Provisional Aspirations with Geoffrey Wallis
by Geoffrey Wallis
Provisional Aspirations is a podcast exploring the intersection of the psychology of religion, neurospirituality, and mental health counseling. Listen bi-weekly as writer and counseling psychology graduate student Geoffrey Wallis reviews popular and academic literature and reflects his findings against his experience as a member of a high-demand religious group (HDRG). Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/geoffrey-wallis/support
Episodes
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Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis - Interview with John Dall'Aglio
In this episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Duquesne University Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student and author of the book Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis - Conscious Enjoying Uncertainty, John Dall'Aglio. In our conversation, we discuss how Lacanian concepts can be mapped to contemporary...
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Enjoy Your Enjoyment - Lacanian Jouissance in the Brain
This episode explores jouissance—the paradoxical form of enjoyment that transcends mere pleasure, often intertwining with pain and excess, as conceptualized in Lacanian psychoanalysis. We delve into how contemporary neuroscience intersects with this notion, examining how the brain's reward…
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Spatiotemporal Neuroscience & Mental Health | Dr. Georg Northoff on Consciousness, Time, & Therapy
In this episode of Provisional Aspirations, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Dr. Georg Northoff joins us to explore how brain activity across space and time shapes our consciousness, sense of self, and mental health. A professor of psychiatry and globally recognized thinker in…
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Zen, Psychoanalysis & The Counselor's Secret Radicalism
In this episode of Provisional Aspirations, we delve into the fascinating intersection of therapy, spirituality, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. We explore the radical and often overlooked spiritual dimensions of modern therapy practices. How does therapy, often viewed through a secular lens,...
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Season 2 - The New Psychodynamic
In this second season of Provisional Aspirations, we explore the fascinating world of neuropsychodynamics—a field bridging psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and emotional health. Host Thomas W. Moore delves into his journey from leaving the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses to his…
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Stop Whining & Make Yourself Happy - Albert Ellis' Controversial Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT)
Albert Ellis was the founder of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). This episode is based on Ellis' 1999 self-help book How to Make Yourself Happy—and Remarkably Less Disturbably. The book provides the origins of the modality, Ellis’s A-B-C approach to altering limiting thoughts and...
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Romance as Rebellion - On Freud On Love
Freud is generally remembered idiosyncratically for his concentration, not on love, but sex. Psychoanalysis, it is quipped, makes everything about sex. I was surprised then, to read Freud refer to the libido, not as a sexual force, but one of love — “Love-force, the libido of psychoanalysis” (p....
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Active Inference & The Emergence of Philosophical Thought
Karl J. Friston is a British neuroscientist known for developing theoretical and statistical models for cognitive processing in the brain. Most notably, Friston’s work has been leveraged to create predictive models for artificial behavior and learning — artificial intelligence (AI). I was...
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The Antagonism is The Real - Zizek & The Neurophilosophy of Negation
My introduction to Zizek is an object lesson in the cognitive paradox presented in The Sublime Image of Ideology. Intellectual curiosity, that desire for the power of knowledge fueled by what Nietzche would call the “will to knowledge”, wraps itself around a traumatic psychological void that is...
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The Right Brain & The Dao of Psychotherapy
Allan Schore is a lover. He not only reminds us of the softer side of the psychological #healing arts but also elevates his discussion with evidence from the hard #neuroscience of the brain. Schore’s Right Brain Psychotherapy and associated Regulation Theory contribute to psychotherapy’s efforts…
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We Are Looking At the Brain All Wrong
George Northoff’s spatiotemporal neuroscience has the potential to completely overhaul the lay reader’s conceptualization of what goes on inside their head. If embraced by the field, Northoff’s spatiotemporal approach could drastically alter the way we conceptualize the brain and consciousness…
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The End of Spirituality - Deconstructing Spirituality with Postmodern Hermeneutics
In this episode, I extend the thinking of of the American #postmodern #philosopher Richard Rorty (who is said to have brought the end of philosophy) to #spirituality. With the rebellious badassery of anyone who brings change to an infrastructural or cultural edifice, the American #postmodern...
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Thinking Under Erasure - The Therapeutic Usefulness of Jacques Derrida's Grammatology
In this episode, I dig into the French postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida's use of sous rature typography. The practice of writing under erasure, or with an 'x' through a word or phrase, has an interesting connection with modern theoretical orientations to psychological trauma. When you read…
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Affective Consciousness & The Origin of the Self
It is not uncommon for philosophers and neuroscientists to proffer pet theories about the nature of the self, some more influential than others. One of the more influential has been that of the late neuroscientist Jaak Paaksepp who pioneered the field of social affective neuroscience. Panksepp’s...
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Where Does Consciousness Come From?
Where does consciousness come from? This question is understandable in the religious (or post-religious) thinker who is accustomed to connecting psychic content with an outside source, like a higher power. That is to say, it’s a bit of a flawed question to begin with; one that likely comes from...
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Faith After Religion - A Lifespan Development Approach
What is faith? What is faith from a psychological perspective? It can be easy for the secular thinker to reject faith as only for religious people. But perspectives from evolutionary psychology and anthropology challenge us to think about religion and spirituality as human experiences that…
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Hannah Arendt & The Limitations of Truth
Political and social discourse is a quagmire of facts, truths, opinions, and lies. How does each of these concepts function in our minds and the minds of those who speak them? This episode focuses on a collection of two small philosophical treatises by the philosopher Hannah Arendt released in a...
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Defining Spiritual Abuse with Kayla Felten
This episode of Provisional Aspirations includes a conversation with MSW, LICSW Kayla Felten of Reclamation Collective. Kayla has been an advocate for religious trauma and spiritual abuse survivors throughout her career, which has brought her to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) work as an...
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Sigmund Freud's Psychology of Religion
What are the connections between compulsion and religiosity? In his 1913 book Totem & Taboo, the father of analytical psychology, Sigmund Freud, discusses the use of religious totem and taboo prohibitions in ancient cultures and how they relate to religious cognition in modern life. In this...
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Making Meaning with Logotherapy
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher who survived human suffering at its worst in a Nazi concentration camp. Following his release, he developed a psychotherapeutic modality that he called Logotherapy. Logotherapy recognizes the human need to create meaning in...
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The Neuroscience of Religious Extremism
This episode is a review of the book Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by neuroscientist and professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Andrew Newberg. In this episode, learn about the psychological profile of religious extremists and how the...
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Thomas Szasz & The Clinical Implications of Toxic Theology
In this episode, learn some of the key theories from the controversial Thomas Szasz. Szasz has been blamed for an anti-psychiatry movement that coincided with the counterculture of the 1960s. However, some of Szasz's insights about the etiology of psychological distress are meaningful even in...
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The Congruence of Carl R. Rogers
This episode explores the fundamentals of Client-Centered Psychotherapy developed by Carl R. Rogers. Geoff discusses the strengths of this therapeutic approach and its connection to existentialism and humanism. One of the elements of Rogerian therapy (in addition to empathy and universal positive...
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Trailer: Searches in the Realm of Aspiration
In this introduction to Provisional Aspirations, learn about philosopher Robert H. Kane's concept of "searches in the realm of aspiration" and how it inspired Geoffrey Wallis to embark on the academic quest that will be chronicled through this podcast. Wallis discusses Kane's views on…
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About this show
Provisional Aspirations is a podcast exploring the intersection of the psychology of religion, neurospirituality, and mental health counseling. Listen bi-weekly as writer and counseling psychology graduate student Geoffrey Wallis reviews popular and academic literature and reflects his findings against his experience as a member of a high-demand religious group (HDRG). Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/geoffrey-wallis/support
Hosted by
Geoffrey Wallis