Info
For thousands of years, philosophers and religious traditions have wrestled with the same questions that eventually entered the consulting room: Why do we suffer? Why do we repeat the same...
show more
For thousands of years, philosophers and religious traditions have wrestled with the same questions that eventually entered the consulting room: Why do we suffer? Why do we repeat the same mistakes? What makes us jealous, resentful, anxious, ashamed, or afraid of abandonment? What is the self? What does it mean to love another person? And why is knowing how we ought to live rarely enough to make us live that way?
Philosophy on the Couch brings philosophy, religion, and psychodynamic psychology into conversation. Each episode takes an idea from thinkers and traditions ranging from Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, and examines it alongside contemporary psychodynamic thought.
Rather than asking which side is right, the podcast explores where these traditions unexpectedly converge, where they fundamentally disagree, and what each can teach us about the hidden forces shaping ordinary human life.
Philosophy has long asked us how we should live. Religion has asked what our lives ultimately mean. Psychodynamic psychology adds another uncomfortable question: Why is it so difficult to become the person we already know we should be?
show less
Philosophy on the Couch brings philosophy, religion, and psychodynamic psychology into conversation. Each episode takes an idea from thinkers and traditions ranging from Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, and examines it alongside contemporary psychodynamic thought.
Rather than asking which side is right, the podcast explores where these traditions unexpectedly converge, where they fundamentally disagree, and what each can teach us about the hidden forces shaping ordinary human life.
Philosophy has long asked us how we should live. Religion has asked what our lives ultimately mean. Psychodynamic psychology adds another uncomfortable question: Why is it so difficult to become the person we already know we should be?
Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
Transcribed
26 OCT 2026 · Why do people who pride themselves on being kind, fair, and decent sometimes treat others with shocking cruelty? Friedrich Nietzsche warned that high-minded principles can easily hide bitterness, jealousy, and an unacknowledged hunger for power. Drawing on clinical psychodynamic insights, this episode explores what happens when we banish our darker impulses into the unconscious. When our self-worth depends on feeling completely blameless, our goodness stops being a virtue—and starts becoming a weapon.
Transcribed
25 OCT 2026 · What happens when we spend our adult lives longing for a parent who never truly existed? Søren Kierkegaard explored how despair emerges from the struggle to reconcile who we are with who we believe we should have become. Through Heinz Kohut’s self psychology and the personality-functioning framework of the PDM-3, this episode examines parental idealization, unmet emotional needs, and the grief associated with childhood relationships that never fulfilled our expectations. We explore why some adults continue searching for parental recognition long after childhood has ended, and why psychological growth sometimes requires mourning a relationship that never existed.
Transcribed
22 OCT 2026 · Søren Kierkegaard called anxiety the "dizziness of freedom," the vertigo that strikes when we realize we are responsible for authoring our own lives. Yet in the consulting room, we discover that what people fear most isn't simply the blank canvas of the future, but the unconscious guilt and internal sabotage that accompany stepping away from who they were expected to be. True authenticity demands confronting the archaic inner voices that equate self-realization with destructive abandonment.
Transcribed
11 OCT 2026 · Why can two people look at the same painting and discover entirely different meanings? Using Salvador Dalí’s surrealist art, this episode explores how philosophers have understood perception, interpretation, and the relationship between reality and subjective experience. Drawing on existentialism, phenomenology, and the philosophy of art, we examine whether meaning exists independently of the observer or emerges through the act of interpretation.
Transcribed
4 OCT 2026 · Most of us imagine cruelty as something committed by people fundamentally different from ourselves. But Nietzsche and Freud both suspected that aggression, envy, resentment, and the desire for power exist alongside our better qualities rather than outside them. Psychodynamic psychology goes further, suggesting that the parts of ourselves we cannot tolerate are often projected onto other people, allowing aggression to feel morally justified. In this episode of Philosophy on the Couch, we explore why otherwise decent people humiliate, punish, exclude, and sometimes destroy others while remaining convinced of their own goodness. The disturbing possibility is that cruelty becomes most dangerous when we believe our motives are entirely pure.
