The Living Philosophy

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm is Professor of Religion and Chair of Science and Technology Studies at Williams College. His books include The Invention of Religion in Japan, The Myth of Disenchantment and Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. He co-founded the journal Metamodern Theory and Praxis with Brendan Graham Dempsey, and is writing Transcendent Machines: Religion and the Philosophy of Technology for Cambridge University Press.In this conversation, I sit down with Jason to explore one of the foundational stories of modernity: that God died, magic vanished, and the modern West became a disenchanted place. Jason traces this narrative back through Schiller's The Gods of Greece and the German Romantics, and much further, to medieval books of magic that already claimed magic was lost, Chaucer's departed fairies, and the Irish fairy farewell. We discuss the romantic spiral, Hegel's negation of the negation, and how Jason's Hegelian reading of postmodern theory, originally titled Absolute Disruption, became Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. Jason tells the story of how the Fukushima disaster, a Kyoto tattoo parlour and an offhand remark about "mystical Asia" exposed the Orientalism at the heart of the disenchantment story, and why so many of its theorists, from Freud to the Vienna Circle, were themselves doing psychical research. We then turn to the new myths of technology: religion as technique, the Denden-gū shrine where Thomas Edison is worshipped as a god of electricity, the AI bubble, and why college should be a gym for the brain. This is a conversation for anyone who has felt the loss of meaning in modern life and wondered whether the story of that loss is itself a myth.🔗 Links- Website: https://sites.williams.edu/jaj1/- Blog: Absolute Disruption: https://absolute-disruption.com/- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/profstorm.bsky.social⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro - Is the death of God a myth?01:00 Did God die, or did meaning pluralise?05:27 Schiller, the gods of Greece and the long foreground of God's death08:35 Chaucer and the fairy farewell: magic has always been leaving09:17 The banshee, pishogues and the electrification of rural Ireland13:42 Magic as always foreign and archaic: from the Magi to Hermes Trismegistus17:36 Pro-Enlightenment Romantics and modernity as always elsewhere20:09 Why does modernity always look west? Hegel and Orientalism23:02 The romantic spiral24:30 Hegel's dialectic: abstraction, negation and the negation of the negation29:24 From Absolute Disruption to Metamodernism: The Future of Theory32:33 Why every road in metamodernism leads back to Hegel36:03 Rebelling against postmodern teachers: is there nothing after Derrida?39:45 Buddhism, Japan and The Invention of Religion in Japan45:23 Fukushima, a tattoo parlour and the birth of The Myth of Disenchantment47:41 But aren't a quarter of us disenchanted?50:58 A real myth: occult disavowal and how disenchantment breeds re-enchantment54:32 The Vienna Circle's psychical research and the cycles of the occult55:43 Transcendent Machines: technology as eschatological promise59:00 Religion as technology: the codex, prayer wheels and techniques of the body1:03:20 How did Thomas Edison become a Japanese god?1:06:54 The AI bubble and the myths we're living through1:13:07 AI in the university: free cheating machines and watermarking1:17:40 Labs for the humanities: college as a gym for the brain1:21:16 Jason's guest recommendations: Ruth Millikan and Andreas Malm1:22:35 Where to find Jason

Peter Ulric Tse is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, currently on sabbatical as a visiting professor at Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall. A Guggenheim and Humboldt Fellow, he studies attention, visual consciousness and volition, and has spent over fifteen years building a naturalistic case for libertarian free will, beginning with The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation (MIT, 2013). He is now two volumes into a trilogy: A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will and Free Imagination (both OUP, 2024), with Re-enlightenment to follow.In this conversation, I sit down with Peter to explore the idea at the heart of Free Imagination: that what makes humans free is not intelligence but imagination, our capacity to model what is not, has never been, and could not be. We start with bonobos sitting miserably in the rain and the Löwenmensch, a 40,000-year-old carving of a lion-headed man, and trace how tool-making may have forged an internal virtual avatar that lets us act in imagination long before we act in the world. Peter takes apart the Libet experiments and the case against free will made by Sapolsky and Gazzaniga, arguing that the real action lies not in split-second choices but in distal, deliberative imagining. We explore the brain's planning and willpower systems, efference copy and schizophrenia, Kundalini yoga, and why lobotomised patients simply stopped acting. Then the conversation turns to culture: whether our imaginations are sovereign, Edward Bernays and The Century of the Self, why some stories grip us from beneath, and Peter Singer's expanding circle. This is a conversation for anyone who suspects the imagination is both our greatest tool and our greatest weapon, and wants to know whether we can learn to wield it freely.