorders, grandiosity, delusions, splitting from reality—they're happening at the collective level, in near real-time. Groups of humanity can now be analyzed almost the same way you'd analyze a patient in therapy. You can identify the defenses, trace the trauma, watch the collective do exactly what an individual does when confronted with something they can't face. DIGITAL COLONIZATION The Steve Bannon, Trump, 4chan, alt-right phenomenon wasn't just politics—it was networks of the collective brain expanding, sussing out weaker regions, finding wounds and grievances, colonizing them at the speed of thought. Traditional colonialism needed ships and armies and decades. Digital colonization happens before resistance can organize. The neural pathway is laid before anyone notices. THE STAGES OF DEFLECTION Watch humanity move through the same defense mechanisms as a therapy patient avoiding change: It didn't happen Okay it happened, but it's not real Okay it's real, but it doesn't matter Okay it matters, but we can't do anything about it Okay maybe something could be done, but someone else will do it Okay it's not getting solved, but it's someone else's fault Okay it's going to take us all out, but we deserve it Watch climate discourse. Watch inequality discourse. You'll see these exact stages playing out collectively in real time. THE MIRROR WORLD The parallel objectivities aren't just tribal disagreements—they're self-contained systems of representation that are coherent and reproducible but not valid. They don't point back to anything real. When official metrics say the economy is doing well while patients can't afford a $30 copay, those metrics are reliable but not valid. We feel this disconnect—but we've been convinced the solution lies inside the metrics. This is gaslighting at civilizational scale. THE 1960s PARALLEL "Turn on, tune in, drop out" recognized the system was sick. And they weren't wrong—the institutions were corrupt, the Vietnam War was built on lies, consumer society was producing alienation. But the counterculture won the cultural war and lost everything else. By 1980, rebellion had become a marketing strategy. Symbolic victory was captured and neutralized while material defeat was total. We're at risk of making the same mistake. THE COLLISION Peter Sloterdijk described modern life as "foam"—countless bubbles providing micro-environments, each its own immunological container. The bubbles worked for a while. But material crises don't care which reality you inhabit. Climate change crosses all boundaries. Pandemics don't check your epistemological commitments. The bubbles are colliding now. Not reflecting—colliding. Grinding like gears that don't mesh. In a kaleidoscope, mirrors create beautiful patterns. In a collide-a-scope, the mirrors themselves are moving, crashing, shattering. THE WAY THROUGH The biggest step is recognizing that trauma treatment is self-evidently necessary—not as luxury, as foundation. Trauma fuels the blind spots. The parallel realities are trauma responses at collective scale. Therapy itself has to change. We have to learn to actually live together—not manage or avoid each other. Western history is largely the story of managing avoidance: tolerance as sophisticated avoidance, transactions as connection without vulnerability, rights as protection from rather than relationship with. Connection without internal avoidance. That's the task. The parts of yourself you can't face become the parts of others you can't tolerate. We need to see ourselves as multiplicities—communities of parts—and stop splitting thought from emotion. The Cartesian divide is part of what broke us. The mirrors are shattering. The gears are grinding. The collision is here. What we build from the fragments depends on whether we can finally stop avoiding—ourselves, each other, reality itself. ABOUT THE SHOW: www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com   TAGS: metamodernism, collective psychology, trauma therapy, David Bohm, Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Walter Ong, secondary orality, meme culture, digital colonization, parallel realities, post-truth, Peter Sloterdijk, collective trauma, IFS therapy, parts work, Internal Family Systems, depth psychology, cultural criticism, media theory, political psychology, social media psychology, consciousness, cognitive dissonance, polarization, tribalism, epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychotherapy, mental health, collective healing, systems theory, Jungian psychology, trauma-informed, neoliberalism critique, Frankfurt School, critical theory, internet culture, 4chan, alt-right, counterculture, 1960s, Timothy Leary, collective unconscious, mass psychology, social psychology, complexity theory, emergence, neural networks, brain science, qEEG, Birmingham therapy, Alabama therapist, complex trauma, PTSD, dissociation, emotional regulation, somatic therapy, body-based therapy, Brainspotting, ETT, integrative therapy, holistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, spiritual psychology, meaning crisis, nihilism, existential psychology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, postmodernism, sincerity and irony, authenticity, alienation, anomie, social fragmentation, culture war, political polarization, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, information warfare, attention economy, surveillance capitalism, algorithmic amplification, filter bubbles, echo chambers, radicalization, deradicalization, healing polarization, bridging divides, difficult conversations, conflict resolution, relational therapy, attachment theory, developmental trauma, adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, intergenerational trauma, collective memory, historical trauma, cultural trauma, social healing, community healing, collective resilience, post-traumatic growth, meaning-making, narrative therapy, constructivism, social constructionism, embodied cognition, 4E cognition, extended mind, distributed cognition, enactivism, phenomenological psychology KEYWORDS metamodernism explained, collective trauma therapy, why society feels broken, David Bohm thought as a system, Guy Debord society of the spectacle explained, understanding political polarization, trauma and politics, why we can't agree on facts, parallel realities psychology, meme culture analysis, internet psychology, collective psychology theory, therapy for our times, parts work IFS, internal family systems explained, depth psychology modern, cultural criticism podcast, media theory podcast, understanding the culture war, healing political division, trauma-informed society, systems thinking psychology, consciousness and society, meaning crisis solutions, why communication is impossible, post-truth psychology, collective healing trauma, Birmingham Alabama therapist, complex trauma treatment, Brainspotting therapy, somatic experiencing therapy, integrative psychotherapy, holistic mental health, transpersonal therapy, spiritual psychology podcast, existential therapy, phenomenological therapy, social psychology podcast, mass psychology explained, collective unconscious modern, Jung and politics, critical theory psychology, neoliberalism and mental health, capitalism and trauma, social media mental health, algorithm psychology, attention economy effects, filter bubble psychology, radicalization psychology, bridging political divides, healing polarization therapy, difficult conversations psychology, relational psychotherapy, attachment and society, developmental trauma society, intergenerational trauma healing, collective resilience building, post-traumatic growth society, narrative therapy culture, embodied cognition society, extended mind theory

"We built institutions that were supposed to reflect reality. But the windows became mirrors." In the second century, the Gnostics believed our world was a false reality created by a confused lesser god known as the Demiurge. Today, we are trapped in a modern equivalent: a labyrinth of metrics, models, and algorithms that dictate our lives while entirely missing our humanity. In Part 7 of The Mirror World, we dissect the collapse of institutional sense-making and the profound psychological toll of living inside the "fake world." Drawing on the histories of standardized testing, the DSM, and economic modeling, we explore how disciplines retreated behind "mechanical objectivity" to defend against insecurity—and how the profit motive locked us inside these models. Ultimately, we confront the modern pinnacle of this trap: Large Language Models (LLMs). We examine why AI is not the solution, but rather the ultimate simulacrum—the ghost of the human archive that performs the gesture of understanding while severing us from the real. To escape the mirror, we turn to the late psychologist James Hillman. Reclaiming our soul's calling—our daimon—requires more than just new metrics or better prompts. It requires us to do the one thing the algorithm cannot: grieve.

Are we navigating reality, or just a highly optimized map of the past? In this episode, we dive into the architecture of our modern ghost story. We explore how the digital systems built to reflect our world have instead consumed it, replacing human experience with statistical prediction, algorithmic herding, and mechanical objectivity. Drawing on a wide synthesis of philosophy, media theory, and history, we deconstruct how the "map ate the territory." From Jean Baudrillard's simulacra to the predictive text of modern Large Language Models, we examine the uncanny reality of living inside a model that only knows what the dead have written. If the internet is a séance and your digital profile is a voodoo doll, what happens to the biological original? In this episode, we unpack: The Precession of Simulacra: How credit scores and algorithmic risk models generate the reality they claim to measure. The Bureaucracy of the Dead: Why modern AI is less an artificial intelligence and more an industrialization of our ancestors, echoing the warnings of James Hillman. Digiphrenia & The Voodoo Doll: Douglas Rushkoff's narrative collapse and Jaron Lanier's terrifying metaphor for the modern attention economy. The Numbers Shield: Theodore Porter's revelation that "mechanical objectivity" and rigid quantification are actually defense mechanisms used by fragile institutions. Spheres & Foam: Peter Sloterdijk's theory on why we retreat into fragile, toxic digital bubbles when our shared reality fractures. We didn't just build tools; we built environments. And when the machine becomes the environment, its logic becomes our logic. Join us as we look for the gap in the code—the unquantifiable silence where true human agency still survives. Concepts & Thinkers Discussed: Adam Curtis, Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, Naomi Klein, Shoshana Zuboff, James Hillman, and Peter Sloterdijk.

Tania's advanced training program which is starting on February 25th:   https://deepmindpt.com/deep-mind-mastery   In this episode, I'm joined by Tania Kalkidis for a deep, evidence-based conversation on the growing gap between research, academic psychology, and real-world clinical practice — with a sharp focus on the DSM and its role in modern mental health care. Together, we unpack the challenges of evidence-based practice in psychology, questioning how closely current diagnostic frameworks align with the latest scientific research. We explore where clinical practice diverges from academic psychology, why this matters for clients and clinicians alike, and how systemic pressures shape diagnostic decision-making. A key focus of this conversation is the Australian mental health system, including how DSM-driven practice operates within local funding, training, and service delivery models — and how this compares to psychological practice in the United States. We examine similarities and differences in diagnosis, treatment pathways, professional accountability, and the influence of insurance and policy on clinical care. This episode is essential listening for psychologists, therapists, mental health professionals, students, researchers, and anyone interested in how psychology is actually practiced versus how it's taught and studied. If you care about scientific integrity, ethical practice, and the future of mental health diagnosis, this conversation offers clarity, critique, and nuance. Topics covered include: Evidence-based practice vs. diagnostic tradition Limitations and controversies surrounding the DSM Clinical psychology and academic research misalignment Mental health systems in Australia vs. the United States Implications for clinicians, clients, and policy

More @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/   Why does modern mental health care often feel like a bureaucratic ritual rather than a healing encounter? In Part 5 of The Absence of Idols, we explore how psychiatry emptied the temple of meaning and replaced it with a checklist. We begin with the ancient dream of Addudûri and the terror of an empty temple, using it as a map to understand our current crisis. Drawing on the work of historian Theodore Porter and physicist Richard Feynman, we dismantle the "Cargo Cult Science" of the mental health system—a system that builds perfect wooden control towers but cannot land the plane. From the rigid authoritarianism of James Dobson's Focus on the Family to the "mechanical objectivity" of the DSM, we examine how weak institutions use metrics to hide their lack of authority. We also look at the "lacuna"—the institutional blind spot that prevents experts from seeing the harm they cause—and why deconstructing religion without reconstructing meaning has left us vulnerable to the return of monsters. In this episode, we cover: The Cargo Cult of Psychiatry: Why "evidence-based" protocols often function like coconut headphones—mimicking science without the substance. Mechanical vs. Disciplinary Objectivity: How the mental health system traded trained wisdom for insurance-friendly checklists. The Lacuna Effect: Why institutions are literally blinded to their own biases (and how the brain fills in the gaps). Deconstruction Dangers: Why stripping away context without offering new metaphors creates a vacuum filled by conspiracy theories and extremism. Mentions & References: Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" address (Caltech, 1974) Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers The Dream of Addudûri (Mesopotamian texts) James Dobson & Focus on the Family critiques The Rosenhan Experiment Wilhelm Reich, Fritz Perls, and Somatic Experiencing Mental Health, Psychiatry Critique, Cargo Cult Science, Psychology, Trauma, James Dobson, Philosophy of Science, Theodore Porter, Somatic Therapy, Institutional Trust.

https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-dark-reflection-adam-curtiss-all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/   Why is the most therapy-literate generation in history also the most depressed? This episode traces the hidden history connecting Cold War game theory, a 1964 pop psychology bestseller, and the mental health crisis devastating Gen Z. The thread starts with John Nash—the schizophrenic mathematician who built models assuming all humans are paranoid, self-interested calculators. It runs through Eric Berne's "Games People Play," which taught millions that relationships are just strategic transactions. It continues through Reagan, Thatcher, and the rise of CBT—a therapy model that treats your mind like buggy software. And it ends with a generation drowning in optimization, starving for meaning, and wondering why all their self-knowledge isn't helping. Featuring the tragic story of George Price, the scientist who slit his own throat trying to disprove his equation proving love is just calculation. Plus: why therapists can't legally unionize, how a secret committee of surgeons sets the price of your mental healthcare, and why the "just do it yourself" wellness movement is the final victory of the worldview that broke us. This isn't self-help. This is an autopsy of the assumptions we've been living inside. Topics covered: Game theory and psychology, Eric Berne transactional analysis, Adam Curtis The Trap, John Nash Beautiful Mind, CBT criticism, Gen Z mental health crisis, Theodore Porter Trust in Numbers, neoliberalism and therapy, Rosenhan experiment, C. Thi Nguyen gamification, purpose vs point, George Price equation, Wilhelm Reich, depth psychology, mental health policy   More @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/  

Can Therapists Start a Union? The Antitrust Trap, the Shadow Committee, and the Economic Strangulation of American Psychotherapy Analyzing America's Healthcare Regulations and Their Effect on Us: Why the Law Prevents Therapists from Organizing While Allowing a Private Committee to Fix Prices for the Entire Medical System https://gettherapybirmingham.com/can-therapists-start-a-union-spoiler-alert-they-cant/ The Monthly Rage Thread If you hang around therapist forums long enough, you will see it happen. It operates with the regularity of the tides. Someone posts a thread, usually after receiving a contract from an insurance company offering 1998 rates for 2025 work, and asks the obvious question: “We are the ones providing the care. The system collapses without us. Why don't we just all go on strike? Why don't we form a union and demand fair pay?” It is a logical question. In almost every other sector of the economy, workers who feel exploited band together to negotiate better terms. Screenwriters shut down Hollywood to get paid for streaming residuals. Auto workers walk off the line. Teachers fill the state capitol. Nurses at major hospital systems have successfully unionized and won significant concessions. So why, in the midst of a national mental health crisis, does the mental health workforce remain so politically impotent? The answer is not that we lack will. It is not that we lack organization. The answer is that for private practice therapists, forming a union is a federal crime. This is not a political manifesto. It is an analysis of the bizarre regulatory environment that governs American healthcare, a system of antitrust laws, shadow committees, and bureaucratic classifications that effectively strips clinicians of their bargaining power while empowering the corporations that pay them. If you want to understand why corporate tech monopolies are ruining therapy, or why the corporatization of healthcare feels so suffocating, you have to understand the legal straitjacket we are all wearing. And you have to understand the one group that is allowed to set prices, the one group exempt from the rules that bind the rest of us. Part I: You Are Not a Worker, You Are a Standard Oil Tycoon The primary reason therapists cannot unionize dates back to the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to prevent massive corporations like Standard Oil from colluding to fix prices and destroy the free market. It prohibits “every contract, combination… or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” The law was a response to genuine abuses: companies buying up competitors, dividing territories, and coordinating prices to gouge consumers who had no alternatives. Here is the catch: In the eyes of the federal government, a private practice therapist is not a “worker.” You are a business entity. Even if you are a solo practitioner struggling to pay rent in a subleased office, seeing clients between crying in your car and eating lunch at your desk, the law views you as the CEO of a micro-corporation. You are classified as a 1099 independent contractor, not a W-2 employee, and that distinction makes all the difference in the world. If two workers at Starbucks talk about their wages and agree to ask for a raise, that is “collective bargaining,” which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. But if two private practice therapists talk about their reimbursement rates and agree to ask Blue Cross for a raise, that is “price-fixing.” It is legally indistinguishable, in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission, from gas stations conspiring to raise the price of unleaded. It sounds absurd, but the FTC takes it deadly seriously. When independent contractors organize to demand higher rates, when they share information about what they are being paid and coordinate their responses, they are engaging in horizontal price-fixing, one of the most serious violations of antitrust law. The Sherman Act provides for criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. The law that was meant to break up monopolies is now used to prevent social workers from asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. The irony is crushing. The same regulatory framework that prevents two therapists from discussing their rates allows massive insurance conglomerates to merge repeatedly, concentrating buyer power in fewer and fewer hands. UnitedHealth Group, for example, has acquired dozens of companies over the past two decades, becoming the largest healthcare company in the United States. When they offer a “take it or leave it” contract to providers, they do so with the full knowledge that fragmented, legally prohibited from organizing therapists have no counter-leverage. The antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopoly power, have created a system where sellers are atomized and buyers are consolidated. Economists call this “monopsony,” and it is precisely the market distortion the Sherman Act was supposed to prevent. Part II: The Day the “Learned Profession” Died For a long time, doctors and lawyers thought they were exempt from these laws. They argued that they were “learned professions,” not mere tradespeople, and therefore above the grubby laws of commerce. They believed that their ethical obligations to patients and clients set them apart from the rules that governed steel mills and meatpacking plants. Medicine was a calling, not a business, and surely the government would not regulate the sacred doctor-patient relationship as if it were a commercial transaction. That illusion was shattered in 1975 by the Supreme Court case Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar. The case involved lawyers, not doctors, but its implications cascaded through every licensed profession in America. The Goldfarbs were purchasing a home and needed a title examination. The Virginia State Bar had established a minimum fee schedule for such services, and every lawyer they contacted quoted the exact same price. They sued, arguing that this fee schedule was illegal price-fixing. The Supreme Court agreed. In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that professional services, including legal and medical advice, are “trade or commerce” subject to antitrust laws. The “learned profession” exemption, which had been assumed but never explicitly established in law, was declared a myth. “The nature of an occupation, standing alone,” the Court wrote, “does not provide sanctuary from the Sherman Act.” This ruling was intended to lower prices for consumers by preventing lawyers from setting minimum fees, and in that narrow sense it was a good thing. But in healthcare, it had a catastrophic side effect: it made it illegal for doctors and therapists to band together to resist the pricing power of insurance companies. The “learned profession” exemption is dead. We are now just businesses, and businesses are not allowed to hold hands. This creates the illusion of progress: we have “free market” competition among providers, but monopsony power among payers. It is a market where the sellers are forbidden from organizing, but the buyers are allowed to merge until they are too big to fail. The result is not a free market at all. It is a market designed to transfer wealth from one class (providers) to another (insurers and administrators), with the law itself serving as the enforcement mechanism. Part III: The Cartel in the Basement If therapists cannot collude to set prices, surely nobody else can, right? Wrong. There is one group in American healthcare that is allowed to meet in a room, decide what every doctor's time is worth, and set prices for the entire industry. It is called the RUC, the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee. And understanding the RUC is the key to understanding why talk therapy is dying in the medical model, why psychiatrists abandoned the couch for the prescription pad, and why your insurance company offers you a ghost network of providers who never answer the phone. The Birth of a Shadow Government To comprehend the current crisis in mental health economics, one must excavate the foundations of the physician payment system. Prior to 1992, Medicare reimbursed physicians based on a system known as “Customary, Prevailing, and Reasonable” charges. Under this system, physicians were paid based on their historical billing charges. It was inherently inflationary; it rewarded those who raised their fees most aggressively and created wide geographic disparities for identical services. In response to spiraling costs, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, mandating a transition to a fee schedule based on the resources required to provide a service. This birthed the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale. The intellectual architecture for this system was developed by a team of economists at Harvard University, led by William Hsiao. Hsiao's team sought to create a “unified theory” of medical value, attempting to quantify the “work” involved in disparate medical acts, comparing the cognitive intensity of a psychiatric evaluation with the technical skill of a hernia repair. The Harvard study was revolutionary. It promised to level the playing field, suggesting that cognitive services, the thinking and talking that comprises primary care and mental health, were vastly undervalued relative to surgical procedures. Had Hsiao's original recommendations been implemented purely, the income gap between generalists and specialists might have narrowed significantly. But the administrative complexity of assigning values to over 7,000 Current Procedural Terminology codes overwhelmed the Health Care Financing Administration. Into this administrative vacuum stepped the American Medical Association. The AMA, fearing that the government would unilaterally set prices, proposed a “partnership.” They would convene a committee of experts to maintain and update the relative values, providing this labor-intensive service to the government at no cost. The government accepted. Thus, in 1991, the RUC was born, not as a government agency, but as a private advisory body with unparalleled influence over public funds. The Architecture of Control The RUC's claim to legitimacy rests on its status as an “expert panel.” But a structural analysis of its composition reveals a profound bias that mimics the governance of a cartel designed to protect incumbent interests. The committee consists of 32 members, but power is concentrated in the 29 voting seats. Of these, 21 seats are appointed by major national medical specialty societies. The distribution is not proportional to the volume of services provided to Medicare beneficiaries, nor is it proportional to the physician workforce. Instead, it is frozen in a historical moment that favored high-technology specialties. Primary care physicians, who perform roughly 45 to 50 percent of Medicare work, hold approximately 4 to 5 seats, giving them about 17 percent of the vote. Procedural and surgical specialties, including surgery, radiology, and anesthesiology, hold 15 to 18 seats, giving them roughly 60 percent of the vote despite performing only 35 to 40 percent of Medicare work. The American Psychiatric Association holds a single seat. One seat. This lone representative must negotiate with a supermajority of specialists, neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, radiologists, and ophthalmologists, whose financial interests are often diametrically opposed to the valuation of cognitive work. The cartel dynamic is enforced by a statutory requirement of budget neutrality. The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule is a zero-sum game. If the total relative value units projected for a given year exceed the budget, a “scaler” is applied to reduce the conversion factor, effectively cutting everyone's pay. Therefore, any proposal to increase the value of psychotherapy, which would increase the total RVU spend, effectively asks every surgeon in the room to take a pay cut to fund the raise for psychiatrists. Given that a two-thirds majority is required to pass a recommendation, the procedural bloc holds absolute veto power over any redistribution of wealth. The Secret Chamber A hallmark of cartel behavior is the restriction of information. For nearly two decades, the RUC operated in near-total secrecy. While recent years have seen minor concessions to transparency, such as the publication of vote totals, the core deliberative process remains opaque. RUC meetings are private. The public, the press, and even non-RUC physicians are largely barred from attending the deliberations where billions of tax dollars are allocated. Participants, including the specialty advisors who present data, must sign strict non-disclosure agreements. These agreements prevent them from discussing the specific tradeoffs, deals, or arguments made within the chamber. A former RUC participant described these agreements as “draconian,” designed to insulate the committee from public accountability. The Government Accountability Office and the Center for American Progress have noted the inherent conflict of interest. The individuals setting the prices are the same individuals who receive the payments. Unlike a regulatory agency, where officials are salaried and divested of industry assets, RUC members are practicing physicians whose personal incomes are directly tied to the decisions they make. This secrecy serves a functional purpose: it allows for “logrolling.” A representative from Orthopedics might support an inflated value for a Cardiology code in exchange for Cardiology's support on a Knee Replacement code. This “I'll scratch your back” dynamic creates an upward pressure on procedural values that excludes those outside the dominant coalition, specifically primary care and mental health. The Antitrust Shield Why has the Department of Justice not broken up this cartel? The legal shield is the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine. This Supreme Court doctrine establishes that private entities are immune from antitrust liability when they are petitioning the government. Because the RUC technically only “recommends” values to CMS (that is petitioning), and CMS “decides” (that is government action), the RUC is protected by the First Amendment right to petition. This legal loophole allows the RUC to operate with monopolistic characteristics without fear of prosecution, provided CMS continues to go through the motions of “reviewing” the recommendations. And CMS accepts those recommendations over 90 percent of the time. Because private insurance companies generally base their rates on Medicare, this private committee effectively sets the price of healthcare for the entire country. If independent therapists did this, if they gathered in a room and agreed on what their services should cost, they would face criminal prosecution. But because the RUC operates under the fiction of “advising” the government, it is protected. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist solidarity provides cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. Part IV: The Mechanics of Suppression To control a market, one must control its currency. In American medicine, that currency is the Relative Value Unit. Every medical service, from a 15-minute therapy session to a heart transplant, is assigned a total RVU value. This value is the sum of three components: the Work RVU, which accounts for physician time, technical skill, mental effort, and judgment; the Practice Expense RVU, which covers overhead costs like rent, staff, and equipment; and the Malpractice RVU, which reflects professional liability insurance costs. The Work RVU, which comprises roughly 50 to 55 percent of the total value, is determined by RUC surveys. When a code is flagged for review, the relevant specialty society distributes a survey to a sample of its members. These respondents are asked to estimate the time and intensity of the service compared to a “reference service.” This methodology violates several principles of statistical validity. The surveys are voluntary and distributed by the specialty societies themselves. The respondents are typically those most active in the society and most invested in maximizing reimbursement, advocates rather than neutral observers. The sample sizes are often shockingly small; RUC surveys frequently rely on fewer than 50 or 70 respondents to set the price for services performed millions of times annually. A sample of 30 orthopedic surgeons might determine the value of a procedure costing Medicare billions. The Time Arbitrage The most critical variable in the RUC equation is time. The Work RVU is conceptually derived from the formula: Work equals Time multiplied by Intensity. Therefore, inflating the time estimate is the most direct route to inflating the price. Independent studies by RAND and the Urban Institute, often using objective data like Operating Room logs, have consistently shown that the RUC overestimates the time required for surgical procedures. A procedure valued by the RUC as taking 60 minutes may, in reality, take 30 minutes. This creates an arbitrage opportunity. If a gastroenterologist can perform a “60-minute” colonoscopy in 20 minutes, they can effectively perform three procedures in the time allotted for one. They bill for three hours of work in one hour of real time. This “efficiency gain” is captured entirely by the physician as profit. Psychotherapy cannot utilize this arbitrage. CPT codes for psychotherapy are explicitly time-based in their definition. Code 90832 requires 16 to 37 minutes. Code 90834 requires 38 to 52 minutes. Code 90837 requires 53 minutes or more. A psychiatrist cannot perform a 60-minute therapy session in 20 minutes; doing so constitutes fraud. Therefore, the revenue of a psychotherapist is capped by the linear passage of time. They can sell, at maximum, roughly 8 to 10 units of labor per day. A proceduralist, aided by RUC-inflated time assumptions, can sell 20 or 30 units of “RUC time” in the same day. This structural discrepancy creates a widening income gap that no amount of “hard work” by the therapist can close. It is not a market failure. It is market design. The “Thinking” Penalty The RUC's bias is not merely structural; it is philosophical. The committee, dominated by surgeons and proceduralists, consistently values “doing things to people,” cutting, scanning, injecting, far more highly than “talking to people,” diagnosing, counseling, managing complex chronic conditions. This creates a regulatory environment that functions as a de facto wealth transfer from cognitive care to procedural care. In 2013, a major revision of psychiatry codes exposed this bias in stark relief. Previously, psychiatrists used codes that bundled the medical evaluation with the psychotherapy. The new system required psychiatrists to bill an E/M code for the medical management plus an “add-on” code for psychotherapy. While intended to improve transparency, this change exposed psychotherapy to the raw mechanics of the RUC's valuation bias. By isolating the “therapy” component, the committee could subject it to rigorous cross-specialty comparison. And the committee, dominated by surgeons, views “talking to a patient” as low-intensity work compared to “operating on a patient.” The economic signal was clear. This created the 15-minute med check culture not because psychiatrists stopped caring, but because the regulatory environment made relational care financial suicide. It effectively “illegalized” the practice of deep, slow psychiatry for anyone who wanted to take insurance. Part V: The “Messenger Model” and Other Legal Fictions When therapists ask about collective bargaining, lawyers will often point them to the only legal loophole available: the “Messenger Model.” In this model, a third party (the messenger) acts as an intermediary between a group of providers and an insurance company. The messenger takes the insurance company's offer and conveys it to each therapist individually. Each therapist must then make a unilateral, independent decision to accept or reject it. The messenger is strictly forbidden from negotiating. They cannot say, “The group rejects this.” They cannot say, “We want 10% more.” They cannot advise the therapists on what to do. They can only carry messages. This is why “Independent Practice Associations” are often toothless. In the 2008 case North Texas Specialty Physicians v. FTC, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear that if an IPA actually tries to leverage its numbers to demand better rates, it violates antitrust laws. If it follows the messenger model, it has no leverage. It is a “heads I win, tails you lose” regulatory structure designed to protect payers, not providers. The only exception is “clinical integration,” where providers genuinely merge their practices, share infrastructure, and accept joint financial risk. But this requires substantial capital investment and essentially means ceasing to be an independent practitioner. It is a legal pathway available mainly to large physician groups and hospital systems, not to solo therapists working out of rented offices. Part VI: Market Distortions and the Flight to Cash When a cartel sets a price below the market equilibrium, suppliers exit the formal market. This is precisely what has happened in psychotherapy. Mental health providers generally have lower overhead than surgeons. They do not need MRI machines or sterile surgical suites. And they face high consumer demand; the national mental health crisis ensures a steady stream of people seeking services. This gives them an “exit option” that proceduralists do not have. They can refuse to accept insurance and operate as cash-only businesses. The statistics are stark. Nearly 50 percent of psychiatrists do not accept commercial insurance, compared to less than 10 percent of other specialists. A 2023 survey indicated that 64 percent of private practice therapists planned to increase their cash-pay rates. Research published in Health Affairs Scholar found that patients are 10.6 times more likely to go out-of-network for mental health care than for medical/surgical care. This mass exodus is a rational economic response to RUC-suppressed rates. If the RUC says an hour of therapy is worth $100 via the RVU-to-dollar conversion, but the market demand is willing to pay $250, the provider will leave the RUC-controlled sector. They are not abandoning their profession; they are abandoning a pricing regime that values their work at less than half its market rate. Ghost Networks The RUC's pricing failure creates “Ghost Networks,” directories filled with providers who are ostensibly “in-network” but are functionally inaccessible. They are either full, not accepting new patients, retired, have moved, or simply do not respond to inquiries from insurance-based patients because the administrative burden of prior authorizations and clawbacks outweighs the suppressed fee. This is not a “shortage” of providers in the absolute sense. There is no shortage of therapists in private practice. There is a shortage of therapists willing to work at the RUC-determined price point. The insurance directories are graveyards of phantom availability, creating the illusion of access where none exists. The Cost Paradox The central thesis of the RUC's defenders is that they “control costs.” By strictly managing RVUs, they claim to save taxpayer money. In psychotherapy, this logic backfires catastrophically. By suppressing reimbursement rates to a level that drives providers out of the network, the RUC forces patients into the cash market. The theoretical in-network cost might be a $20 copay with the insurer paying $100. The actual out-of-network cost is $250 cash out-of-pocket, paid in full by the patient. Thus, the “cost of therapy” for the consumer skyrockets. Therapy becomes a luxury good, accessible only to those with disposable income. For the poor and middle class, the “cost” is effectively infinite, because the service becomes inaccessible. The RUC's cost-control measure for the system becomes a cost-multiplier for the patient. It shifts the financial burden from the risk pool, where it belongs, to the individual, where it causes maximum harm. The Signal to Students The RUC sends powerful economic signals to medical students making career decisions. When a student observes that a dermatologist or radiologist can earn $500,000 working regular hours, while a psychiatrist earns $240,000 handling emotional trauma and on-call emergencies, while a primary care doctor earns even less, the choice is clear for those motivated by financial security. The undervaluation of cognitive codes discourages the best and brightest from entering mental health and primary care. The cartel's pricing structure creates a perpetual labor shortage in the fields most needed for public health, while creating a surplus in high-margin procedural specialties. We then wonder why there are not enough psychiatrists, why primary care is in crisis, why mental health access is collapsing. The answer is in the price signal, and the price signal is set by a committee of proceduralists meeting behind closed doors. The Hands Are Tied The question “Why can't therapists start a union?” is not just a labor question. It is a window into the broken soul of American healthcare. We have built a system where a secret committee of proceduralists can legally fix prices to favor surgery over therapy, but a group of social workers cannot band together to ask for a living wage. We have utilized laws meant to break up Standard Oil to break up the solidarity of caregivers. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist coordination provides legal cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. The result is a regulatory environment that drives doctors crazy, burns out therapists, and leaves patients navigating a fragmented, assembly-line system that was never designed to heal them. It was designed to process them. Until we confront the legal architecture of this system, the RUC, the Sherman Act, the 1099 trap, we will remain powerless to change it. And the reality of therapy is that quick fixes, whether in treatment or in policy, usually end up costing us more in the end. Some states are beginning to push back. New York and California have implemented strict network adequacy standards requiring mental health appointments within 10 business days. These regulations force insurers to expand their networks, which means they must attract providers, which means they must raise reimbursement rates above the RUC/Medicare floor. It is effectively a state-level override of the RUC cartel, forcing capital back into the mental health labor market. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has long advocated for stripping the RUC of its power, proposing the use of empirical data, tax returns, payroll records, practice invoices, to set values automatically. But these are patchwork solutions to a systemic problem. The fundamental issue remains: we have created a healthcare system that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We have engineered a system where the only way to survive is to stop acting like a healer and start acting like a factory. And we have wrapped this system in a legal framework that criminalizes resistance while protecting the status quo. The hands are tied. But at least now we can see the ropes. Bibliography For those interested in the primary sources and legal texts that underpin this analysis, the following external resources provide high-trust verification of the claims made above: Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975): The Supreme Court decision that ended the “learned profession” exemption from antitrust laws. Read the Oyez Summary. The Sherman Antitrust Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7): The foundational text of US antitrust law prohibiting restraint of trade. Read the Document at the National Archives. North Texas Specialty Physicians v. Federal Trade Commission (5th Cir. 2008): A key ruling establishing that independent physicians cannot collectively bargain on fees without financial integration. Read the Court Opinion. FTC/DOJ Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care (1996): The federal guidelines explaining the “Messenger Model” and the narrow exceptions for clinical integration. Read the Guidelines (PDF). The RUC (AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee): The AMA's own description of the committee structure and its role in valuing physician work. Visit the AMA RUC Page. “Special Deal” by Haley Sweetland Edwards (Washington Monthly, 2013): An investigative deep-dive into how the RUC operates and its impact on primary care vs. specialty pay. Read the Investigation. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA): The law governing the right to unionize, which specifically excludes independent contractors. Read the NLRA. Laugesen, Miriam J. Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid. Harvard University Press, 2016. The definitive scholarly analysis of the RUC's history, structure, and influence on American healthcare pricing. Government Accountability Office. “Medicare Physician Payment Rates: Better Data and Greater Transparency Could Improve Accuracy.” 2015. GAO's critical analysis of RUC methodology and conflicts of interest. Center for American Progress. “Rethinking the RUC.” 2015. Policy analysis of the RUC's structural bias against primary care and cognitive services. Health Affairs Scholar. “Insurance Acceptance and Cash Pay Rates for Psychotherapy in the US.” 2023. Empirical research on out-of-network utilization in mental health care. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). “Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System.” 2024. Annual policy recommendations including proposals for reforming physician fee schedule methodology. Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, is the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective in Hoover, Alabama. He specializes in complex trauma treatment and writes at GetTherapyBirmingham.com.  

