Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Feb. 3, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:03:07

2316 Family, Responsibility and History: Freedomain Radio Sunday Show - Daniel Mackler

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses a variety of philosophical and psychological issues, with Daniel Mackler, filmmaker and psychotherapist.

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody.
	It's, oh my goodness, it's a new month of the year, February 2013.
	And we have, oh, it's a couch-surfing kind of Sunday morning show for me because we have the most exquisite and excellent Daniel Mackler on the line.
	Now, for those of you who don't know, Daniel's been on the show once or twice before, and I think he's...
	Just got wonderful, wonderful stuff to say.
	He's currently a filmmaker, writer, and musician.
	He's based in New York City, but he travels really like a dandelion far and wide.
	He worked for 10 years as a psychotherapist in New York, although he doesn't do that so much anymore.
	And he cranks out just the most fantastic documentaries on mental health, and in particular on focusing on ways of treating mental health issues without using Drugs that I and many others are not a huge fans of the SSRIs the psychotropics and so on and You've obviously heard him on this show before you may have actually see him on your couch as well as he has traveled the world doing a fair amount of couch surfing and hostel dwelling so Daniel,
	thank you so much for taking the time and welcome back Hi, nice to be here.
	So you can check out Daniel's stuff at iraresoul.com and There's so much that you've been up to since we last talked.
	It's really hard to narrow down what it is that we should talk about.
	But I think one of the things that is very interesting to me is, well, the two things I'd like to talk about is one of your documentaries, or I guess you've done two, on the recovery for programs for psychosis that use little to no psych meds and also what you've been doing at the Soteria Alaska Project.
	I think those things are just amazing.
	Sure.
	Yeah, I've been up to a lot.
	I was trying to remember when I was last on the show.
	One of the problems for me is traveling so much, I never remember.
	Time takes on a whole different meaning.
	So I really, I think it was a year ago, maybe, we last talked, or was it two years ago?
	I really just can't remember.
	I think probably closer to two myself.
	But yeah, it's definitely been a while.
	But you have been, I mean, we've chatted a few times on Skype, but you've been far from the World Wide Web at times.
	Right.
	Yeah, I'm pretty much in and out.
	But yeah, I'm just finishing another documentary right now.
	It'll be coming out in a couple of months, but it's in post-production.
	And it's all on just the subject of coming off psychiatric drugs.
	Because there's really very little...
	There's nothing in terms of good films out there about coming off psychiatric drugs.
	Nothing that I've seen.
	And...
	Even the literature on there is pretty scant.
	The research is pretty scant.
	And given the numbers of people who take it, but in some ways it's sold as insulin for diabetes, right?
	That's the typical metaphor or analogy, I guess, that's used.
	In psychiatric circles, in which case, you're not supposed to come off it, but there are other people who believe that it's more for a, quote, intervention in more crisis situations, and then you're supposed to come off it.
	But coming off these things is really harsh on the system, as far as I understand it, and particularly on mental stability.
	Yeah, it depends.
	It goes very much person by person.
	I mean, there's a lot of people out there, when they start coming off, they just feel better right away.
	So it's not actually difficult to come off.
	But that's generally for people who've been on a shorter time.
	My film is more focused also on coming off antipsychotics.
	But there is...
	It definitely does talk about coming off mood stabilizers and antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs.
	But more...
	I like focusing on, quote, the most extreme ones, which is the antipsychotics.
	But on the other hand...
	Coming off like benzos, anti-anxiety drugs, it's really horrible for people.
	And for many people, those are the hardest to get off of because they're just so absolutely addictive.
	Yeah, there's a Robert Whitaker, I'm sure you know, is an investigative journalist who's written Anatomy of an Epidemic, which has stories of benzodiazepine withdrawal that are just chilling.
	It really does seem to be some pretty dangerous and toxic stuff to start putting into your system.
	Yeah, pretty nasty.
	He's written some of the best stuff.
	Yeah, and his passion for the subject comes through, and I think he's got some credibility because he actually came into the question of antidepressants or psychoactive drugs as curious and as, well, I'm sure this is good stuff and so on, but as he began to dig in, he revealed to himself and then to the world just all the stuff that was going on that was very destructive.
	So yeah, it's a great book to read.
	And what happened in Alaska?
	I mean, you became the director of this program.
	What are they doing up there that is the work that they're doing with psychotics?
	Well, it's Soteria Alaska.
	I think in many ways it's the most innovative psychosis-oriented program in the United States.
	Perhaps North America.
	There's actually some good stuff going on in Canada, too, though.
	But...
	Soteria Alaska is based on the Soteria Principle, which came out of Northern California, out of the Bay Area in the 70s and early 80s, which was a National Institute of Mental Health-funded project to help people experiencing a first-episode psychosis, where they would go into this house and they would live With people who were not mental health professionals,
	but were instead just chosen because they were good, compassionate, nice people who had a comfortable ability to be with people who were going through really intense extreme experiences.
	And so they would all live together, and basically it was an experiment to see what would happen.
	And there was a control group, and the control group of people who were experiencing a first-episode psychosis would just go into the regular hospital, the mental hospital, and get antipsychotics.
	And almost all of the people who went to Soteria, at least two-thirds, didn't get any antipsychotics at all.
	And then they just followed up on what happened to them.
	And the results, this is in the 70s and into the early 80s, the results were profound.
	And that was that about 70% of the people who went to Soteria got fully well, left the mental health system.
	And in the regular mental health system, it's more than a 10% maybe get better.
	Not high at all.
	So the project in Alaska was intended as a replication study.
	And it's all funded by...
	Well, different sources, but it's not for fee paying.
	Some of it's Alaskan government paid.
	Right now it's funded a lot by the legislature, but it's also funded to some degree by Medicaid dollars and a few different – and there's some other sources, like Alaska has an Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority that basically has – There's a lot of land that's been put into trust that pays toward alternative mental health projects.
	The nice thing about that, I have a lot of pros and cons of dealing with state-paid systems and programs, but the main alternative to state-paid systems is fee-paying systems where Basically, they're only affordable to the rich or for people who are willing to mortgage their homes, because a lot of these programs cost $10,000 to $20,000 a month per person.
	Wait, the program to live in a house with nice people?
	I mean, I did that in college.
	It didn't cost me...
	20%, 10%, 5% of that much.
	Why would it be so expensive?
	Well, Soteria, Alaska would basically cost probably around $10,000 a month per person, because it would be five people living in a house, and they either have to rent or own the house, and then they have to have around-the-clock people being there.
	And so, basically, a huge amount of the money just goes to paying people, and they're not paid much at all.
	It's probably between about $10 and $15 an hour.
	I see.
	So if you had a big house and lots of people, you could split that cost among the individual participants and so on, right?
	Exactly.
	But it does sound like a lot of money, but in another sense, it's like, well, you're basically paying people salaries and paying for the rent on a house and paying for food and paying for electricity.
	And unfortunately, In the modern era, anything to do with mental health requires all sorts of liability insurances, and then there's, to some degree, a bureaucracy around the organization.
	So it's not just two people around the clock earning $10 to $15 an hour.
	Then there's a few more people.
	Mm-hmm.
	A lot of the other programs, actually the most innovative programs for psychosis in the United States, are quite a bit more than that.
	I mean, I do think Soteria probably, if they really worked hard at it, and any program could probably come down quite a bit.
	I mean, I know there are some psychosis-oriented programs in the U.S. that are charging like $6,000, and that's considered a major, major steal.
	But there's a lot also that are charging $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 a month.
	And if you...
	Listen to what they do.
	Your first reaction is probably similar to yours.
	It sounds silly.
	They'd be charging so much, but then it's also like things can add up pretty quickly when you're paying people salaries.
	And isn't it a strange thing?
	I was just thinking about a warning label on psychoactive drugs.
	I mean, of course, most of them have this black box label from the FDA. It's the most serious side effect label that's possible.
	But it would be interesting to see, you know, if the truth in advertising were applied, it'd say, well, these drugs have these horrible side effects, but, and have been proven far less effective than living in proximity with nice people.
	I mean, isn't that astounding?
	It'd be like your doctor saying, oh, you have some sort of terrible cancer, you can go through this radiation chemotherapy that's going to, or, you know, what's much more successful is live in a house with nice people.
	I mean, it really is.
	It's such a strange thing to think of.
	Yeah.
	And these things are complicated because there's a lot of problems with Soteria Alaska.
	There's a lot of wonderful things there, but a lot of problems also.
	And the Alaskan project is intended as a replication project for the one in California, but in actual fact, it's really not a replication of it, and it's its own thing, for better and for worse.
	So...
	What it was was their regular executive director got a – she won a sabbatical grant and she asked me if I would basically take her job for three months.
	So I was up there for four months working there three of the months.
	I was just working as the executive director for Soteria and for another program that's under their umbrella, an outpatient kind of program.
	It's pretty hard, though, because the main problem with Soteria is that they're not getting people in a first psychotic episode.
	They're getting people who are coming into the house already pretty heavily drugged, a lot of them for a long time, and a lot of them have been hospitalized several times.
	And the problem with that is that once people have gotten into the mental health system and the mental health system has gotten their hooks into them, and they've been on the drugs for a while, especially the antipsychotics, they're not getting well that quickly.
	It's not...
	It's nothing like someone who's experiencing a first psychotic breakdown or whatever you want to call it, going into their first extreme state or having a really serious breakdown the first time where people are going through something the first time.
	Often, if they're in a gentle, loving, healthy, mature environment, they come out of it and often pretty quickly.
	And once they've gotten into the mental health system, the mental health system has a very strong tendency to make people's problems chronic.
	And so by the time they come into Soteria, Alaska, it's not like being around nice people is necessarily at all enough to help them pull out of it because their problems are too entrenched.
	Their brains have been all scrambled by the drugs.
	And so the results at Soteria, Alaska are nothing compared to what was going on in California.
	And It's not quite the same.
	There have been some successes there, but at the same time, it's a pretty rough place in some ways.
	It's not the Garden of Eden at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.
	Well, and especially since the application of these drugs to children, which is just one of the great untested monstrosities of the modern age, in my opinion, means that, of course, it's hard to find somebody who's got a mental health issue who hasn't had any exposure to the mental health system by the time they might be able to check into one of these facilities as an adult.
	Is that fair to say?
	Well, that's very interesting because that's what I was told before I went up there, that my whole goal was to try to get people who were actually in a, as would be medically called, a first psychotic episode, experiencing a first episode psychotic break.
	I was told that these people don't really exist.
	One of the main reasons being exactly what you just said.
	Everybody gets drugged so early nowadays when they have a problem that by the time they're 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, right around when people are usually having a first psychotic episode, that They're not medication naive.
	They've already been on medication a lot of times for 10 years.
	But I went up there and I took that as a hypothesis because I just know in my life, basically almost everything that I've tried that seems a little bit different, there's always been people who have told me it's impossible.
	Can't be done, doesn't work, won't happen, this and that.
	So I like to take the big no's that won't work and take that as a hypothesis.
	So I went up there and pretty quickly, the logical place to find people who are coming in to the mental health system and see if that's true, the way to test that hypothesis is to go to the local psychiatric emergency room, which Anchorage has one basic local psychiatric emergency room.
	And what they said is there are a fair number of people coming through there who were having a first psychotic episode who were 18 or older and have never been on drugs before.
	And so that was the first thing that was very interesting.
	I went there with some of the Soteria staff, and we found that out.
	And they're all looking at each other, going, wait a second, we've been working here for a while, and we didn't even realize that these people actually exist.
	Then the question is, why aren't they sending them to Soteria?
	And that's a very complicated issue, medically, politically, there's a lot of things that go into it.
	Thank you.
	The original Soteria house in California was shut down once their results started coming out, and it became very clear that their results were excellent.
	Their National Institute of Mental Health Funding was cut off, and there was actually a Soteria house, and there was another nearby place called Emanon that was very similar to Soteria, and they were shut down also.
	And so it's not like getting good results endears a program to the traditional mental health system, Is, in so many words, pretty bluntly saying, well, we're getting good results doing something that's essentially non-medical, and here you are with the best of modern medicine, spending a heck of a lot more than $10,000 a month per person, and you're ruining people and getting horrible results.
	And so it was a complicated thing, but that was basically what I worked on doing for the three months there.
	Aside from doing, I mean, I hung out at the house a lot, and Just became very much a part of the Soteria House culture and also the local Anchorage culture.
	But my basic thrust of my work was going into the emergency room and trying to convince them to send first episode people to Soteria.
	And it's pretty much a hard sell.
	But it worked, I would say.
	I think I did pretty well.
	And pretty much everybody thought I did well.
	So it was also very exciting, but it's not easy to go into...
	A psychiatric emergency room and say, listen, send us people who are some of the most difficult people that you're seeing.
	And I'm asking you to do the exact opposite of what you would normally do.
	Don't put them on drugs.
	Don't send them to the hospital and send them to our little house where we'll just, you know, keep them with a bunch of people who are just a bunch of hippies, basically.
	And let's all just hang out together.
	And basically, we're going to give them nothing according to what you would traditionally define as treatment.
	So that's why it's a hard sell, among other reasons.
	Sure.
	I mean, I guess, imagine liability issues and so on can be hugely challenging.
	Just before we get to the callers, do you mind?
	And I really appreciate that information.
	And of course, I hugely appreciate it.
	I mean, I have a thousand other things that's going on in my head, that's for sure.
	Okay.
	I just wanted to ask you a big picture question that I think is interesting.
	Do you think that childhood as a whole is getting better or getting worse?
	Yeah.
	In the modern era?
	Oh, that's a good question.
	Getting better or worse?
	I guess it would be by what criteria you're defining better and worse by?
	Oh, my gut vibe is it's getting much worse.
	Much worse.
	Yeah, I'm pretty ambivalent about the topic.
	I mean, there's obviously some stuff that's getting better.
	I think that the prevalence of spanking and so on is declining, and there does seem to be some approaches to less coercive methods of child raising and so on, and I think that's good.
	But of course, the quality of education, I think, is declining.
	Of course, the two-parent working family puts a lot of infants and toddlers in very lengthy daycare programs, which I think is really not good.
	And economically, of course, more debt gets piled onto the kids.
	So it's hard.
	I mean, I think it's one of these things that's a complex question.
	I mean, I think we can clearly say better to be...
	Oh, of course, and the rise of meds on kids is really horrible.
	But, you know, I'd still rather be a kid now than in the Middle Ages.
	But in more recent times, it seems that there was some improvement that seems to have been interrupted in many ways is declining.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I guess I think the reason I think it's worse is just...
	It seems that there was some improvement that seems to have been interrupted in many ways.
	Sorry, I've asked my twin to join us in the call today.
	He's kind of annoying.
	He just repeats everything I say.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I think the main reason I think it's just getting worse is that our world is really in a decline in a lot of ways.
	This is a lot of what I'm thinking about lately.
	It's like all the stuff I talk about with psychosis and psychiatry, which is a lot of my sort of, quote, professional focuses going there.
	How I make my living, etc.
	But really what I do think about a lot more is about what's happening in the world in the bigger picture and what's really happening to children.
	And I just think our world is...
	The world as we know it is changing so profoundly in such an absolutely negative way that the reason I think it's worse for kids is this is not a nice world for children to grow up in.
	And I'm talking about the natural environment, what we're doing to our natural environment, to our planet, to literally the toxic stuff that's going on on the planet physically.
	But I do think, yes, there are a lot of parents that are a lot more enlightened walking around, some of them.
	And all the things that you described, I agree with all of that.
	I thought that was actually quite nicely put.
	But there's just still a thing like, hmm.
	I think about it a lot.
	I mean, I really love children, and I would not want to have them.
	To me, this is no world to bring children into.
	It's too messed up.
	So children would be chocolate cake to your diabetes, right?
	Yeah, I think it's one of these things, and as far as I understand it, based on my sort of readings of psychohistory, these things do tend to be a fork in the road, that whenever things seem to get better for children, there is sort of a reaction formation of the conservative people.
	Psycho classes and they tend to pull things back.
	Because, of course, there's a lot in this world, as I think you know, there's a lot of structures in this world that really can't survive without traumatized children.
	And everybody who's in those structures consciously or unconsciously tends to work towards preventing advances in the benevolent treatment of children.
	Right.
	I'm just going to go back to what you said, that having children is like chocolate for my diabetes.
	I think that's actually quite not what I meant.
	I think what I mean more is that the world is like chocolate for a healthy child.
	Or a world is like poison for a healthy child.
	And that's the main reason.
	It's not that children are toxic to me or to my sickness.
	It's more like the world is so sick.
	And...
	That it's just not a, it's a bad place.
	And until the world gave me more confidence that it was a lovely place for kids, it's like, I just think that, at least, I think we know too much now.
	And I think also the reality of all the stuff that, you know, has come out about what children really need.
	I think that, to me, the math, to add all the math up, is to come up with the reality that it's like, this is, that children deserve more.
	And I really do question this modern era of how good of a place it is for kids.
	It makes me very sad.
	Oh, it's desperately tragic.
	And of course, for those of us who are having children, there is of course the challenge that the healthier you raise your children, in some ways, the more challenges you're heaping upon them as they move into a world of people who weren't raised in a very healthy manner.
	So it's almost like good parenting creates problems.
	Yes.
	Yeah, tough.
	Tough stuff.
	Well, let's move on to a couple of callers, if you would be so very kind.
	We have some couple of questions in the chat room.
	And I'm just going to see to make sure.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Should I peek at the chat room also?
	No, you can.
	I can read them off to you if you like.
	See if we can find.
	Oh, do you have any experience with EMDR therapy or any knowledge about it or any thoughts about it?
	With EMDR therapy.
	Yeah.
	I have a lot of feelings about it.
	I have friends who are EMDR therapists and EMDR trainers, and I've known a lot of people who have gone to EMDR. I've actually tried it myself.
	I had a friend who was a practitioner of EMDR, and she said she would try it on me a few years ago.
	I personally just think it's a big gimmick.
	I think it's a It's a bunch of words, but I think any good therapist who has a good intuitive sense of working with people with trauma can do all that stuff intuitively without giving it a fancy title and having to go to all that training and using all the gimmicks.
	That said, I still think even though it's a gimmick, a lot of therapists feel more comfortable using a gimmick because they lack a deep sense of intuition and confidence in their own intuitive abilities.
	A lot of them are pretty traumatized themselves, so they feel more comfortable using this external structure of a thing called EMDR. That said, it can help people.
	Some people it helps.
	I've known people who said they've been very helped by EMDR, and I think there are people seeking help for their traumas that feel comfortable with a Something with a label and a title like EMDR. A lot of people feel comfortable with a gimmick.
	I mean, I would have people come to me with therapy and they would ask me if I could do cognitive behavioral therapy.
	And please, can you do DBT? Can you do CBT? Can you do EMDR? Can you do this and that and whatever?
	Can you do EFT? And if I would say, well, I don't actually practice it that way, but a lot of the things that go into making up that therapy, I do it rather spontaneously and naturally.
	They'd get all panicked.
	Oh, you mean you don't know how to do EMDR? Then you can't help me.
	And they'd quit.
	Other people were willing to try it out.
	Try working with a therapist who didn't necessarily follow a thing with a bunch of labels and words.
	But what I did see, and this is the thing that really troubles me most about things like EMDR, is that I've seen a fair number of practitioners of EMDR who use it on everybody.
	And they advertise as EMDR therapists.
	And what is that statement?
	You probably know it, Stefan, about when all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a tack.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I've seen that with some EMDR practitioners and other practitioners who follow their own little model that they've trained in.
	The result of that is that not everyone is a TAC and that I've seen people who've been horribly traumatized by EMDR with practitioners who basically are getting people into their traumas very quickly.
	A lot of them are using EMDR because they lack their own I've heard of people and talked to people who have gone psychotic as a result of going to an EMDR practitioner.
	They're going to an EMDR practitioner.
	They know they're traumatized.
	The next thing you know, they get EMDR. They're completely overwhelmed and flooded by it, and it's just totally anxiety-producing, and they lose it.
	I've seen people end up in the hospital.
	I've seen people just totally crack up.
	I've heard people have suicide attempts as the result of EMDR. Now, that's not the majority of what I've heard about EMDR. But I have heard those kind of situations, and that's just in general why I'm not into the things with the labels and the gimmicks, because I think it's just better to have a therapist who's really connected with his or her internal self and follow the intuitive ability and make that really deep connection.
	Because I think that's really where the gift of therapy comes from, not from following some practice.
	Yeah, I mean, my, I guess, admittedly amateur It seems to be that the science is very clear that trauma in adulthood is usually, I mean, I would say almost always, but what do I know, right?
	It's usually something that goes back to early childhood experiences, lack of attachment, trauma, abandonment issues, and so on.
	And so, to me, I think that the therapy that works the best, certainly for me, I mean, I was Over two years, three hours a week, plus another ten hours of journaling and all that kind of stuff.
	And this sort of slow, deep, steady work of focusing on early childhood stuff, that to me is the stuff that works the best and seems to have the strongest correlation scientifically with long-term improvements.
	But, you know, we are all enormously tempted by shortcuts.
	You know, it's just, is there a pill I can take?
	Is there something that can be flashed in my eyes?
	Is there an exercise regime that I can, you know, so that I can bypass all of the challenges of exploring the deep early brain?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and I think, I mean, this isn't, again, it isn't necessarily to take away from the validity of what's going on with EMDR, because I think there is a validity to it, but it doesn't mean that people make it out.
	I mean, I've heard people make it out like EMDR is the best thing for trauma, and I don't think it is the best thing for trauma.
	I think it's just...
	It's a fairly interesting and useful technique.
	There's a lot of overlap with EMDR and other things.
	I remember the first time that someone was explaining EMDR to me, I thought, oh, I do a lot of that stuff already with people.
	I do it with myself.
	So it wasn't like, oh, wow, this is a big mystery.
	I just know so many people love a bunch of words and acronyms.
	You know, when there's an evidence-based practice, people get very comfortable with that.
	And to me, it's sort of like I roll my eyes when I hear about yet another evidence-based practice.
	It's like, come on.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	So, James, would you like to bring up the first caller?
	Yeah.
	The first caller we have today is Nate.
	Hey, how you doing?
	Hi.
	I've got two questions for you, just real quick.
	The first being, I actually lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for three years, and as I'm sure you are familiar with, or maybe not, what time of year did you go to Alaska, if you don't want me asking?
	I'm not sure.
	I was there June, July, August, September.
	I left in mid-October.
	Okay.
	So you kind of maybe got to the end result of the, when the day changes, when you just start to see more, a lot more of darkness throughout the day, as opposed to having sunlight.
	And the vast majority of the time is dark.
	I purposely went there the nice time of the year.
	I had no desire to be there in winter.
	Yeah, I totally understand that because it gets really cold and there's no sunlight for the majority of the day.
	I was just wondering if you noticed any, and obviously when it comes to the Soteria house, there wasn't a whole, there wasn't closely supervised, but you said you had experienced some of the Anchorage community.
	And for me, it seemed that while living in Fairbanks, there was a lot of abuse going on, not only domestic, but also alcohol abuse or some drug abuse.
	And particularly in my case, I did abuse alcohol when I was living there to help combat, one, the boredom, especially in winter when it was negative 40 outside.
	There's not a whole lot going on.
	You don't feel like doing a whole lot of things.
	And I just wondered if you had seen any of that when you were living there and experienced that with any of the residents.
	That's a good question.
	I talk to a lot of people up in Anchorage now.
	I have a lot of friends there.
	I don't think I know anybody in Fairbanks.
	I must know a few people in Fairbanks too.
	I never went there.
	I was pretty close.
	I was up in Denali a bit.
	Yeah, basically this is the depressing time of year.
	It's pretty miserable and I think a lot of people tend to sleep a lot more now from what I hear.
	I was there at a pretty alive time of year when people are getting out and doing stuff and it's a lot more fun.
	I've heard statistics like Alaska has six times the national average of sexual abuse in childhood, all sorts of horrible violence.
	But I think a lot of that's going on in Native communities.
	But I also think that it's a pretty rough place, Alaska.
	I mean...
	Part of the reason I think Soteria has been having a hell of a time is in the middle of 2011, a former resident murdered another former resident in the backyard of Soteria.
	I didn't get to that when I was talking about it, but there is a lot of violence in Alaska, and it's a pretty rough place.
	It was also an issue with people in the house.
	My God.
	I mean, I still follow the Alaskan news.
	I get it on my news feed every day.
	And just reading what goes on there.
	And it's like, for not a very large place, there's a huge amount of violence.
	And it's pretty scary.
	I mean, I guess it's neighborhood by neighborhood.
	But I also saw a lot of the smoke shops are loudly and proudly selling spice.
	So it's like you're getting people who are having psychotic episodes and half the time is it like, oh, are they having an actual psychotic episode because of trauma in their childhood?
	Or are they just acutely smoking spice and snorting bath salts and injecting bath salts into them?
	This is part of the problem in the modern era of helping people with psychosis.
	It's not like so much it was 40 years ago when people who were having a psychotic episode were just troubled or maybe having a bad acid trip.
	Now there's like 50 different things that can be going on.
	Especially, I mean, probably worse in Fairbanks than in Alaska, especially once you get out more into the bush.
	It's like people are very isolated and very lonely.
	And I think, I mean, I heard tons of stories of, you know, also in northern Canada when I was up there in the Yukon, just like lots of suicides and not, I don't know.
	I mean, certainly outside of the cities, it's, I mean, even if you want to call Fairbanks a city, it's like, you know, pretty, uh, Pretty rough living in a lot of ways.
	I mean, I think for a lot of people, it's a pretty hard place.
	Though in a way, I loved it up there.
	I mean, I feel like I have a second home in Anchorage.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, Fairbanks, again, is what, ten times smaller?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I can totally, I concur, like, with what you're saying as far as the, there was a lot of, especially, a native violence, not only upon each other, at least what I've witnessed firsthand, but also on other people that were living in the Fairbanks area.
	There was, especially, I mean, you throw alcohol or any sort of other drug in it if you're at various places in Fairbanks, because, you know, as far, as small as Fairbanks is, I think there's 10 or 12 bars slash, you know, Clubs, if you want to call it that.
	I know there's a couple of strip clubs there as well.
	And from what I experienced by living there, it was just like insane.
	I don't know.
	I was kind of sheltered because I didn't put myself in situations where, hey, I would end up getting in a fight or whatnot.
	But yeah, I would totally agree with you.
	I would say it's a big deal, even without the impact of the weather on the residents.
	But just the fact that, you know, it's kind of like really isolated.
	Like once you go to Fairbanks, there's really nothing other of any size past Fairbanks whatsoever.
	Thank you very much for that.
	My second question being, I'm looking after going through therapy myself for me and then be able to help my children as they get older so they don't repeat my same cycle or I haven't enabled them to repeat my same cycle of having to have therapy themselves when they get older, right?
	And looking into possibly helping other people as I get more education and go forward myself.
	I spoke with a professional who gave me some other information and with you rather, I wouldn't say crazy, but disturbing information.
	And what you just said earlier kind of hit that home as well.
	She told me that a lot of therapists that you go see may have not even, they may have issues themselves.
	And what the lady I talked to, she told me is that they try and Because they haven't worked out these issues themselves, they'll focus those issues onto their patients.
	And that kind of disturbed me a little bit.
	But my question is, what would you suggest as far as a career in psychology and helping people out?
	Obviously, you have a lot of experience.
	You've interviewed a lot of people.
	You've seen firsthand knowledge and putting that experience into practice.
	What would you see as the best?
	Way to help other people, or more specifically, families, parents, and children, in order to help facilitate, really, like what Steph talks about, and the majority of us want a better world going into the future.
	Right.
	So I'm trying to figure out specifically your question.
	So what would I suggest for you specifically if you want to go into a career in psychology?
	Was that it?
	Yes, definitely.
	And with more of a specialization into helping parents and children.
	Hmm.
	Well, I guess it would depend on what your personal desires are and what your educational level is.
	I mean, I know what I did.
	I have a college degree in biology.
	I took intro to psych in college when I was 20.
	I hated it.
	I thought it was stupid.
	And so when I decided I wanted to be a therapist, I looked at my options, and my options were like, Oh, I can go get a PsyD or some sort of PhD in psychology, but I'd have to go back to basically do a year or two of college to take all the prerequisites, and I did not want to do that.
	So I just got a master's in social work.
	But I think the basic ways to go are to become some sort of professional therapist or counselor, and that's being a social worker, being a psychologist, being a licensed marriage and family therapist.
	Or going the psychiatrist route, though that pretty much negates being a therapist and you just end up pushing pills mostly.
	But then there's ways of doing it non-professionally.
	I think an example of that would be being a coach.
	That is kind of professional too.
	Or blogging about it.
	But I think...
	Some people just hire themselves, say, okay, I'm ready to go, and just start getting clients and charging for it, and then just making sure when they advertise themselves, they don't advertise themselves in a way that...
	Overlaps with the mental health field, so doing something more like coaching, something like someone like Amy Childs does, something like that.
	But in a way, working as a mental health professional without really going to any sort of formal training.
	I considered that when I originally became a therapist.
	I was 27 when I decided to become a therapist.
	I thought I would have much preferred to just do it completely outside of the system.
	The problem is I didn't have any clue where to start or how to build a practice or how to get clients, and I really wasn't that confident because I'd never really done it.
	It's just a question of what route to go.
	Personally, I'm very glad that I did a route that was minimalist in terms of education.
	I did a social work degree in MSW, which was a two-year master's, which is not a particularly academic degree.
	The best part about it was, at the very beginning, they stuck me in internships where I got to be a therapist immediately.
	But specifically working with families and parents, I mean...
	Children and parents?
	My personal belief is I don't think children really belong in therapy that much.
	I think the parents belong in therapy and the children should get the benefits of having parents who are in a growth and maturing process.
	But I think it's just something weird about children going and sitting with a therapist.
	It's just my personal feeling.
	But I know people who said that That when they were children, they got a lot of benefit from being in therapy, especially if their parents were really screwed up and their therapist was very loving to them, that they felt therapy could be a very safe place.
	But just on a sort of personal, sort of primal level, I just never felt comfortable working with kids because I felt that it sends them the message at some level that there's something wrong with them, as opposed to the message that I much prefer to send children, which I don't want to say to their faces because it can be very hurtful, but the real message is that you're fine.
	Your parents are fucked up.
	Most parents get very threatened when they hear that, and they'll pull their kids out of therapy if you start even hinting that the parents are the problem.
	I was caught in a conundrum.
	People knew that I was good with kids, and I'd worked as a children's musician for several years before I became a therapist.
	So people right away started wanting to refer me kids.
	Every time these parents would call me and try to refer me their kids, I'd say, well, I really don't want to work with children, but I will work with you to help you resolve your issues.
	You know, or help you work with whatever it is so you can be a better parent to your child.
	And maybe through you, your child will get better.
	And I hear a lot of parents, they get very threatened by that.
	And I heard it so many times.
	But I don't have the problem.
	My kid has the problem.
	My kid has the problem.
	So that's part of why I think really the best way to help children is to help their parents.
	That might sound a little disingenuous coming from me considering the harsh stuff that I write about parents on my website, but actually I really don't think what I write is harsh on my website.
	I think it's just realistic.
	I don't know.
	I personally think The best way to help kids as a therapist is to help their parents.
	And really the best way is to change the whole system.
	And for me, it's just like, I don't know.
	I just think writing about my ideas and getting them out there to the best of my ability is the best way I can do it.
	But I'll be honest, I feel like I have not done it to the best of my ability.
	I've gotten way off track by getting so focused on all this psychosis stuff.
	And I'm in a way looking to get away from all this psychosis stuff and get back to what I really care about, which is directly talking about childhood trauma.
	Which, sooner or later, I'm going to get back to.
	And I feel like that was a very long-winded way of not quite answering your question.
	No, no, totally fine.
	And I would agree with you.
	I mean, obviously, you know Stefan, and you know the word he puts out, and is pretty much advocating the same thing, at least how I understand it, is that children, when they're born, they're not born...
	corrupt or broken or anything like that.
	They are pure, innocent human beings who learn continuously from the moment they're conceived, right?
	And I would agree with you totally on the fact that, and that's kind of what I was getting at.
	And hopefully being able to put myself forward in a way to parents or parents-to-be, obviously that would be the most beneficial time to get to parents before they had children, right?
	But obviously that's not the case as we have parents Parents have kids now who abuse them or mistreat them.
	So I'm just looking forward to how I can best posture myself in order to help those parents so their kids can grow up free and happy.
	Well, you said you're a parent.
	So my first vibe would be, be a great example.
	Be a beacon of light for other parents and be as good as you can.
	Because you said something else that I wanted to jump on.
	You said earlier about it surprised you when some therapist said to you that a lot of therapists haven't done their own work or are screwed up in their own ways and are acting out their stuff.
	I'm transforming your words a little bit.
	I think every therapist does that.
	Every parent does it.
	That's just inherent in the nature of power dynamics.
	I do it.
	I did it as a therapist.
	It's inevitable that some of my issues are going to be somehow thrust upon the people who are coming to me for help.
	I think it's inevitable, if I became a parent now, no matter how healthy I am, parts of me that are still screwed up are going to negatively influence my kids.
	I would try to buffer that.
	Certainly as a therapist, I put a huge amount of effort into buffering that by being as aware of what my issues are and being open about it.
	But at the same time, I think that's the main limiting factor in life.
	When we're in a helpful role or in a parenting role is the degree to which we're still screwed up.
	I don't know.
	I would never say that I'm out of the woods.
	I still got my issues.
	I still got a lot of Achilles heels and unresolved traumas and You know, unresolved needs and I'm still like needy and screwed up in some ways.
	I think I'm way better than average.
	I still think I'm still growing, but it's like, I see it and it's like, and I'm trying to be honest about it and humble about it.
	And that's part of the reason also I think I don't want to have kids.
	I'd probably still, even in a very minor way, probably still screw them up.
	And I just couldn't abide, abide that in myself.
	I totally understand that, and I would say I would agree with you, just some guy that's talking to you, that by you purely admitting that, you're probably ahead of 90% of the people in the world.
	So anyway, thank you very much.
	I appreciate your answers, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
	Yeah, you too.
	Thanks.
	Thank you.
	Let's move on to the next caller.
	Thank you so much.
	All right, next up today we have Loretta.
	Hi, can you hear me?
	Yep, I can hear you.
	How's it going?
	It's good.
	How are you?
	Good.
	I have a question about my brother and I wanted to get some advice and I wanted to possibly have him hear this call later on and see if he would maybe listen to someone other than myself because I tend to be...
	My family listens to me with some regards to health, but they kind of think I'm an extremist because I pretty much go against all drugs and I'm not really a big fan of the current allopathic system.
	So I thought I'd get some of your advice if that's okay.
	Right.
	I'll give you my preamble first.
	It probably won't be advice.
	And also, it's like, since it's about somebody else, I'll be pretty gentle.
	Because, I don't know.
	I think of how I would have felt if my sister had called about me.
	Because my parents, when I was a teenager, I don't know how old you are or how old your brother is.
	We're both in our 30s.
	You're in your 30s, yeah.
	Well, my family saw me as the problem, and they were always trying to get help from me.
	And it's like, ooh, I would have died to think that...
	Someone was asking for help about me.
	And also, I really rebelled against my family throughout my 20s and into my 30s.
	And they were seeking help from me, from professionals.
	I still shudder.
	But anyway, that said, go for it, man.
	I'm curious.
	Well, my brother has been addicted to psychotropic drugs and alcohol probably for the past 18 years.
	Okay.
	Earlier this year, like the beginning of January, he was found next to a six-story building.
	We're still not clear on the story, but the police thought that he might have jumped, but he could have been pushed off.
	He's just really lucky to be alive.
	I mean, following six stories, you know, pretty much most people die because of that.
	And he was in ICU for a few weeks, and he had a lot of fractures, lost a lot of blood, had some internal organs that were damaged.
	And now he's in a normal hospital room.
	He's in traction still.
	They've done a lot of surgeries on him.
	But he's starting to become more lucid, and he's definitely talking about what happened to him.
	And in our conversations, he says he definitely wants to stay away from the psychotropic drug.
	He wants to stay away from the alcohol.
	And he's actually talking about how he wants to serve other people.
	You know, he wants to kind of devote his life to something more positive.
	And the psychiatrist came in, and I was there when the psychiatrist was talking to him.
	And the psychiatrist seems to think that my brother would be good with something like Prozac after leaving the hospital.
	And I mentioned to the psychiatrist afterwards, you know, he was addicted to Xanax and Allatrol and a lot of psychotropic meds.
	You know, I don't really think that's...
	Allatrol?
	What's that?
	What's that?
	What was that name?
	Alitol?
	I think, is it Alitol or Alitol?
	It's something for like ADHD, I think.
	Yeah, Adderall.
	Adderall, thank you, sorry.
	I never heard of Alitol.
	I was like, what is that?
	I had no idea.
	This just shows you how little I know about drugs and how much I despise them.
	I can't even say them right.
	But he, yeah, I guess it was Adderall.
	Sorry about that.
	And so I'm trying to really help my brother as far as Helping his body kind of detoxify and getting him on like a healthier regimen.
	Myself, I eat a lot of fruit and some vegetables and I really try to live like a really pure lifestyle in that respect.
	But my brother, not so much.
	And I believe that diet is kind of the first way to...
	Help the body heal.
	And I just feel like though he's kind of such a big issue because he's done so many drugs and so much alcohol in his life, I'm afraid that he might need something more than what I have to offer and he might want to go back to something to help him.
	So I didn't know if you had any suggestions.
	Like a pediatric drug.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, suggestions?
	Well, I would say, yeah, I'm not going to give advice, for sure.
	But I'll give thoughts.
	Okay.
	Well, I think the first main thought is, what does he want?
	Because I think a person's internal motivation is the primary thing that's going to kind of tell what they're going to do and where they're going to go.
	So it's a question of what his real motivation is.
	I mean it's sad but I get emailed like pretty much every day because of the movies that I've made because they're spreading all over.
	I get emailed every day from families trying to help their children.
	Sometimes their children are teenagers, 20s, 30s, 40s.
	The situation is kind of similar to yours.
	Everyone is trying to help the person, but it really depends on what that person wants.
	I think a lot of the things that you're talking about, healthy diet and things like that, yeah, they're great.
	It depends on how hard a person is willing to work emotionally and what their tolerance level is for discomfort.
	I think a lot of people who run to drugs and alcohol and things like Xanax and Adderall, which by the way, you're right, they are very addictive.
	It's often people who have a pretty low tolerance for the discomfort required for really doing the deep internal work and changing their lives.
	That doesn't mean that they can't do it, but I think also it's like...
	I don't know.
	I don't know what kind of information he's had presented to them.
	Stefan earlier mentioned that book, Anatomy of an Epidemic.
	That's a winner.
	But there's a lot of good stuff out there.
	I mean, I don't know if he's taking Adderall or Xanax in the hospital.
	I mean, I imagine they're probably giving him some stuff if he's miserable and in traction and stuff like that.
	He's taking pain medicine, I think.
	Right.
	That's it right now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, which can be a problem in and of itself.
	People get hooked on that stuff.
	But I wonder...
	I don't know.
	I think it's just...
	I don't know where you live, but it depends on what's really available.
	I mean, I admit it.
	I want to puke when I hear some psychiatrists say that your brother's going to need Prozac.
	It's like, who the hell has anyone to say what somebody needs?
	He needs this drug.
	I mean, I get so sick of hearing that somebody needs this or they need that.
	It's like...
	Most people that I see, when they end up on psychiatric drugs, they just have no knowledge of what they're getting into or they're desperate or both.
	And the main reason is because there's no good alternatives being offered to them.
	So the question is...
	It's half of it, what is your brother's motivation and what's his drive and his force to really change his life?
	And the other half is what is realistically being offered to him to meet him halfway so that he has something that he can grab onto?
	Because, I mean, I don't know what happened to him.
	It sounds like you don't either, but just to end up For anybody, ending up on lots of psychiatric drugs and ending up on alcohol and who knows what else, and to the point of complete misery and destruction of one's own life, usually a person feels pretty desperate to get into that situation and usually doesn't feel like there are any good alternatives being offered.
	So realistically, it's pretty hard.
	So I don't know.
	I mean, this is one of the big problems I have with psychiatry and the mental health system is really good alternatives are very, very, very few and far between.
	And yet, there are some good things.
	Okay, if alcohol is a big problem for him, is he interested in going to a rehab?
	Is he interested in 12-step programs?
	I mean, I'm actually not a big advocate of 12-step programs.
	I've been around AA a fair amount and know it pretty much through and through.
	At the same time, there's a lot that really bugs me about it, and I think a lot of it's just wrong.
	But on the other hand, I know for a lot of people it's been a step in their life that has been in a good direction.
	Yeah, he's done a lot of rehab, and I know my parents have spent a ton of money on him as far as sending him to different rehab centers across the country.
	You're American?
	What's that?
	You're American?
	Yes, yes.
	And I don't know the specific names, but he went to one in Chicago, one in Florida, I think maybe one in Arizona, I'm not quite sure.
	And he'll come back, he'll be there for 30 days, and he'll come back and that night he'll drink.
	And it's gotten to the point where my dad just kind of wanted to disown him and have nothing to do with him anymore.
	And now my brother is pretty much poor.
	He relies on my parents and he's pretty much bankrupt my parents.
	They haven't filed bankruptcy or anything, but they basically cashed in all of their retirement money to pay for all of his rehab.
	And now it's kind of like his rehab is basically going to be him living with my parents.
	Right.
	Can I challenge you for a minute?
	Sure, sure.
	I'm going to go with what you said, that he bankrupt your parents.
	I would say your parents had choice in that.
	I agree.
	They chose to do that, and this is their decision.
	I mean, I've got a lot of people I love.
	I don't know a single one of them that can bankrupt me.
	I would have to spend all my money.
	I would say that they bankrupt themselves.
	This is a common situation with people who have a lot of conflicts and issues that they're going through and that parents will jump in and rescue them repeatedly.
	So this question, it could, I mean, and not to the betterment of their child.
	So they can feel like, oh, this child has bankrupt us.
	Poor me, poor me, poor me, poor us.
	Not saying your parents are doing that, but I do see that sometimes.
	And it's like, it sends a very bad message to the child.
	An adult child, I mean, you said your brother's an adult.
	It's like, I don't know.
	As an adult, it doesn't make me feel good about myself.
	When other people are sending me the message that I need to be rescued.
	And so, I don't know.
	Sometimes it's like tough love can go a long way.
	Not saying that that'll solve the problem, because sometimes it has very ugly results, but But it's definitely something worth considering and thinking about.
	Just because of the way you said it, I imagine they probably didn't think that he's bankrupted them.
	Or maybe not, and I don't really know.
	Actually, I shouldn't say that.
	So he's going to go back and live with them.
	That sounds like a pretty hopeless situation to me.
	They've already spent all their money on him.
	They've gone bankrupt.
	Yeah.
	Well, he's going to be in a wheelchair for a while, and he really has nothing.
	I mean, his license has been taken away from him because of alcohol-related issues and...
	You know, back before, he was living with my parents off and on, and he would do something, he'd get into a fight, and they'd kick him out, and this repeated for years and years.
	And now that he's going back, and he seems to me like he wants to stay off the drugs and alcohol for good now.
	We're hoping that falling off six stories...
	It was a wake-up call, and that was rock bottom.
	But I just don't know.
	I mean, I've been listening to FDR for a while now.
	Well, not for a while, but since early summer.
	And, you know, I know Steph uses a lot of, you know, he stresses curiosity, and I'm really trying to be curious with my brother, but I don't know if there's anything I can do other than I'm trying to help him eat healthier and be curious with him, but I agree with you.
	I would never allow him to bankrupt me.
	I have my limitations as to how far I'll go to help him, and I'm trying to see if he really wants the help.
	Right now, he does seem to be like he wants the help.
	Right.
	Well, I don't know.
	I'm being blunt with you, but the thought that goes through my head is you wanted him on this call.
	Maybe your parents need to be on this call.
	Yeah.
	And because it just sounds to me like a lot of what's going on, somehow they're very involved with it, probably at a lot of levels.
	And so the question is, are they doing anything so differently?
	Because many of your questions have come back to, or your comments have been about, he's changed, he's hit rock bottom, he's doing something differently, but have they?
	And so they sound like they're the primary support system for him, or maybe one of the primary ones.
	And so...
	If they haven't changed, if they haven't hit rock bottom, then his environment really hasn't changed.
	And so that's the other half of, like, what are his alternatives?
	And if his basic support system hasn't changed, then it doesn't sound very helpful to me.
	I agree.
	I tried to bring up this situation.
	Sorry, just to interrupt for a sec.
	The sort of grim-faced empiricism I think that philosophy demands is I think of great utility in these kinds of situations.
	I mean the first thing that I would suggest the family look at is to recognize that everything that the family did prior to him falling six stories resulted to some degree or another in him falling six stories, which was the exact opposite of what everybody wanted.
	So this is the grim empiricism that needs – this has nothing to do with psychology.
	This is just, I think, just basic philosophy, which is that everything that was done prior to his disaster contributed or resulted in or did not prevent that disaster, which means everything must be open to question.
	Everything must be open to question.
	Everything that wasn't done needs to be examined as to its potential utility.
	Everything that was done needs to be examined extremely critically because it produced or at least did not prevent the opposite of what everyone wanted.
	Does that make sense?
	And if the family is open to that, because what you're talking about is all external stuff.
	He went to therapy.
	He was prescribed these drugs.
	He made these choices.
	He didn't do this.
	He did that.
	And I don't think that we can look at these kinds of dysfunctions outside of looking at the family system.
	But it seems that there's a lot of externalization.
	And part of Giving someone money, and I don't know, of course, the motives of your parents, but part of giving money is a way of externalizing the problem.
	The problem is that you don't have money.
	The problem is that you're on the wrong meds.
	The problem is that you're taking drugs, whereas I would argue that these are symptoms, and the symptomology seems to be fairly clear, and this is coming straight out of...
	A book I've recommended a number of times from a guy who's been on the show, which is Gabor Mate's In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, where he goes directly into early childhood trauma and its causal effect on triggering addiction and self-destructive behavior in numbers of people.
	So what I haven't heard a lot of is, you know, the family needs to sort of sit down and figure out what happened in early childhood and so on and work on changing that because it's not an issue, I don't think.
	I mean, this is just, again, amateur opinion hour as usual.
	But it is not an issue of drugs.
	It's not an issue of alcohol.
	It's not an issue of money.
	It is, I would imagine, an issue of brain problems that come out of early childhood deprivation, abandonment, or abuse, or something like that.
	And if you keep playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms, it doesn't seem that that's going to help very much.
	So that's the first thing I would say.
	The second is that you mentioned something that made my spider sense tingle a bit, which is that he sort of came out of his...
	Paul, saying he now really wants to help people.
	Helping people is not the best thing to do after you've plunged six stories after decades of abuse and of drugs and other things.
	Helping people is an interesting way of avoiding intimacy.
	Because when you're helping people, you are putting yourself in an authority position, whether you like it or not, and you are not engaging at a level of egalitarianism.
	And so, I mean, obviously I think helping people is a great thing, but it's very tempting for people who have intimacy issues to dedicate themselves to helping others.
	But I'm not sure that that is going to do a lot to deal with the true nutrition of life, which I think is egalitarian intimate love relationships.
	So I would not necessarily encourage him to sort of pick himself, his shattered body up and start throwing himself into helping others because I don't think that will deal with any intimacy issues he may have.
	Yeah, I've suggested that to him because he's mentioned things like how he wants to go back to school and just in the hours that we've spent in the hospital together, he's talked about a lot of different things he wants to do with his life.
	But it seems to me like I want to tell him maybe you should just take time to allow your body to realize what you've gone through and maybe hang out with the dog for a while in nature and learn how to...
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, I mean, sorry, even if there's no childhood issues, right?
	Maybe if you just got hit by the random god-lightening of addiction, if there are no childhood issues, I mean, I tell you, if I lose my keys for 10 minutes, I get frustrated, and then I feel like, oh man, that was 10 minutes, whatever, right?
	And, I mean, if it were 10 years that I had lost, I mean, the amount of grieving that will need to go on with regards to the lost years, End all of the harm that he may have done to himself, obviously, and to others potentially during that time.
	You know, there's a lot of grieving to be done, I would argue, before moving on with his life.
	You can't just sort of pick yourself up from 10 or 15 or 20 years of addictive self-destructive behavior and say, well...
	The past is in the past.
	I'm moving on.
	I think that there is grieving because, of course, at least according to the general wisdom of psychologists that I know of, it seems that emotional development tends to be arrested during a time when significant addiction begins, right?
	Because significant addiction is a way of avoiding pain and the ability to process pain is one of the hallmarks of maturity.
	Having avoided emotional development through addiction for many, many years, there's a lot of regrowth or first growth really that needs to occur with all the additional burdens of many years of addiction.
	So there's a lot to process, I would argue, years of stuff to process before thinking about helping others.
	But again, it's a very tempting thing to think because it's another way of avoiding processing the original trauma and also the additional trauma of the last years.
	Yeah, that's what I'm sensing, and I really appreciate your input on that, because it seems like him wanting to move forward with his life is ignoring a lot of what he hasn't processed yet, and I'm just hoping, without pushing too much, I can question him in the right way to get him to think about what has happened to him, really think about it.
	Well, and if he's setting himself up for the kind of disappointment that's going to reignite addictive behavior, right?
	I'm going to go and help people.
	I'm going to leave the past to the past.
	And then, you know, you stumble and fall.
	I would argue that he's telling you a lot about the original problems that probably go back to early childhood.
	He's telling you a lot about those because if this is an attempt to an unconscious recreation of the early trauma, which would be this kind of setup followed by this kind of disappointment, the inevitable disappointment, that probably tells you a lot about what's going on deep down in the Bowels of infancy and so on, but again, that would be something I would imagine would be productively explored with a great therapist.
	Yeah, that's something we need to find, I think.
	Well, I'm going to jump in for one more sec here.
	Okay?
	Yeah, sure.
	Yeah, I just heard you say one other thing that just made me...
	A little red flag went up.
	You said, Loretta, that you wanted to...
	Get him to realize something.
	Go in and talk to him and get him to realize or understand something.
	I can't remember your exact words, but it's like...
	I think it's pretty risky to try to wake somebody up if he's your brother.
	I mean, I'd say...
	It's just my thought that it's like...
	I don't know.
	I think...
	If he's living with your parents, it's like this is a family system that didn't sound like it got stuck somewhere along the way.
	He's still coming back to live with his parents like a child.
	I don't know.
	I guess bottom line is obviously I don't know you or your personal situation, but I don't know that it necessarily would be so fruitful to try and wake him up.
	Maybe a little bit of work, but if he doesn't do it, it's like it's on him.
	I agree.
	It's totally on him.
	I think living with my parents, because the state pretty much paid for his entire medical expense, because he has absolutely no money, and they're not really going to do too much with rehab, so he's going to stay with my mom and dad until he can walk, and he's out of a wheelchair, I think they might provide limited help with him learning to walk again.
	But after that, I did mention to my mom and dad, you know, he needs to find a place to live on his own and, you know, take care of himself.
	He's got to want to do this more than anybody else in his life.
	Yeah, I guess the thought that goes through my head is, hmm, it's like, I don't, this doesn't sound like moving back in with your parents.
	I mean, to me, it's like, I would question that at all.
	Because once he gets in there, it's hard to get out.
	Yeah.
	And he's going to transition into a different place.
	It's like, I don't know, I don't know, I'm assuming he probably has Medicaid or something like that.
	Yeah, I think so.
	In whatever state you're in, or Medicare if he's old enough, or if he's worked enough, but I don't know.
	Just...
	I mean, I also just have a personal visceral reaction when I hear about moving back in with parents.
	It's like, oof, my 30s?
	That sounds like, you know...
	Well, he's been living with them off and on his whole life.
	I mean, I think maybe a couple of times he's had his own apartment.
	And those were short-lived because he...
	But sorry, but this is what I was saying, was that everything that has been done before contributed to him plunging six stories.
	So if he was living with your parents before, that had something to do with or at least did not prevent him plunging six stories.
	And this is why, as a family system, it's important to sit down, list everything.
	I mean, this is just basic empiricism.
	And I'm sorry, I don't mean to say basic like it's obvious.
	It's just this is not usually the way we're taught to think.
	But you list down everything.
	What did the family do to try and solve this problem?
	Well, we gave him money.
	Well, he lived with us here.
	Well, we put him into rehab.
	Well, we did this.
	None of that worked.
	So at the very least, let's not do any of those things again.
	Good point.
	Or at least let's talk about not doing those things again.
	I don't know what anyone should or shouldn't do.
	But there is this kind of weird, we just kind of go back onto these train tracks all the time.
	There's this gravity well on these train tracks.
	And it is.
	The easiest thing to do is to have him go live with your parents.
	Of course it is, right?
	But that has been on the list of things that failed to prevent or contributed to him plunging six stories.
	So the sort of objective outside the biosphere rational approach is to say everything which we did before must be questioned.
	And so if giving him money, giving him resources, getting him rehab, having him live with your parents, it's like, well, we did all that for years and years and years, and it did not solve the problem, so let's talk about not doing that.
	At least that would be my suggestion.
	I agree.
	I think that's wonderful.
	Go ahead.
	The issue that I get into all the time when I talk with parents in these kind of situations is And it's right along the lines with what you're saying, Stefan, about If that's what we've tried before and it didn't work, why are we going to try it again?
	Then the problem is what are the other realistic alternatives that are available?
	Sometimes they're horrible, and that's why everybody gets scared and goes toward the easier one.
	For all I know, they'd put him in some nursing home with a bunch of old people and stick him in a room and he'd never get any rehab and he'd be permanently crippled forever.
	That's one possibility.
	I don't really know what realistic alternatives are available.
	But I also know that once something like, oh, his parents will take him back and keep him, Then all the social workers are let off the hook.
	No one has to really find a good place for them.
	It just becomes the easy answer and that the alternatives often dry up.
	It's a pretty rough situation.
	I don't know.
	I think it's like now is the time, as far as I'd see, to really fight for the alternatives.
	Because I don't think they're going to get better necessarily.
	They probably are going to shrink as time goes on.
	Because the other thing is they're not going to put him out on the street.
	It's just a question of where would he go.
	Yeah.
	But anyways, I'm basically agreeing with Stefan.
	I was just translating it into a bit of practicality because often it's like parents take their kids in when they realize the alternatives all absolutely suck.
	Well, yeah, and we haven't even discussed alternatives in depth.
	So that's definitely, I think, a place to start when I have a chat with my mom and dad about this.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, mention to them that we don't want to repeat what has led to him falling off a six-story building.
	And I just really wanted to express my sympathies.
	God, I mean, what an unbelievably horrible situation to have to be dealing with.
	I mean...
	There's no good answer.
	I mean, there's no good answer.
	I mean, in many ways, it's like, okay, let's juggle these flaming balls called the lesser of many evils.
	And so I really wanted to express incredible sympathies for the effect that this has had, obviously, on your life for many, many years.
	I mean, siblings have a very, very powerful impact on our lives.
	I mean, in many ways...
	More so than parents, because the parental relationship ideally changes over time, but the sibling relationship, it's someone who continues through your life.
	And certainly after your parents die, they're the people who knew you when you were children.
	And they're the only people who follow you through, ideally, through your whole life and go through the same major life events and all the wonderful little minor life events that go after making who we are.
	Given that you haven't had that companion and that you are having to deal with this or you're choosing to deal with this, I'm so sorry.
	What an unbelievably difficult, horrible, challenging, resource-draining, mind-filling, in not a positive way, series of events to have to deal with.
	I'm incredibly sorry that this is even on your menu of to-dos because these kinds of things do tend to expand and eclipse a whole lot of other things.
	That obviously would be much more pleasant and positive to deal with.
	So I'm so sorry for what it is you're going through.
	That's just wretched.
	And there's not going to be any easy solutions, I'm sure, as you know.
	Yes.
	Thank you so much.
	And I always appreciate the heartfelt, you know...
	Expressions when you reach out to people like me and I just really feel love and I can't even talk, right?
	But thank you so much for all of your help.
	If you get a chance, feel free to drop me a line.
	Let me know how it goes.
	I'm always curious to know what happens and best of luck.
	I'm sad to say you'll need it.
	So I hope it works out.
	Well, thank you so much.
	Do we have other callers, or should we dip into the chat?
	Dip into the pool of text.
	All right.
	Well, Daniel, I feel that any show wherein you and I do not talk about Spanking the Bishop is just a show that does not have its completeness, so we've had some questions about where you stand, assuming that standing is the position on masturbation.
	Okay, so the monkey has devolved now into a bishop.
	Yes, yes.
	I think that the bishop, because of the hat, is more related to the uncircumcised penis.
	So that's, I think, probably more of a Britishism than a British phrase, I would imagine.
	I never heard of spanking the bishop.
	I'm sorry?
	Oh, I never heard of spanking the bishop.
	So anyway, so masturbation.
	So was there a question?
	Yes, because I think somebody had read some material on your site about your thoughts and about masturbation in the past and just wondered where you stood these days.
	Oh, where do I stand on masturbation?
	That's a good question.
	Probably no different from what I wrote on my website, but I don't know.
	I haven't even gone back and read.
	You know, it's really funny.
	I haven't gone back and read my website in a few years, so I don't even remember half of what I wrote.
	I'll have to go back and read it again.
	If I remember rightly, it's been some time since I read this as well, but you viewed masturbation as problematic in that it's a little dehumanizing and it can be a way of getting sexual need met without intimacy and that there can be some significantly negative effects of it that are generally under-discussed.
	Yeah.
	I mean, maybe that makes it sound a little more dangerous, but I think it's basically...
	See, it's complicated.
	Here's a thought that I had.
	I think that most masturbation involves fantasy.
	And I mean, I think it's possible to masturbate without having fantasy, just to literally just like get sexual release, have an orgasm.
	But I think it's the fantasy more in the masturbation that I think is the dangerous part, not the sexual release.
	I don't think that's bad or good or anything.
	That just is what it is.
	And actually, there's probably some evidence that that could be fairly healthy in some ways to just let that stuff out.
	And probably just anxiety release and all that stuff can, let's say, be healthy.
	But I think it's the fantasy part that's the part that's troubling.
	I don't know.
	I actually don't really feel like I have a huge amount of thoughts about it right now.
	I've been putting a lot of thought into it.
	Maybe if there was a specific question.
	I don't know.
	Well, we'll wait and see if somebody comes back with more detail.
	Otherwise, I'd just be jerking off.
	Yeah, I mean, the fantasy element may not be too bad in that you really don't want to be doing it while you're actually staring at someone.
	It could be, you know, particularly on the bus, kind of unsettling.
	So another question, you know, people are surprised sometimes because every now and then somebody calls in with a dream.
	And I have, you know, I'm sure people know, come from a very artistic perspective.
	Background.
	I was in theater school.
	I wrote novels and plays.
	I acted, did Shakespearean leads and so on.
	So I have worked a lot with the juicy man meat of deep brain creativity throughout my life.
	And of course, I did a lot of work on dreams when I was going through my never ending continues journey.
	A phase of self-knowledge.
	So when people call in and ask about dreams, it fires up my metaphor center and we talk about those.
	And I find dreams to be, I guess the Freudian phrase is the royal road to the unconscious.
	I think that they are very powerful and I think that there is an element very deep within our brain that escapes culture.
	And I don't mean jazz.
	I mean like the things that we are told about the world that aren't true.
	You know, the things that we're told about the world that aren't true There's two words that tend to try and pretty up the lies.
	One is called culture and the other is called faith.
	And there's a part of our brain deep down that remains immune to those things, which is why very few people jump off buildings, with apologies to the previous caller for the analogy, but they don't jump off buildings and wait for the hand of God to hold them up.
	You know, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition is what people generally tend to work with.
	And so I think there's a part of the brain that escapes programming, and I think that part of the brain also tends to work in dreams and tries to wake us up.
	Dreams try to wake us up from cultural, religious indoctrinations, nationalism, all the nonsense that passes for I think dreams are fantastic, and there's a lot that we can learn from them.
	But people, it kind of blows their mind, you know, because we go from talking about Austrian economics to what is the panther doing in my bed.
	But what are your thoughts about dreams and their value, Daniel?
	Did you use them at all in your therapy?
	Do you find them to look at them and to try and examine their content to be of value?
	Yeah.
	I write about that, or have written about it a fair amount.
	I mean, I spent...
	Probably, oh, I don't know, seven or eight years every night writing down my dreams.
	I had my computer set on Hibernate, kept it right next to my bed, and I would just wake up often two or three times in the night and write down my dreams.
	I'd write them down.
	I would analyze them immediately upon having them, and I got kind of trained in doing that.
	And then I'd wake up in the morning and then do a really in-depth analysis the next morning.
	And what was amazing, what I found, is how I'd wake up in the morning and And wouldn't even really remember that I'd written down my dreams.
	And there would be 2,000 words of dreams and analysis written down that I was basically in a mostly asleep state when I wrote it down.
	And then I would just be reading these dreams and it would bring back memories that I totally forgot that I'd even had the dream.
	And I found a great value in it.
	I spent every day a lot of hours doing dream analysis.
	And I felt it really...
	Got me in touch with knowing myself and being profoundly honest with myself about what my deeper issues were.
	And yeah, dreams are all just a big metaphor for what's going on under there.
	And sometimes the metaphor is pretty obvious, and sometimes it's a little less obvious.
	And I also think dreams can mean a lot of different things.
	They can be metaphors for a lot of different things going on.
	But I found them incredibly helpful.
	I grew a lot as a result of studying my dreams and analyzing them and making sense of them.
	And as a therapist, yeah, I certainly had people who brought in their dreams, and I worked with them on their dreams.
	But I think that it's all context-specific.
	So I feel like before I would get into really analyzing somebody's dreams, I would want to really feel confident that I knew that person and knew their history pretty well, because the dreams are happening on so many levels.
	For instance, that last woman who just called in, Loretta, I was hesitant to give I probably said more than I wanted.
	And I was hesitant to say too much because I really don't know her situation.
	I don't know her family's situation.
	I don't know her brother's situation.
	So I was trying to speak in generalities to a degree because it's like there really can be so many contingencies with You know, human history and family systems and culture.
	But it's the same way with dreams for me, is that I'm not too quick to go and jump into analyzing anybody's dreams until I feel confident that I know them very well.
	And yeah, sometimes people can tell me just a little bit about them and tell me a dream, but there's just so many things that are going on.
	Even for myself, it's like, I mean, I literally, I must have analyzed 10,000 of my own dreams more.
	I really don't know.
	I never counted.
	But I have Tens of thousands of pages of dream analysis that I've done of myself and I still feel like I don't always know what the heck is going on in my dreams.
	Sometimes I can go back to a dream that I had five years ago and look at it and see the analysis.
	And it's a very interesting analysis.
	And I'll say, well, maybe it really was totally off and it meant this.
	But I do feel, yes, dreams are, as you put it, that Freud quote, the royal road to the unconscious.
	And so it's a great way to get to know oneself.
	Though I do know people who don't remember their dreams.
	And I don't think that that's...
	That should stop them from being able to get to know themselves.
	It's just one tool because I think anything in anyone's life, anyone's relationships, anyone's thoughts, anyone's fantasies, what a person is doing, what their fears are, all these things are also part of the royal road to the unconscious and can tell what's going on.
	The basic thing is following somebody's feelings.
	Whatever a person's feelings are really tell what's going on on the inside and that's the strand to follow.
	So I think a big part of following It's not just the intellectual metaphors that are coming up, but the feelings that are going on within them.
	Oh, good.
	Somebody just posted in the chat window.
	You probably talked about all this anyways, because I don't think I said anything that was particularly revolutionary there.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, look, don't worry, but this is a show where we don't tell people what to do, because of course there are those incredible limitations of the internet medium and the Somebody just wrote, I've introduced my aunt and uncle to Free Domain Radio.
	They're here listening with me.
	Hello, auntie.
	Hello, uncle.
	I hope that you are enjoying.
	You know, I never know what to call it.
	The conversation, the show, you know, I just don't want to confuse with the Rockettes or anything like that, but...
	Somebody has asked, suggestions on how to begin a conversation with your family about childhood experiences without them shutting down.
	Ah, yes.
	Plucking the jewel from the temple in Indiana Jones conversation.
	This person says, I've tried to broach the topic many times, but the conversation tends to always stay in the abstract.
	I don't want to force the issue because knowing my family, this will just end the conversation.
	How do I get them to open up personally about topics I know that's something that people in this field never get asked, so I thought for the very first time...
	Of course, it's a common question because it is, of course, such an important question that so many people are wrestling with.
	What are your thoughts on it?
	It's a great question.
	I think...
	Well, it's funny.
	I'm soon going to start working on a book.
	I wrote a draft of a book last year and I have to really get it ready for publication, but it's basically on people divorcing their parents.
	So it's in a way the exact opposite of this question.
	But I think it's a wonderful thing to try to get information out of one's parents because they know all sorts of stuff.
	It's a question of how much they're really going to tell.
	So I think part of it goes against a lot of the things that I feel about my parents right now, which is I don't want anything to do with them.
	So I think a lot of it is building a relationship with them.
	It's like, how does one get information out of anyone?
	It's win their trust and get close to them.
	Be calm about it.
	Be gentle.
	Respect their terrors.
	Respect their denial.
	I do think a lot of it really is when people trust This is beyond just parent-child relationships, but when people trust, they'll talk.
	When people feel safe, they'll talk.
	When they feel comfortable, they'll talk.
	I think using any sort of interactive skills that help people feel comfortable make people more likely to talk.
	Being really empathic, being understanding.
	There's ways to bridge Please tell me about the horrible things that happened to me in my childhood.
	It might be a little bit of a leap for some people at first.
	It is.
	People don't want to talk about it.
	So I think that there's halfway topics that can be safer, talking about other personal kind of things, edging closer to it.
	For anybody, talking about this stuff is like building a muscle.
	Building a relationship is like strengthening a muscle also.
	I think also people want to get information quickly.
	It doesn't mean that their parents necessarily have that ability.
	Right now, it might take a while.
	This might be an investment of several years to get closer to it.
	I think, in general, pushing them doesn't work.
	Attacking them doesn't work.
	Threatening them doesn't work.
	Ultimatums don't work.
	Oh, I'll be blunt.
	I mean, I've heard stories of people saying, yeah, I couldn't get anything out of my dad except when he gets drunk and then he'll talk.
	I've heard people, so they've gone to the bar with their dad and waited until he gets drunk and then asked questions and then he'll talk and sleep it off.
	I know Sometimes people's parents won't talk until one of the parent dies and the other one is still left alive.
	And so sometimes parents are protecting each other.
	Sometimes parents have to wait until their own parents die before they feel comfortable to say anything about their past.
	So a lot of times it's just patience.
	But I know, gosh, I heard one story about a woman A woman who tried to kill herself.
	She was an older woman in her 70s, and she called her son into the hospital.
	He went to visit her, and while they were in there, she admitted that the reason she tried to kill herself was all sorts of stuff she'd never told him about his childhood.
	And so, literally, she was extremely ill, and had almost died, and then tried to kill herself to avoid the conversation, and then finally realized she just needed to have it to get it off her chest.
	And...
	At one level, I'm not at all sympathetic for parents.
	If I'm taking the side of the child, I really just don't care about the parents because I feel like I'm on the child's side and I want the child to do whatever they need to get the best out of life and to grow.
	But also, I'm also very able to recognize easily that parents are just traumatized children themselves.
	It's like dealing with a traumatized child.
	How do you deal with a traumatized child to build a relationship?
	So that's how I think, if you really want information from your parents, treat your parent like a traumatized child.
	So that's it.
	It might sound contradictory to a lot of what I say, but it's just very practical, I think.
	Yeah, I mean, I would say that a parent is like a traumatized child, with the exception that the traumatized child usually hasn't abused other children, and so there's the additional weight of guilt over and above the hurt, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, of course.
	That's why it sounds like it contradicts my point of view, but this is why it's just specifically...
	Looking at them that way as a means to an end.
	But in the bigger picture, whose side am I on?
	I'm on the child's side.
	If they want to break up with their parents, fine.
	I couldn't care less about the parents.
	Because once people traumatize a child that they've created They're culpable.
	It's done.
	But I'm only talking about parents as a traumatized child and to treat them that way as a specific means to an end for someone who asked the question of wanting to get information out of their parents about talking about the past, talking about their childhood, talking about these things.
	That can sometimes really help.
	I'll say specifically, I got a huge amount of information out of my mom.
	She got sober.
	She was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
	She got sober when I was 22 and got into AA. Her first year or so being in AA, she was wildly open and maybe even two years.
	She told me a ton of stuff in those first couple of years because she was very vulnerable and she was really open.
	I learned a huge amount.
	I learned about the affairs she'd had.
	I learned about the affairs my dad had had.
	I learned about her being abused as a child and this weird sexual stuff that happened with her parents.
	I learned about her horrible history of neglect.
	I heard about her terrible drug abuse history.
	She admitted to me that she had hepatitis C from shooting drugs before I was born.
	I had to go get tested for hepatitis C. I could have killed her.
	I never knew any of this.
	I was in my 20s.
	I was 23, 24 years old when she was telling me this stuff.
	I actually lived with her for part of that time.
	It was very, very helpful.
	During that time, I really wasn't angry at her almost at all.
	Later, when I moved out, I was really mad because I put all the pieces together in my head and realized what an absolutely horrible person she was for having done what she did to me.
	During the time when I was in information gathering and getting a ton from her about my history that was vital, I was totally bonded with her.
	That was very valuable as a means to an end.
	I wasn't thinking about it consciously then.
	At that point, I just wasn't particularly mad at her.
	I saw her as an ally.
	But later when I did the math on a deeper emotional level, I was like, this fucking woman is an enemy.
	She really, really destroyed me in a lot of ways.
	But I was very glad for that time of getting that information because later it was very useful to me.
	I didn't know all of that, Daniel.
	I mean, I knew some of it, but again, just wanted to...
	Wow, that is a wretched mess to deal with, and I'm sorry that the evil stalk of happenstance happened to drop your infancy on the lap of such people.
	I'm really...
	Oh, listen, it gets a lot worse, Stefan.
	That was not even the thumbnail sketch.
	I mean, like, they really did horrible things to me.
	And they, like, you know, that's...
	They were people who...
	Basically, as I say, and by the way, I know parents that are a heck of a lot worse, but they did a lot of horrible stuff.
	I came by whatever abuse I got by them.
	When I talk about being traumatized, I got it.
	They were bad.
	They did a lot of bad stuff.
	There are other things that, you know, in sort of the...
	I feel like we're giving spy lessons or something, you know, how to get information out of people to whom the information is costly.
	And so the one thing you can do is...
	I think it's totally fair.
	I think it's fair to be able to strategize to get what they want from their parents later, because...
	I mean, I think their parents should just give it willingly, but if they don't, get it.
	Figure out how to get it out of them.
	I mean, within reasonable, respectful means.
	Yeah, I mean, we definitely do not advocate waterboarding here.
	So one thing that I found helpful is you can ask parents about...
	They're childhoods with no overt agenda of finding out about your own childhood.
	If you get a portrait of your parents' childhood, what it's like, it's like, I mean, when you look at your own childhood without looking at your parents' childhood, it's like looking at a painting of a forest with no background.
	It's just some bare trees and white space.
	Sorry, I'm thinking a different thought.
	Can you repeat what you just said?
	Yeah.
	If you try to get information about your own childhood without trying to get information about your parents' childhoods, it's like looking at a painting or a picture of a forest without any background at all.
	Like it's just a bunch of trees and white space between them.
	There's no context.
	There's no depth.
	And it's not a full picture.
	And in fact, it can be sort of a misleading picture.
	So I would ask my mother about her childhood.
	You know, overtly saying, and it's a fact on my childhood or whatever, right?
	So hearing about her experiences during the Second World War in Germany, the bombings and the death of her own mother in the firebombing of Dresden and the time when she had to cozy up to a Russian tank commander in order to get him to not shoot up the the bombings and the death of her own mother in the firebombing of Dresden Shoot up the town with his tank.
	I mean, the things that she had to do, I mean, just wretched, horrendous environments that I, you know, can't imagine really very well.
	But you can get a lot of information about what happened to your parents just by asking them without it being a fact-finding mission to find out about your own childhood.
	So that's one thing that you can...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I agree.
	I have an idea.
	I don't want to lose it, but go on.
	No, no.
	I've got my second thought in the back burner, so go ahead.
	Okay, because there was something I wanted to kind of disagree with what you're saying about that analogy of if you don't get the history of your parents, then basically the picture is going to be Very limited.
	There's not going to be a context for it.
	And it might even be a distorted picture.
	I actually think that deep down in our unconscious, we know the entire history of our own childhood.
	We know it all.
	We know it all.
	Completely true and accurate.
	It's just a question of resolving our traumas enough to be able to see it clearly.
	And I think that we don't really...
	We don't need...
	To hear from our parents what the heck happened to us.
	We know it.
	We just have to be able to access it.
	And it's getting through all that terrifying stuff to be able to find it.
	That's part one.
	Part two is that if we want to find out what all those trees are like in the background of that picture, if we really want to know the context of our parents' childhood and what really they went through, all we have to do is look at what they did to us.
	And that'll tell us really basically at basic all we really need to know about what happened to them.
	And it'll be just as accurate because what they did to us is what happened to them and what they were never able to resolve.
	So I think from that angle, we really don't need to hear anything from our parents.
	We don't need to get their history.
	On the other hand, it's incredibly valuable to hear it.
	It has been for me.
	And I put a huge amount of effort into getting both of my parents' histories, getting the histories of my uncles and aunts.
	Thankfully, I had grandparents alive.
	Well into my 30s.
	My last grandfather only died a year ago.
	He was 99, almost 100.
	And I got his history from him.
	I got my grandmother.
	She died at 96, and she was lucid to the end.
	Got her history in depth.
	I mean, I know my family's history, the real people back into the 1850s.
	What that did for me, getting that family history, what it was was corroboration.
	And so it's kind of like doing a math problem in different ways.
	It's like checking my own work.
	And I think the two can work together very well.
	But the bottom line is, the real truth is within us.
	We know the truth.
	And we can feel it.
	Then hearing from my parents and having them tell it, it adds another dimension to it.
	But all it at best really does is corroborate what happens to us.
	Because the other thing is we can know our history totally well, but if we don't feel what happens to us, it's not really of that much use to us.
	We have to be able to feel it within and know it within ourselves.
	And that's where the internal healing process is.
	It's an internal job.
	So that's just what I wanted to say.
	When you were talking about that picture analogy, because that's kind of how I flesh out that analogy.
	But that's all I wanted to say, and so now I'm curious to hear what your second part was, and sorry for cutting in there.
	No, listen, I mean, much though I love the metaphor, I think that you're absolutely correct, and I'm not, because I think you're right.
	Of course, even if we don't get information, we can get the inner history of our parents by looking at their actions towards us.
	So thank you for a truly great correction, and I think I was seduced by the pleasure in the metaphor.
	So yes, listen to what he said, because I think that's a much better way of looking at it.
	So the second thing around getting information from parents Or anyone, really.
	The one thing that Socratic reasoning or philosophical thinking or critical thinking is really great at is in helping to break down defenses.
	I mean, in general, I think if you can't break down defenses, you – and breakdown sounds like a really aggressive thing, you know, shouting at people in the corner or whatever.
	I don't mean that.
	At all, it can be very gentle, and it can involve significant curiosity, but Socratic reasoning is fantastic for that, and, you know, I think the intersection of self-knowledge and philosophy is a very fertile ground.
	It's somewhat underexplored.
	You know, the greatest people in psychology tend to have not had philosophical training, and the people who've had philosophical training tend not to have done a lot of self-knowledge work, but I think the intersection is really fruitful.
	So, for instance, you know, parents will say, let's leave the past in the past.
	Let's not bring up the past.
	Let's whatever.
	Let's move on and so on.
	And one of the things – that is a principle, right?
	And if you make that into a principle, then it becomes universal because they're not claiming it's my preference, but it's a good thing to leave the past in the past.
	It's no point going back to dig up the past.
	In which case, if they themselves have acted in contradiction to the principle that they're claiming, that's a useful thing to point out.
	Again, not with the goal of cornering them and saying, aha, you hypocrite, but just to say, well, okay, if leaving the past in the past is so important, why do you keep bringing up the past in these areas?
	I'm just curious how that works with the principle.
	And if they then say, "Wow, I said this to you, but I do the opposite somewhere else.
	I wonder why," then you can be in a conversation which is moved past the initial dismissal of the question with some sort of usually moral or pseudo-moral defense.
	And so I think that comparing the principles that are brought up by parents in the moment with their prior actions and looking for ways in which those contradicted each other, as they almost inevitably will.
	That can be very fruitful in helping them to understand that what they're saying is not how they're acting, and therefore it's more likely to be a defense, and you can move past that, I think, with some dignity.
	That's interesting.
	Yeah, yeah, good points.
	I like that.
	All right.
	Do we have – I don't think we have any callers.
	James, do we have – if you'd like to read off any other questions that we have, Don LeRum of Chatting?
	Sure.
	Do you have the questions that I sent to you earlier?
	We don't have any other callers at the moment.
	Well, it's fantastic that we've answered everybody's questions forever.
	That's quite a good show.
	Yeah, it's so satisfying when that happens.
	Oh, sorry, another thing that parents will say, just while I'm looking that up, another thing that parents will say is, and you'll hear this from a lot of people, we did the best we could with the knowledge that we had.
	Yeah, well, that's a very interesting statement, right?
	So the question then is, why do we ever fail children in an exam?
	I mean, they are doing the best they can with the knowledge that they have.
	So we should never mock children down for failing to get math or science or biology questions wrong.
	And also, children should never be faulted because children are doing the best they can with the knowledge that they have.
	Right.
	punished for not doing things correctly, then your parents can't logically claim as a principle we were doing the best we could with the knowledge that we had because they punished a child for failing that standard and then they can't claim that standard for themselves when they get older.
	I mean it's the basic philosophical ethical thing.
	I wish I had a better word for it, a thing, which is that you simply cannot conceivably have higher moral standards for children than you have for adults.
	I mean, that would be an insane standard to have.
	And so parents can't claim – and again, this doesn't mean jump all over their throats or whatever, but this is something that just has to be dismantled.
	They can't claim, well, we were just doing the best we could with the knowledge that we had.
	Because, you know, you say, well, when I was a kid, if I had a spelling bee, you said you need to prepare for it.
	If a math test, you need to prepare for it.
	And if you don't prepare for it and you do badly, then you need to do better.
	And what's more important?
	A spelling bee or a math test when I was in grade four or how to raise your children in a peaceful, productive, and loving manner?
	Can I ask you a question?
	Sure.
	It's one that I think about sometimes.
	I'm wondering if you could answer it simply.
	That's very optimistic, but I will try.
	At what point do people become responsible for their actions?
	And how do you define why they should be responsible for their actions if you think people should ever be responsible for their actions?
	To me, and I can't give you a simple answer.
	As a 24-year-old, as a 48-year-old, that's my...
	No, I think you're responsible for your actions when you begin using moral rules on other people.
	What do you mean?
	In a very specific way, you are responsible for the moral rules that you inflict on other people.
	That's where you gain responsibility.
	So somebody who has mental retardation or is developmentally handicapped in some manner, they're not going to use moral rules to manipulate other people.
	I mean, they're just not.
	So you would never give them responsibility.
	Somebody who is suffering from some sort of psychosis or who has temporary insanity is not doing what he's doing by inflicting moral rules on other people.
	He's just maybe lashing out or driving a car off a cliff or something like that.
	But the moment that you start using moral rules to influence the behavior of other people...
	I mean, manipulative sounds bad, like people just using ethics to manipulate, which I think is depressingly common, but...
	The moment that you start using moral rules on other people, then you have moral responsibility because you know what ethics are, you know that they're universal, and you're using them to influence the behavior of others.
	And if you quote a law, you are subject to the law.
	That's really, I think, where responsibility lies.
	So if parents inflict moral rules upon their children or – I don't know what's a nicer way.
	If they encourage conformity to universal standards on the part of their children, then they are in a much greater fashion subject to those universal rules, whatever those rules are.
	Share, be nice, don't hit, don't yell, don't use violence to get what you want.
	Don't be aggressive, don't be selfish, don't listen to your – whatever it is.
	So whatever moral rules are being imposed upon children, the parents are then morally responsible for adherence to those rules.
	Because, of course, if you inflict moral rules that you never intend to follow, that's a truly nasty manipulation that I think has some of the most far-reaching consequences.
	Because moral rules, being universal, tend to really go deep into the brain, which is why they say, you know, once a Catholic, all was a Catholic kind of thing.
	So, does that help?
	It's a great answer.
	It's given me a lot to think about.
	So, basically, it's...
	As soon as someone...
	What you're saying is...
	You feel as soon as somebody knows that something is wrong, as soon as they know it, then they're subject to it.
	And that's when they become a show.
	No, sorry.
	Not if they know it, because that's not verifiable.
	Again, I'm a rabid empiricist.
	Yeah, if they use ethics to influence other people, then they are subject to those ethical norms.
	I'm sorry, could you just repeat?
	Doesn't that kind of presuppose that they know it though?
	For them to start applying it to other people means they have to at some level feel it and know it.
	Well, yeah, so if I impose a moral rule on you, then I'm imposing it not as a personal willpower of mine, Daniel, it's morally good that you love chocolate chip ice cream.
	I mean, that would be a silly statement, right?
	So the moment that I'm using ethics and imposing ethical standards upon you, I'm claiming to be an impartial delivery messenger of a universal standard.
	And if I'm saying that you are subject to this universal ethical standard, the very fact that it's universal means that I must be subject to it, too.
	And the fact that I'm bringing it to you means that I'm more of an expert in it than you are, which is what parents claim to be with their children.
	Of course, children...
	Let me ask you this.
	Go ahead.
	I'm thinking of...
	I've had the chance to work with some people that sexually abused young children, and some of them don't feel it's wrong.
	They feel like, well, you know...
	I've even heard people say, I wish someone had sexually abused me when I was little because I really was looking for that.
	Or somebody did sexually abuse me and it was fine and therefore I don't think it's the wrong thing to do and I think it's okay if other people do this and they feel like it's fine that they're doing it.
	According to that principle you just described, they are really not responsible then.
	Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that because the question is – because the act of sexual abuse, of course, as you know, has horrendous physical consequences and violation of space consequences and sexual trauma.
	But one of the things, of course, that it does, as abuse always, always tends to do, is it isolates.
	And the reason it isolates is you basically have to convince your victim to shut the hell up about what you're doing to them.
	But I mean, I agree with all that.
	I mean, I think it's wrong, of course.
	No, sorry.
	No, I agree with that.
	Let me just finish the thought.
	So first of all, you basically have to tell other people to lie, and then you have to say that lying is good.
	But at a more universal way, the person who sexually abuses a child is saying that the satisfaction of my wants is the good.
	And, of course, the problem with universalizing that is that sexual abuse is not something the child wants.
	And so you can't universalize the satisfaction of wants when it conflicts with the satisfaction of other people's wants.
	So they would have, I think, a tough time because they would basically have to say – you would have to ask them, is lying wrong?
	And they would – I mean, unless they're just going to go completely to say whatever they want.
	If they're going to say that – That lying is, you know, it's better not to lie.
	It's better to be honest, you know, if somebody asks you a direct question.
	Well, then they've contradicted that by making the other person not tell the truth, the victim not tell the truth about their predation.
	And then you could explore, right, the satisfaction of wants issue, right?
	So you, it satisfies your need for power, control, sexuality, whatever, at the hands of an innocent, helpless child.
	So what is the principle behind that?
	How is that justified?
	And almost inevitably, somebody will come up with a justification for it.
	And the moment that somebody comes up with a justification for it, it has to be something that's universal.
	And in that case, it's broken by the predation upon the child.
	There's ways of sort of exploring and examining it, though I certainly agree with you.
	I mean, there are some people who will say spanking children is...
	I mean, a depressingly large number of people will say that spanking children is really good and effective and positive.
	And so you say, well, are they morally responsible?
	Well, yes, because you can universalize that.
	So they say, well, why do you spank children?
	Well, children's brains are immature, and the best way to train an immature or under-functioning brain is to spank it.
	And then you say, okay, so when you get older...
	Oh, parents, and you start to become forgetful, as aging brains tend to do, are your adult children allowed to spank you to help you remember where you left your keys or your glasses or your wallet or whatever?
