Today, a conversation with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco about living in the spiritual world. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. It was the Police back in the early '80s that approached the subject of us being spirits in a material world. A typically spare and rhythm driven track that was catchy and infectious. They were an interesting band. But, while they …

Dr. Norberto Keppe, the developer of the psychoanalytical science used by Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco on this podcast, has written extensively about sociopathology, which is the application of psychological conditions to society at large. Quite innovative really. So, as we might analyze an individual's neurotic response to an everyday situation, we c…

We are always, in our programs, trying to get to the psychological and spiritual causes behind our physical and emotional problems. It's a journey that Norberto Keppe's Integral Psychoanalysis is well positioned to embark on Keppe has synthesized Freud's psychoanalytical methodology, Melanie Klein's observations on envy and gratitude, classical Ger…

Our latest podcast initiative is an attempt to create a forum for people to call or write with critical recent or long-standing issues they've never been able to adequately resolve and move on from. Those habits or patterns of response you've never fully understood. You know there's something unresolved moving below the surface that's affecting you…

Are there any of us completely free of what happened in our upbringing? I was joking with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco after the therapy session you're about to listen to about how I was relating to today's client. She's dealing with fear of judgment, and I can relate to that feeling of pressure in social situations. As Dr. Pacheco will discuss to…

Adolescents and their parents. Who doesn't have a story about that? I sometimes wonder how any of us survive our adolescence. And I would extend that as I've gotten older to wondering how our parents survived our adolescence. Premature grey hair is probably the least serious consequence. We are embarking on this journey to discover how the therapeu…

A number of years ago, I initiated a series of call-in shows to deal with real life problems - from new work initiatives to relationship challenges, even to drug abuse, death and suicide. Those everyday situations that hit all of us. Integral Psychoanalysis is the name of the therapy we do form our clinic in São Paulo. And it goes out to the world …

Inversion. It's a recent 20th century discovery by the brilliant Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Dr. Norberto Keppe. 1977 to be precise. So, if you hear about our modern inversion of values, you can be sure that's come into today's lexicon because of years of effort from Keppe and his team, who work tirelessly to bring consciousness o…

Welcome to the, I suspect, final episode in our Healing Through Consciousness series. It'll be the final curtain for this series. Unless I discover more pearls from past programs that are relevant, of course. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and I've been working through old episodes of my Thinking with Somebody Else's Head podcasts and re-editing them int…

Welcome to our continuing Healing Through Consciousness podcast series. Just when you thought it was over. Fitting we'll be addressing death today in Episode 13. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Death. Such a downer, isn't it? The final curtain. The choir invisible. Kicking the bucket. Except it's much more complex than that, don't you think? My sister tel…

Beginning a new series today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head - Therapy for the World. In fact, this is the slogan of our Keppe & Pacheco Trilogical Colleges in Brazil, where we teach the science of Analytical Trilogy developed by Norberto Keppe and Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco. Today, an interview with Susan Berkley, president of the Great Voice…

We’ve been focusing on more specific health situations in our series lately, and we’ll continue that today with an expansive look at eating disorders. You may know someone dealing with this neurosis – it’s all too common today – and you’ll find an abundance of treatments for this – most of them physical and ranging from highly elaborate nutritional…

In the early part of the 20th century, a non-medical educator was hired by the Carnegie Foundation to report on the state of medical education in North America. Abraham Flexner wrote a book concluding that there were too many bad medical schools, too much non-scientific quackery and curricula that were all over the place. Specifically, there was a …

I’m a product of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I saw guys trying to homestead in the woods of Vancouver Island as I was walking to a favorite swimming hole. I remember the distinctive smell of those funny cigarettes permeating the summer air. I thought they were struggling to find something. I also remember some idiot slipping a hit of acid into a friend’s br…

What is an addictive personality? You’ll see all sorts of definitions if you Google that! From addiction being a learning disorder, to a passion for something gone wrong, to the more serious diagnosis that it’s a character disorder, it’s difficult to get a final word on this all-too-common behavior. I’ve been around my share of addictive behavior, …

Well, this is a relevant – and disturbing – topic for any who’ve experienced its devastating effects. The thought of someone taking his or her own life can leave us bewildered and even horrified. How could someone do that?, we wonder. And why? And when we see it happening in teenagers and young adults, we’re even more mystified. They’ve got their w…

This is Episode 7 of the Healing Through Consciousness series on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. This time, a clinical look at a modern mental health crisis. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. We’ve been laying a foundation for a more psychological and even spiritual approach to health and healing in our first 6 episodes of this series. That’s been impor…