Transcribed
29 SEP 2026 · Why does desire sometimes become strongest precisely when something remains beyond our reach? Freud believed wanting was woven into the architecture of the human mind, while Buddhist philosophy warned that craving can become one of the engines of suffering. On Philosophy on the Couch, we put these perspectives into conversation and ask a more uncomfortable question: do we actually want the thing—or do we need the wanting?
Transcribed
24 SEP 2026 · Stoicism teaches that much of our suffering comes from trying to control what does not belong to us: other people’s opinions, behavior, judgments, and choices. Psychodynamic psychology largely agrees, but introduces a more uncomfortable question—why do certain things outside our control affect us so deeply in the first place? The distinction between genuine acceptance and emotional avoidance may tell us whether we have actually mastered an emotion or merely found a more respectable way of escaping it.
Transcribed
3 MAY 2026 · Examine the striking convergence between Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “bad faith” — the self-deception that denies personal freedom and responsibility — and Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic “False Self,” the defensive persona constructed to meet external demands at the expense of authentic existence.
This episode explores how inauthentic living creates profound psychological costs, including emotional numbness, identity fragmentation, chronic anxiety, and relational emptiness.
Essential listening for psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, coaches, and individuals seeking deeper self-understanding and pathways toward authentic living and psychological integration.
Transcribed
25 APR 2026 · In this episode of Philosophical Psychodynamics, we explore Marcus Aurelius’ concept of the Internal Citadel through a psychodynamic lens, examining how Stoic practices in Meditations function as sophisticated defense mechanisms against psychological distress. We integrate existential psychology and philosophical principles to reveal how Aurelius cultivated self-awareness and emotional regulation by fortifying the inner self. Listeners will gain practical insights for building their own internal citadel in daily life, fostering greater authenticity and resilience.
Transcribed
22 APR 2026 · Explore the intersection of ancient Hellenistic philosophy and modern depth psychology. This episode deconstructs the pursuit of *ataraxia* using psychodynamic personality axes, theories of emotional mastery, and concepts of self-fragmentation. Discover if tranquility is a state of mental health or a sophisticated defense against the universal "Anxiety of Lack."
For thousands of years, philosophers and religious traditions have wrestled with the same questions that eventually entered the consulting room: Why do we suffer? Why do we repeat the same...
show more
For thousands of years, philosophers and religious traditions have wrestled with the same questions that eventually entered the consulting room: Why do we suffer? Why do we repeat the same mistakes? What makes us jealous, resentful, anxious, ashamed, or afraid of abandonment? What is the self? What does it mean to love another person? And why is knowing how we ought to live rarely enough to make us live that way?
Philosophy on the Couch brings philosophy, religion, and psychodynamic psychology into conversation. Each episode takes an idea from thinkers and traditions ranging from Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, and examines it alongside contemporary psychodynamic thought.
Rather than asking which side is right, the podcast explores where these traditions unexpectedly converge, where they fundamentally disagree, and what each can teach us about the hidden forces shaping ordinary human life.
Philosophy has long asked us how we should live. Religion has asked what our lives ultimately mean. Psychodynamic psychology adds another uncomfortable question: Why is it so difficult to become the person we already know we should be?
show less
Philosophy on the Couch brings philosophy, religion, and psychodynamic psychology into conversation. Each episode takes an idea from thinkers and traditions ranging from Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, and examines it alongside contemporary psychodynamic thought.
Rather than asking which side is right, the podcast explores where these traditions unexpectedly converge, where they fundamentally disagree, and what each can teach us about the hidden forces shaping ordinary human life.
Philosophy has long asked us how we should live. Religion has asked what our lives ultimately mean. Psychodynamic psychology adds another uncomfortable question: Why is it so difficult to become the person we already know we should be?
Information
| Author | Circle Of Insight Productions |
| Organization | Circle Of Insight Productions |
| Categories | Education , Religion & Spirituality , Society & Culture |
| Website | - |
| - |
Copyright 2026 - Spreaker Inc. an iHeartMedia Company
