Provisional Aspirations: Season 2 — The New Psychodynamic
Welcome to the second season of Provisional Aspirations. This year marks the third year of a podcast I launched as a platform to explore my spiritual and academic curiosity after leaving the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in late 2021. The show emerged from the response to my book, A Voice from Inside (published under a pseudonym due to my insider status at the time), which chronicled the psychic turmoil I experienced upon exiting a semi-closed fundamentalist community. I found myself in the virtual company of others who had shed religious worldviews, often grappling with existential crises — sometimes as severe as Religious Trauma Syndrome (a subset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) triggered by the abrupt loss of faith and of social support due, in many cases, to shunning practices like those of my former church. I discovered that I was not alone in my quest to ask rather elementary metaphysical and philosophical questions at a much later stage in life than my peers who had done such exploration in their teenage and college years.
A Journey of Education & Aspiration
The above journey coincides with my formal education in psychology and psychotherapy: a Bachelor of Science in Psychology (2021), a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (2024), and my ongoing doctoral studies in Counselor Education and Supervision. Provisional Aspirations is a “quest in the realm of aspiration” — a concept originating with the American philosopher Robert Kane, who argued that philosophy’s raison d’être is to pursue universal wisdom, much like religion claimed to do in bygone eras when information flowed slowly and technology was limited (Kane, 2010). Even if such a comprehensive worldview’s existence is uncertain, says Kane, the attempt itself is inherently valuable.
Balancing Postmodernism & Universal Wisdom
Kane’s perspective is partly a reaction to postmodernism, a topic I’ve explored in earlier episodes. Postmodernism’s embrace of fragmented worldviews and its rejection of a dominant epistemological system — favoring relentless introspection and deconstruction of normative cognition— offers a vital thought experiment. This is especially true for post-religionists and anyone choosing to live Socrates’ “examined life.” Yet Kane laments that postmodernism abandons philosophy’s mission: the search for objective wisdom that transcends the contradictory worldviews of our pluralistic age (Kane, 2010). Kane’s “quest in the realm of aspiration” benefits the philosophical thinker and can be extended to the layperson in a clinical setting, providing a guiding ideal, a North Star, that fosters resilience amid adversity.
Conversely, stubbornly clinging to and defending a worldview (explicitly or implicitly) often breeds humanity’s worst atrocities. Wisdom, then, lies in embracing a provisional aspiration — the passionate application of a yet incomplete worldview, held with an intensity matched only by the agility to let it go.
Lessons from Clinical Training
During my clinical counseling masters program, I was struck by the repeated requests of graduate level clinicians to not only formulate a personal worldview, but to articulate it. I always thought that having an opinion was as banal as having a bellybutton. But it appears that academic training in the field of clinical counseling is an exercise in knowing one’s bellybutton better than anyone else and defending it over that of the other’s belly. (In time, I learned that this exercise is largely an effort to reduce bias — when one has introspectively deliberated a worldview at length, one is more apt to awareness and sensitivity of the junctures where another’s does not align, prompting the aforementioned postmodern agility.)
I felt similarly uneasy when pressed to specialize in a therapeutic modality amid countless psychotherapeutic, scientific, and philosophical theories, each with their own epistemological gaps. I have come to understand that my professional path mirrors Kane’s quest in the realm of aspiration: niching into a clinical specialty that leverages effective philosophical systems for change, while maintaining my awareness of its incompleteness and relative usefulness.
Setting the Stage for Neuropsychodynamics
This preamble resets the podcast’s purpose for new listeners and sets the tone for Season Two, which centers on a specific theme. My curiosity and autodidactism have organically led me to neuropsychodynamics. Years ago, with little grasp of its influence on psychoanalysis, I bought Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience after seeing YouTube videos of him during my undergraduate studies playing with rats in a lab , validating the kinship I felt with higher mammals (yes, I mean my dog). The book’s brain diagrams intimidated me, and it sat unread for months on my kitchen table until I finally mustered the fortitude to complete it (and cover it in Episode 10). Later, I discovered Panksepp’s influence on Mark Solms, the father of neuropsychoanalysis, via Solms’ The Wellspring of Consciousness (2020). Solm’s pioneered the field of neuropscyhoanalysis, an amalgam of classical Freudian psychoanalysis and modern cognitive and affective neuroscience, in the late 90s — a story wonderfully journaled in Casey Schwartz’s 2015 Into the Mind Fields.
Neuropsychoanalysis has since evolved through the contributions of other psychodynamic thinkers, including George Northoff. Northoff is collaborating with researchers and therapists to develop Spatiotemporal Neuropsychotherapy, a model rooted in his pioneering work in Spatiotemporal Neuroscience. I’m thrilled to announce an interview with Northoff this season. Likewise, John Dall’Aglio’s Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis, which weaves Hegel, Marx, Lacan, and Žižek (philosophers of what I term “The Negative Principle”) with Panksepp and Solms will feature in an upcoming episode. John’s coming on the show, too.
Neuropsychodynamics bridges some persnickety gaps in our collective understanding of emotions, their therapeutic manipulation, the language of folk psychology, and the material brain. So in the next season, I’m digging in. Over the next eight episodes, I’ll explore neuropsychodynamics — a term I use to encompass traditional Solmsian neuropsychoanalysis as well as emerging theories that bridge mind and brain epistemologies — sharing my curiosity as a budding psychodynamic thinker (a New Psychodynamic) for the enjoyment and insight of my audience.
I hope the show remains engaging for clinicians and clients alike. Early followers will notice my shift from personal metaphysical exploration to that of the clinical as I explore the connection between philosophical worldviews, neurobiology, and the practical usefulness of unreasonably complex systems of thought to make people feel better. After all, it’s all fun and fMRIs until someone’s teetering on the edge.
Despite my newfound reckoning with post-religious nihilism (there’ll be plenty more opportunity for that in future seasons) I want to make hurt people feel good. And I plan on using neuropsychodynamics to do so.
Thanks for listening.
References:
(This article was edited using xAI’s Grok 3.)
Dall’Aglio, J. (2024). Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis: Consciousness enjoying uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan.
Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press.
Kane, R. (2010). Ethics and the quest for wisdom. Cambridge University Press.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Oxford University Press.
Schwartz, C. (2015). In the mind fields: Exploring the new science of neuropsychoanalysis. Pantheon Books.
Solms, M. (2021). The hidden spring: A journey to the source of consciousness. W. W. Norton & Company.
Northoff, G. (2023). Neuropsychoanalysis: A contemporary introduction. Routledge.
Wallis, G. (2021). A voice from inside: Notes on religious trauma in a captive organization. [Self-published].
Winnell, M. (2006). Leaving the fold: A guide for former fundamentalists and others leaving their religion. Apocryphile Press.
