Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions Podcast

This was a webinar I did earlier this month, on ways to think about digital life without falling into the trap of casting technology as the aggressor. The confusion of tongues in the digital age is not between child and algorithm — it is between the child and the adults, institutions, and economic systems that deploy algorithms without adequate care. When a venture capitalist rushes an AI companio...

Some of you are aware that I have a friend and colleague in Iran, a bright graduate student who I have been mentoring. When the Twelve Day War began and Zoom failed we used Instagram and email. Now, during this current war, when email and Instagram have failed us, and my words have failed me, I turned to AI music composition, to translate a section of Freud’s essay “On Transience” into Farsi, and...

Hi Folks, Here’s a webinar I did a while back on Video Games in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. It doesn’t get you any CEs, as I am trying to minimize how much I participate in the CE industry. Knowledge should be available to all, and although I do hire myself out and accept paid subscribers, I also try in parallel to offer people access to things regardless of if they can pay. If you want to hire m...

In this episode, I sit down with integrative psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and poet Brittany Robertson, LICSW , whose work centers on embodiment, liberation, and deep relational healing for “the strong sensitive one.” Our conversation moves quickly from her professional bio into something far more personal, playful, and unexpected: how a mini-trampoline became an essential tool in her therapeutic...

In this episode of Playful Subversions , I sit down with my longtime friend and colleague Catherine Beckett, LCSW, PhD , whose work spans grief counseling, hospice care, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Catherine also happens to be a 20-year veteran of Portland’s Comedy Sports improv troupe, which becomes the perfect starting point for a conversation about play, trust, and the creative root...

In this Halloween episode, I welcome my friend and colleague Heather McGibbon , a psychodynamic therapist and cinema scholar whose unusual passion for horror and serial killers makes her the perfect guest for a spooky season conversation. We explore how horror functions both psychologically and culturally—as a container for our deepest fears, desires, and aggression. Heather shares how her fascina...

In this episode I sit down with Fallon Stapleton , a Navy veteran turned therapist and birth worker, to explore how the cozy farming game Stardew Valley became a portal for healing, queerness, and defiance against burnout. What begins as a lighthearted chat about gaming unfolds into a profound reflection on perfectionism, motherhood, and the radical potential of play in a world built on exhaustion...

In this heartfelt episode of Playful Subversions , psychotherapist and yoga teacher Taylor Young joins the conversation to explore how caring for her two rescue dogs, Jasmine and Stanley, became a mirror for her own healing and a practice of defiant joy. From serenading her elderly chihuahua mix with improvised “poop songs” to literally tumbling down hills while chasing squirrels, Taylor describes...

In this episode of Playful Subversions , I speak with Nicholas De Carlo , an analytic social worker, educator, and co-director of the Emancipatory Sciences Lab at UCSF. Our conversation—humorous, reflective, and deeply humane—centers on birds, both literal and symbolic, as vehicles for tenderness, abolitionist imagination, and re-enchantment with the world. Nicholas recounts a spontaneous initiati...

In this episode of Playful Subversions , I talk with psychoanalyst and activist Molly Merson about the seriousness of play. From lifting tires to planting fruit trees, we explore how embodied play, failure, and queering the use of objects become acts of resistance to authoritarianism, while also cultivating joy, resilience, and connection. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at...

Our inaugural episode of Playful Subversions has me chatting with Carter Carter—assistant professor, psychotherapist, community organizer, and author of the food column Larder Ardour (with Carter Carter .) I frame the podcast as a response to contemporary authoritarianism and fascism, which I describe as exhausting and immobilizing. Drawing on D.W. Winnicott, I emphasize play and creativity as vit...

Gamer Therapist: Object Constancy, Nervous Systems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

This is a recording of a dialogue Patricia Clough and I had this week at the American Psychological Association’s 2025 Conference. In it we discuss our idea of the Promethean impulse as it relates to technology in psychoanalysis, something that can feel by turns socially transgressive, dangerous and brave, i.e., daring to understand technology. We critique technophobia’s relationship to race and c...

Gamer Therapist: Object Constancy, Nervous Systems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

There have been derisive tropes about “keyboard warriors” for as long as there has been the internet. Here's why that hurts all of us. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Gamer Therapist: Object Constancy, Nervous Systems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Gamer Therapist: Object Constancy, Nervous Systems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe