Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast

Dorothy Holmes joins John Totten for a live conversation at the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. As the Forum’s Hans Loewald Award recipient, Dr. Holmes reflects on her work with the Holmes Commission, the racial enactments she has observed within the psychoanalytic field, and her invitational upbringing as the granddaughter of a minister. Her family instilled in her an inclusive...

Jessica Benjamin joins host John Totten for our season finale. In a wide-ranging conversation [outlined below], the renowned psychoanalyst and theorist reflects on her radical upbringing, the development of recognition theory, and the feminist lens through which she examines our persistent social dilemmas. Why does more civilization seem to generate more problems? Dr. Benjamin’s answer diverges fr...

Lara Sheehi was doing her job as a professor of clinical psychology when her criticism of Israel catapulted her into uninvited infamy. Bad faith accusations of antisemitism, reliant on obfuscating political dissent with bigotry led to her investigation while reports from news outlets led to her being disinvited from speaking engagements, stalked, and protested. Despite a letter of support from Jew...

Sue Grand joins us for a conversation about hatred and totalitarianism. A psychoanalyst who has spent decades studying trauma and the ways evil reproduces across history, Grand is interested in how introspection might protect us and others from our own perpetrator fragments. She challenges the assumption that traumatized people victimize others—most do not. The regeneration of harm, she argues, ar...

Tony Bass is less concerned with building psychological metatheories than with how theory comes alive in the consulting room. From the earliest days of the Relational movement, he worked alongside Stephen Mitchell and others to shape a vision of treatment grounded in mutual influence, drawing inspiration from Ferenczi’s dialogue of unconsciouses—an approach Bass experiences as intuitive and “not s...

Roy Barsness returns to the show to discuss his new book, which establishes a psychodynamic model of clinical supervision. Steeped in relational psychoanalytic values, this approach offers not only a new way of thinking about supervision, but also a recapitulation of how this theory informs practice in the treatment room—and life in general. By considering each case a muse for both therapist and s...

Jay Bakker joins us live from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. As the child of the famous televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jay has always been surrounded by persistent narratives—even among therapists of every stripe. The pressures of life in the limelight from an early age led him to cope through addiction, especially after his parents faced a very public downfall. B...

Lynne Layton joins us for our most political conversation to date. Layton’s concept of the normative unconscious, which addresses the myriad of ways we all strive to maintain the status quo, has been influential to those who believe that the mind is shaped by social forces beyond the family. Racism and sexism play a central role, but these bigotries, that work to separate us and dominate some, als...

As a child of Palestinian parents displaced to Beirut, Karim Dajani became interested in psychoanalysis at a young age. These days, he’s justifiably interested in the field’s own exiles, particularly Trigant Burrow, who theorized as early as the 1920’s that the unconscious is structured in concordance with the social world, only to be expelled from the APA shortly thereafter. Dajani explains how t...

This week, we continue our conversation with Eyal Rozmarin. If belonging is a powerful force compelling us to identify with groups, it follows that our collectives must imprint themselves on the foundation of our very subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, Rozmarin paints a portrait of personhood that is always in conflict between the warm acceptance of the State, and t...

In the premiere of season six, psychoanalyst Eyal Rozmarin joins our host John Totten to discuss the constitutive power of belonging. A native of Israel-Palestine, and an objector to his compulsory military service, Eyal has a unique take on the respective costs of belonging and its counterpart abandonment. From Oedipus to the superego, Freud is subverted here; Rozmarin posits it is not that socie...

Orna Guralnik joins host John Totten in our season finale. When John discovered Orna’s show, Couples Therapy, it was a breath of fresh air as depictions of psychotherapy in media go. However, Orna’s presence as a protagonist who is not the main character raises all sorts of questions about disclosure and authority; the line between anonymity and transparency is curious territory for a televised an...

Avgi Saketopoulou’s work challenges our notions about trauma and much more. Her concept of traumatophilia asks us to consider not what we do about our trauma but what we do with our trauma. These theories are profoundly disruptive to our therapeutic sensibilities- the value we place on safety and the import of language. Favoring Freud’s earlier, frenzied model of sexuality, Avgi draws connections...

Donna Orange is a foundational figure in the world of intersubjective psychoanalysis. A philosopher-practitioner who carved out her niche as the radical ethicist of the field, she discovered the work of Emmanuel Levinas to provide an alternative to mutuality. His description of the hierarchy of intersubjective space, in which the Other is always primary, became integral to her progressive ethos. A...

Lynne Jacobs joins us for our first ever live episode. In 2023, the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education hosted John in Pasadena to interview Lynne for the conference theme, “…but is it psychoanalytic?” As a therapist with loyalties both in psychoanalysis and gestalt therapy, Lynne has much to say about the use of presence and emotional process in the treatment room. This focus has bee...

Steven Kuchuck was taught by classical psychoanalysis that his subjectivity was an artifact to bury. However, through his interest in social responsibility he found a relational revolution, and a promising way for therapists to stay more alive in the room. As a dedicated guardian of the contemporary perspective, he speaks with John about the importance of examining the humanity in all of us, inclu...

Nancy McWilliams is a renowned psychologist with many foundational books to her name. Her work has been particularly groundbreaking to psychoanalytic psychotherapists in reshaping how practitioners all over the world think about diagnosis and personality. In an extensive conversation, she discusses the beginnings of her career, how her personal tragedies appeared in her own analysis, and the faith...

Mick Cooper is a British existentialist who is most interested in how humanistic psychology can play a role in social change. As a leader in pluralistic psychotherapy, he is wary of the monoliths we espouse even down to the most basic concepts that the relationship is curative. In this week’s episode, he discusses how research has made him more open to difference, the influence of Emmanuel Levinas...

For Kj Swanson, an upbringing in Christian purity culture did not metabolize as trauma. It wasn’t until her queer awakening that she realized just how much it aligned with her identity. As an academic working in theology, Kj has always been interested in the heart of matters. This week, she discusses with John the various ways this commitment to meaning permeates her entire personality, including...

For our first guest in years, John speaks with his friend Caleb Williams, a fellow psychotherapist in Seattle. Over dinner, they discuss Caleb’s affinity to the British psychoanalyst Neville Symington, their thoughts on narcissism and the neediness of masculinity. Less of an interview and more a study in the relationship of friend/colleague, John and Caleb reminisce about their own camaraderie and...

In the premiere of season five, our host John Totten checks in with co-producer Mason Neely as they reflect on the last season of Between Us, the hiatus that followed, and the boundaries of the therapeutic purview. In a meandering conversation, John and Mason look inward at their own creative and family lives and forward to the upcoming season, a collection of dialogues and reflections that, in sp...

In the finale of our fourth season, John discusses therapeutic stance with Dr. Anton Hart who views openness as a key component of healing in the treatment room, especially in regard to societal trauma. Dr. Hart makes the case that foreknowledge is in opposition to curiosity and that curiosity is necessary to introduce new prospects to the therapeutic relationship. As a psychoanalyst, teacher and...

Carlos Padrón personifies the concept of psychoanalysis as applied philosophy. As a Venezuelan living in New York, he has witnessed both the horrors of the pandemic and the projections of the immigrant experience. Both phenomena challenge our American fantasies of purity and pit us face to face with that which unsettles us as the uncanny takes form. In a broad-ranging interview recorded last summe...

Dr. Jonathan Shedler is dissatisfied. As both a researcher and a practitioner, he is frustrated with the misinformation that permeates the counseling field, much of it promulgated by an academia with little clinical experience. His contrarian voice is best known for his deconstruction of so-called “evidence-based therapy,” its research methods, and his staunch defense of psychodynamic psychotherap...

As we investigate the role of the therapist-as-citizen, John pauses to interview his own therapist, Lane Gerber, about their relationship and what it means to be useful- useful to our patients, useful to academia, and useful to our interpersonal worlds. Lane describes his experience growing up in a community of Jewish immigrants, what it was like to rebel against his family’s plan for his life, an...