EMMY VAN DEURZEN on Existential Freedom, Psychotherapy & Finding Meaning - Highlights

“As a psychotherapist, I've worked with thousands of people over my 53 years of practice, and I have had to learn to love each and every one of them. There is something about opening your heart and stopping judging and arguing, and listening again, inquiring until you find what is most lovable about another person, and that is a very difficult thing to do. We're all inclined to reject one another, even the people we love. It is very difficult to systematically seek to accord the other respect, your attention, your care, your capacity for appreciating and valuing what is good in them and what is possible for them in the future.”Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, a therapist and a pioneer who has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she came to London in 1977 to work alongside R.D. Laing, only to realize the anti-psychiatry movement had kind of lost its way. She decided to build something new. Today, she's the founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the leading voice of existential therapy in the United Kingdom and founded the Existential Movement.Her work challenges the medical model of mental illness, suggesting instead that our crises are not diseases to be cured but philosophical crossroads to be understood. Her latest book is a distillation of that life's work. Beginning To Live: The Art of Existential Freedom is her first book written for a general audience, offering a guide on how to reclaim our freedom and find meaning in the face of suffering. Emmy van Deurzen, welcome to The Creative Process.(0:00) The Art of Psychotherapy(1:39) AI and Artificial Wisdom(5:40) Practicing Freedom(8:06) Finding Inner Peace Amidst the Ruins(16:19) The Yellow Balloon(22:36) Freedom and the Confrontation with Death(25:31) Multilingual Roots, Language and Translation(32:03) The End of One Love, The Beginning of a Love of the Arts(37:20) The Art of Loving(45:17) The Canvas of Life(48:24) The Purified Essence(1:01:10) The AI Dependency and the Future of Loving(1:10:22) Radical Psychiatry, R.D. Laing, and The Divided Self(1:17:52) Awakening to Beauty(1:24:38) The Art of Living and Existential FreedomEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, a therapist and a pioneer who has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she came to London in 1977 to work alongside R.D. Laing, only to realize the anti-psychiatry movement had kind of lost its way. She decided to build something new. Today, she's the founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the leading voice of existential therapy in the United Kingdom and founded the Existential Movement.Her work challenges the medical model of mental illness, suggesting instead that our crises are not diseases to be cured but philosophical crossroads to be understood. Her latest book is a distillation of that life's work. Beginning To Live: The Art of Existential Freedom is her first book written for a general audience, offering a guide on how to reclaim our freedom and find meaning in the face of suffering. Emmy van Deurzen, welcome to The Creative Process.(0:00) The Paths to Freedom(2:03) Emmy Van Deurzen, Philosopher, Existential Therapist, Author(3:13) AI and Artificial Wisdom(5:03) Practicing Freedom(7:00) Finding Inner Peace Amidst the Ruins(8:39) The Yellow Balloon(11:17) Multilingual Roots, Language and Translation(13:31) The End of One Love, The Beginning of a Love of the Arts(16:11) The Art of Loving(17:30) The Canvas of Life(20:20) The Purified Essence(27:46) The AI Dependency(30:09) Radical Psychiatry, R.D. Laing and The Divided Self(33:48) Awakening to Beauty(37:18) The Art of Living and Existential FreedomEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Chiara Barzini has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?(0:00) Water as Power(2:17) The Necessity of Illusions(4:24) Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water(7:51) The Edge of Apocalypse & Writing(9:10) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying(13:13) Translation and the Creative Spark(14:38) Raising Children in a Crazy World(16:18) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land(18:48) Scents and Sounds of Two Cities (Rome and Los Angeles)(20:43) The Connection with Animals and Nature(22:54) The Evolution of Love and Compassion(24:12) The Memory Museum(27:04) We are in this lifetime togetherEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Well, I think first of all that in order to have disillusion, you need to have illusion and I really want to sort of take a stand in the name of being a delusional person, you know? I do think illusions are necessary to our sense of creativity, and we need to fall in love with extreme projects, and we need to have ideas that are sometimes unsustainable. We need to dream big in order to be creative and feel alive. The illusions that are a part of Aqua are larger illusions. They're illusions that have to do with my adult life. They're connected to nature and the presence or absence of water, the illusion that we can keep sustaining a city even though the water has run out.”My guest today, Chiara Barzini, has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?(0:00) The Necessity of Illusions(1:40) Chiara Barzini, Author, Screenwriter(4:44) The End of Empire and Ecological Anxiety(12:15) The Allure and Cruelty of Capitalism(16:07)   Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water(21:02) Screenwriter Robert Towne and the Legacy of Chinatown(26:20) AI Consumption and Water Bankruptcy(30:23) The Edge of Apocalypse and Bombay Beach(33:41) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying(42:33) Translation and Creativity(44:28) Raising Children in a Crazy World(47:30) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land(57:33) Scents and Sounds of Rome and Los Angeles(01:04:17) The Connection with Animals and Nature(01:07:35) The Evolution of Love and Compassion(01:09:17) The Memory Museum(01:13:00) We Are in This Lifetime TogetherEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“I think that Jews have become extremely solipsistic in a way that is embarrassing. It's very much contrary to the way I was brought up, which was not to talk about yourself, which was to talk about other people and to serve other people. That was part of the heritage that I received from the Holocaust and from my family's background as refugees was, “You're not a refugee. You've got it pretty good. You live in America.” We were very much exhorted against that and exhorted to serve other people and to try to do something good in the world. And so I hope this will be one tiny little part of something that will make a change for the Palestinians.”In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Benjamin Moser about his new