Getting Real About Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels invokes 1984, Jean Lamarck, Marshall McLuhan, D.W. Winnicott, among others, in this rumination upon the technological enhancement of/intrusion upon domestic life. Comments congeal upon a review of the book, Mother Media: hot and cold parenting in the 20th century, by Hannah Zeavin.

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels reads from and comment upon his award-winning paper, "Treatment of a Recovering Alcoholic with Substitute Addictions"

Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author, discusses his paper entitled "Treatment of a Recovering Alcoholic with Substitute Addictions", which won the 2025 Lee Jaffe prize as awarded by the American Psychoanalytic Association

Author and psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels talks about psychoanalytic training amid the covid and post covid era, referencing elements of his own book, An Analyst in Training: Psychoanalytic Candidacy Amid Covid and Other Distractions, as well as an article on treatment termination by analyst Joyce Slowchower

Graeme Daniels, author and psychoanalyst, takes the concept of guilt from the courtroom to its analogous space in psychoanalysis, contrasting a religious/redemptive model with case illustrations of Oedipal guilt, in the context of "problem" sexual behavior

In this episode, author and psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels further discusses the aftermath of the trial of AB1775 at the California Superior Court in August, including its anti-climactic judgement. Commentary explores the curious presence of guilt--of a subject of treatment, that of its providers, of an adjudicating state--amidst this battle over privacy rights.

Get comfortable, because soon you won't be. Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels, fresh from his front seat at the trial of child abuse reporting law AB1775, reports and comments upon the testimonies given, the cross examinations leveled, and the judgements made in the August 2025 trial that had been on hold for 6 six years, based upon a law about viewing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that is now 10 years old. And the ending is shocking. 

Graeme Daniels, psychoanalyst and author, presents the first of a two-part commentary about psychotherapy and privacy, pitting the needs of significant others, family, the community--even the state--against the needs for individuals to seek psychotherapeutic treatment with optimal confidentiality. The contexts are sexual infidelity and child abuse reporting law.

In this episode, psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels chats with Dr. Davide, " the empathy coach" about infidelity and sex addiction treatment, exploring the "2 Es model of emphasis and empathy", and challenging the premises of the "right to know" ethos of many providers in this field

Author and psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels introduces his book, An Analyst in Training, published by Bloomsbury, in conversation with Portuguese psychologist Pedro Job. The compare training experiences in Portugal versus the United States, and discuss what motivates mid-career professionals to become psychoanalysts

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels discusses Freud's concepts of infantile sexuality, slips, group psychology, plus latter-day analytic theories of a social unconscious within the context of today's quickly moving, disposable, and replaceable headlines

Psychoanalyst and author Graeme Daniels speaks about the writings of Avgi Saketopoulou, commenting on her concepts of psychic overwhelm, transgressive play, affirmative and limit consent, in the context of sadomasochistic rituals, with an eye towards how such phenomena emerge in psychoanalytic treatment

In this episode, psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels talks about masochism, surrender and submission, weaving in theories of Freud, Klein, and Winnicott with reflections upon addiction, BDSM, repetition compulsion, even rape--all relating to a paper by Emmanuel Ghent from the nineties, plus the fifty year anniversary of a famous shark film

Psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels begins his newly re-configured podcast series with a review of a paper by Israeli psychiatrist/analyst Amit Saad: a paper about time arrows, the timelessness of the unconscious, causal loops, the Oedipal myth and Oedipal development, and what Saad describes as the "sexualizing of asymmetric time"

Psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, a Bloomsbury/Rowman & Littlefield publication, discusses the fraught cottage industry of personality disorder and addiction treatment training, lambasting in particular certificate programs that are reductive of complex phenomena

Psychoanalyst Graeme Daniels, lead author of the book Getting Real About Sex Addiction (published by Rowman & Littlefield), excoriates the California Superior Court, which has once again delayed its trial of AB 1775, a 2015 law that amended now forty five year old child abuse laws to oblige psychotherapists to violate the confidentiality of patients who report viewing sexual material that depicts minors. Daniels paraphrases the case brief from the case plaintiffs that lays out the reasons this law should be ruled unconstitutional and overturned. The state is procrastinating!

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, a Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury publication, talks psychoanalysis, masculine ego, psychosis and addiction, with Portuguese psychologist Pedro Job, relating these subjects to the film and play, Dr. Strangelove. 

In this follow-up to his discussion with AB1775 plaintiff Don Mathews, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, a Rowman & Littlefield publication, speaks of laws that inhibit proper use of mental treatment, the implications for mandated treatment episodes, plus the problem of people being deterred from proper treatment altogether.

