Psyche

What if transcendence isn’t a ladder we climb but a descent we resist?In this solo episode, I explore an intuition that first confronted me in my own therapy — especially when I began taking my dreams seriously. The symbols that unsettled me most were the ones that betrayed my conscious morality and stirred disgust or erotic charge. And yet, those very images carried psychic energy that felt unmistakably sacred.Bringing together Bataille’s claim that the sacred can be entered through the latrine, Philip K. Dick’s idea of the “trash stratum,” alchemical transformation, Lacan’s notion of jouissance, and Kristeva’s theory of abjection, I challenge the spiritual-material dualism that elevates prayer above orgasm and transcendence above embodiment.If the sacred erupts precisely where identity destabilizes — in what we expel, repress, or deem impure — then the places we most want to reject may not be obstacles to depth. They may be its doorway.

In this solo episode, I explore what Jeffrey Kripal calls the traumatic secret — the uneasy coordination between trauma and transcendence in mystical literature — through the philosophy of Georges Bataille.I reflect on how Kripal shaped my own intellectual and spiritual development during a season of deconstruction, teaching me how to remain open to mystery while staying critically grounded. From Bataille’s ideas about eroticism, death, and transgression to Huxley’s filter theory and the destabilization of the ego, I examine the possibility that rupture does not “cause” mystical experience but may sometimes allow it to appear.This is not a romanticizing of trauma or a defense of supernaturalism. It’s an inquiry into thresholds — those moments when the structures of the self tremble and something larger presses in.The shell must be broken.What emerges remains a mystery.

I don’t believe in astrology.But while reading I Don’t Believe in Astrology by Deborah Silverman, I found myself unexpectedly confronted — especially by the fact that Capricorn is traditionally associated with The Devil card in the tarot.Not evil. Attachment.In this solo reflection, I explore ambition, purpose, materialism, and the subtle chains we don’t realize we’re wearing. I talk about being a terrible boss but deeply driven, about the difficulty of being still, about the constant hum of productivity in my nervous system, and about Freud’s death drive and the superego’s demand to produce.This isn’t a book review. It’s a meditation on compulsion, freedom, and what it might mean to loosen the chains without abandoning ambition.I don’t take the symbols literally.But I do take what they reveal seriously.

I’ve been using the phrase ethical hedonism in recent episodes, but I realized I hadn’t slowed down enough to ask a foundational question: what do I mean by pleasure?In this solo reflection, I think out loud about pleasure as subjective, embodied, relational, and psychologically complex. I explore the neuroscience of dopamine, the difference between craving and deep presence, and how culture shapes what we’re allowed to enjoy.This episode isn’t definitive. It’s a work in progress. A serious attempt to ask whether pleasure — when it enhances vitality, connection, and coherence — might actually be an ethical guide rather than something to mistrust.

In this solo episode, I explore a tension that I’ve encountered both personally and clinically—the way some high-control religious communities can feel deeply warm, relational, and inviting at first, and yet over time reveal a much more rigid and exclusionary structure underneath.I begin with a personal reflection on being re-exposed to Douglas Wilson while listening to conversations about Christian nationalism, and how his winsome, calm, and disarming tone stands in stark contrast to what I see as deeply dangerous ideas—especially when it comes to democracy, pluralism, and the ability for real difference to exist.From there, I unpack what I’m calling aesthetic hospitality—the way warmth, attentiveness, and belonging can function as a kind of soft power that draws people in before they’ve had the chance to fully discern what they’re stepping into.Drawing on psychoanalytic insights, including Todd McGowan’s critique of community and James Hollis’ distinction between internal and external authority, I explore how belonging in these systems is often conditional, particularly for LGBTQ+ individuals, and how exclusion is frequently reframed as truth, morality, or righteousness.This episode is ultimately an invitation to develop a deeper kind of discernment—not just asking whether a community is kind or welcoming, but whether it can actually tolerate your full existence without requiring you to become someone else in order to belong.

