Private Practice Podcast

It's time to stop living your best life. Nothing can be said to be truly conscious, the mycelial-like network of unconscious knowledge stretches so deep that your logical left brain needs to take a minute's silence to consider the one thing it can know about the unconscious forest of terrible things; that it contains many ideas brutally repressed. You don't know what your best life even is if you pick it up off the shelf, so this week we look at Jung's list of things you don't know about yourself (and don't necessarily want to).

We discuss the Jungian idea of two selves, or, how gruesome will the carpet look when you finally murder your boss? We ask, what does a "sane and sorted" life without therapy look like, when only consciousness has a voice? We turn to Carl Rogers for his view of mutually open therapy to allow access to the unconscious with the breakdown of defence mechanisms. And we were going to finish with a guide to common defence mechanisms, but got our feet wet in the mud beneath the lemongrass flower, in a discussion of psychodynamics. As future James writing this, I can however confirm that we do finally get round to this in a subsequent part in the Unconscious series. And that in the future, when we all live on Mars, the aliens really will be able to download your unconscious catalogue and laugh.

The dark arts of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy each dress from different collections of arts and science, and a science-valuing society can repress the art of therapy in the back of the collective unconscious wardrobe. To be truly enlightened, come with us into the forest and we'll find the witch before you become her.

Further reading:

'On the Nature of the Psyche' by Carl Jung
'On Becoming a Person' by Carl Rogers
'The Communist Manif–' …only kidding!

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Unconscious: Part One – Your Brain is Hot

This is the first part of our mini-series exploring ideas of the unconscious mind, in which we compare the conscious, subconscious and unconscious states, using Carl Jung's theory of psychodynamics from 'On the Nature of the Psyche' to allude to functions of the material world, as well as Freud's five characteristics of unconscious symbolism. We also ask, what do you really want to do with this jar of pesto?

It has been more than 100 years since Freud tried to solve the puzzle of why he fundamentally desired to slaughter his father and penetrate his mother in service to Venus. Jung and others developed Freud's revolutionary insights into what is basically the practice of psychoanalysis today. The purpose of which is for an individual to integrate their unconscious ideas into consciousness. Not to accept who they are, but to become who they are. To enjoy life as an integrated self, newly able to feel a semblance of will and meaning.

So why are we not all enlightened beings by now? Why are we still mostly the puppets of genes inherited from prehistoric fish, values internalised from cultures and parents that find truth so disgustingly repellent? Why is the unconscious mind still such a mystery? This unfalsifiable obsession of just a few individuals who call themselves therapists, or, "the rapists?" How can we know what is unknowable, and what would make you want to?

But it's not all fishing for scary penis envy and displaced diarrhoea. The people who come out of psychoanalysis know the only thing they can possibly know for sure, that their conscious experience feels better after the process of integration. So if you have a drip of curiosity to discover that which is the core of your being, the controller of your life, so that you can use this knowledge in consciousness to become a person and not a puppet, unleash your only semblance of free will, then come with us into the dark, enchanted forest of the unconscious.

Ludicrous epic music credit:

Legends by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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A taste of what's brewing in the darkness before it enters your conscious experience. Our new mini-series on the unconscious mind starts next week.

Ludicrous epic music credit:

Legends by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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As the great philosopher Belinda Carlisle said so profoundly, Heaven is a Place on Earth. This week we question how you can create that state for the entire duration of your life, instead of living in suffering, hopeful of the pearly gates that come with the divine release of death. It's the tenth chapter of Flow explored in more detail. But do you know what that's worth? If we count how much we ask of you for the conversation we provide to stimulate your transcendence, it's nothing more than an hour and a quarter of blissful pleasure in your ears.

But pleasure is not enough; this being wisdom from Aristotle, a philosopher almost as inspirational as Belinda. How can your life have any meaning if you're dependent on pleasures, and distractions from the stuff you don't like? When you walk out of that concert that made you feel so good, you're just left with your miserable life, and a social media feed showing everyone else having it better.

What am I talking about? The cosmos has no meaning! We are all just random humans, may as well just have fun, be kind and hopefully not die in suffering. Jeez. Well I'm glad you bring up Jesus. It looks very unlike humans are truly nihilistic as a species, at least that's how Jung interpreted his psychoanalytic insights, and this week we look at how the most inconsequential-seeming pleasure pursuits are loaded with meaning, which James will pod-splain to you with his Beyoncé aubergine principle. We're not pulling down the shutters on fun, we're just stuffing fun into the overarching sausage of life with a bit more meat than you might find on a night out (and we're both aware how much meat can be explored there, as well as how unfulfilling it can be).

Once again, a ludicrous description of a podcast about improving the integrity of your mental health over time, rather than seeking moment-to-moment happiness. There's only one way to find out what it's really worth. They say in Heaven, love comes first, and we've shot a provocative load for you to swallow this week. Thanks to our friend Mathis for some complementary wisdom, and to the Internet Archive for music.

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You shout at us, we listen! It's already time for excellent, complex critique from the sophisticated listener. Although when life gives you lemons, you just have to pull your socks up and let the lemonade flow, so in the absence of a sophisticated voice we navigate merely what is within our control. Why should you develop your concept of self, when it's a tiny toy sailboat being blown by the hurricanes of Mother Nature? We have answers, three of them. The first involves hypothetical quantum physics, the second is totally relatable, real and now, and the third goes back over 2000 years to Stoic philosophy, in order to explore how the problems you face in your life today are timeless aspects of the evolved human condition.

The fundamental purpose of mindfulness, Flow, CBT, psychoanalysis and philosophy, is to make you "antifragile" when you face up to the thrashing forces of life throughout the awful burden of existence. These forces cannot destroy your inner citadel, the conscious experience that is all you can control, so we present some inspiration to help you fight the dragon of chaos.

If you want to contact the show, sail your tiny boat to www.privatepracticepodcast.net and dock up on the ‘Contact Us’ page. And if you're interested in learning about Stoicism, here are the sources referenced in the episode:

'Happy' by Derren Brown (in spite of that title)

'The Daily Stoic' by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

'The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science' by Jonathan Haidt

'The Modern Stoic' series by Voices in the Dark https://voicesinthedark.world/modern-stoic/

And if you're convinced that you're superior to a plastic cup, you can experience your beliefs blossom as you hit them with a copy of 'Antifragile' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

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How do you cope with external chaos? Just be like James, he's doing fine with his divinely ordered consciousness in the current situation. Is that not helpful? You want better advice, you want more words? Well we have a treat for you!

If you don't give a pack of fudge about the indulgent, pretentious, hippy nonsense of sitting down to pay attention to nothing but what is going on inside your head, while outside thousands of people are between the crushing loins of death, then we have some reasons why it's the best thing you can do for your wellbeing, that of everyone you encounter, and the wider world in general. And it transcends all external conditions, because consciousness is something you have to put up with every moment of your life; you can switch us off, but you can't switch off your mind until death us do part.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION: The useful stuff about meditation starts at the 37 minute mark (obviously it takes us more than half an hour to get to the point; what do think this is, a meme?).

We've previously looked at the Flow idea in detail, and next week we will be talking about Stoic philosophy, but this week we go into more detail about the most useful technique for coping with chaos in the external world by first addressing the internal space for interpretation and experience. We define external chaos as any time ever, except maybe the late 1990s. It's not just Trump and capitalism and coronavirus that cause suffering. As you've come to expect, we promise minimal hedonistic pleasure, maximal tough enjoyment. So fasten your seatbelt for a bumpy but thrilling ride into your hideously chaotic mind.

If you want to try a meditation app but cannot afford a subscription, you can use the Waking Up app for free, using this link and scrolling down to the free subscription instructions (no bank details required): https://wakingup.com/

We are not sponsored by Waking Up and many other services are available, but since most provide a financial barrier, or put an emphasis on "de-stressing" (which we think is naïve) we are removing that from our recommendation. This podcast is also free, with no sponsorship or paywall, so you can recommend this episode to anyone you know who may benefit from an introduction to meditation. Just make sure you prepare them for the only price they will have to pay, which is putting up with James and his… "personality."

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Describe yourself. Things I couldn't guess from averages of humanity or that "outfit" you're wearing. Are you the kind of person who says, "I hate filling out the 'About Me' box on dating apps?" Well I've heard that one before. It seems you need to turn to the grandfather of self discovery.

Carl Jung was a protégé of Freud until their conflicts of belief in the nature of sexual desire, among other things, caused Jung to part ways and develop his own theories of psychic energy, which continue to form the structure of much psychoanalysis today. In this episode we look at his book, The Undiscovered Self, which presents compelling ideas of the reasons why every individual's development of their self identity is so important for the wellbeing of society as a whole, to counter totalitarian oppression. Jung was writing in the aftermath of the Holocaust and at the peak of Stalin's tyrannical style of communism in 20th century Europe, but we look at how the ideas apply today as we approach, or are arguably already in, a world of advanced artificial intelligence. It's not just the despots like James, the self-styled, divine megalomaniac only-child that you should fortify yourself against; it's their robots that are coming for your mind!

We also look at the differences between personality tests and the contents of the unconscious, and offer some helpful, practical tips for when alien life arrives on Earth. And James lets slip some revelations that you probably already suspected were true. Yes, Alexa, I'm talking to you (how can I not?). If you do take notes from this episode, don't follow the mistake of writing in pink on pink, and definitely don't store the notes on your phone. The brighter the light of your screen, the darker the shadow it casts.

This misquote is for pun purposes only, we can confirm that turning down the brightness will not protect your psyche from totalitarian interference.

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Mental health and self-development amounts to ineffectual, vulgar, bourgeois fluff. Political action is what makes a real improvement to the lives of the many?

Well… not exactly.

Anxiety is a contagious oppression. Anxiety is inevitable without individual action. You are no help to your community if you spread anxiety. For the luckiest, anxiety means irritation. For the unluckiest, suicide.

But no one is a helpless victim. Not even the one who thinks they're unique, or the worst off. So who can you turn to? A shrink? Maybe you can't afford that. God? Here's a better idea… Private Practice Podcast!

Free will may be an illusion but we are aware that our choices have consequences. So we're more than just puppets to external powers, or unchangeable zombies. If you don't have a sense of a purposeful self, however, it's inevitable that you will become a contagious anxious drone. Remember the studies of psychic entropy from the Flow season. But neuroscience has no proof of a physical self, so what even is self development? In this episode we talk about the reality of things that don't literally exist, like the ego, and how the consequence of acknowledging their reality changes your life from helpless to purposeful, your thoughts from anxious to ordered.

We look at people who suffer brain damage. At what point are they no longer themselves? How many members of your family do I have to kill before the family no longer exists? If I blow your brains out and they're dripping down the wall, do you live on as gunge?

Anxiety is inevitable if you do nothing. We've talked about how mental health is an ongoing action, a form of exercise. But the route out of excessive anxiety is often one of chance, and in this episode James talks a little (surprisingly concise for once) about the sequence of events that have determined his experience since the start of this podcast. But you can change that chance for someone else through self development, and talking about it to anxious friends who haven't stumbled across a way out of their internal oppression.

So I guess listen to this episode or people will die. Something like that anyway. Maybe we should imitate the UK government's obsession with repeating three bullet points; BE SELFISH. REDUCE ANXIETY. SAVE LIVES.

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What is a mental health problem and why do you need more of them? Like the Flow activities discussed in the previous season, any state of improved mental health requires a verb; practicing, questioning, paying attention, maintaining. There is no completion to the process, besides climbing into a pickling jar and hoping someone tightens the lid. In addition, can you think of anyone you know who doesn't have any issues with their personality? And what are the chances you are the only perfect, divine human who has got it all sorted and under control? If you're not James Hall and you've never levitated and glowed in the paradise of Montpellier, then we both know the answer to that one.

To think that using your precious time and energy on your mental health is a luxury you can't afford, or a waste you don't need, is not just a rejection of your potential, but also a burden on any unlucky individual who has to put up with you. But the process requires actively looking for problems and finding them where you didn't necessarily realise they existed, and in a toss-up between this and Netflix plus ice cream, which one usually wins? Over the course of this season, we're going to give you some of the reasons why the seemingly ridiculous choice is a fantastic one to make, starting with overcoming the "problem" barrier. On the other side you will find the garden of discovery, where the peaches are ripe to pluck and Call-Me-by-Your-Name, the bright sunlight casts dark shadows behind the rose bushes, and the flowing stream of consciousness never stops gushing. The hard problem of how to be is not one to toss off, it's tantric. But you can still reward yourself with some of that ice cream afterwards, so long as you suck it off the spoon mindfully. There you have it, intro to season 6. Off you go then, get listening.

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You'll never find the enjoyment of a complex and meaningful life without listening to this climactic epi-Flow-de. Quitting at last week's penultimate one will take you plummeting right back into the anxiety zone. It's Mihaly's bombshell at the 11th hour; enjoying isolated Flow activities in your everyday life amounts to nothing without an overall purpose, which you're definitely not given and won't just find if you hang around for long enough waiting! This week we start with cave people who didn't need much Flow, and whizz through time to aliens of the future who finally have free will in their planet-sized brains, and miss out most things in between because there were only 90 minutes of recording. So if you've enjoyed the Flow season and you don't require every tiny detail to be concluded, you will love the bumpy climax to our magnum Flow-pus.

We take one final look at fascist Flow and compare this with Greta Thunberg Flowing across the Atlantic. We deliver the promised argument about free will, ending it long before it's finished (you're welcome); while Dan holds onto the comfort of choice reassurance, James uses the subconscious and limitations of consciousness to claim free will is impossible. We look at infinite choice in contemporary life, regardless of our free will or lack thereof to make our decisions, because either way the decisions cause Flow-obstructing anxiety and a likely life of perpetually augmenting psychic entropy. And finally we look at the four life stages of self-development proposed in the book. Can you guess where you're at? And where does James think he is..?

It's the final chapter of our season reading the book of Flow. Find all previous episodes of Private Practice Podcast and send us your concluding-but-not-conclusive thoughts on the Contact Us page of www.privatepracticepodcast.net – not that you will, for which we are probably grateful.

'Flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi claims to be 'The classic work on how to achieve happiness', although we think it's more like 'how to create states of purposeful complexity', which make for enjoyment, which can be interpreted as happiness. But obviously no one is going to write that on the cover of a book. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent over two decades looking scientifically at situations in which people from a variety of social and biological backgrounds report feelings of deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is a state of ordered concentration and complexity, which eliminates the psychic entropy that causes anxiety, and he called this 'Flow'.

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