	And they will say, well, no!
	That's not allowed, right?
	It's okay.
	Well, so you have an under-functioning brain relative to your children, your adult children, but they're not allowed to spank you.
	So spanking based upon an under-functioning brain is not valid, is not a valid way of getting somebody to learn better.
	And so this is just how you would explore the moral question with them and get them to really understand that All of their moral reasoning is an ex post facto justification for what they had an impulse to do in the moment.
	It's not just a simple thing.
	Usually it's more complex.
	That was a great example.
	Can I cut in?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It still sounds like it's a bit subjective to me, what you're saying.
	I'm just curious.
	You're basically saying someone who's mentally retarded and doesn't know They could—it doesn't know what they're doing.
	They don't have the whatever it takes to know that it's wrong or something like that.
	They could not be held responsible.
	But it seems to me— Well, yeah, I mean, the test to me would be if they did not inflict moral standards upon others, then— Right.
	They could not be held to those moral standards themselves.
	How else would you know whether they understood anything about morality?
	I guess you could ask them questions or whatever, but they might be just answering based upon how they feel that day.
	But the way that you know if somebody understands morality is that they use morality in their personal relationships.
	And once you start to look for this stuff, you see it everywhere.
	where people are always trying to put universal standards on others to attempt to modify their behavior.
	And that's where they gain their moral responsibility.
	I'm trying to think of an example of someone who doesn't because some of the some of the exceptions you gave are someone who is like so psychotic or something like that, that they wouldn't know.
	But my experience is, I mean, I know a lot of like, certainly, people who are psychiatric survivors who have been psychotic, they're all for holding people responsible for their actions when they're insane.
	And they say, don't bring them to the mental hospital, put them in jail.
	They're responsible.
	They beat someone up, they go to jail.
	It doesn't matter how nuts they were.
	And so I Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry.
	You're bringing another factor in, though.
	I appreciate it.
	It's great.
	You're bringing jail into the conversation, which is not quite the same as moral responsibility.
	I mean, you can violate moral standards without going to jail, and you can go to jail without having violated moral standards.
	So you may want to – somebody may have no moral responsibility.
	And still be an incredibly dangerous predator, in which case you would put them in some sort of confined area.
	I don't know in a free society what it would look like.
	We call it jail for now.
	But you wouldn't do that because they were morally evil.
	You would do that in the same way that you would quarantine someone for being sick or in the same way that you would lock up a rabid dog, not because the dog is morally evil, but just because they're a dangerous predator to have in the environment.
	Nicely said.
	Yeah, you got me there.
	Because I actually think this whole idea of jail, the way that jail is looked at as a moral punishment is completely idiotic.
	So you're right.
	And I was getting into a side topic and you nailed it.
	I guess I still just don't feel totally satisfied with this idea of when do people become responsible?
	And what is the cutoff?
	And I know...
	You described it well, but I guess you undid some of my exceptions.
	And the example of spanking, that was a good one.
	Did someone want to be spanked when they're getting old, even if they think it's okay to spank kids?
	Hmm.
	I wonder.
	Well, are there examples where you think a five-year-old could be held responsible for punching another kid?
	Do you know what I mean?
	Oh, yes.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	No, absolutely.
	So, let's take a five-year-old.
	And then it comes down to what does responsibility mean?
	I guess maybe that's even the deeper question that I'm after.
	Because, yes, I do think five-year-olds can know what they're doing.
	I think two-year-olds can know what they're doing.
	Yeah.
	A lot of times, they know...
	They're not following the golden rule, basically, of doing unto others what they would like to do unto them.
	Let's take the example of a five-year-old who has a three-year-old brother, and the five-year-old gives a stern lecture to the three-year-old brother when the three-year-old brother has a popsicle and says that it's really important for brothers to share.
	Right, and then won't share himself.
	And then he won't share himself.
	Well, now he's morally responsible for that, right?
	Right.
	As a father myself, I'm having these conversations with my daughter all the time about the standards that she imposes, the standards that she subjects herself to, and noting that it is a human instinct, I believe.
	I don't know, it's hard to get.
	Conversations about human nature are always so tricky and slippery.
	I think that it's almost inevitable for people to attempt to create standards to control other people's behavior and then to exempt themselves from those selfsame standards, right?
	So if I can convince my little brother that he should share his popsicle, I get popsicle and then I'm going to change my tune when I get my popsicle so that I get to keep more of my popsicle.
	I mean using ethical arguments is such a great way to get resources from people that it's almost inevitable for people to try.
	But yeah, so yes, I can absolutely believe and accept that a five-year-old has moral responsibility.
	I mean, the correction for it is significantly different than it would be for an adult, of course.
	But yeah, the moment you sort of pick up the sword, then you're part of the combat, so to speak.
	Right.
	An interesting word that you used, the correction for it, because I think that is the deeper question I'm getting at.
	What does being responsible mean?
	What is the appropriate action for other people or society or friends or parents or children to take siblings?
	And so that, I guess, is what I'm actually getting at, probably.
	That's the deeper question, is if someone is responsible, Responsible to use that nebulous kind of word.
	Let me ask you this then, just a specific question.
	How do you define responsibility?
	What does it mean?
	Well, responsibility is the infliction of responsibility.
	That's what being responsible is.
	The moment that you inflict responsibility on other people, you have to accept it yourself.
	Let's say the moment a parent punishes a child, then the parent is accepting universal morality, the parent is accepting moral responsibility, and the parent is accepting negative consequences for violations of universal standards.
	I mean, so if you inflict responsibility on others, then you are responsible because you've held it up as a value.
	You know what it means.
	You know who it applies to.
	You're an expert in the subject and so on, right?
	Right.
	And yes, and I do think people have a right to protect themselves and maybe society has a right to protect itself, one could argue.
	But it's like, what is the...
	What is then, therefore, the responsible action for others when someone is violating, is responsible for...
	Ooh, ooh, I know this one.
	Ooh, I know this one.
	Can I, can I, can I? Please, I'm very curious.
	Yes, you in the back with your hand in the air.
	Can I just, I'll just take a very brief swing at this and then, again, I'll leave it to your judgment as to whether it's valuable or not, but...
	Yeah, yeah, I'm curious.
	So, there are people, when you bring hypocrisy to their attention, they are...
	They're just like, oh my goodness, what have I done?
	And this is true of parents as well.
	I mean, I get emails from people all the time who say, you know, my parents spanked me and I brought up this moral spanking argument about when they get old and so on.
	And they're like, wow, I never thought of it that way.
	You put the plug right in the hole.
	I am appalled at what I did because I would be horrified if you did that to me in exactly the same moral circumstances.
	And those people are like appalled.
	What they have done and that to me is integrity.
	We're not responsible for knowledge that we don't have if it's readily available or whatever, right?
	So there are those people who, when you point out that they have used ethics while exempting themselves, particularly when they've used it against children while exempting themselves as adults, I mean, it's pretty wretched.
	So those people, I think, you can really work with and hopefully work to improve the human condition, the quality of the relationship, and all of that kind of stuff.
	But there are other people who will never admit that, who will continue to manipulate, you know, whether it's the one in 25 sociopaths or not, I don't know what the overlap is, but it's probably not too separate.
	But there are those people who will continue to use moral manipulation and as a method for controlling and getting resources out of others and will not feel any guilt or shame or remorse when the hypocrisy of their position is pointed out but will simply change the subject, make up new moral rules and will never admit anything and I think those people you're just always going to be in danger around.
	Right.
	Now it's very interesting the way you've divided it up.
	So it's basically the people who can see the error of their ways They're the ones that you can work with and the people that can't, they're done for.
	Well, can't or won't, who knows.
	But that to me is, you know, it can take a little bit of time.
	I'm generally a big fan of the first 24 hours.
	For me, you know, if you surprise someone with new information, you know, it's not any kind of exact guide, but To me, it's very rare that people say, well, you know, my friend has been denying his moral hypocrisy for three years, but then he woke up one morning and said, oh my goodness, right?
	Because defenses tend to harden, and whatever you defend against, you tend to become better at defending against, not worse.
	So I think the sort of shock of that connection is usually really important at the beginning.
	Over time, I think there's a law of diminishing returns in expecting sudden growth out of people who have been defending themselves against basic propositions for a long time.
	I like it because I don't have to prove anything in the abstract and I don't have to convince people of things that are in their heads.
	You simply, again, as an empiricist, you just have to look at their actions.
	Oh, you've been inflicting moral rules on children.
	Well, you must be infinitely more subject to those moral rules because you're an adult and they're a child.
	You know, their brains are developing and you're the authority figure and you've had lots of time to prepare and you're the adult and you've got a mature brain and all that.
	And this is really one of the great drives of this show is to get people to understand that we cannot have higher moral rules for children than we do for adults.
	And it's something that's almost embarrassing to say.
	It's like going to a clothing designer and saying, you know, you really do have to design clothes for children that are smaller.
	Because you see children are small...
	I mean, it's like weirdly patiently having to explain these basic things to clothing manufacturers and them going, oh, that's ridiculous.
	Children are bigger than adults.
	And it's like...
	It's the same thing in ethics, but it's just one of these things that's really hard because so much of society depends on children having higher moral standards than adults.
	Right.
	That's interesting.
	Or I'm thinking with a clothing designer, probably a...
	Yes, they're smaller, but they're going to grow into their clothes.
	They're going to grow into them.
	This is their responsibility to grow into those clothes.
	Yeah, but they drag their feet and they fall all over the place.
	Well, that's because they haven't grown into them yet, but they've got to learn to grow into them.
	Right.
	And until they grow into them, we're going to keep stretching them.
	Daniel, I think your facility with analogies, you are now the official metaphor wrangler of Free Domain Radio.
	When we have a challenge, we will just ping you on Skype and you will clarify the metaphors.
	So that's a good way of putting it.
	That's all those years of dream analysis.
	It is!
	Seriously.
	I really think those dream analysis, I love analogies because, my God, I saw every single fucked up thing inside of myself in analogy and having to sort it out and realize, ooh, Yeah, I know.
	I think I'm sometimes praised for my fluidity of metaphors, and that simply comes out.
	I mean, it's the same place that generates metaphors and analogies.
	It's the same place that generates the THX nightly experience of your dreams.
	So that's a good thing that you get, I think, of that, get out of that, that going to the place.
	Yeah, and I think everybody is a genius in their dreams.
	Everybody has a genius ability with metaphor.
	I think the more we become comfortable in that world, the more this stuff becomes very easy in the outside world.
	And analogies become a sort of a simple way to look at life.
	Yes, and analogies are incredible for philosophy.
	I mean, a philosopher who I think is completely terrible is Plato, but he has the most incredible metaphors and analogies, like the metaphor of the cave and all the gold, silver, and bronze people in his perfect totalitarian society.
	He's such a brilliant metaphor generator.
	That he has taken a place among the greats simply because he's so compelling.
	So if you can get reason together with metaphor, woohoo!
	I think you've really cornered the progress of the species.
	So yeah, I think people should pay more attention to that.
	So, party's over?
	Party's over, man.
	Great to have you back.
	Listen, you are welcome anytime.
	I just really wanted to remind people you can get Daniel's great DVDs at iraresoul.com.
	I'm really looking forward to the new film.
	If you could let me know when it's out, of course, I'll get them and add them to my collection and maybe we can have a show and talk about it and help promote it.
	It's good to get the SkyFlare publicity out there for whatever it is that you're doing.
	Whatever minor internet muscle I have, I'd like to put behind your activities.
	You're welcome back anytime.
	Thank you for taking the time this morning.
	Great answers.
	Okay.
	I'll be seeing you around the virtual world.
	Take care.
	Remember, Daniel Mackler, on his travels, always needs a couch.
	Feel free to get in contact with him if you have something particularly plush and comfortable.
	Thank you, all of the callers, as usual, for your openness, your honesty, your vulnerability.
	It is a challenging medium to open your heart to because it's not typed.
	It's vocal.
	And so I really, as always, hugely want to express my deep, deep, deep appreciation for you people who make this show really what it is.
	So thank you to the listeners.
	Thank you, James, as always.
	And have yourselves a great week, everyone.
	Thank you, Danny!
	Boy, the pipes are calling.
	Oh, I wasn't going to do that, but then I did.
	Have a great week, everyone.
	Thank you to all the donators.

▲