Lives of the Unconscious. A Podcast on Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Over the course of a therapeutic session, a depressed patient talks about his work colleagues with whom he is working on a group project for his studies. The patient says: "Yesterday we wanted to meet to discuss our project and everyone brought their work. As we were exchanging ideas, I noticed that everyone else was already much further along with their work than me. I have the feeling that they...

The division head of a company has called an important meeting. All employees are present at the agreed upon time, except for the boss. Only once an employee calls him does he remember the meeting and arrives significantly late. He apologizes cursorily and begins the meeting. In the next few minutes, in front of the assembled team, he criticizes specific employees unusually harshly for their work...

Everyone has their rituals that they insist upon observing more or less fastidiously and, if interrupted, would react to sensitively. From adhering to a particular daily routine, say, before an important exam or a date to athletes who cross themselves, put on their lucky socks, or perform some other ritual before competing. Among the so-called obsessive-compulsive disorders there is a set of sympt...

When this term comes into play, all analytical alarm bells start going off: Oedipus Complex. This concept seems to epitomize everything disreputable in all those abysmally-fanciful psychoanalytic concepts, which conflate childhood and sexuality and which give birth to concepts such as castration anxiety, penis envy, incestuous desire. But what exactly is the Oedipus complex about? And is the conce...

Children are existentially reliant upon their primary caregivers concerning almost every sphere of life and, most of all, in relation to their need for love. If the caregivers are also those who attack this psychological survival, children face an unanswerable situation that has disastrous consequences for psychological development. According to the psychoanalytic understanding, borderline is a se...

Not all depression is the same, nor all forms of anxiety. The very same symptom can have completely different meanings for different people and can require different therapeutic approaches. For classification, the so-called level of structural integration is often used in psychoanalysis. It offers information on the architecture and composition of the structure of the psyche, which can be built mo...

We all wear masks from time to time: at work, in front of our friends, sometimes even—or perhaps especially—within our family and in front of our partners. But there are people who find it difficult to ever take off this mask, who may not even know what their face would look like underneath. This episode deals with such questions of identity and the influential concept of the false self. Visit our...

Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychological problems for which people seek out psychotherapy. At the same time, anxiety is a feeling that everyone knows and everyone has suffered from—some more, some less. But at what point does anxiety become an illness? This episode explores the question of how anxiety arises and how anxiety disorders can be understood from a psychoanalytic perspec...

The world is a stage—the couch too? So many scenes, sometimes even true dramas, play out in our minds. In everyday life we slip into the most diverse roles; the two protagonists we call patient and therapist are no exception. This episode deals with how, within the therapeutic setting, our unconscious sets the stage for these roles and how psychoanalysts understand these situations. Visit our webs...

Is there evidence for the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic-based therapy methods? For which forms of illness is it suitable? In this episode we present significant findings from research on psychoanalytic psychotherapy and address the question of whether the effectiveness of psychoanalysis is scientifically proven. Visit our website: www.psy-cast.org Support us on Patreon and get...

Psychoanalysis is an exotic resident in the house of science. A wide variety of disciplines have borrowed from it, from neuroscience to the social sciences, to art and literature. At the same time, it has often been confronted with the accusation of being unscientific. We will dedicate two episodes of our podcast to just this question. In the first episode, we look at the scientific status of psyc...

Everyone has probably wondered to themselves: "Why did I just do that?" or even, "Why did my partner actually behave like that?" The ability to relate and interpret one's own actions and behavior, and that of another person, to mental states is called the ability to mentalize. In some people it is well developed, while in others it is rather fragile, as is often the case, for example, with so-call...

What constitutes our inner mental life is in large part based on our early relationship experiences. This principle of psychoanalytic thinking becomes particularly clear in the concept of attachment. Attachment describes the existential experience of emotional resonance and reassurance in relationships—or its fateful absence. Visit our website: www.psy-cast.org Support us on Patreon and get the sc...

"Should I really do it—or should I rather not?" In many situations, we are at odds with ourselves, want to have our cake and eat it too, or are two minds—or even more?—about something. Conflicts determine our coexistence with other people, but also our inner mental life. The subject of this episode is: why conflicts are the key to understanding psychological suffering, but also to psychological de...

"That’s something that I’ve done? I don’t to remember that at all!" The word repression has made a career for itself: even in our everyday language we speak of repressed feelings and memories. But what is it really all about? Is it true that one can really completely repress basic experiences? What role does repression play in our mental life and in therapy? This episode digs into the dark chamber...

They are among the central terms of psychoanalysis: transference and countertransference. While at the same time, they describe something that every person experiences in daily life; for transference always takes place when we enter into relationships with others. In this episode you will learn what is meant by this. Visit our website: www.psy-cast.org Support us on Patreon and get the scripts to...

Outdated and dusty? No other psychotherapeutic practice generates as many rumors as psychoanalysis. Generally, psychoanalysis is equated with a red couch and the works of Sigmund Freud. But what is it really all about? And what distinguishes contemporary psychoanalysis? The first episode introduces the basic features of psychoanalytic therapy and explains what is characteristic of psychoanalysis t...