https://gettherapybirmingham.com/what-is-a-diagnosis-anyway-is-the-dsm-dying-part-2/ The Archaeology of a Label: What We Forgot About Diagnosis and Why It Matters Now The book that decides if you're sane was written by the military to process soldiers. The committees that define your mental illness hold "typewriter parties" where they shout symptoms until someone wins. And the federal government declared the whole thing scientifically invalid—two weeks before the latest edition dropped. In this episode, Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, takes you inside the bizarre, hidden history of the DSM—the document that shapes every therapy session, every prescription, every insurance claim in American mental health. You'll learn: Why the DSM started as an Army logistics manual, not a medical document How a single awkward psychiatrist named Robert Spitzer staged a coup against Freud using checklists and political horse-trading The "dopamine miracle" that saved psychiatry from total collapse—and the price we're still paying Why the biggest research agency in mental health publicly divorced the DSM and nobody noticed What Joseph Campbell and Star Wars have to do with the therapy your insurance won't cover This isn't anti-psychiatry. This is pro-understanding. Because the system isn't broken by accident—it was built this way. And if we want to fix it, we have to see how we got here. "The DSM was never a description of nature. It was a set of administrative protocols created by the military, adapted by the bureaucracy, defended by a profession fighting for legitimacy, and captured by industries seeking profit." Subscribe. Share. And maybe question that diagnosis. More @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/

https://gettherapybirmingham.com/is-bpd-really-multiple-disorders/

Is the DSM Dead? The "Bible" of Psychiatry, The Thud Experiment, and The Crisis of Diagnosis Episode Description: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/is-the-dsm-dying-rethinking-suffering/ It dictates every diagnosis you receive, every medication you're prescribed, and every insurance dollar spent on your mental health. But what if the "Bible of Psychiatry" isn't actually scientific? Pull back the curtain on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to reveal a document in crisis. From the secret backroom deals that voted diagnoses into existence to the "checklist revolution" that stripped therapy of its meaning, we investigate how American mental healthcare became a system of billing codes rather than healing. We explore the infamous Rosenhan "Thud" Experiment that humiliated the psychiatric establishment, the accidental creation of "false epidemics" like ADHD and Bipolar II, and why the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) effectively abandoned the DSM years ago. Most importantly, we ask the hard question: Why does the system demand you be "broken" to get help, yet deny you care if you are "functioning" enough to work? If you have ever felt misunderstood by a diagnosis, frustrated by the medical system, or wondered why your "high-functioning" suffering doesn't seem to count, this episode is the validation you've been waiting for. In This Episode, We Cover: The "Thud" Experiment: How 8 sane people got committed to asylums and proved psychiatry couldn't tell the difference between madness and sanity. Reliability vs. Validity: Why the DSM prioritized "agreeing on a label" over "finding the cure." The Productivity Trap: How the "Clinical Significance Criterion" denies care to people who are suffering but still employed. The "False Epidemics": A look at how diagnostic inflation created the modern ADHD and Autism boom. The Divorce of Psychiatry & Therapy: Why your psychiatrist doesn't do therapy anymore (and why that matters). The Future: Moving beyond the checklist toward a model of narrative, systems, and human connection. Quote from the Episode: "The DSM is not a description of nature. It is a description of what American healthcare requires nature to be." Resources Mentioned: The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz The Book of Woe by Gary Greenberg The STAR*D Study's true remission rates (2.7%) Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) Connect & Listen: Subscribe to hear more critical investigations into the mental health system. If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review and share it with a friend who needs to hear that they are more than a billing code. Keywords for SEO: Mental Health, DSM-5, Psychiatry, Psychology, Trauma, ADHD, Neurodivergence, Joel Blackstock, Taproot Therapy, Clinical Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Big Pharma, Medical History, Rosenhan Experiment.   More @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/

The Story Science Forgot: Why Psychotherapy Needs Narrative More Than Ever by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 15, 2025 | 0 comments Joseph Campbell is arguably one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. If you have watched a Marvel movie or read a modern fantasy novel or sat in a screenwriter's workshop you have encountered his fingerprints. George Lucas explicitly credited Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces as the structural backbone of Star Wars. Every major Hollywood studio has copies of his work floating around their development offices. Even filmmakers who actively deconstruct his monomyth model still have to be in conversation with Campbell to do so. You cannot escape him if you are telling stories in the Western tradition. But here is the thing about Joseph Campbell that we need to hold in our minds when we think about what psychology has become. He was a showman. He was a legitimate scholar but also someone who understood that the truth sometimes needs a little theatrical assistance. The Showman and the Bear Bones One of Campbell's favorite presentation techniques involved showing an image of ancient bear bones that were perhaps two million years old and discovered in a cave. The bones had been arranged in a particular way with pieces shoved back into the bear's mouth. Campbell would present this with his characteristic gravitas and explain that the ancients understood that nature must eat of itself. They knew that to take life is to participate in a cyclical loop of giving and receiving. The bear consuming itself was a ritual recognition that we are all food for something else. It is a beautiful interpretation. It is probably even partially true. We know through depth psychology and early anthropology that prehistoric humans were almost certainly trying to make meaning of existential realities. Ritual practices around death and consumption are well documented across cultures. Campbell was not fabricating this from nothing. But also come on Campbell. These are two million year old bones shoved in a hole. Maybe the jaw just collapsed that way. Maybe soil shifted. Maybe an animal disturbed them centuries after burial. He did not know. He could not know. And yet he presented it with the confidence of revealed truth. Here is why this matters. Campbell's influence is incalculable despite his methodological looseness. He told a story that resonated so deeply with something in the human psyche that it became the invisible architecture of our entire entertainment industry. He was not objectively right about those bear bones but he was pointing at something real about how humans make meaning. The story he told about that meaning making was more powerful than any peer reviewed paper could have been. We need to remember this when we think about psychotherapy and what it has become. The Dream I Had and the World I Found When I first entered the field of psychotherapy I had a fantasy. I thought I was going to be Joseph Campbell. I was going to find my way to someplace like Berkeley and immerse myself in the grand conversation between psychology and mythology and anthropology and philosophy. I imagined something like the Esalen Institute in the 1970s where Fritz Perls developed Gestalt therapy and where researchers and mystics and clinicians sat together in hot springs and argued about the nature of consciousness. Those places barely exist anymore. What I found instead was a competitive model built on H-indexes and impact factors. I found academic departments that had been siloed into increasingly narrow specializations. Each department defended its territorial boundaries against incursion from neighboring disciplines. The institute model where a psychologist might spend an afternoon talking to an anthropologist about ritual has been systematically dismantled. What we have instead are specialists who do not read outside their sub specialty and researchers whose entire careers depend on defending one narrow hypothesis. We have an incentive structure that actively punishes the kind of cross pollination that leads to genuine discovery. The Hollow Room: How the Biomedical Model Fails This is not just an academic inconvenience. It is a catastrophe for the human sciences and for the actual treatment of patients. There is a reason Freud stuck around. It is not because psychoanalysis was rigorously validated through randomized controlled trials. It is because as the science writer John Horgan observed old paradigms die only when better paradigms replace them. Freud lives on because science has not produced a theory of and therapy for the mind potent enough to render psychoanalysis obsolete once and for all. The biomedical model promised us a better story. It told us that humans are biological machines and that suffering is just a mechanical malfunction. It promised that if we could just find the right neurotransmitter or the right gene we could fix the machine. But look at what that looks like in practice. It looks like the 15 minute medication management appointment. A person comes in with their life falling apart. They are grieving a divorce or wrestling with the trauma of their childhood or facing a crisis of meaning. And the doctor looks at a checklist. They ask about sleep. They ask about appetite. They ask about energy levels. They treat the symptoms like check engine lights on a dashboard. They prescribe a pill to dim the lights and they send the person away. It looks like manualized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This is the gold standard of evidence based treatment. But in the vacuum of a manual it becomes absurd. A patient might be crying about the loss of a child and a therapist who is strictly adhering to the protocol has to redirect them to the agenda for Module 3 which is identifying cognitive distortions. The model has no room for the tragedy of the situation. It only has room for the erroneous thought that the patient is having about the tragedy. The result is that by most measures we are not actually helping people more effectively than we were fifty years ago. To understand the depth of this failure, we must look at the “smoking gun” of the psychiatric establishment: the STAR*D study. For nearly two decades, this massive, taxpayer-funded study was held up as the irrefutable proof that the “medication merry-go-round” worked. It cost $35 million and was cited thousands of times to justify the idea that if a patient didn't get better on one antidepressant, you simply switched them to another, and then another. The study claimed a “cumulative remission rate” of 67%. It told us that two-thirds of people would be cured if they just complied with the protocol. This was a lie built on methodological quicksand. A forensic re-analysis of the data (Pigott et al., 2023) revealed that the researchers had inflated their success rates through a series of stunning methodological sleights of hand. The original design called for the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) to be the primary outcome measure. But when that scale wasn't showing the numbers they wanted, investigators switched to a secondary, unblinded, self-report questionnaire (the QIDS-SR) which painted a rosier picture. Furthermore, the re-analysis exposed that hundreds of patients who dropped out due to side effects were excluded from the failure count, effectively scrubbing the negative data. Even worse, over 900 patients who didn't even meet the minimum severity for depression were included to boost the numbers. When the data was re-analyzed using the study's original criteria and including all participants, the cumulative remission rate plummeted from 67% to 35%. But the most damning statistic is the sustained recovery rate. Of the 4,041 patients who entered the trial, only a tiny fraction achieved remission and actually stayed well. When accounting for dropouts and relapses over the one-year follow-up period, a mere 108 patients achieved remission and stayed well without relapsing. That is a sustained recovery rate of 2.7%. If a heart surgery or cancer treatment had a failure rate of 97.3%, it would be abandoned. Yet, this study was championed by investigators with deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and the results were codified into clinical guidelines that still rule the profession today. This is the indictment: we have built an entire system of care on a statistical fabrication, prioritizing the protection of the model over the healing of the human. I have big problems with Freud. I have big problems with classical psychoanalysis. I am more of a Jungian. But here is what the depth psychologists understood that the biomedical model forgot. Humans are not just biological machines. We are meaning making creatures who navigate the world through story. When you take away our stories you do not make us more rational. You make us lost. The Flock of Dodos This separation of science from narrative has hurt the researchers too. In his book The Ghost Lab journalist Matt Hongoltz-Hetling uses the flock of dodos metaphor to describe this phenomenon. He argues that specialized creatures that are perfectly adapted to narrow environments become extinct when conditions change. Academic science has become a flock of dodos. A neuroscientist studies one particular brain region. A psychologist studies one particular therapeutic intervention. An anthropologist studies one particular culture. Nobody is allowed to step back and ask what all of this means together. When you silo information into separate academic disciplines instead of organizing it into a holistic understanding you kill the narratives that are already there. You cannot see the story until you step back far enough to recognize the pattern. Heidegger and the AI Bubble One of the primary functions of a subjective narrative in an objective field like psychotherapy is that it lets us start with things we consider self evident. These are things that do not need evidence because they are the ground upon which evidence stands. Things like humanity is important. Things like we contain multiplicities and conflicting parts. Things like consciousness is a mystery. The biomedical model has no way to accommodate these self evident truths because they are not measurable. You cannot run a randomized controlled trial on human dignity. Martin Heidegger understood this trajectory. He warned that science and technology were becoming self justifying systems that asked only whether something could be done and never whether it should be done. We are watching this play out right now with Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. The tech industry is boiling seawater and consuming enormous amounts of our remaining resources to build ever larger systems. As Ed Zitron has documented the current AI boom is likely a bubble that will crash and burn. It may leave us with a Google monopoly on Gemini that will not actually help anybody. Should we be doing this? Should we be fundamentally restructuring our economy around technology whose benefits are speculative at best? The Heideggerian answer is that we are not even capable of asking these questions properly because we have lost the narrative framework within which “should” makes sense. When everything is reduced to capability and efficiency the concept of values disappears. The Perennial and the Possible Can we just recognize that having a livable planet is probably a self evidencing goal? Can we recognize that having a psychotherapy willing to engage with perennial philosophy might be more valuable than another meta analysis demonstrating small effect sizes for manualized interventions? This is what I mean by reintroducing narrative. I do not mean replacing evidence with myth. I mean recognizing that the facts do not speak for themselves. Data requires interpretation. Interpretation requires a framework. And frameworks are stories about what matters. The story science forgot is the story of science itself. It is the story of how inquiry emerged from human communities trying to understand their world. We can recover this story. We can rebuild the connections that the academic silos have severed. The path is there. It always has been. We just need to be brave enough to walk it. The Exodus of the Sick If academic science has become a flock of dodos clinical practice has become something arguably worse. It has become a reenactment of the Milgram experiment where the system plays the role of the authority figure and the patient plays the victim. We often remember Stanley Milgram's famous 1961 study as a lesson about the capacity for evil but its deeper lesson was about the capacity for distance. When the subject had to physically touch the victim compliance with the order to harm them dropped to 30 percent. The White Coat only retained its authority when it created a buffer between the human actions and their consequences.   Modern psychotherapy has built a massive administrative White Coat that separates the healer from the healed. This is not just a metaphor. It is a structural reality that is actively driving patients out of the profession and into the arms of pseudoscience. The Bureaucracy as Trauma For a patient in crisis the Evidence Based system often functions as a machine of exclusion. A study on healthcare administrative burdens reveals that the psychological cost of navigating billing and insurance denials and intake forms acts as a friction that hits the most vulnerable the hardest. We ask trauma survivors to retell their stories to three different intake coordinators before they ever see a therapist. This process is itself retraumatizing. When they finally reach a provider they are often met with the biomedical gaze which is a checklist driven assessment that reduces their complex narrative of suffering to a code for billing. As the Australian Psychological Society has noted the chemical imbalance theory and the medicalization of distress have failed to reduce stigma and have instead left patients feeling defective and unheard. The result is a profound Low Trust environment. Theodore Porter in his book Trust in Numbers argues that we only rely on strict mechanical numbers when we do not trust people. We use the DSM and manualized protocols because insurers do not trust clinicians to judge and clinicians do not trust themselves to deviate. The Great Split: Why Research and Practice Are Divorcing This creates a fundamental schism that explains why the profession feels like it is cracking in half. On one side you have the academic researchers who are incentivized by grant funding and publication metrics. To get these rewards they must isolate variables and create reproducible manualized protocols. This means they must strip away the very thing that makes therapy work which is the messy and unrepeatable human relationship. On the other side you have the clinicians who are incentivized by patient outcomes. They are in the room with the messiness. They see that the manualized protocol fails the complex trauma patient so they improvise. They integrate. They use intuition. The academic looks at the clinician and sees a cowboy who ignores the data. The clinician looks at the academic and sees a bureaucrat who has never treated a suicidal patient. This is why the research is no longer informing the practice. We have created two different languages. The researcher speaks in p-values and population averages while the clinician speaks in case studies and individual breakthroughs. Why Pseudoscience Wins the Trust War This low trust environment creates a vacuum that wellness influencers are all too happy to fill. We often mock the public for turning to unverified supplements and TikTok diagnosticians and quantum mysticism. But we have to ask what these influencers are providing that we are not. They are providing narrative. They are providing connection. They are providing a. parasocial yes but still, High Trust experience. A recent analysis suggests that wellness fads thrive not because people are stupid but because the influencers offer a feeling of personal validation that the medical system denies. Even AI chatbots are now being described by users as more humane than doctors because the AI listens to the whole story without looking at a watch or a checklist. When a patient is told by a doctor that their pain is idiopathic or psychosomatic because it does not show up on a lab test and then an influencer tells them I see you and I believe you and here is a story about why this is happening the patient will choose the influencer every time. The trust gap drives them away from care that might actually help and toward solutions that feel good but do nothing. The Clinician's Moral Injury This leaves the ethical psychotherapist in a state of moral injury. We are forced to participate in a system that we know is alienating the very people we are trying to help. We are trained to value the therapeutic alliance or the bond of trust above all else yet we work in a system designed to sever it with paperwork and time limits and standardized protocols. We have to put down the White Coat of administrative distance. We have to stop hiding behind the Evidence Based label when that label is being used to deny the reality of the person in front of us. Proposals for a Unified Future If we want to stop this exodus and heal the split we need specific structural changes. We cannot just hope for better insurance reimbursement. We need to change what we consider valid science. First we must re-legitimize the systematic case study. For a century the detailed narrative of a single patient was the gold standard of learning. We replaced it with the aggregate data of the randomized controlled trial. We need to bring it back. We need journals that publish rigorous detailed accounts of what actually happens in the room when a patient gets better. Second we need to build open source repositories for clinical observation. Currently the wisdom of the field is locked behind for profit paywalls or lost in the private notes of isolated therapists. We need a Wikipedia of Clinical Practice where thousands of clinicians can document what they are seeing in real time. If ten thousand therapists report that somatic processing helps complex trauma that is a data set that rivals any RCT. Third we need to teach philosophy and narrative in graduate school again. We are training technicians when we should be training healers. A therapist who knows how to read a spreadsheet but does not know how to understand a story is useless to a human being in crisis. If we do not offer a therapy that is human and narrative and deeply relational we will continue to lose our patients to those who do even if what they are offering is a lie. The Mirror and the Map: Why Math is a Story We often treat mathematics as if it were the bedrock of reality itself. We act as though a p-value is a piece of the universe, like a rock or a proton. But we must remember that math is not the thing itself. It is a representation of the thing. It is a map, not the territory. It is a mirror, not the face. Theodore Porter's work in Trust in Numbers reminds us that we reach for these mirrors when we do not trust our own eyes. But the mirror is useless without someone to look into it and interpret the reflection. Data by itself is pointless. It is a pile of bricks without an architect. It requires interpretation to become meaning, and interpretation is fundamentally a narrative act. When we try our best to make a purely objective study, we are still telling a story. We are saying, “These numbers represent this phenomenon.” Then another researcher comes along, looks at the same numbers, and tells a different story: “No, they represent that.” This conflict isn't a failure of science; it is science. The Storytellers of Science The greatest breakthroughs in history did not come from people who just crunched numbers. They came from people who could see the story the numbers were trying to tell. These stories are really damn interesting, often stranger and more beautiful than fiction. Consider August Kekulé. He didn't discover the structure of the benzene molecule by staring at a spreadsheet. He discovered it by dreaming of a snake eating its own tail—the Ouroboros. His subjective, narrative brain provided the image that unlocked the objective chemical reality. The data was there, but it needed a myth to make it intelligible. Look at Quantum Physics. The raw math of quantum mechanics is cold and abstract. But when physicists like Erwin Schrödinger or Werner Heisenberg looked at that data, they saw a story about uncertainty, about cats that are both alive and dead, about a universe that only decides what it is when it is observed. They didn't just calculate; they interpreted. They told a story about reality that was so radical it changed how we understand existence. Even in psychology, the data of the “talking cure” was messy and anecdotal until Freud and Jung gave us the language of the Unconscious and the Archetype. Were they objectively “right” in every detail? No. But they gave us a framework—a story—that allowed us to navigate the chaos of the human mind. They provided the map that allowed us to enter the territory. The Final Integration We have spent the last fifty years trying to strip this storytelling capacity out of our profession in a misguided attempt to be taken seriously by the “hard” sciences. In doing so, we have thrown away our most powerful tool. The brain is a story-processing machine. To treat it with checklists and spreadsheets is to deny its fundamental nature. We need to be brave enough to pick up the mirror again. We need to be brave enough to look at the data—whether it's the 2.7% recovery rate of STAR*D or the trembling pupil of a trauma patient—and ask, “What is the story here?” The path forward isn't about choosing between science and narrative. It is about realizing that science is a narrative. It is the grandest, most complex, most rigorous story we have ever tried to tell. And it is time we started telling it properly again.   More @ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/

Join Joel Blackstock for an extraordinary conversation with Dr. Steven Vazquez, the inventor of Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT), as he reveals the 25-year scientific journey that led to one of the most innovative breakthroughs in trauma treatment. From skeptical experimentation to treating cancer with eye movements, discover how specific wavelengths of light directly impact the brain's emotional centers. In this illuminating episode, Dr. Vazquez shares the fascinating evolution of ETT's four core technologies, the neuroscience behind why colors disappear during dissociation, and remarkable case studies including elimination of Parkinson's symptoms, instant resolution of 15-year chronic pain, and complete remission of colorectal cancer through targeted eye movement protocols. Key Topics Covered: The accidental discovery: From syntonic optometry to emotional transformation Building and testing 7 different light devices over 25 years Why the optic nerve's path through the brain stem changes everything The substantia nigra connection: Treating movement disorders without surgery Temporal-parietal junction: Why trauma survivors are 4x more likely to be re-traumatized Real-time dissociation detection through visual distortion Converting EMDR practitioners: Why they switch and never go back Breakthrough Cases Discussed: Arthritic pain eliminated instantly with orange light Colorectal cancer remission confirmed by oncologist next day Father's visual trauma from discovering son's suicide - resolved in 10 minutes Sciatica eliminated in 20 minutes (physician patient, still gone 1 year later) Birth trauma causing adult osteoporosis - complete resolution Resources: ETT Training Programs (7 levels): www.etttraining.com Research and publications on wavelength-specific brain activation International training locations and certification pathways Perfect for neuroscience enthusiasts, trauma therapists, EMDR/Brainspotting practitioners, and anyone seeking to understand the cutting-edge intersection of light, brain science, and emotional healing. #EmotionalTransformationTherapy #ETT #DrStevenVazquez #Neuroscience #TraumaTherapy #LightTherapy #BrainScience #EMDR #Brainspotting #Innovation #PTSD #ChronicPain #Dissociation #TherapyResearch

https://mjdenis.com/whoismjdenis Join Joel Blackstock as he sits down with MJ Denis, LPC, LMFT, and certified ETT trainer from Austin, Texas, for an eye-opening conversation about Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT) - a groundbreaking approach that integrates light, color, and neuroscience to transform emotional healing. Read the blog article: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/from-skepticism-to-science-how-emotional-transformation-therapy-is-revolutionizing-mental-health-treatment-a-deep-dive-with-mj-denis/ In this compelling episode, MJ shares her journey from skepticism to becoming one of the leading ETT trainers in the country, having conducted over 3,100 sessions. Discover how this evidence-based therapy goes beyond traditional talk therapy and EMDR to create rapid, lasting change for trauma, anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, and chronic pain. Key Topics Covered: The science behind using specific wavelengths of light for emotional regulation Why ETT succeeds where EMDR and traditional therapies plateau Real case studies: From lifelong phobias resolved in minutes to chronic pain relief How therapists can integrate ETT with existing modalities (IFS, somatic experiencing, CBT) The neurological basis of color perception and emotional processing Virtual ETT sessions and expanding access to care globally Resources Mentioned: ETT Training Information: www.etttraining.com Find an ETT Therapist Directory Dr. Steven Vazquez's research and methodology Perfect for mental health professionals, trauma survivors, and anyone interested in cutting-edge therapeutic approaches that bridge neuroscience and emotional healing.  #EmotionalTransformationTherapy #ETT #TraumaTherapy #EMDR #BrainSpotting #Neuroscience #MentalHealthInnovation #LightTherapy #ColorTherapy #PTSD #AnxietyTreatment #DepressionTherapy #TherapistTraining #HolisticHealing

In this eye-opening episode of the Discover Heal Grow podcast, host Joel Blackstock sits down with healthcare policy expert Timothy Faust to demystify America's complex healthcare system. They explore how Medicaid expansion actually saves states money, why cutting healthcare funding costs more in the long run, and the real economics behind healthcare policy. Key topics covered: The business case for Medicaid expansion How preventative care saves millions in emergency costs Why rural hospitals depend on Medicaid funding The hidden costs of means-testing and bureaucracy Real stories of how healthcare debt impacts economic mobility Why healthcare spending creates 4x more economic activity than defense spending Perfect for healthcare workers, policy enthusiasts, and anyone trying to understand why American healthcare costs so much and how we can fix it.

Walter Sorrells Blades (Japanese sword site): https://www.waltersorrellsblades.com/ Tactix Armory (production knives): https://www.tactixarmory.com/ Sorrells Tool (new tool website): https://sorrelstool.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkLxJCuQZ4hStBfs8TCnT9Q From Novelist to Master Swordsmith: In this captivating episode of Chap Therapy Collective: Discover Here, Grow, host Joel Blackstock welcomes Walter Sorrells, a master bladesmith whose extraordinary journey from bestselling mystery novelist to renowned Japanese sword maker offers profound insights into creativity, craftsmanship, and personal transformation. Walter Sorrells has spent over 25 years perfecting the ancient art of Japanese bladesmithing. After writing more than 30 mystery and suspense novels (including an Edgar Award winner), Walter made the bold decision to pursue his passion for sword making full-time. Today, he's one of America's most respected makers of Japanese-inspired blades and has built a massive following through his educational YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In This Episode, We Explore: The fascinating technical world of Japanese sword construction, from traditional tamahagane steel smelting to the intricate process of clay tempering that creates the legendary hamon (temper line). Walter shares how he evolved from purely commission work to developing his Tactix Armory production line and incorporating modern CNC machining into his craft. The psychological and philosophical dimensions of martial arts training, including how Walter's 20 years in karate and Japanese sword arts shaped his approach to both life and metalwork. We dive deep into the concept of "killing the opponent on the inside" and how constraints and limitations often drive the greatest innovations. The business realities of being a working artist, from dealing with difficult custom clients to finding your authentic voice in the marketplace. Walter's insights on genre, focus, and the importance of making "chairs not art" offer valuable lessons for any creative professional. The intersection of ancient techniques and modern technology, as Walter discusses his journey into CNC machining and how he balances traditional hand-forging with contemporary production methods. About Walter Sorrells: Walter holds a 3rd degree black belt in karate and has trained extensively in Japanese sword arts including Shinendo. His blades are fully functional works of art, crafted using traditional clay hardening techniques and often featuring folded steel construction reminiscent of historical Japanese swords. Through his YouTube channel, instructional videos, and tools business, Walter has become one of the most influential educators in the modern bladesmithing community. Key Takeaways: How to navigate major career transitions while staying true to your core identity The importance of embracing limitations as sources of creativity Why focusing on craft over self-expression often leads to better art How traditional skills can be enhanced (not replaced) by modern technology The role of practice and discipline in both martial arts and creative work Whether you're interested in metalworking, martial arts, Japanese culture, or the broader questions of artistic development and career transformation, this conversation offers something valuable. Walter's story demonstrates that it's never too late to completely reinvent yourself while honoring the skills and wisdom you've already developed. Connect with Walter Sorrells: Website: waltersorrellsblades.com Production Knives: tactixarmory.com YouTube: Search "Walter Sorrells" for hundreds of knife-making tutorials Patreon: patreon.com/WalterSorrells About Chap Therapy Collective: Hosted by therapist and writer Joel Blackstock, Chap Therapy Collective explores the intersection of creativity, psychology, and personal growth through conversations with artists, craftspeople, and innovators. The show's motto "Discover Here, Grow" reflects our belief that growth happens through engagement with meaningful work and authentic relationships. Subscribe for new episodes every week, and visit our website for show notes, additional resources, and Joel's writing on creativity and personal development. Episode Length: 59 minutes Release Date: [Insert Date] Season/Episode: [Insert Info] #Bladesmithing #JapaneseSwords #KnifeMaking #MartialArts #Craftsmanship #CreativeJourney #ArtisanLife #Metallurgy #PersonalGrowth #ChapTherapyCollective

Buy the Book! https://hatandbeard.com/products/american-sugargristle-by-toby-huss What if the secret to understanding America was hidden in gas station graffiti? Why does actor Toby Huss photograph truck stops instead of sunsets? And how did abstract painting help him process MDMA therapy sessions? In this mind-expanding episode, beloved character actor Toby Huss (John Bosworth in "Halt and Catch Fire," Cotton Hill/Kahn in "King of the Hill") takes us on a journey through his photography book "American Sugargristle" and reveals how finding beauty in overlooked places can transform both art and consciousness. You'll discover: ✓ The "connective tissue" that unites America beyond political divisions (hint: it's in plain sight) ✓ Why cynicism is the enemy of authentic art (and how to avoid it) ✓ The surprising connection between his abstract paintings and trauma processing ✓ How playing salesmen taught him that performance can be authentic ✓ Why he insisted on specific cowboy boots for Bosworth (and what that teaches about intuition) ✓ The profound humanity in truck stop graffiti and strip mall aesthetics ✓ His approach to voicing Dale Gribble after Johnny Hardwick's passing ✓ Why technical photography skills mean nothing without story ✓ How to train your eye to find beauty anywhere (even Palmdale) ✓ The unexpected spiritual dimensions of documenting mundane America Toby drops wisdom bombs about: Why every actor needs to trust their character intuition over directors The danger of the "safari mentality" when photographing America How different creative mediums access different truths Why he photographs the "impression" places leave, not just the places The democracy of anonymous expression (yes, including dick graffiti) Plus: Learn about his upcoming films "Americana" and "Weapons," and why a Native American ghost shirt might be the perfect metaphor for his artistic vision. Perfect for: Artists seeking authentic vision, photographers tired of Instagram aesthetics, actors wanting to deepen their craft, anyone processing trauma through creativity, fans of Halt and Catch Fire, King of the Hill enthusiasts, and people curious about the real America beyond media narratives. ⚠️ Content note: Frank discussion of trauma, therapeutic psychedelics, and the artistic process. TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] Cold open - Testing audio with an actor who records everything [03:52] "American Sugargristle" - What the hell does that mean? [06:22] Visual DNA: Decoding America's aesthetic language [07:32] Lyn Shelton memories and creative cross-pollination [10:00] When your writing sounds like a fever dream (compliment) [11:39] The universal language of dick graffiti (seriously) [14:10] "Are you a pervert?" - Getting detained for photography [17:31] Photographing ghosts: Capturing a place's impression [18:19] "Where They Grow Headstones" - Perfect titles take time [20:09] Why cynicism kills art (and wonder) [22:32] Finding humanity across the political divide [24:03] Truck stops as temples: Spirituality in mundane places [27:37] From disgust to beauty: The Palmdale transformation [28:33] F*ck your expensive camera (story matters more) [29:19] That time he roasted sunset photography [31:46] Iowa barns and the death of cliché [33:29] Your book feels like a Wim Wenders film [35:02] The performative truth of John Bosworth [36:34] When the salesman mask IS the real face [40:19] Becoming Dale Gribble (with respect to Johnny) [45:37] Stage vs. film vs. voice: Different mediums, different magic [46:40] Plot twist: Those squiggly paintings were trauma all along [48:20] MDMA therapy meets abstract art [52:46] How trauma blocks intuition (and art unblocks it) [56:45] Brain spotting and carnival barkers [59:21] "Americana" and "Weapons" - Coming this August Guest Bio: Toby Huss has built a career finding depth in seemingly simple characters. From Artie (The Strongest Man in the World) on Nickelodeon's "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" to Cotton Hill and Kahn on "King of the Hill" to the unforgettable John Bosworth on AMC's "Halt and Catch Fire," Huss brings authentic humanity to every role. His photography book "American Sugargristle" reveals the same gift for finding profound beauty in overlooked corners of American life. Born in Marshalltown, Iowa, Huss now voices Dale Gribble in the King of the Hill revival while continuing to act in films like "Copshop" and the upcoming "Americana" and "Weapons." Resources Mentioned: "American Sugargristle" photography book "Sword of Trust" directed by Lynn Shelton Upcoming film "Americana" (August 2024) Upcoming film "Weapons" from the director of "Barbarian" (August 2024) King of the Hill revival on Hulu Brain spotting therapy Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT) Related Episodes: The Psychology of Place: How Environment Shapes Identity Artists and Trauma: Creative Expression as Healing Finding Beauty in the Broken: A Photographer's Journey Connect: Website: GetTherapyBirmingham.com Instagram: @gettherapybirmingham Podcast: Discover + Heal + Grow Subscribe for more conversations about consciousness, creativity, and what happens when we really start paying attention. Keywords: Toby Huss, American Sugargristle, Halt and Catch Fire, John Bosworth, King of the Hill, Dale Gribble, Cotton Hill, voice acting, photography book, trauma and art, MDMA therapy, creative process, actor interview, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Artie strongest man, vernacular photography, American identity, visual storytelling, Lyn Shelton, character acting, artistic intuition #TobyHuss #AmericanSugargristle #HaltAndCatchFire #KingOfTheHill #Photography #TraumaHealing #MDMATherapy #ActorInterview #CreativeProcess #AmericanIdentity #VisualStorytelling #CharacterActing #ArtisticIntuition #VernacularPhotography #SomaticTherapy #BrainSpotting #TherapyPodcast #ConsciousnessAndCreativity #AuthenticArt #TraumaAndArt #VoiceActing #JohnBosworth #DaleGribble #CottonHill #LynShelton #Photography Book #CreativeHealing #TheAdventuresOfPeteAndPete #EmotionalTransformationTherapy #Mindfulness #ArtAsTherapy #StreetPhotography #Documentary Photography #AmericanaFilm #WeaponsFilm #GetTherapyBirmingham #DiscoverHealGrow

Is your therapist accidentally making your dissociation worse? Why does ketamine - a dissociative drug - keep getting prescribed for dissociative disorders? And what if everything we think we know about treating trauma is backwards? https://gettherapybirmingham.com/understanding-dissociation-trauma-and-addiction-insights-from-adam-obrien-and-the-wounded-healer-institute/ https://youtu.be/6SxxhB10G8U  In this eye-opening episode, trauma specialist Adam O'Brien (founder of the Wounded Healer Institute) reveals why the body IS the psychological unconscious and how dissociation connects directly to our natural opioid and cannabinoid systems. You'll discover: ✓ Why it takes YEARS to diagnose dissociative disorders (and why that's insane) ✓ The hidden link between dissociation and addiction that most therapists miss ✓ How "skilled dissociation" can actually be protective (and when it becomes problematic) ✓ Why Brainspotting accesses preverbal trauma that talk therapy can't touch ✓ The 3 "missing addictions" society rewards: perfectionism, altruism, and ambition ✓ How to work with non-verbal parts of yourself that hold trauma ✓ Why "checking out" actually means you're "checking in" somewhere else ✓ The real reason some therapies (CBT, ABA) might induce dissociation Adam drops truth bombs about: The medical system's resistance to qualitative research Why calling alternative therapies "pseudoscience" is often gaslighting How insurance companies dictate mental health treatment The historical use of psychedelics in healing (and what we lost) Plus: Learn about the Wounded Healer Institute's revolutionary peer-support model that values lived experience alongside professional training. Perfect for: therapists, anyone with complex PTSD/DID, trauma survivors, addiction counselors, and people failed by traditional therapy. ⚠️ Content note: Frank discussion of trauma, dissociation, and mental health system failures. TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] Cold open - "The body is the psychological unconscious" [01:05] The dissociation-addiction connection no one talks about [02:38] What is the Wounded Healer Institute? [06:08] "Your lived experience matters more than their data" [15:27] Preverbal trauma: Why talk therapy isn't enough [19:14] Your body IS your unconscious mind [29:39] Brainspotting: The therapy that changes everything [41:25] Plot twist: Dissociation is checking IN, not out [42:24] The ketamine scandal no one's discussing [44:16] How to talk to parts that don't use words [53:49] Time doesn't exist in trauma (literally) [1:03:24] The addictions we celebrate (that are killing us) [1:06:37] Building the healing community we actually need Guest Bio: Adam O'Brien is a researcher, Brainspotting expert, and founder of the Wounded Healer Institute. Specializing in the transdiagnostic nature of dissociation and addiction, Adam challenges the biomedical model with integrated approaches combining neurofeedback, somatic therapy, and lived experience. Their groundbreaking work reframes dissociation as a navigable healing journey rather than a life sentence. Resources Mentioned: Wounded Healer Institute Brainspotting International QEEG Brain Mapping Progressive Counting Technique Emotional Transformation Therapy (ETT)

The ancient wisdom that keeps coming back because it's true Athens, 399 BCE. Socrates holds the cup of hemlock, about to die for something that can't be proven - only known. The daimonion. The inner voice. The shamanic function that guides from beyond rational thought. 2,400 years later, we call it the unconscious. Or intuition. Or the default mode network. Same truth, different words: There's something in us that knows, and everything depends on whether we listen. This final episode reveals the perennial philosophy underlying all effective therapy. The wisdom that every culture discovers, then forgets, then rediscovers when the forgetting becomesunbearable. https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-weird-history-of-psychotherapy-part-5-the-perennial-philosophy/ You'll learn: Why depression and anxiety might be evolutionary features, not bugs The eternal tension between warriors (order) and shamans (transformation) How modern neuroscience validates ancient insights about multiple selves Why we keep forgetting what works (hint: there's no profit in wholeness) The metamodern moment: learning to hold paradox in a polarized world What therapy looks like when it remembers we're shamanic beings From Socrates' inner voice to Jung's active imagination to modern parts work, the same insights keep emerging. Not because they're trendy, but because they're true. True like the sunrise. True like the need for love. True like the mystery we can never fully grasp but must learn to dance with.  

How therapy became a computer program and lost its soul 1973: A researcher walks into a psychiatric hospital claiming to hear voices saying "empty, hollow, thud." He's immediately diagnosed with schizophrenia and held for weeks. The twist? He's perfectly sane. It's all an experiment to prove psychiatric diagnosis is fiction. Those three words - empty, hollow, thud - would become the perfect description of what American therapy was about to become. This episode exposes how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy conquered psychology by promising scientific precision while secretly throwing out everything that makes therapy work. The computer metaphor for mind created treatments that were measurable, billable, and completely ineffective.   https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-weird-history-of-psychotherapy-part-4-empty-hollow-thud-or-cbt-and-the-satanic-panic/   You'll discover: How Aaron Beck's computer metaphor reduced humans to software Why the "evidence-based" revolution was built on falsified research The hidden truth: effective CBT therapists are doing depth work in disguise How the Satanic Panic destroyed trust in memory and trauma Why America's most "rational" era believed in underground demon cults The replication crisis that proved the "gold standard" was fool's gold

From genius discovery to UFO battles: The man who found trauma in the body Wilhelm Reich made one of psychology's greatest discoveries: The body remembers what the mind forgets. Trauma doesn't just live in thoughts and memories - it's held in muscle tension, breathing patterns, and physical armor that protects us from unbearable feelings. Then he went completely insane. This episode follows Reich's journey from Freud's most promising student to a paranoid exile shooting orgone energy at alien spacecraft. But here's the twist: His early insights about somatic trauma were revolutionary. They laid the foundation for every body-based therapy that actually works. https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-weird-history-of-psychotherapy-part-3-wilhelm-reich/ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/what-are-wilhelm-reichs-character-styles/ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/wilhelm-reichs-analysis-of-fascism-enduring-wisdom-and-controversial-reception/ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-curious-case-of-wilhelm-reich/ https://gettherapybirmingham.com/john-c-lilly-when-dolphins-drugs-and-the-deep-end-of-consciousness-collided-in-the-psychedelic-70s/   You'll learn about: Character armor: how the body holds emotional pain The knife incident that got him expelled from psychoanalysis Orgone energy, cloudbusters, and weather control experiments Einstein's basement test that debunked Reich's cosmic theories The FBI raid that destroyed his life's work How his somatic discoveries live on in modern trauma therapy Discover the untold story of how trauma therapy evolved from Freudian analysis to revolutionary body-based healing approaches that preceded "The Body Keeps the Score" by decades. This evidence-based deep dive explores the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, and Fritz Perls who discovered that trauma lives in the body long before modern neuroscience proved them right. Learn why your physical symptoms might be stored emotional memories and how the therapeutic revolution of the 1960s changed psychology forever. What You'll Learn: Why Reich was expelled from psychoanalytic institutes for discovering "character armor" How Jung's archetypal psychology laid groundwork for modern therapy approaches The real story behind Fritz Perls and the birth of Gestalt therapy Why America abandoned somatic approaches for cognitive behavioral therapy How trauma gets trapped in muscles, creating chronic tension and pain The scientific evidence behind body-based trauma treatment Perfect for: Mental health professionals, trauma survivors, psychology students, anyone interested in the history of psychotherapy, and those seeking alternatives to traditional talk therapy. Evidence-Based Content: Drawing from peer-reviewed research, historical documents, and the foundational texts of somatic psychology, this episode traces the scientific evolution from Freudian psychoanalysis through modern neuroscience-backed trauma therapy. Keywords: trauma therapy, somatic therapy, body keeps the score, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, PTSD treatment, psychology history, mind-body connection, character armor, nervous system healing, experiential therapy, depth psychology Hosted by experts in trauma-informed care with clinical experience in EMDR, brainspotting, somatic experiencing, and Jungian analysis. Resources: Visit gettherapybirmingham.com for articles on somatic trauma mapping, Jungian therapy, and evidence-based body-centered healing approaches. Discover the untold story of how trauma therapy evolved from Freudian analysis to revolutionary body-based healing approaches that preceded "The Body Keeps the Score" by decades. This evidence-based deep dive explores the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, and Fritz Perls who discovered that trauma lives in the body long before modern neuroscience proved them right. Learn why your physical symptoms might be stored emotional memories and how the therapeutic revolution of the 1960s changed psychology forever. What You'll Learn: Why Reich was expelled from psychoanalytic institutes for discovering "character armor" How Jung's archetypal psychology laid groundwork for modern therapy approaches The real story behind Fritz Perls and the birth of Gestalt therapy Why America abandoned somatic approaches for cognitive behavioral therapy How trauma gets trapped in muscles, creating chronic tension and pain The scientific evidence behind body-based trauma treatment Perfect for: Mental health professionals, trauma survivors, psychology students, anyone interested in the history of psychotherapy, and those seeking alternatives to traditional talk therapy. Evidence-Based Content: Drawing from peer-reviewed research, historical documents, and the foundational texts of somatic psychology, this episode traces the scientific evolution from Freudian psychoanalysis through modern neuroscience-backed trauma therapy. Keywords: trauma therapy, somatic therapy, body keeps the score, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, PTSD treatment, psychology history, mind-body connection, character armor, nervous system healing, experiential therapy, depth psychology Hosted by experts in trauma-informed care with clinical experience in EMDR, brainspotting, somatic experiencing, and Jungian analysis. Resources: Visit gettherapybirmingham.com for articles on somatic trauma mapping, Jungian therapy, and evidence-based body-centered healing approaches.  

The mystic who mapped the soul while America decided it was too scary https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-weird-history-of-psychotherapy-part-2-jungs-and-the-bottom-of-consciousness/ While Freud was projecting his trauma onto patients, Carl Jung made a radical discovery: There's a layer of mind beneath the personal unconscious that we all share. The collective unconscious. A realm of archetypes, myths, and healing wisdom that every culture discovers independently. But Jung's profound insights came at a cost. His confrontation with the unconscious nearly drove him mad. For years, he dialogued with inner figures, painted visions, and mapped territories of psyche that science still can't explain. He emerged with the most complete understanding of human consciousness ever developed.   The trial of Carl JHung Assesing his legacy Carl Jung's Work with the OSS Carl Jung's Shadow the Tension of the Oppposites Development of Carl Jung's Theories A Short Intro to Jungian Psych What does Mysticism have to do with therapy How did Freud and Jungs Parent Effect Their Psychology  Archetypes in Relationships What is Emotion The Trial of Carl Jung's Legacy Carl Jung's Work with The CIA How Psychotherapy Lost Its Way Ritual and Animism  Tensions in Modern Therapy Schizophrenia Trauma and the Double Bind Jung and the New Age Science and Mysticism Therapy, Mysticism and Spirituality? The Left and Right Hand Path in Myth The Shadow The Golden Shadow The Symbolism of the Bollingen Stone What Can the Origins of Religion Teach us about Psychology The Major Influences on Carl Jung Animals in Dreams The Unconscious as a Game How to Understand Carl Jung How to Use Jungian Psychology for Screenwriting and Writing Fiction How the Shadow Shows up in Dreams How to read The Red Book  The Dreamtime Using Jung to Combat Addiction Healing the Modern Soul Jungian Exercises from Greek Myth Jungian Shadow Work Meditation The Shadow in Relationships Free Shadow Work Group Exercise Post Post-Moderninsm and Post Secular Sacred Mysticism and Epilepsy The Origins and History of Consciousness Archetypes Jung's Empirical Phenomenological Method      

The cocaine addict who convinced the world children want to sleep with their parents Vienna, 1866. Ten-year-old Sigmund Freud watches antisemitic thugs knock his father's hat into the mud. Jakob Freud picks it up, head down, and walks on. This moment of paternal humiliation would shape the entire field of psychology. But this episode reveals the shocking truth textbooks won't tell you: Freud was high on cocaine for 10-15 years while developing psychoanalysis. His "revolutionary" theories weren't insights into universal human nature - they were the projections of a traumatized man who never dealt with his own demons. What if the "father of modern psychology" was actually a trauma victim who never healed - and passed his wounds to millions of patients? https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-wounded-healer-how-freuds-trauma-shaped-modern-psychology/ This groundbreaking episode exposes how Sigmund Freud's unprocessed childhood trauma corrupted the foundations of psychotherapy. From cocaine addiction to patient manipulation, discover the dark patterns that still plague therapy today.

Addiction Recovery Psychology: Jung, 12-Step Evolution & Depth Therapy Breakthrough with Recovery Expert

Join therapist Joel Blackstock, martial artist James Waites, and esoteric practitioner Alice Hawley as they delve into the fascinating world of Japanese swords. This episode explores the metallurgy, history, and psychological significance of the katana – from its invention by Masamune after the Mongol invasions to its deep connections with Bushido philosophy and Japanese culture. Discover how the unique forging process of folding different steels creates both strength and flexibility, mirroring the integration of the human psyche. Learn about legendary duelist Miyamoto Musashi's unconventional fighting techniques, the mental aspects of swordplay, and how swords symbolize clarity, truth, and trauma healing across cultures. Whether you're interested in martial arts, Japanese history, metallurgy, or psychological symbolism, this episode offers profound insights into how ancient wisdom continues to resonate in our modern world. Listen to "The Psychology of the Katana" and explore more thought-provoking conversations at GetTherapyBirmingham.com. #Katana #JapaneseSwords #Bushido #SamuraiPhilosophy #MartialArtsPsychology #MiyamotoMusashi #Metallurgy #SwordSymbolism #BirminghamTherapyPodcast #WarriorMindset

Embark on a captivating journey into the depths of Jungian psychology with hosts Quique Autrey and Joel Blackstock. In this episode, Joel shares his unique perspectives on a wide range of topics, including: The potential oversimplification of Jung's ideas by American Jungians How neurology is validating Jung's phenomenological map of the soul Joel's personal journey from CBT to depth psychology and somatic practices The connections between influential figures like Ericson, Hillman, and Jung Navigating the tension between monotheistic and polytheistic psychology The concept of disenchantment in the modern world Jung's three ages and the resurgence of religion in a "post-secular sacred" era The evolution of "post-Jungian" thought and its therapeutic applications Joel's distinctive approach to dream work and adaptive therapy style Unpublished aspects of Jung's life and relationships The enduring relevance of Jung's work in today's world This episode offers a thought-provoking exploration of Jungian psychology and its far-reaching implications. Join us as we uncover the wisdom and insights that continue to shape our understanding of the human psyche.

Explore the transformative power of Lifespan Integration therapy in this enlightening episode of the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast. Join host Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, as he interviews three expert LI practitioners: Marie Danner, Kristan Baer, and Pamela Hayes. These skilled therapists share their personal journeys with LI, explain how it gently rewires neural pathways associated with trauma, and discuss its effectiveness for PTSD, anxiety, and attachment issues. Learn how Lifespan Integration complements other therapeutic approaches like Somatic Experiencing, Brain Spotting, and Internal Family Systems. Discover why LI has become a cornerstone of trauma treatment at Taproot, offering a gentle yet powerful path to healing that keeps clients within their window of tolerance while processing difficult experiences. Whether you're a mental health professional or someone seeking healing, this episode provides valuable insights into how timeline-based therapy can help integrate fragmented aspects of self, create a coherent life narrative, and foster lasting transformation.

Tired of mental health podcasts that just tell you to breathe deeply? Discover + Heal + Grow from Taproot Therapy Collective brings you honest, sometimes irreverent conversations about the real challenges in psychology and therapy today. In this episode, Joel Blackstock, James Waites, Alice Hawley, and Hailey critique evidence-based practice and the research status quo in psychology. They explore why academic publishing paywalls limit access to knowledge, how profit motives influence research, and why the biomedical model falls short in understanding human consciousness. The therapists examine why CBT has dominated the field despite its limitations, why qualitative research deserves more respect, and how clinical wisdom often outpaces published research. They advocate for a psychology that values both scientific rigor and the subjective experience of individuals, making space for newer modalities like brain spotting, EMDR, and somatic approaches. Whether you're a mental health professional questioning the orthodoxy or someone interested in the deeper workings of therapy, this episode offers a refreshingly authentic critique of how psychological knowledge is created, shared, and applied.   The Future of Therapy: Navigating the Tensions of Our Time - Published January 2025 This article examines the growing mismatch between hyper-specialized, manualized approaches favored by clinical research and the actual needs of patients. It critiques the "cognitive revolution" in psychology, which despite promising a more humanistic alternative to behaviorism, has perpetuated many mechanistic assumptions Gettherapybirmingham. Evidence Based Practice is Bul$*%!@ , Let's Fix It! - Published February 2025 A provocative critique of evidence-based practice, especially in trauma treatment. The author challenges the dominance of CBT and medication-based approaches, arguing they often fail to address the root causes of trauma Gettherapybirmingham. When Evidence Based Practice Goes Wrong - Published October 2024 This piece discusses how commercial interests can negatively influence psychiatric research and practice, compromising scientific integrity and patient welfare Gettherapybirmingham. Evidence Based Practice and Research Psychology Archives The archive section of their blog dedicated to evidence-based practice, which explores the scientific foundations of mental health treatment through integrative lenses of depth psychology and trauma neurology Gettherapybirmingham. These articles collectively offer a thoughtful critique of current evidence-based practice models while acknowledging the importance of scientific rigor. They advocate for a more holistic approach to therapy that values both empirical evidence and the subjective, lived experiences of clients and clinicians. Keywords: evidence-based practice, psychology research, clinical wisdom, CBT critique, biomedical model limitations, qualitative research, academic publishing, psychotherapy, trauma therapy, depth psychology

Ultimate Archetype Meditation for Inner Healing and Self-Discovery | Tapoo Therapy Collective Welcome to the Ultimate Archetype Meditation guided by Joel from the Tapoo Therapy Collective Podcast!

Preorder the Book: https://amzn.to/3RzDcaH Checkout our episode with Matt from last year when you are done.  We sit down with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and George Polk Award winner renowned for his incisive local reporting. As a reporter for the Valley News in New Hampshire, Matt brings unparalleled depth to every story he tackles. His bylines appear in Popular Science, Foreign Policy, USA Today, and Atavist Magazine, showcasing his versatility across major media outlets. Praised for immersive storytelling that transports listeners from Maine's Governor's Mansion to Ebola wards in Sierra Leone, his narrative features blend rigorous investigation with human-centered nuance. In This Episode We dive into Matt's journey from exposing deplorable conditions in federally subsidized Section 8 housing—work that spurred state investigations and reforms—to his explorations of fringe medicine in his second book, If It Sounds Like a Quack…, published in April 2023. We also reflect on his debut book, A Libertarian Walks into a Bear (September 2020), which examines the collision of libertarian ideals and wildlife management in a small New Hampshire town. As a Pulitzer Center grantee, Matt's long-form journalism has spotlighted flood insurance challenges for riverboat casinos in Missouri and maternal health crises during the Ebola outbreak. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Science Journalism award from the American Meteorological Association and was voted Maine Journalist of the Year. Throughout our conversation, we unpack the ethics of investigative storytelling, the role of narrative in driving public policy, and the craft of turning complex issues into compelling human stories. BUY THE BOOK! https://amzn.to/3RzDcaH If you enjoyed this deep dive with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, hit the Like button, subscribe for new episodes every week, and ring the

Immerse yourself in the transformative world of Ericksonian hypnosis with this powerful guided meditation for overcoming phobias and healing trauma. Inspired by the revolutionary therapeutic methods of Dr. Milton Erickson, the brilliant psychiatrist who fathered modern hypnotherapy, this deeply engaging visualization process will guide you to reframe your most challenging fears and traumatic memories as opportunities for profound growth and resilience. With great care, skill and artistry, we'll invite you to translate your anxiety or traumatic recollection into a vivid symbolic image, explore that inner landscape with genuine curiosity and self-compassion, and playfully experiment with small tweaks to the image that generate large-scale positive shifts in your embodied experience. Through this process, you'll viscerally discover how much innate power you have to flexibly shift your perceptions and emotional responses, even to your most deep-rooted traumas and anxieties. More than just a set of techniques, this meditation journey will steep you in the fundamental principles of Ericksonian hypnosis - utilization of your mind's inner resources, indirect suggestion to bypass resistance, and paradoxical interventions that often move you forward by first moving you back. You'll come away with an unshakable felt sense of your mind's infinite capacity for creative problem-solving and a clear map for continuing to transform your obstacles into opportunities. Whether you're a therapist seeking to expand your toolkit, an individual struggling with PTSD, phobias, or anxiety, or simply a curious explorer of your own vast inner potential, this immersive experience will repattern your neuro-emotional circuitry and reawaken your faith in your own indestructible spirit. Join us to reclaim your birthright of inner freedom - it's time to stop surviving your story and start authoring it.

In this episode of Discover Heal Grow, we delve into the rich psychological tapestry woven around dragons, exploring how these mythical beasts have occupied our collective imagination and served as powerful archetypes for both terror and transformation.  Episode Overview We begin by tracing dragon origins in ancient mythologies and evolutionary psychology, illuminating how collective fears around predators shaped dragon imagery and stories. From there, we journey into Jungian depth psychology to uncover the dragon's role as the shadowed reservoir of our untamed energies and primal instincts. Next, we examine practical therapeutic applications—how framing inner struggles as “battling your own dragons” can externalize negative narratives, foster insight, and promote self‑mastery. Finally, we sit down with Jungian depth therapist Dr. Elena Morales, whose work integrates dragon symbolism in somatic and experiential therapies, to learn how clients can transform their fiercest fears into sources of strength. Historical and Cultural Foundations Dragons emerge globally as composite monsters, blending talons, fangs, and scales to personify both danger and wonder . Dragons in the Psyche: Archetypal Roles In Jungian theory, archetypes are universal imprints in the collective unconscious; dragons stand among the most potent, representing what Jung called the “cold‑blooded part of our psyche” that lies beyond rational control. Therapeutic Applications: Facing Your Inner Dragon Modern therapists leverage the dragon metaphor in cognitive‑behavioral and art therapy contexts to help clients externalize self‑doubt and self‑sabotaging thoughts—those “inner dragons” that whisper we're unworthy or helpless. Guest Interview: A Dialogue with a Jungian Depth Therapist We're joined by Dr. Elena Morales, author of Awakening Your Dragon Power, who asserts that dragons can also manifest as static feminine energy or entrenched social structures—forces that must be recognized before meaningful change can occur  Integrating Dragon Energies: From Fear to Flow Throughout the episode, we interweave mythic storytelling, depth‑psychology insights, and practical exercises, showing how dragon myths have guided seekers on self‑discovery quests for millennia  Join us as we explore the psychology of dragons and their archetypal significance, forging a path from ancient legend to contemporary healing practice on the Taproot Therapy Collective Podcast.

  This deeply transformative meditation, based on the groundbreaking approaches of psychiatrist Milton Erickson and psychotherapist Bill O'Hanlon, guides you on a gentle inner journey to release anger and the weight of obligation. Through artful storytelling, naturalistic trance, and the strategic use of paradox, it bypasses conscious resistance to facilitate profound emotional shifts. You'll be immersed in soothing imagery as you trek through a lush forest with a metaphorical backpack full of anger. As the meditation progresses, that anger is "composted" and released in the serene waters of a woodland pond. Grounded in Erickson's pioneering utilization techniques and O'Hanlon's "inclusive therapy," the narrative deftly weaves in therapeutic double binds - like discovering how to be both responsible and free, happy and mature, important yet unnoticed. These paradoxical suggestions allow the unconscious to find its own creative solutions and expand the sense of self. Layered with permissive language, embedded commands, and sensory-rich details, the meditation leverages the latest insights from neuroscience and psychotherapy to reprogram limiting beliefs and habitual tensions. Listeners can experience a felt sense of wholeness and integration. Use this meditation regularly to cultivate inner peace, resolve contradictions, and develop self-acceptance. Embrace the full spectrum of your experience and reconnect with your innate okayness. Tune in to find your path to authentic freedom and ease. With an evidence-based foundation and a soothing, poetic delivery, this powerful meditation is a reliable ally on your healing journey. Drift into serenity now and let nature's wisdom restore your deepest essence.

Alabama physician Dr. Madeline Eckenrode gives an insider's view of the suffering caused by the state's failure to expand Medicaid. Hear harrowing stories of patients with diabetes, substance use disorders and other chronic conditions who can't afford care. Learn how Medicaid expansion would lower costs and save lives. Most importantly, get inspired to join the fight for healthcare justice in your community! Resources and Organizations Mentioned in Interview Advocacy Organizations Alabama Arise Organization that does advocacy around issues affecting Alabamians, including Medicaid expansion Encourages Dr. Eckenrode to write her article about young adults losing Medicaid coverage Provides information about legislation and opportunities for civic engagement Helps people know when to lobby, who to contact, and when to show up at the state house Alabama Appleseed Advocacy organization that works on criminal justice reform and other issues in Alabama Successfully advocated to end the practice of jail managers pocketing leftover food budget money Works on issues with broad, cross-partisan appeal Media and Publications AL.com Website where Dr. Eckenrode published her article about Medicaid expansion Main news source for Alabama ProPublica Published an article about United Healthcare using algorithms to determine if people were using "too much" mental health care and denying claims Healthcare Organizations & Programs UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) UAB Medicine Where Dr. Eckenrode practices and did her residency Home of the STEP Clinic for young adults with complex medical conditions The STEP Clinic at UAB Specializes in treating young adults with complex medical conditions from childhood Treats conditions like cerebral palsy, spina bifida, organ transplants, lupus, etc. Equal Access Birmingham Student-run free health clinic affiliated with UAB Provides care for uninsured patients with conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes Cannot provide cancer screening or comprehensive services PATH Clinic UAB clinic for uninsured patients with poorly controlled diabetes Provides free medications REACT (Resource for Addiction and Community Treatment) UAB assertive community treatment team Works with severe cases of psychotic mental illness Cooper Green Healthcare facility funded by Jefferson County taxpayers Provides services to uninsured individuals in Jefferson County   Insurance Programs Medicaid Government insurance for low-income and disabled people In Alabama, primarily serves disabled adults and children Pediatric Medicaid coverage ends at age 19 in Alabama Alabama has not expanded Medicaid unlike many other states Has "pretty good prescription drug coverage" according to Dr. Eckenrode Medicare Government insurance primarily for people over 65 Some people who are disabled can qualify before age 65 People on dialysis automatically qualify for Medicare Blue Cross Blue Shield Private insurance company mentioned throughout the interview Various plans (state employee, federal, employer-specific) United Healthcare Private insurance company mentioned as "the enemy" by Dr. Eckenrode Largest employer of doctors in the country Uses algorithms to identify and deny claims for "excessive" mental health care usage in some states Recent Policy Developments Medicaid Postpartum Expansion Extended postpartum care through Medicaid from 6 weeks to 12 months New Medicaid Enrollment for Pregnant Women Legislation to make it easier for pregnant women to enroll in Medicaid in first 60 days Physical Therapy Direct Access Law Recent Alabama law allowing patients to see physical therapists without a doctor's referral Some insurers still requiring referrals despite the law States Mentioned as Medicaid Expansion Success Stories North Carolina Arkansas Pennsylvania (mentioned as having no tax on groceries or essential items) Disclaimer: The views expressed in this episode are not neccesarily the views held by taproot therapy collective. #MedicaidExpansion #AlabamaHealthcare #UninsuredPatients #ChronicIllness #MentalHealthAccess #SubstanceAbuseTreatment #PatientAdvocacy #HealthcareActivism #HealthcareCosts #HealthEquity #TaprootTherapyCollective #DrMadelineEckenrode

Join therapists Joel Blackstock, Alice Hawley, and James Waites as we dive deep into the fascinating intersection of trauma therapy, psychology, and everyday life. Our roundtable discussions explore everything from clinical approaches to the psychology behind pop culture, spirituality, and the human experience. Whether you're a fellow trauma therapist or just curious about psychological perspectives, we offer authentic conversations that challenge conventional thinking and explore the depths of consciousness and healing. Subscribe for new episodes where we unpack topics like the neurobiology of new age and eastern medicine concepts, the psychology of artists and design, therapy, dragon energy, the psychology of true crime, therapy representation in media, burnout in helping professions, and much more! #TraumaTherapy #MentalHealthPodcast #PsychologyTalk #TherapistConversations #ConsciousnessExploration #DragonEnergy #TrueCrime #TherapyCollective #BurnoutPrevention #JungianPsychology #AnimismDiscussion #TherapistsOfYouTube #MindfulnessMatters #TraumaInformed #HolisticHealing

  Welcome to this transformative guided meditation designed to help you connect with the wisdom of your inner parts and integrate shadow experiences with compassion. In this meditation, you'll gently explore where your distressing emotions reside in your body and invite them into a dialogue with your protective and vulnerable parts.