Today on Episode 6 of the Healing Through Consciousness series on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, we’ll look at the effect our minds have on our immune system. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. One of the consequences of Louis Pasteur’s Germ Theory was the inevitable fear that outside us lurk nefarious elements waiting for their opportunity to pounce. D…

This is episode 4 of the Healing Through Consciousness series on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. From the time we're young, we're taught to protect our lives from nature. Sprays to keep off the bugs, oils to block the harmful rays, potent cleansers to ward off the offending bacteria waiting to take up residence in the b…

From the psychosomatic department of the Keppe & Pacheco Colleges, this is episode 3 of the Healing Through Consciousness series on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. It’s been very interesting to live through this pandemic time, hasn’t it? In the face of a real worldwide challenge, it’s been illuminating to watch how heal…

From the psychosomatic department of the Keppe & Pacheco Colleges, this is episode 2 of the Healing Through Consciousness series on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. Our first episode was spent laying out some credentials of our College’s psychosomatic vision and pedigree. And I want to stress that our discussions here in…

Welcome to our new series on the Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head podcast. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. We’re calling this series Healing Through Consciousness. An abstract title, perhaps. In our western civilization, with its over-emphasis on the material solutions for disease of pills, surgery, vaccines, righting our chemical imbalances and tweakin…

Welcome to Episode 17 – our final episode – of the Modern Relevance of God Podcast Series on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. You know, as I think about it, 17 is kind of an odd number for the final episode in a series about spirituality, isn't it? It's not particularly a number of completion ... although I guess adding …

We've been attempting in this series to make the scientific case for the relevance of a more theological consciousness in our everyday lives. Along the way, I've been impressed with what Dr. Joseph Ghougassian elaborated in the preface he wrote to Keppe's book, Glorification that if we have religions in the world, this must be because of a metaphys…

I've been impressed in my personal journey of discovery with the rational arguments for the existence of God throughout history, by Augustine and Anselm, and more recently, as I mentioned back in episode 11, by the logical argument for Jesus elaborated by Oxford's C.S. Lewis. They all make provocative reading. But for me, a devout and believe-it-wh…

Welcome to Episode 14 of the Modern Relevance of God podcast series here on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. My dad used to say the problem with the human being was we were born without an owner's manual. I used to nod in agreement, but now I'm pretty sure my father was a little simplistic in his understanding. To be fai…

Welcome to episode 13 of the Modern Relevance of God audio course here on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. As I’ve been developing this series, I have to admit I’ve been wondering about the acceptance of its premise in the English-speaking world. Living in Brazil for the past 20 years has coloured my perceptions and tast…

This is episode 12 of the Modern Relevance of God audio course here on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. I think one of the greatest difficulties I've had in coming closer to spirituality has been a pretty common one: mixing up God with religion. If God was all the mess stirred up by the church over the centuries, I wante…

How many times have you heard this phrase: "I don't believe in God anymore because how could a loving God allow all this misery on Earth?" Usually it's a Bruce Willis-like character in a war zone in some desolate African country squinting his eyes and muttering weightily, "God abandoned this place a long time ago." The writers mean this to be profo…

Can God and science exist together? I think that’s a fundamental question. I've heard some of the more vocal scientists proclaiming that a belief in God is the sign of a weak mind. Well, one thing I’ve discovered: the deeper I delve into the theological and philosophical knowledge, the more I encounter rather brilliant minds, actually. Some very in…

The Dark Night of the Soul. In the theological canon, this signifies a spiritual crisis in a journey towards union with God. In more secular language, that would be the transformational journey that takes place when you're suffering. A journey of transformation. A conversion, even. A deep repentance for a path ill chosen. And at the end, "the sudde…

So far in our series, we've been looking at the nature of life and God, and how that knowledge has been pushed aside from our daily considerations and from scientific inquiry, obviously. The concretization of the scientific method was an attempt to free the human being from superstition, squalor and medieval cruelty. The cherished ascendance of rea…

Welcome to Episode 7 of our Modern Relevance of God podcast series here on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. I was struck in re-listening to our last episode that perhaps some more explanation of the story of man might be necessary. I also realize the challenge today of Biblical references. Religious life has often been e…

Welcome to Episode 6 of our Modern Relevance of God podcast series here on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. You might have noticed in our first few episodes, I've been mentioning the importance of the wisdom of the past to our understanding of the present. And especially in our understanding of God and spirituality. That…

Welcome to Episode five of our Modern Relevance of God podcast series here on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. In our last episode, we looked at some of the scientists responsible for modern science's turn to materialism. Something that sought to make God irrelevant in the creation of life. English biologist, Richard Daw…

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Episode 4 of our Modern Relevance of God special podcast series on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. In our last episode, we looked at some of the consequences of materializing science, the reverberations of which we are obviously still feeling today. From elevating the bean counters to the lofty perches of po…

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and welcome back to our continuing series. This is Episode 3 of our special podcast series, The Modern Relevance of God. This episode is the first of 2 parts exploring how science turned its back on God. Well, the dominant scientific view has actually never been tolerant of dissent, and we know the consequences of challengi…

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and welcome to Episode 2 of our special podcast series, The Modern Relevance of God. One of the fundamental problems in doing a series on God is the branding that happens of anyone broaching the subject. "Modern? God? Oh my, how 13th century of you!" Well, religious nutters we are not. The Theology Department of the Keppe &…

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Welcome to something new on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. A podcast series on what I consider one of the most important subjects in our world today. Spirituality. Finding meaning in this crazy, inverted world today. We could all use some of that, couldn't we? So I've dug back through past Thinking with Somebody Else's…

If you were watching a TV series about the pandemic lockdown we are currently suffering through, you might look at it as a phantasmagorical kind of thing. "Oh, that could never happen," you might think. "It's too much." And, of course, they do magnify and dramatize events for dramatic purposes in those series. Real-life dystopia proceeds more glaci…

As we turn the page on what was surely one of the most unprecedented years in modern history, we look forward to better times in 2021. It's natural to do that - greet the new with optimism. Hope, after all, springs eternal in the human breast as Alexander Pope noted almost 300 years ago. But this New Year, there is trepidation present in the mix, a…

It's as old as philosophy itself. Freedom. Free will. Free choice. We've taken it for granted in our western world. "Of course we're free," we gloat when comparing ourselves to those in the world we consider unfree. Until we're not free. To get together in groups, or sit tight to another table at a restaurant, or even go to a basketball game. Which…

It's July, and we're still in the middle of the pandemic. Actually, we've been in the middle of this for what, 4 months now? You ever seen anything like this? Of course not. Unless you're a Highlander who lived through the Plague. This crisis feels different, doesn't it, from all the other global crises we've faced. The real ones I mean ... not the…

It's week 8 of the quarantine here in Brazil. Restaurants and shops are still closed, they're taking temperatures before they let me in to the supermarket across the street, and no end in sight to the general Big Pharma orientation to lock down everyone, high risk or no. It's an entirely materialistic response to a health condition that is not only…

There must have been a "Eureka!" moment back in the late 1800s when, investigating an infection in the French wine industry, Louis Pasteur happened upon the discovery of micro-organisms. He must have felt the jolt of a thrill of realizing that he'd stumbled upon something really monumental. He was perfectly aware of the concurrent research being co…

One of the challenges in our modern philosophy lies in the difficulty of acknowledging right and wrong, good and bad. We've blurred the lines so much it's almost impossible to clarify this in any absolute way. An artist puts a glass of water on a shelf and calls it an oak tree, and defends that it's an oak tree because he says it is. And there's no…

One of the things that's happened to me over the 18 plus years I've been in Brazil working with the science of Analytical Trilogy elaborated by Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Norberto Keppe, has been a gradual opening of the door to my spirituality. I still consider myself pretty "feet on the floor", which I guess is a nice way of sa…

As we head into Christmas, we often take time to reflect on friends and family, on hopes and dreams, on plans and logistics. After all, we've got the trips to hometowns, the Christmas gift buying, the parking lot congestion to navigate. It's a time to reflect on what's happened, and how fast it's all gone by. And in those times, we need the wisdom …

Back when I was a kid playing street hockey in my hometown, a couple of Dutch immigrant kids came out hoping to join us. They were carrying hockey sticks their father had made by nailing a piece of wood to long broom handles. These makeshift sticks were far from the sleek, black taped, store bought babies the rest of us were sporting, and my friend…

In Norberto Keppe's extraordinary book, Liberation of the People, he writes, "Humankind reckons among its numbers a few individuals who are completely sick. This includes those who have succeeded in attaining positions of social power." That's why the subtitle of his book is the Pathology of Power. He wrote that in 1984 - a good year for books like…