book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. A book of immense historical and geographic reach, Anti-Zionism conveys its arguments through the lives of twelve Jewish anti-Zionists. From the 19th century Polish-Jewish rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares to the contemporary photographer and activist Nan Goldin, we learn how Jews have fought against the reduction of the traditional, expansive notion of Jewishness open to and in service to the world, to a form of narrow ethno-nationalism, closed off to all how do not subscribe to its genocidal settler colonial logic. We learn how many of these figures foretold precisely the perpetual cycles of violence Zionism has unleashed. One of the reasons Moser wrote this book is contained in this statement. I offer it as a contribution to the movement by so many noble people who are working to construct an alternative vision of Jewish life, one that is free from racism, nationalism, and militarism. It is an attempt to say, especially to younger people, that we are not the first, and that we do not need to start afresh. (0:00) The Jewish Heritage of Service vs. Solipsism (8:10) Theodor Herzl's Zionist Writings (16:29) The Sensitive Rabbi: Aaron Samuel Tamares (22:16) The Tragic Fate of Jacob Israël de Haan (27:53) Hannah Arendt and the Backlash to Eichmann (41:25) A Spiritual Catastrophe for Judaismwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“It's my past selves that I feel are so intertwined with the experience of moving home and of childhood, that they're inside of us, that they're with us.”Those past selves that the poet Ada Limón speaks of aren't ghosts, they are part of our present. Before we had the words to explain the world, we understood it through the warmth of sunlight, the scent of rain, and the sound of a mother’s voice. Today, we are joined by composers Max Richter and Dustin O'Halloran; biologist David George Haskell; and cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman. We hear from the host of First Voices Radio, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Lincoln Center’s Chief Artistic Officer, Shanta Thake; and photographer Ralph Gibson, who reflect on beauty, childhood and the memories that give their life meaning.(0:00) ADA LIMÓN (24th U.S. Poet Laureate, Startlement) Returning to the Place of Childhood and Imagination (13:05) (19:10)(2:24) TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE (Founder, First Voices Radio) The Virtue of Patience and Connecting with Nature (5:08)(3:45) MAX RICHTER (Oscar & Golden Globe-Nominated Composer, Hamnet, SLEEP, Arrival, The Blue Notebooks) First Musicial Memories (11:34)(6:59) SHANTA THAKE (Chief Artistic Officer, Lincoln Center) Childhood Memories(8:19) DUSTIN O'HALLORAN (Emmy Award-winning Composer, 1001, Silfur, Transparent, Lion) Exploring Soundwaves Underwater (12:23)(9:53) DAVID GEORGE HASKELL (Biologist, Author, How Flowers Made Our World , The Songs of Trees) The Sensory Awakening of Childhood(14:11) DONALD HOFFMAN (Cognitive Scientist) Childhood and the Magic of Nature(16:23) RALPH GIBSON (Leica Hall of Fame Photographer) Vision in Childhood and the Perception of TimeTo hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Things and The Carrying and her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival. (1:45) Silence as the Music of the World(9:17) The Deepening of Roots(13:19) 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'(18:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief(21:02) Singing Back the Wounded World and the Case for Beauty(28:22) Love as an Active Daily Choice(30:38) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation(37:34) Writing Without Music, Listening to the Landscape(40:04) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness(42:51) The Creative Toll of AI(51:29) Embracing the Liberation of a Childfree Life(1:01:06) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity(1:06:44) Interconnectedness of Living BeingsEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“It’s always very interesting that we have to make a case for art because we don’t have to make a case for fast food. Like, we don’t have to make a case for all of these sort of things in our lives that we do not need, and yet we have to make a case for beauty? We have to make a case for the soul? We have to make a case for humanity? We have to make a case for singing back the wounded world? That to me is fascinating”My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Thingsand The Carryingand her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.(0:03) The Case for Beauty  (0:39) About Ada Limón(2:44) The Deepening of Roots(5:01) Reading 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'(6:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief(7:50) The Definition of Beauty and the Dissolving Self(9:41) Love as an Active Daily Choice(11:11) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation(13:28) Reading 'Hell or High Water'(17:01) Writing Without Music and Listening to the Landscape(19:08) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness(21:34) The Environmental and Creative Toll of Generative AI(24:02) AI and the Future of the Arts(25:21) Stewardship, Conservation, and Faith in the Invisible Workers(28:14) The Childfree Daughter(29:57) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity(32:40) The Music of the World(34:03) The Seed of InterconnectednessEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza, and it feels very vibrant and beautiful. In the summer, we really take that plaza and we transform it into a dance floor. So this idea of also interrupting what people’s notion of Lincoln Center is because it’s a space that is very aspirational, which is a great thing.”Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.(0:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center(2:27) Art and the Human Experience(4:40) The Curiosity of Childhood(5:44) Alvin Ailey and the Pivot(8:29) The Invisible Arts(9:06) The Power of Public Theater(17:03) Curation, Programming and the Art of Listening(23:42) San Juan Hill and The Wall(31:23) Art as the Oldest Technology(35:02) globalFEST: Music and Connection(38:20) Finding Universal Belonging(41:20) The Gift of Pause(54:27) A Collective CaretakingEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance."I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent sixteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.(00:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center(03:09) A Collective Caretaking(03:47) The Technology of Human Creation(04:20) The Curiosity of Childhood(09:25) San Juan Hill and The Wall(14:20) globalFEST: Music and Connection(16:06) The Gift of Pause(17:20) A Collective CaretakingEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcastEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast