Psychoanalysis and Addiction

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training) discusses problems in addiction treatment when providers attempt to reconcile the needs of addicted individuals and their impacted significant others, and inadvertently reinforce the escapism that lies at the heart of addiction

Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training), discusses addiction and pleasure-seeking as it relates to the following: the ethics of affirmative versus limit consent in the context of the drive to overwhelm, based on the paper "The Draw to Overwhelm" by Avgi Saketopoulou. 

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training) discusses the practice of free consultations in the context of Freud's recommendations for treatment, as well as the specter of mandated treatment scenarios, which run counter to psychoanalytic principles

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training), once again critiques/pokes fun at the addiction treatment field: its Hollywood style populist guilt-trippy interventions, tendentious pronouncements; its conflating of empathy and guilt. 

Author and psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training), explores how psychoanalysis adapts itself to the framework of couples therapy despite its reputation as a theoretical model that is fundamentally unsuited to the treatment of couples according to some in pop psychology quarters. 

In this episode, psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training), talks about a 1990 paper by analyst Emmanuel Ghent about surrender, submission, and masochism, and relates its themes to the theories of Freud, Klein, and Winnicott, plus surrealistic devices in cinema, and humor. 

Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author (Getting Real About Sex Addiction, An Analyst in Training), discusses the problem of double bind communication, especially within short-term iterations of addiction treatment: the privileging of guilt-inducement interventions over attention to underlying fears, feelings of shame. 

Psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, describes the history of the disease concept of addiction, originally aimed singularly at alcoholism, and remarks on its positive and negative consequences: namely, its potential to obscure exploration of in-depth and relational meanings within addictive phenomena

Graeme Daniels, author of An Analyst in Training, welcomes fellow psychotherapist Mark Lederer as a guest to discuss the emerging role of AI in the practice of psychotherapy. Graeme and Mark discuss psychoanalytic theory, the philosophical implications of using AI in psychotherapy given how it appears to function currently. The discussion poses questions like, would an AI companion call out reaction formations?

Author and psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels continues his reading of his 2019 book, The Psychology of Tommy, about the famous rock opera. This reading covers the mid-section and finale of the piece, explicating Tommy's schizoid and narcissistic rise and fall, his failed efforts at messianism with a drug-addled following, and his dejected yet accepting defeat.