What if suffering isn’t the clearest sign I’m on the right path?In this episode, I explore the legacy of high-control Christianity and its elevation of pain as virtue, contrasted with a different ethical vision rooted in aliveness, pleasure, and embodied experience. Drawing on David Congdon, Linn Tonstad’s resurrection-centered theology, and Carrie Jenkins’ work on love, I begin to reframe pleasure as something deeper than indulgence—as a guide toward a more fully lived life.This is an exploration of ethical hedonism, not as an escape from suffering, but as a way of no longer centering it.

I’ve been reading Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown as a way of making sense of what I’ve been calling my own ethical hedonism — not indulgence, not impulsivity, but the question of whether pleasure might actually function as guidance.Included in that book is Audre Lorde’s classic essay The Uses of the Erotic, which I recently told a group chat might be one of the best essays I’ve ever read. In this solo episode, I unpack why.Lorde reframes the erotic not as performance or spectacle, but as a form of embodied knowledge — a deep connection to our capacity for joy that becomes a lens through which we evaluate our lives. When we reconnect with that internal hum of aliveness, she argues, we can no longer settle for what is merely safe, conventional, or externally approved.Along the way, I explore a resonance I can’t ignore — the connection between what Lorde calls erotic knowledge and what James Hollis describes as inner authority. They are not saying the same thing. They are not operating in the same tradition. And yet both point toward an internal guidance system that asks us to live from alignment rather than expectation.This episode weaves together ethical hedonism, embodied joy, clinical reflections, and the responsibility that comes with knowing your own capacity for depth.Once you know your capacity for joy, you are responsible to it

In this solo episode, I return to James Hillman’s chapter on the puer aeternus and pothos from Loose Ends — and explore how longing may not be a problem to solve, but the very engine of being alive.Building on Jung’s reflections on the wanderer while moving beyond a mother-centered interpretation of desire, Hillman reframes longing as structural to consciousness itself. I weave his insights together with Lacan’s notion of lack, Jaak Panksepp’s SEEKING system in affective neuroscience, Emmanuel Coccia’s reflections on fear as the death of desire, and even a Rumi quote I strongly disagree with.This episode is also deeply personal. I reflect on my own journey in therapy, the suspicion of desire within Christian spaces, the demonization of the puer archetype, and why I’m learning to trust longing again — including how erotic pursuit can become a conscious participation in that blue flame rather than a distraction from it.What if wandering isn’t immaturity?What if desire isn’t deception?What if depression is, at least sometimes, the extinguishing of the flame that keeps us reaching?Not all who wander are lost.

Esther Perel has named Jack Morin as a major influence on her thinking about desire — so I returned to The Erotic Mind. What emerged was a theory of passion that feels even more relevant now.In this episode, I explore Morin’s Erotic Equation — attraction plus obstacles equals excitement — and connect it to psychoanalytic reflections on lack, resistance, and the structure of desire. Drawing on Todd McGowan and Fichte’s concept of Anstoß, the obstacle that functions as both barrier and propulsion, I examine why desire often thrives in tension rather than total security.This is a deep dive into longing, ambivalence, power, and the paradox that keeps erotic life alive.

When Bella Freud—great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud—sat down with Esther Perel on Fashion Neurosis, I knew I had to listen. What unfolds is not a conversation about trends or aesthetics, but about identity, masculinity, desire, and the psychology of being seen.In this solo reflection, I explore clothing as a kind of “second skin”—a psychological boundary between self and world. Drawing from Perel’s thinking on Eros in Mating in Captivity, Valerie Steele’s idea of fashion as skin ego, and even a touch of Jack Morin’s erotic equation, I reflect on why what we wear is never neutral.I share a story from my therapy room about helping an autistic client build confidence through intentional style, what it’s like to shop for clothes with my 16-year-old son, and why paying attention to how people craft themselves might be one of the most countercultural practices available to us right now.Fashion isn’t superficial. It’s relational. It’s embodied. And in a world where we rarely look up from our screens, noticing what someone is wearing might be one small way of saying: I see you.