🔗 Links- Website: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/peter/- Free MOOC: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBZk0Jl545845TCxtkEbJQ7bTJTqi_HrF⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro - Free will, imagination and the crack in the animal mind00:47 What can we learn from bonobos sitting in the rain?04:37 Defining imagination: our internal virtual reality07:47 The Default Mode Network, daydreaming and the ego11:08 From mental workspace to the Löwenmensch14:27 Hand axes, Homo erectus and the slow birth of imagination17:19 Our greatest tool and our greatest weapon: escaping the reptilian trap22:14 Free Imagination: the internal avatar and the evolution of tool-making24:54 Has neuroscience been barking up the wrong tree?26:54 Libet, the readiness potential and the case against free will32:31 Distal decisions: where free will really lives34:34 Baseball, Sapolsky and learning Spanish: why past imagining still counts38:27 Why volitional attention needs consciousness39:59 Split brains, Gazzaniga and the interpreter43:34 Efference copy and schizophrenia: did I do that?47:14 Planning, priorities and the neuroscience of willpower52:18 Lobotomies, akinetic mutism and the fire in the belly55:57 Ritual, Jung and the gods and madness of the imagination57:52 Breath, Kundalini yoga and training the will1:00:30 Is your imagination sovereign?1:01:56 Edward Bernays, The Century of the Self and propaganda1:04:42 Why do some stories capture us?1:07:49 Peter Singer's expanding circle1:12:24 New religions for an expanding circle1:16:12 The unconscious and the elves in the basement1:18:59 Emotions, desires and cybernetic beings1:21:31 Anagnorisis, storytelling and why Harari is wrong1:24:19 Globalism and the merging of the world's religions1:27:26 Peter's guest recommendations: Carolyn Dicey Jennings and Eddy Nahmias1:28:23 Where to find Peter

Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist whose work sits at the junction of depth psychology, mythology and ecology. Coming from a background in behavioural psychology and neuroscience, she has spent over two decades reinstating imagination and intuition as ways of knowing. She is the author of seven books, including the internationally bestselling If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, which reframed midlife and elderhood as alchemical rather than diminishing. Her latest, Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now, was published in May 2026.She writes the global-bestselling Substack The Art of Enchantment (60,000+ readers), is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Member of the Association of Jungian Analysts, and recently founded the Nostos Institute, which aims to build a living Western spiritual path out of ancient philosophy and depth psychology.________________In this conversation, I sit down with Sharon to explore what it might mean to re-enchant a disenchanted world. We begin with her winding path: from a fiercely behaviourist psychology department, to a PhD in the neuroscience of anxiety, and finally to the imaginal, mythic heart of depth psychology. Sharon gives a crash course in Neoplatonism (the One, the Nous and the World Soul) and traces how James Hillman and Henri Corbin drew on it to describe the imaginal world: a real, intermediary realm where images, dreams and synchronicities live. We dig into the difference between enchantment and magical thinking, why so much Jungian thought stops short of the metaphysics, and how big dreams and synchronicities tend to convert people rather than arguments. We talk about Plato's Myth of Er and the guardian daimon, why Sharon has focused on reclaiming women's stories and the archetypes of the older woman (the Hagitude project), and what her new Nostos Institute is trying to build. Along the way: fairy tales as the antidote to alienation, why young people are turning to Christianity, and whether a screen-bound, precarious, increasingly mechanised world can find its way back to community and the more-than-human world. This is a conversation for anyone who feels the pull of meaning and belonging but can't quite find the door.________________🔗 Links- Website: https://sharonblackie.net/- Substack (The Art of Enchantment): https://sharonblackie.substack.com/________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro - Reinstating imagination as a way of knowing01:01 From behaviourist neuroscience to the imaginal: Sharon's winding path05:59 A crash course in Neoplatonism: the One, the Nous and the World Soul08:55 "Platonism for the masses": Christianity and the problem of institutionalisation12:52 Iamblichus, theurgy and the imaginal world15:51 Soul vs. spirit: the missing piece19:20 Enchantment vs. alienation: Studebaker, Don Quixote and "to sing into"25:41 Magical thinking vs. enchantment: fantasy or participation?29:20 The metaphysics Hillman and Jung left out31:47 What actually converts you: big dreams and the angel cards33:36 Plato's Myth of Er and the guardian daimon36:06 Are women more porous to the imaginal?38:55 Reclaiming women's stories: from Native American writers to Celtic myth43:32 Beyond the hero's journey: Hagitude and the archetypes of the older woman48:41 Inside the Nostos Institute: a Western spiritual path57:47 What "feeling fully alive" actually looks like1:01:11 Why young people are turning to Christianity: precarity and meaning1:11:19 Sharon's guest recommendation: David Abram1:13:16 Where to find Sharon's work

Benjamin Studebaker is a political theorist with a PhD from Cambridge whose work cuts against the grain of almost every revolutionary and reformist story on offer. He is the author of The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut (2023) and Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies (2024).His central claim is that the Western democracies have become "embedded democracies" — systems in which citizens can no longer imagine an alternative worth sacrificing for, and so remain trapped in a low, stable, and deeply frustrating equilibrium.________________In this conversation, I sit down with Benjamin to explore his diagnosis of the chronic crisis at the heart of liberal democracy. We begin with the idea of the "embedded democracy" and the restricted imaginarium left behind by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, before working through why the culture war functions as a manageable — even useful — form of disagreement, one that dissipates energy rather than threatening the order. Benjamin unpacks his distinction between personal and impersonal hypocrisy, his four levels of legitimacy (perfect, full, minimal and liminal), and the concept of "enclavism": the retreat into faith, family, fandoms and futurism when politics feels futile. We range across Don Quixote and quixotic socialism, the Lord of the Rings image behind his book's subtitle, the problem of capital mobility, NATO defence spending and the Americanisation of European politics, and why a networked, nuclear-armed, drone-fought world makes the old theories of revolutionary change look obsolete. It's a sobering, clarifying conversation for anyone trying to understand why our politics feels simultaneously so turbulent and so stuck.________________You can find Benjamin's work at:Website: https://benjaminstudebaker.comAbout / all links: https://benjaminstudebaker.com/aboutSubstack: https://bmstudebaker.substack.com/________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro1:29 What is an "embedded democracy"? Why revolution is off the table3:10 Other kinds of democracy: Poland, Hungary and living memory6:31 Is China a viable alternative? The restricted imaginarium9:55 Ironism: why public culture can't take anything seriously12:12 The culture war as manufactured, manageable disagreement14:52 Fusionism, fragmentation and the collapse of coalitions21:06 Personal vs impersonal hypocrisy in US politics28:25 The material drivers: universities, consumers and producers35:14 "The way is shut": the Lord of the Rings reference explained37:07 Quixotic socialism: acting out a politics without stakes43:14 Enclavism and the four Fs: faith, family, fandoms, futurism46:16 Perfect, full, minimal, liminal: the four levels of legitimacy51:35 Can things get better? The New Deal, the 70s and why we can't go back54:29 Capital mobility: the unsolved problem at the heart of the crisis1:00:00 NATO, defence spending and the Americanisation of Europe1:07:53 In defence of the Westminster system: order over fairness1:11:03 Why reform stalls: lost threats and "middle capitalism"1:19:49 Immiseration and the shrinking sense of the possible1:24:25 Can revolution even happen now? Nukes, drones and integrated economies1:28:11 Where to find Benjamin's work1:28:48 Benjamin's guest recommendations

Georg Northoff is Canada Research Chair in Mind, Brain, Imaging, and Neuroethics at the University of Ottawa's Institute of Mental Health Research, a practising psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and philosopher, and one of the founders of neurophilosophy. Over two decades his work has reframed the brain's resting spontaneous activity — the Default Mode Network — as the primary architect of consciousness and selfhood.He is the author of The Spontaneous Brain, alongside more accessible introductions including NeuroWaves: Brain, Time, and Consciousness (2023) and NeuroPsychoAnalysis (2023).________________In this conversation, I sit down with Georg to explore his spatial-temporal neuroscience — a framework that replaces the mind-body problem with the world-brain relationship. We begin with AI consciousness, move into the Default Mode Network and why depression is a brain running too slowly, his non-dual awareness study with meditators, his critique of Heidegger as still anthropocentric, and Whitehead's process ontology. A conversation that starts with ChatGPT and ends near the edge of what it means to exist.________________🔗 LinksWebsite: https://www.georgnorthoff.comNeuroWaves: Brain, Time, and Consciousness (2023): https://www.mqup.ca/Books/N/Neurowaves2NeuroPsychoAnalysis (2023): https://www.amazon.com/Neuropsychoanalysis-Contemporary-Introduction-Introductions-Psychoanalysis/dp/0367678047The Spontaneous Brain: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262038072/the-spontaneous-brain/________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro — Georg Northoff and the spontaneous brain01:15 Can AI be conscious? The case of temporal synchronisation03:21 OpenClaw, heartbeats, and whether AI is moving towards experience06:00 Temporal windows: how the brain processes a word, a sentence, and a self10:12 The spontaneous brain — why background activity is the game changer13:56 A short history of the Default Mode Network16:29 Time is everything: depression, anxiety, and the speed of neural flow22:07 Self as continuity — why the DMN has the longest timescales29:57 The paradigm shift: from cognitive to temporal neuroscience38:03 Where does self emerge from temporal structure?42:33 Self is more basic than consciousness44:55 Jung, Freud, and cultural imprints in spontaneous brain activity49:11 Non-dual awareness: the meditation study and what it shows51:05 The World-Brain problem — replacing mind-body with a new question56:22 Heidegger and Dasein: existential time, but still anthropocentric1:00:23 The tango: self at the seam of inner and outer time1:02:29 Whitehead's process ontology and the Copernican reversal1:04:37 Why this work resonates more in China and Iran than in the West1:09:13 Guest recommendation: Federico Zilio1:09:59 Where to find Georg's work

Keegan Kjeldsen hosts The Nietzsche Podcast and the Untimely Reflections (essentialsalts) YouTube channel — a deep four-year project working through Nietzsche, his forerunners back to the ancient world, and his afterlives in 20th- and 21st-century thought. He’s also a doom metal guitarist with Destroyer of Light and Slumbering Sun, and the author of The Ritual Madness of Rock & Roll, a memoir-meets-aesthetics inquiry written on the road through Europe.________________I sat down with Keegan to work through his concept of übermodernism — what’s “over and above” modernism, in the same Nietzschean spirit as the Übermensch is over and above man. We trace the history of “the modern” all the way back to Petrarch in the 14th century, work through Nietzsche’s perspectivism and his critique of the genealogical fallacy, and ask where the next modernism is meant to come from. A conversation for anyone tired of fighting over whether Nietzsche belongs to the right, the left, or the postmodernists.📚 I’m hosting the Interintellect book club this Sunday 10th May to work through the third and final essay of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. Tickets: https://interintellect.com/salons/what-is-the-meaning-of-ascetic-ideals-friedrich-nietzsche-on-the-genealogy-of-morality________________🔗 Links🎙️ Untimely Reflections (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@untimelyreflections🎧 The Nietzsche Podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nietzsche-podcast/id1573808070☕ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/untimelyreflections📖 The Ritual Madness of Rock & Roll: https://www.blackrosewriting.com/biographymemoir/p/theritualmadnessofrockandroll________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 James’s Intro01:59 Welcome and opening with Keegan02:41 What is übermodernism? Going over and above modernism05:03 Nietzsche’s perspectivism and the death of objective truth08:14 Nietzsche as the canary in the 20th-century coalmine11:47 When did “the modern” begin? Antiqua, nova and the first modernists13:07 Rousseau’s letter and the first use of “modernist” as a pejorative19:00 Genealogies, lineage and the string of pearls fallacy28:42 Reading Nietzsche on the utility of an organ vs. its origin34:29 Heidegger, Descartes and the “where it all went wrong” move39:59 Nietzsche’s lectures on rhetoric: language is rhetoric, not information43:59 Plato’s win over the Sophists as a sophist’s own move48:59 We Philologists: the Greeks weren’t who you think they were55:59 Petrarch and the birth of “the modern” as an age58:29 Toledo and the Muslim transmission of the ancient texts1:04:29 McGilchrist and the right-and-left hemisphere narrative1:09:59 Machiavelli, humanism and man as the actor of history1:15:29 Beyond correctness: value-for-life as the new test of truth1:22:12 Are we übermodern yet? Great politics vs. petty politics1:29:49 Keegan’s guest recommendations: Studebaker and Möller1:31:29 Where to find Keegan and his next book on Nietzsche’s Hellenism

Dr. Aldrich Chan is a neuropsychologist, psychotherapist and founder of the Center for Neuropsychology and Consciousness. An adjunct professor at Pepperdine University, Aldrich's research on the default mode network, mindfulness and trauma bridges neuroscience with ancient Taoist philosophy. He is the author of Reassembling Models of Reality (2021) and Seven Principles of Nature: How We Strayed and How We Return (2025).________________In this conversation, we explore Aldrich's synthesis of neuropsychology, Taoism and evolutionary mismatch theory — his SAD theory (separation, alienation, discord), the seven principles of nature (CPR WEST), subcortical midline structures and our original experience of connectedness, and what it means to live in alignment with nature.________________🔗 LinksAldrich's website: https://www.drchancnc.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/draldrichanFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/drchancncPodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@drchancncBook: https://geni.us/7principlesofnature________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro - Neuropsychology meets Taoism00:43 Seven Principles of Nature and the CPR WEST acronym03:58 The SAD theory: separation, alienation and discord04:53 The default mode network06:29 The triple network: DMN, salience and central executive10:05 The boat metaphor12:58 Separation as a natural phase15:16 Alienation and evolutionary mismatch theory17:21 Movement mismatch19:09 Social connection as the most obvious mismatch21:07 The agricultural revolution's consequences27:44 Discord and dualism31:01 The nature–culture debate36:23 CPR WEST unpacked39:14 Creativity and uncertainty41:18 Certainty is the death of a question43:55 Vipassana and reframing the stress response45:07 Two stress pathways51:06 Chaos and order52:57 Relationship and neuroecology54:03 Multi-level selection theory57:59 Ego boundary dissolution1:00:58 Subcortical midline structures1:02:04 Jung and archetypes as brainstem activity1:05:28 Jung called himself a Taoist1:06:03 Shadow integration and wholeness1:08:42 Dynamic equilibrium1:12:03 Flow states1:13:52 Spontaneity and play1:18:26 Transformation1:19:52 Wrapping up1:22:05 Where to find Aldrich1:23:14 Guest recommendations

Dr. Erik Goodwyn is a practising psychiatrist with a background in neurobiology who bridges the worlds of neuroscience, Jungian psychology, and fantasy. Erik is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Jungian Studies and has written dozens of academic papers along with books on the neurobiology of the gods, dreams, and archetypes. Last year he published his first fantasy novel, King of the Forgotten Darkness, which won the Literary Titan Golden Book Award.________________In this return visit, we dive deep into who actually creates the dream – the Invisible Storyteller that isn't your conscious self. We explore the neuroscience behind this, discussing the Default Mode Network, Salience Network, and Executive Control Network, and what they reveal about dreaming, meaning-making, and the deeply non-egoic nature of consciousness. Erik shares clinical insights into Dissociative Identity Disorder as evidence of an underlying organising principle, we tangle with what it means for consciousness to be "non-egoic," and we work through his groundbreaking definition of archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory. It's a conversation that challenges everything you think you know about who you are.________________🔗 Links- Erik's website: https://erikgoodwyn.com- Erik's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimaginarium________________⏳ Timestamps:00:00 Intro - The Invisible Storyteller01:39 Greeting and reflections on James's reading03:35 What is the Invisible Storyteller?06:01 Jung's avoidance of reductionism through mythic language08:16 The Default Mode Network and dreaming10:27 The three networks: default mode, salience, and executive control15:27 Memory consolidation, identity formation, emotional regulation, future planning18:29 Is the Invisible Storyteller the unconscious?22:18 Deeper processing independent of conscious ego25:58 Recurrent dreams and the role of conscious engagement28:40 The Invisible Storyteller as meaning-making31:07 Dreams versus storytelling: memory Olympics and metaphor36:58 The role of the right hemisphere and symbolism41:04 The Invisible Storyteller as process or personality?44:18 Dissociative Identity Disorder and organising principles50:33 DID as evidence of an organising intelligence55:43 The specificity of dissociative amnesia58:22 Non-egoic consciousness and emergent properties1:02:14 Consciousness arising from complex systems1:05:44 AI image generation as analogy for dream creation1:10:56 The Invisible Storyteller as personality versus ancestry and genome1:15:32 Jungian vision and updating Jung's theory1:18:40 Archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory1:22:37 Spontaneous thoughts and universal challenges1:25:58 Primary metaphors and innate mappings1:29:20 Danger and darkness as innate mappings1:32:17 Definition of archetype and falsifiability1:34:47 Building on Gary Clark's work and Anthony Stevens1:36:25 Gratitude and future conversations

Adriana Forte is a Brazilian-born writer, facilitator, and developmental thinker currently based in a rural intentional community in Bellingen, New South Wales, Australia. Originally trained as a journalist, Adriana has spent years investigating the intersection of women's cyclical biology, embodied knowing, and the structures of modern life. She runs retreats and workshops through her Substack platform C-Lab (A Lab for a Cyclically Informed Society), and is currently completing a book on the spell of modernity and the role of the matriarch as a force for cultural repair.________________In this conversation, James sits down with Adriana to explore one of the most under-examined questions in contemporary culture: what happens when society is built around a linear, continuous model of productivity — and half the population runs on a fundamentally cyclical one? Drawing on her own journey from Brazil through Hong Kong and India to off-grid life in rural Australia, Adriana maps the hormonal landscape of the female cycle and argues that the oscillation between estrogen and progesterone doesn't just produce moods — it produces a distinct mode of subjectivity, perception, and thought. We explore the cultural erasure of rites of passage, the psychological costs of the contraceptive pill, the wisdom encoded in perimenopause and menopause, and why Adriana believes the matriarch — the post-menopausal woman — may be the missing counter-energy to the relentless forward drive of modernity. The conversation moves through evolutionary biology, embodied philosophy, grassroots community-building, and genuine hope for a more rhythmically intelligent future.________________You can find Adriana's work at:Substack (C-Lab): https://theclab.substack.com/________________⏳ Timestamps:0:00 Intro - Our Bellingen Connection5:41 How Adriana ended up on this journey12:56 Critique of Modernity and Birth Interventions15:23 Rhythms and female psychology24:38 A map of the menstrual cycle39:11 The Influence of Modernity on Women’s Psyche45:59 Transgender and phenomenology of hormones52:01 The oscillating nature of female psychology59:25 The spell of the System on modern psychology1:09:15 The challenge of organising around cyclical society1:15:03 Adriana’s Matriarch Book1:18:43 Where to get more from Adriana1:19:39 Adriana’s Guest Recommendation

Dr. Michael R. Montgomery (PhD, MA, MSc, MSW, LCSW) is an existential psychoanalyst who represents a radical wing of contemporary depth psychology—one deeply influenced by R.D. Laing's anti-psychiatry tradition, phenomenology, and a fierce commitment to humanising extreme mental states. Based between Boston, Massachusetts and having deep roots in post-conflict Belfast, Montgomery positions himself as both clinician and activist, bridging psychoanalytic practice with community healing, peace work, and cultural critique.His signature concept—"psychophobia" (society's fear of the mind and extreme mental states)—anchors a body of work challenging psychiatric medicalisation, advocating for phenomenological approaches that honour lived experience, and reclaiming psychosis, mania, and other "extreme states" as potentially transformative rather than purely pathological._____________In this conversation, Michael Montgomery shares his journey through various philosophical and spiritual traditions, emphasising the importance of bridging Eastern and Western thought in psychotherapy. He discusses the role of silence, community, and personal experience in healing, while also addressing the complexities of faith and human nature. The dialogue explores the concept of psychophobia and the transformative power of music and community in fostering connection and understanding._____________🔗 Links- Michael's podcast: https://psychophobia.com/- Michael's website: https://drmontgomery.com/_____________⏳Timestamps:00:00 Intro00:34 How Michael knows Jon Mills03:04 The art of speaking across ideological lines04:36 Michael's relationship with Buddhism08:00 Existential psychoanalysis09:33 The R.D. Laing lineage12:06 The importance of existential psychotherapy13:02 Michael's experience growing up in the Troubles in Belfast13:43 Michael's quest for answers16:26 Michael's World Record attempt in the silent room21:23 The endurance of spiritual lineages22:38 Why no peace on Earth?26:19 What Buddhism offers27:26 The revival of relationship with Christianity31:43 Does God exist?37:02 What is psychophobia?46:47 The McDonaldisation of healthcare52:12 Michael's disillusion with the mental health system57:21 Plurality: do we have many selves?01:06:41 Michael's experience with dreams and consciousness01:08:53 Elevated states and mental health01:14:35 How dreams can change your perception of reality01:17:08 Voices, language patterns and the nature of psyche01:21:06 Michael's guest recommendation: Ken Wilber01:22:11 Where to get more from Michael