Psychoanalysis and Addiction

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , contemplates the presence, the pedigree, the value (or not) of the phrase "actions speak louder than words" in modern culture, and what psychoanalysis, the business world, and the law, have to say, in actions and words, about this principle. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literat...

Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , discusses addiction from a psychoanalytic and 12-step perspective, speaking of the importance of consciousness as a precursor to honesty; the problem that addicts often don't know what they're feeling because their defenses are so embedded. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels draws from a vignette from the book Getting Real About Sex Addiction , to discuss the relative merits of individual therapy or psychoanalysis versus couples therapy in the context of sex addiction or infidelity recovery treatment. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet)... Listen on: A...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , welcomes to the podcast two first time guests, therapists Jen Shelby and John Kravitz, to discuss their affiliation, work with sex addicts and impacted partners of sex addiction.  Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet)... Listen on: App...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , reviews Terrence Real's 2022 book, "US", observing its relational life therapy model, which utilizes ideas grounded in psychoanalytic theory as well as modern neurobiology. Daniels further comments upon the book's application to couples therapy. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding...

Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , reviews the book The Heart of Addiction by Lance Dodes, M.D., and focuses upon its thesis: that "true" addictions have a psychological underpinning that entails unconscious defenses against infantile states of rage and helplessness Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying t...

The pros and cons of working in a team: Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , discusses the history/trend of treating addictions with a so-called team approach, highlighting the reasons that collaborative models are popular and worthwhile, exposing what is problematic pertaining to patient-clinician confidentiality Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding gre...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels and Joe Farley, authors of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , tell anecdotes about feeling exposed, shameful, under pressure, yet working through tough moments with a sense of dignity and resilience. The questions are: how do people cope with their most primitive insecurities? Who are we in such moments, and what can we summon from inside, our reptilian brains or ou...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , revisits intersectional issues, socio-political undercurrents that influence/infiltrate the therapeutic space of sex addiction treatment, and then applies these ideas to the case of an impacted partner previously spoken of in this series and profiled more comprehensively in the book. Leadership Lessons From The Great...

Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , follows-up on matters of guilt, shame, the phenomena of repetition compulsion, defenses like displacement, with a discourse on how these ideas relate to female sex addiction and the treatment of impacted or betrayed partners.  Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and unde...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , reviews some basics regarding SA treatment: SA as a diagnostic matter, the marginal yet influential role of psychoanalysis; extending from that, this episode reviews the significance of symptom-formation, displacement, acting out, and repetition compulsion, as important theoretical concepts that inform treatment appro...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , previews his and Joe Farley's forthcoming webinar presentation at the annual conference of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (whew-got that out!) with a second rumination on the subject of perversion with a nod towards Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis. Oh, and robots! Leadership Lessons From Th...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , talks about perversion from a psychoanalytic perspective, not a religious or moralistic one, and relates the subject to sex addiction treatment, plus concepts of voyeurism, fetishism, and masochism. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , addresses use of full disclosure exercises and polygraph examiners in sex addiction treatment, and follows-up upon a recent podcast about the views of Belgian therapist Esther Perel relating to infidelity and sexual mores in the 21st century Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is bet...

In this first episode of season 3, Graeme Daniels and Joe Farley, co-authors of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , speak about the psychoanalytic concept of countertransference as a crucial aspect of treatment: the clinicians thoughts and feelings, drawn from the past, that transfer onto therapeutic relationships. An overview of theory and case illustration. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books...

No laugh track, applause, or gimmick sound effect on this one: two guys, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , and Pedro Job, clinical psychologist from Lisbon, Portugal, have an impromptu conversation about important concepts in psychoanalysis: projection, projective identification; about getting lost or else figuring out who we are, in relationship to others and ourselv...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , shares from his essay entitled "The Shadow of Esther Perel" which reviews the Belgian therapist's 2017 book, State of Affairs: rethinking infidelity , and links his commentary to psychoanalytic principles and in particular, the current state of sex addiction treatment....

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , welcomes clinical psychologist Pedro Job as a guest from Portugal to discuss the psychic defenses of projection and projective identification: what is projecting into versus projecting onto, and how does this apply to the workings of addictive thinking.  Leadership Lessons From The G...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , gets back into analytic theory, expounding upon Freud's repetition compulsion, Melanie Klein's theories of projective identification, oral and anal sadistic impulses, and locates them as antecedents to some concepts that are prominent in modern day pop psychology. Leadershi...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , pays tribute to the late Martin Amis, a novelist and essayist who had something to say about porn addiction. Daniels also provides an informal post-mortem on the Covid-psychotherapy era: what's changed about how therapists work, how sex addicts play, and what might now stick aro...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , expands upon ideas of group psychology, adding elements that influence the practice of group therapy: from the tacit rules or "contracts" that bind groups, segregate groups, protect from external groups, to the habits that people exhibit when expressing themselves in company. Leadership Lessons From The Grea...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , wades again into the intersection of addiction theory and social mores, exploring how societal "groups" that are institutions, niche fields in psychotherapy, recovery movements, philosophical traditions, shape the values that are insinuated into mental health treatments. Leade...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels and Joe Farley, authors of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , talk about how the consumer of psychotherapy and addiction services has been lied to about what is effective treatment, providing illustrations from their book, including contemporary empirical research on treatment efficacy.  Leadership Lessons From The Great Books Understanding great literature is bette...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , again remarks on the staples of psychotherapy, this time time commenting upon non-verbal versus verbal communication, citing illustrations relevant to addiction and couples' communication, and relaying theory by the likes of D.W. Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, and Sigmund Freud. Lead...

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction , critiques some commonplace ideas within psychotherapy, remarking on the verbosity with which ideas of empathy, "boundaries", "I" statement prescription, love language tropes are invoked and dispensed in the field of treatment Leadership Lessons From The Great Book...