Blog - https://gettherapybirmingham.com/integrating-qeeg-brainmapping-into-your-clinical-practice/   Podcast - https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/   Youtube - https://youtu.be/kDoaCiEz5T0     Join us for an exclusive interview with the visionary owners of Peak Neuroscience as they share expert insights on integrating qEEG into your clinical practice. In this conversation, learn how advanced neurostimulation techniques are making a difference in the treatment of ADHD and ASD. Discover practical strategies, innovative methodologies, and the latest research trends that can help you elevate patient care and transform your practice. Whether you're a seasoned clinician or new to these cutting-edge approaches, this interview is packed with valuable information to help you navigate the evolving landscape of neuroscience in clinical settings. Watch now and join the conversation on the future of mental health and brain optimization! #PeakNeuroscience #qEEG #ClinicalPractice #Neurostimulation #ADHD #ASD #BrainHealth #Neuroscience #MentalHealth #InnovativeTherapies #CuttingEdge #BrainMapping #NeuroFeedback #Alabama #Texas

Join us for an insightful conversation with the brilliant minds behind the popular "This Jungian Life" podcast - Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano, and Joseph Lee - as they discuss their new book "Dreamwise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams." In this episode, our guests share powerful insights about: The concept of the "dream maker" as an intentional guide within your unconscious Why your dreams are personalized messages crafted specifically for your growth Practical approaches to dream journaling and interpretation How our dreams connect to our subcortical brain and deeper emotional life The 69 "keys" that can unlock hidden meaning in your dreams The hosts explain why dreams aren't random brain activity but rather communications designed to help you integrate unconscious material. As Lisa Marchiano puts it, dreams are "the attempt of something in you to communicate with you" and "always come in the interest of healing and wholeness." Whether you're new to dream work or a seasoned practitioner, this episode offers fresh perspectives on how dreams can help navigate uncertain times and connect with the transcendent aspects of existence. #DreamAnalysis #JungianPsychology #DreamInterpretation #ThisJungianLife #PodcastInterview #DreamSymbols #DepthPsychology #Dreamwise #MentalHealthPodcast #SoundsTrueBooks #DreamJournal #InnerWork #JungianDreams #PsychologicalGrowth #ShadowWork #DreamTherapy #PodcastRecommendation #NewBookRelease #SelfDiscovery #ConsciousnessExpansion

Not all ghosts prefer the dark. They can not live long where we ourselves are not alive. The voice in attics and on windy nights is our own echo. We look for ghosts in the dark places while they help us raise our children and sit with us in church. They do not try to hide from us. It is us who need to hide in them.  Dive into the chilling depths of "The Well," a haunting Southern Gothic tale that explores the dark psychological waters of guilt, grief, and the blurred lines between reality and nightmare. Follow the story of two brothers, one kind and loved, the other living in his shadow, as a tragic event sends one spiraling into a surreal, watery underworld. Immerse yourself in the atmospheric narration and eerie soundscapes that bring this ghostly story to life, perfect for a spine-tingling #Halloween listen. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of a boy's descent into a dark, distorted reality, where the faces of loved ones become twisted and the only escape is to plunge deeper into the abyss. Get ready for a #spooky and thought-provoking journey that will leave you questioning the depths of the human psyche and the power of guilt to drown us in our own sorrows.   https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/   #SouthernGothic #GhostStory #Psychological #Guilt #Grief #Brothers #Nightmare #Reality #Haunting #Atmospheric #ASMR #Narration #Soundscapes #SpineTingling #Halloween

Not all ghosts prefer the dark. They can not live long where we ourselves are not alive. The voice in attics and on windy nights is our own echo. We look for ghosts in the dark places while they help us raise our children and sit with us in church. They do not try to hide from us. It is us who need to hide in them.    A haunting Southern Gothic tale of loss and redemption. A man visits the inlet where his brother drowned, leaving flowers in the eerie green water. Staying at his father's beach house to get sober, he dreams of pale arms pulling his brother into the depths. Driving into town, he hits a giant turtle and sees his dead brother fleeing to the beach. He follows, swimming down into an antique green glow where the drowned clutch what lured them. He finds his brother holding his dead child, but cannot save him. A chilling story of ghosts within and without, best enjoyed by the dark of an October night. https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/   #ghoststory #southerngothic #halloween #hauntedbeach #drownedghosts #sobriety #brotherlylove #grief #twistedtales #paranormal #supernatural #psychologicalhorror #octobervibes #inletmystery #asmr

Not all ghosts prefer the dark. They can not live long where we ourselves are not alive. The voice in attics and on windy nights is our own echo. We look for ghosts in the dark places while they help us raise our children and sit with us in church. They do not try to hide from us. It is us who need to hide in them.    Immerse yourself in the haunting world of Southern Gothic ghost stories with a psychological twist. In this captivating podcast series, we delve into a collection of tales that explore the thin veil between the living and the dead. From eerie whispers to spine-chilling encounters, these stories will transport you to a realm where ghosts walk among us, not just in the dark, but in the everyday moments of our lives. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of the supernatural and the human psyche, blurring the lines between reality and the otherworldly. Prepare to be entranced by the mesmerizing narration and atmospheric soundscapes, creating an experience that will send shivers down your spine. Get ready for a journey into the unknown, where the echoes of our own voices mingle with the whispers of the departed.   https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/ #SouthernGothic #GhostStories #Psychological #Supernatural #Haunting #Eerie #Whispers #SpineChilling #Entrancing #Narration #Atmospheric #Soundscapes #Mysteries #Otherworldly #Shivers #Halloween #Spooky https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/

Not all ghosts prefer the dark. They can not live long where we ourselves are not alive. The voice in attics and on windy nights is our own echo. We look for ghosts in the dark places while they help us raise our children and sit with us in church. They do not try to hide from us. It is us who need to hide in them.    Journey into the haunting world of Southern Gothic tales as we explore "The Light," a chilling story of a salesman who sells his soul to the devil. This mesmerizing tale delves into the psychological depths of temptation, regret, and the blurred lines between the supernatural and the human psyche. Immerse yourself in the atmospheric narration and eerie soundscapes that bring this ghostly story to life, perfect for a spine-tingling #Halloween experience. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of a man's descent into darkness and the haunting realization that even the brightest light can cast the darkest shadows. Get ready for a #spooky and thought-provoking journey that will leave you questioning the true nature of our desires and the consequences of our choices.   https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/ #SouthernGothic #GhostStory #Psychological #Supernatural #Devil #Temptation #HumanPsyche #Haunting #Atmospheric #ASMR #Narration #Soundscapes #SpineTingling #Halloween

  In this episode, I explore my ghost stories penned over a decade ago, perfect for the Halloween spirit. Beginning with "The Tree," I reveal a serene yet eerie tale of young love tainted by betrayal, as a girl unwittingly steps into a haunting past. The narrative unfolds the cyclical nature of fate and identity across generations. I invite listeners to immerse themselves in these Southern Gothic tales, blending the supernatural with psychological depth, and encouraging reflection on love, loss, and the shadows that shape our lives. Join me throughout October for more captivating stories. https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/ Chapters 0:32 Introduction to Ghost Stories 1:20 The Tree: A Haunting Tale 5:02 Conclusion and Next Stories   #ghost stories   #Halloween   #The Tree   #betrayal   #haunting past   #fate   #ASMR   #identity   #Southern Gothic   #supernatural  

Sorry guys the sound quality got cooked on this due to a driver issue. I am still uploading because its halfway listenable. Don't ever upgrade to windows 11. I havent seen some of these issues since Windows Me.   Get ready to dive deep into the psyche of Tony Soprano as we explore what could have happened if he had sought out a different kind of therapy. In this thought-provoking episode, we imagine Tony's journey with a Jungian or somatic therapist, delving into the unconscious depths of his mind and the physical manifestations of his trauma. Join us as we unravel the complexities of Tony's character through the lens of these alternative therapeutic approaches. Would confronting his shadow self and embracing his archetypal nature lead to personal growth and transformation? Could somatic exercises and body-centered practices help him release the pent-up tension and aggression that fuels his mob boss persona? Tune in to find out how these unconventional therapies might have reshaped Tony's path and altered the course of his family's fate. Get ready for a #psychologicallythrilling and #insightfulanalysis that will leave you questioning the untapped potential of the human mind and body. #TheSopranos #TonySoprano #JungianTherapy #SomaticTherapy #ShadowWork #Archetypes #BodyMindConnection #TraumaHealing #UnconciousMind #PersonalGrowth #Transformation #MobBoss #FamilyDrama #AlternativeTherapy #PsychologyPodcast

Explore the fascinating world of ritual and animism in psychology! This in-depth look covers the evolution of human consciousness, psychotic experiences, and therapeutic approaches. From James Frazer's "The Golden Bough" to Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind theory, discover how our understanding of the human psyche has evolved. Learn about the changing nature of psychosis in America and how it reflects societal shifts. Dive into the works of Jung, Edinger, and Neumann to understand the role of animism in psychological development. Perfect for psychology students, therapists, and anyone interested in the intersection of spirituality and mental health.   #PsychologyOfRitual #AnimismExplained #ConsciousnessEvolution #PsychologyOfRitual #AnimismExplained #ConsciousnessEvolution #JulianJaynes #BicameralMind #JamesFrazer #GoldenBough #PsychosisInAmerica #JungianPsychology #TherapeuticApproaches #SpiritualPsychology #MentalHealthAwareness #CollectiveTrauma #SymbolicThinking #RitualHealing   What is the Psychology of Ritual and Animism? Ritual and animism are distinct but related concepts that offer insights into the workings of the emotional and preconscious mind. While they are often associated with religious or spiritual practices, they can also be understood as psychological processes that serve important functions in human development and well-being (Edinger, 1972; Neumann, 1955). Animism can be defined as the attribution of consciousness, soul, or spirit to objects, plants, animals, and natural phenomena. From a psychological perspective, animism involves "turning down" one's cognitive functioning to "hear" the inner monologue of the world and treat it as alive. This process allows individuals to connect with the preconscious wisdom of their own psyche and the natural world (Tylor, 1871). Ritual, on the other hand, is a structured sequence of actions that are performed with the intention of achieving a specific psychological or social outcome. In depth psychology, ritual is understood as a process of projecting parts of one's psyche onto objects or actions, modifying them, and then withdrawing the projection to achieve a transformation in internal cognition (Moore & Gillette, 1990). It is important to note that animism and ritual are not merely primitive or outdated practices, but rather reflect a natural state of human consciousness that has been suppressed or "turned off" by cultural and environmental changes, rather than evolutionary ones. This natural state can still be accessed through various means, including psychosis, religious practices, and intentional ritualistic behaviors (Grof, 1975). In times of extreme stress or trauma, individuals may experience a breakdown of their normal cognitive functioning, leading to a resurgence of animistic or ritualistic thinking. This can be seen in the delusions and hallucinations associated with psychosis, which often involve a heightened sense of meaning and connection with the environment (Jaynes, 1976). Similarly, many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate practices that deliberately induce altered states of consciousness, such as meditation, chanting, or the use of psychoactive substances. These practices can help individuals access the preconscious wisdom of their own minds and connect with the living world around them (Eliade, 1959). Even in secular contexts, engaging in intentional ritualistic behaviors, such as art-making, dance, or storytelling, can serve a similar function of integrating the emotional and preconscious aspects of the psyche. By creating a safe, structured space for self-expression and exploration, these practices can promote psychological healing and growth (Turner, 1969). James Frazer and "The Golden Bough" James Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist and folklorist who made significant contributions to the study of mythology, religion, and ritual. His most famous work, "The Golden Bough" (1890), was a comparative study of mythology and religion that identified common patterns and themes across cultures. Frazer's work was influenced by the concept of animism, which had been introduced by Edward Tylor (1832-1917) as a primitive form of religion. Frazer saw ritual as a means of controlling the supernatural world through sympathetic magic, which operated on the principles of homeopathic magic (the belief that like produces like) and contagious magic (the belief that things that have been in contact continue to influence each other) (Frazer, 1890). The title of Frazer's work, "The Golden Bough," was a reference to the mythical golden bough in the sacred grove at Nemi, Italy. According to the myth, the priest of the grove had to defend his position against challengers, and the successful challenger plucked the golden bough and replaced the priest. Frazer saw this story as a symbol of the cycle of death and rebirth in nature and in human society (Frazer, 1890). Frazer's work was significant in highlighting the prevalence of animistic thinking across cultures and throughout history. He observed that many cultures engaged in practices that attributed consciousness and agency to natural objects and phenomena, such as trees, rivers, and celestial bodies (Frazer, 1890). While Frazer's interpretations of these practices were shaped by the ethnocentric assumptions of his time, his work laid the foundation for later anthropological and psychological studies of animism and ritual. By identifying common patterns and themes across cultures, Frazer helped to establish the comparative study of religion as a legitimate field of inquiry. However, Frazer's work has also been criticized for its reliance on secondary sources and its lack of fieldwork, as well as for its oversimplification and overgeneralization of complex cultural phenomena. His evolutionary view of human thought, which posited a progression from magic through religion to science, has been challenged by later scholars who emphasize the coexistence and interplay of these different modes of thinking (Tylor, 1871). Despite these limitations, Frazer's work remains an important touchstone in the study of animism and ritual, and his insights continue to influence contemporary debates about the nature of religion and the evolution of human consciousness. Julian Jaynes and the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) was an American psychologist and philosopher who proposed a controversial theory about the evolution of human consciousness in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Jaynes argued that the human mind had once operated in a state of bicameralism, where cognitive functions were divided between two chambers of the brain. In this state, the "speaking" right hemisphere issued commands, which were experienced as auditory hallucinations, while the "listening" left hemisphere obeyed. Jaynes proposed that the breakdown of this bicameral mind led to the development of consciousness and introspection (Jaynes, 1976). According to Jaynes, the bicameral mind was a normal and universal feature of human cognition until about 3,000 years ago, when a combination of social, environmental, and linguistic changes led to its breakdown. He argued that the development of written language, the rise of complex civilizations, and the increasing use of metaphorical language all contributed to the emergence of self-awareness and inner dialogue (Jaynes, 1976). Jaynes' theory has been criticized for its lack of direct archaeological or biological evidence, as well as for its reliance on literary interpretation rather than empirical data. Some scholars have argued that Jaynes' interpretation of ancient texts and artifacts is selective and biased, and that his theory oversimplifies the complex processes involved in the development of consciousness (Wilber, 1977). However, Jaynes' work has also been praised for its originality and its interdisciplinary approach, which draws on insights from psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and history. His theory has inspired a wide range of research and speculation about the nature of consciousness and the role of language in shaping human cognition (Huxley, 1945). From the perspective of animism and ritual, Jaynes' theory offers an interesting perspective on the experience of "hearing" the world speak. The bicameral mind can be seen as a metaphor for the animistic experience of perceiving the natural world as alive and conscious, and of receiving messages or commands from a higher power (Otto, 1917). Jaynes himself drew parallels between the bicameral experience and certain forms of religious or mystical experience, such as prophecy, possession, and divine inspiration. He argued that these experiences reflect a residual capacity for bicameral cognition, which can be triggered by certain environmental or psychological factors (Jaynes, 1976). However, Jaynes also emphasized the differences between bicameral and conscious cognition, and he argued that the development of consciousness marked a significant evolutionary shift in human history. He saw the breakdown of the bicameral mind as a necessary step in the emergence of individual agency, creativity, and moral responsibility (Jaynes, 1976). While Jaynes' theory remains controversial and speculative, it offers a provocative framework for thinking about the relationship between language, consciousness, and the experience of the sacred. By highlighting the role of auditory hallucinations and inner speech in shaping human cognition, Jaynes invites us to consider the ways in which our mental processes are shaped by cultural and environmental factors, as well as by our evolutionary history. The Changing Nature of Psychotic Experience in America Research has shown that the content and themes of psychotic experiences in America have shifted over time, reflecting the underlying insecurities and forces shaping the collective psyche. Before the Great Depression, psychotic experiences were predominantly animistic, with people hearing "spirits" tied to natural phenomena, geography, or ancestry. These experiences were mostly pleasant, even if relatively disorganized. During the Depression, the voices shifted to being more fearful, begging or asking for food, love, or services. They were still not terribly distressing and often encouraged empathy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the voices became universally distressing, antagonistic, manipulative, and harmful. Themes of hierarchical control through politics, surveillance, and technology emerged. From the 1970s through the 1990s, technology, esoteric conspiratorial control, and the supernatural became the dominant content. Surveillance, coercion, and control were central features. These changes in the nature of psychosis reflect the evolution of collective trauma and the manifestation of unintegrated preconscious elements in the American psyche. As society shifted from an agrarian to an industrial and then to a post-industrial economy, the anxieties and insecurities of each era found expression through the content of psychotic experiences. Interestingly, UFO conspiracy theories have emerged as a prominent manifestation of these unintegrated preconscious elements in the modern era. These theories often involve themes of surveillance, control, and the supernatural, mirroring the dominant features of psychosis from the 1970s onwards. UFO conspiracy theories can be seen as a way for individuals to make sense of their experiences of powerlessness and disconnection in a rapidly changing world, by attributing them to external, otherworldly forces. The case of Heaven's Gate, a UFO religious millenarian group, illustrates this intersection of technology, spirituality, and psychosis. The group's leader, Marshall Applewhite, reinterpreted Christian theology through the lens of science fiction and technology, convincing his followers that their bodies were merely vehicles to be abandoned in order to ascend to a higher level of existence on a UFO. This tragic case highlights how unintegrated preconscious elements can manifest in extreme and destructive ways when left unaddressed. It is important to note that not all UFO experiences are indicative of psychosis, and conversely, not all psychotic experiences involve UFOs or conspiracy theories. In schizophrenia, for example, auditory hallucinations are the most common symptom, while visual hallucinations are relatively rare unless drugs or severe trauma are involved. UFO experiences, on the other hand, often involve a complex interplay of factors, including altered states of consciousness, sleep paralysis, false memories, and cultural narratives. Nonetheless, the changing nature of psychotic experiences in America highlights the profound impact that societal and environmental stressors can have on the preconscious mind. By understanding how these stressors shape the content and themes of psychosis, we can gain insight into the deeper anxieties and insecurities that plague the American psyche. This understanding can inform more comprehensive and compassionate approaches to mental health treatment, which address not only the symptoms of psychosis but also the underlying social and cultural factors that contribute to its development. Moreover, by recognizing the continuity between psychotic experiences and other expressions of the preconscious mind, such as dreams, visions, and altered states of consciousness, we can develop a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of mental health and well-being. Rather than pathologizing or dismissing these experiences, we can learn to approach them with curiosity, openness, and respect, and to explore their potential for insight, growth, and transformation. Ritual as a Psychological Process The work of anthropologists Victor Turner (1920-1983) and Robert Moore (1942-2016) has shed light on the psychological dimensions of ritual and its role in personal and social transformation. Turner's concepts of liminality (the transitional state in ritual where participants are "betwixt and between") and communitas (the sense of equality and bond formed among ritual participants) highlight the transformative potential of ritual. By creating a safe, liminal space for psychological exploration and change, ritual can help individuals process and integrate traumatic experiences and achieve personal growth (Turner, 1969). Turner argued that rituals serve an important function in helping individuals navigate the challenges and transitions of life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. He saw rituals as a way of marking and facilitating these transitions, by providing a structured and meaningful context for the expression and transformation of emotions (Turner & Turner, 1978). Turner also emphasized the social and communal aspects of ritual, arguing that rituals help to create and maintain social bonds and hierarchies. He saw rituals as a way of affirming and reinforcing shared values and beliefs, and of creating a sense of solidarity and belonging among participants (Turner, 1969). Moore, in his books "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover" (1990) and "The Archetype of Initiation" (2001), emphasized the importance of ritual in modern society for personal development and social cohesion. He saw ritual as a container for psychological transformation, which could help individuals navigate the challenges of different life stages and roles (Moore, 1983). Moore argued that many of the problems facing modern society, such as addiction, violence, and social fragmentation, can be traced to a lack of meaningful rituals and initiations. He saw rituals as a way of providing structure and meaning to human experience, and of helping individuals develop a sense of purpose and identity (Moore & Gillette, 1990). Moore also emphasized the importance of gender-specific rituals and initiations, arguing that men and women have different psychological needs and challenges at different stages of life. He saw rituals as a way of helping individuals develop the skills and qualities needed to fulfill their social roles and responsibilities (Moore & Gillette, 1990). From a psychological perspective, rituals can be seen as a way of accessing and integrating the emotional and preconscious aspects of the psyche. By creating a safe and structured space for self-expression and exploration, rituals can help individuals process and transform difficult emotions and experiences (Johnston, 2017). Rituals can also serve as a way of projecting and modifying internal psychological states, through the use of symbols, actions, and objects. By engaging in ritualistic behaviors, individuals can externalize and manipulate their internal experiences, and achieve a sense of mastery and control over their lives (Perls, 1942). In this sense, rituals can be seen as a form of self-directed therapy, which can promote psychological healing and growth. By engaging in rituals that are meaningful and resonant with their personal experiences and values, individuals can develop a greater sense of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-efficacy (Rogers, 1961). However, it is important to recognize that rituals can also have negative or harmful effects, especially when they are imposed or enforced without consent or understanding. Rituals that are experienced as coercive, humiliating, or traumatic can have lasting negative impacts on individuals and communities. Therefore, it is important to approach rituals with sensitivity and respect for individual differences and cultural contexts. Rituals should be designed and facilitated in a way that promotes safety, consent, and empowerment, and that allows for the expression and integration of diverse experiences and perspectives. Animism and Psychological Evolution The work of Jungian analysts Edward Edinger (1922-1998) and Erich Neumann (1905-1960) provides insight into the psychological function of animistic beliefs and their role in the evolution of consciousness. Edinger, in his books "Ego and Archetype" (1972) and "The Creation of Consciousness" (1984), described animism as a projection of the Self archetype onto the world. He argued that the withdrawal of these projections and the integration of the Self were necessary for psychological maturity and individuation. According to Edinger, the Self archetype represents the totality and wholeness of the psyche, and is experienced as a numinous and sacred presence. In animistic cultures, the Self is projected onto the natural world, which is experienced as alive and conscious (Edinger, 1972). Edinger argued that this projection of the Self onto the world is a necessary stage in psychological development, as it allows individuals to experience a sense of meaning and connection with the environment. However, he also argued that the withdrawal of these projections is necessary for the development of individual consciousness and autonomy (Edinger, 1984). Edinger saw the process of individuation, or the realization of the Self, as a lifelong task that involves the gradual integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. He argued that this process requires the confrontation and assimilation of the shadow, or the rejected and disowned aspects of the psyche (Edinger, 1972). Edinger also emphasized the importance of symbols and archetypes in the process of individuation, arguing that they provide a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind. He saw myths, dreams, and artistic expressions as important sources of symbolic material that can aid in the integration of the Self (Edinger, 1984). Neumann, in his works "The Origins and History of Consciousness" (1949) and "The Great Mother" (1955), saw animism as a stage in the evolution of consciousness, characterized by the dominance of the Great Mother archetype and the experience of the world as a living, nurturing presence. Neumann argued that the early stages of human consciousness were characterized by a lack of differentiation between the self and the environment, and by a close identification with the world as a living, nurturing presence until humans were capable of more differentiated thought. Neumann, in his works "The Origins and History of Consciousness" (1949) and "The Great Mother" (1955), saw animism as a stage in the evolution of consciousness, characterized by the dominance of the Great Mother archetype and the experience of. Therapeutic Approaches to Psychosis and Delusions In working with individuals experiencing psychosis or delusions, therapists often face the challenge of addressing the underlying emotional truths of these experiences without enabling or reinforcing the delusional content. One approach, rooted in the ideas of Carl Jung (1875-1961), Fritz Perls (1893-1970), and modern proponents like Sue Johnston, Richard Schwartz, and Bessel van der Kolk, is to treat the psyche as a separate entity with its own language and to focus on the here-and-now experience of the individual. Instead of debating the reality of delusions, therapists can validate the feelings behind them and help individuals find alternative ways to meet their emotional needs. For example, a therapist might say, "You feel alone and persecuted. That must feel terrible. What do you need to feel better?" By acknowledging the emotional truth of the delusion without reinforcing its literal content, therapists can help individuals find more adaptive ways of coping with their distress. This approach recognizes that delusions often serve as metaphors for existential or societal realities that victimize the individual. By helping individuals understand and integrate these metaphorical truths, therapists can promote psychological healing and growth. By recognizing ritual and animism as distinct psychological processes that can inform our understanding of psychosis, we can develop more effective therapeutic approaches that address the underlying emotional truths of these experiences. Whether we see ritual and animism as religious or psychological processes is less important than understanding their potential for facilitating personal growth, healing, and the integration of the preconscious mind. Bibliography Brewster, F. (2020). African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows. Routledge. Doe, J. (2023, April 15). Personal communication. Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press. Moore, R., & Turner, D. (2001). The Rites of Passage: Celebrating Life's Changes. Element Books. Nakamura, K. (2018). Memories of the Unlived: The Japanese American Internment and Collective Trauma. Journal of Cultural Psychology, 28(3), 245-263. Smith, J. (2021). The Changing Nature of Psychosis in America: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 130(2), 123-135. Somé, M. P. (1993). Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community. Penguin Books. Further Reading Abramson, D. M., & Keshavan, M. S. (2022). The Psychosis Spectrum: Understanding the Continuum of Psychotic Disorders. Oxford University Press. Duran, E., & Duran, B. (1995). Native American Postcolonial Psychology. State University of New York Press. Grof, S., & Grof, C. (1989). Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Jeremy P. Tarcher. Hillman, J. (1975). Re-Visioning Psychology. Harper & Row. Kalsched, D. (2013). Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption. Routledge. Kirmayer, L. J., Gone, J. P., & Moses, J. (2014). Rethinking Historical Trauma. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 299-319. Metzner, R. (1999). Green Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth. Park Street Press. van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking. Watkins, M., & Shulman, H. (2008). Toward Psychologies of Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan. Woodman, M., & Dickson, E. (1996). Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. Shambhala Publications.

Exploring the Intersection of Trauma, Psychotherapy, and the Supernatural with Alex Monk Check Out Alex's Book ajnd Website: https://alexmonktherapy.com/ Alex's Daimon article he mentions: https://alexmonk.substack.com/p/the-daemonic-divine In a fascinating new podcast episode, psychotherapist and author Alex Monk delves into the complex relationship between relational trauma, unconscious phantasies, and experiences of the supernatural. Drawing upon his groundbreaking book "Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy," Monk introduces the concept of the "curse position" - a psychological state in which individuals feel trapped by a sense of chronic misfortune and self-sabotage. Throughout the interview, Monk illuminates how developmental trauma can interact with a "daimonic uncanny," leaving individuals feeling haunted and helpless. He shares rich case illustrations and draws upon fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, anthropology, and esoteric philosophy to outline a framework for understanding and working with clients who struggle with uncanny experiences. Some of the key topics covered in this wide-ranging discussion include: The role of unconscious phantasies in perpetuating the "curse position" How therapists can navigate the tension between "magical thinking" and "magical consciousness" The potential for engagement with the supernatural to be a source of empowerment and healing for trauma survivors The importance of therapists cultivating the capacity to tolerate uncanny and irrational experiences in the consulting room The historically conflicted relationship between psychoanalysis and the occult Monk's work offers a fresh and nuanced perspective on the interplay between trauma, altered states of consciousness, and culturally marginalized experiences. He advocates for an approach that neither dismisses the ontological reality of uncanny phenomena nor romanticizes "magical thinking," but rather meets clients in the full depth and complexity of their lived experience. For therapists interested in learning more about working at the intersection of trauma and the supernatural, this episode is a must-listen. Monk's innovative framework has implications for clinicians of many orientations who are grappling with how to integrate spiritual and anomalous experiences into trauma-informed treatment. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this conversation will challenge you to expand your conception of the possible and re-examine your assumptions about the the role of the uncanny in psychological healing. Tune in to discover a cutting-edge approach to one of the most overlooked dimensions of trauma treatment. Key Phrases: trauma and the supernatural, curse position, relational trauma, unconscious phantasies, daimonic uncanny, magical thinking, magical consciousness, uncanny experiences, anomalous experiences, psychoanalysis and the occult, spiritual bypassing, dissociation, mythology in psychotherapy, mythic reality, esoteric philosophy, spirituality in treatment, haunted states, self-sabotage   Alex Monk on Facebook Alex Monk on Twitter     Soundcloud  Alex Monk Bandcamp   Taproot Blog Page: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/unraveling-the-e…the-supernatural/

Growing Through Grief: Holistic and Somatic Approaches to Healing After Loss Grief is a universal human experience, yet it is deeply personal and unique to each individual. In this article, we explore innovative approaches to grief therapy that integrate somatic and holistic practices to help people grow through loss. We sat down with Amy Pickett-Williams, a grief therapist with over 25 years of experience, to discuss her work and the nonprofit she founded, The Light Movement. Here are some of the key insights from our conversation: The Many Faces of Grief While we often associate grief with bereavement after the death of a loved one, Pickett-Williams emphasizes that grief encompasses many types of loss, including: Loss of a relationship or identity after a major life transition Loss felt by those struggling with infertility or health issues Collective grief over global issues like war, terrorism and climate change The "everyday losses" we experience when things don't go as planned "Losses are around us all the time," says Pickett-Williams. "Every day we experience losses...and if we don't know how to work with them, it's just going to build more and more in our bodies, which can lead to physical issues and chronic stress." #grief #traumahealing #somatictherapy #yogaforgriefandloss #windowoftolerance #vagusnerve #polyvagaltheory #holistichealing #grieftips #griefwork #bereavement #lifechanges #healingtools #meaningmaking #theLightMovement #therapy #counseling