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, interviews Don Mathews, plaintiff in the forthcoming case against the state of California and a 2015 law originally named Assembly Bill 1775. This case, a decade in the making, is about privacy rights and psychotherapy versus the state's efforts to police child pornography

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, reads an email from a disgruntled impacted partner about responses to Esther Perel's State of Affairs. From this, Daniels discusses the problem of integrating perspectives amid a treatment culture that fosters taking sides. 

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, discusses factions within the fields of sex addiction/infidelity treatment: the factions that purport to represent acting out or addicted individuals or their impacted partners. A typical scenario explored from two sides illustrates ideological biases and tacit rules.

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, discusses the problem of being a neurotic--not controlling how you feel--which underlies many addictions, which is about not controlling behavior. He also discusses in the spirit of the season the celebrated loners of yuletide literature, and cautions that guilt as an intervention works much more in Hollywood than it does anywhere else

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, talks about the vagaries of sex addiction or infidelity treatment--its flawed premises and biases--particularly with respect to treatment efficacy, and offers an anecdotal vignette as to how a psychoanalytic treatment  might explore the mind of an addict in treatment. 

part two of Graeme Daniels' excoriation of contrived labeling in the field of sex addiction treatment.

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, discusses the language of mental health disorders, distinguishing for the listener categories that are prominent in social media but not standardized conditions as determined by the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization, or peer-reviewed in professional literature.

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, reads part two of his analytic paper, "Born Small, Addicted to Guilt", presenting the case of Mr. D, illustrating the concept of repetition compulsion as it relates to self-punishing/pleasure-seeking behaviors of addiction, plus the displacement of guilt via patient/addict and--equally importantly--treatment provider-induced displacements of shame onto overwrought expressions of guilt.

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, offers a preview of his academic paper, "Born Small, Addicted to Guilt", about psychoanalytic treatment of addiction, ahead of his public presentation at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

Graeme Daniels, lead author of the book, Getting Real About Sex Addiction, continues a discussion of the unconscious, venturing into a famous dream of a patient of Sigmund Freud's, dubbed "Wolf Man". The interpretation of his famous dream reveals (and represses) elements of aggression, fears of death, of castration anxiety relating to Oedipal wishes and a memory of a "primal scene". 

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, discusses the implications, the subtext, and the truer meanings within the increasingly popular sex positive therapy movement.

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, talks in historical and Freudian terms about the unconscious as a centerpiece of a psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of somatic symptoms, inhibition, guilt, and loss. 

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, published by Rowman & Littlefield, reflects upon the recent guest appearance of Michelle Langley on the podcast, and considers further her opinions about female sexuality and the myths that society attaches both to women's infidelity and domestic violence.

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, welcomes guest Michelle Langley, author of Women's Infidelity: Living in Limbo: What women really mean when they say "I'm not happy", to discuss myths that men and society have about women's sexuality, and debunk the idea that women are less inclined towards infidelity than men

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, discusses the World Health Organization's category of compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), focusing upon its ambiguous and complicated "marked distress" criteria for diagnosis

A mouthful of jargon? No, argues Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction. This episode presents common scenarios culled from dialogues between so-called sex addicts and their impacted or betrayed partners, and asks, what does it mean to be empathetic? to "validate" ? how does a feeling denied get communicated to another?

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, discusses the emotional impact of problem sexual behaviors, both for PSBs and their impacted partners, and features a case illustration of a group discussing whether to reveal porn use to an impacted partner

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, riffs on numerous ideas previously addressed in this podcast series: where analytic perspectives on addiction fit in with the sex addiction field; the ethical/moral biases of practitioners, and how those biases play out among gender divides

Opening podcast of season, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, outlines topics that will be addressed on upcoming podcasts, including the re-framing of "the problem"; he then discusses a positive review of his and Joe Farley's book by Kirkus magazine, examining reviewers' comments in detail. 

In this episode, Graeme Daniels, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and lead-author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, contemplates the pros and cons of the sex addiction label from the point of view of the would-be addict and the impact partner, and then speaks of the intertwining of guilt and shame, in which false guilt, as perpetuated by sex addiction treatment models, often obscure attention to underlying shame

Part two of this discussion, Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, offers some case illustrative descriptions culled from his work with female sex addicts/problem sexual behaviors--compares/contrasts with profiles exhibited by male patients--again referencing the writing of Michelle Langley

Graeme Daniels, lead author of Getting Real About Sex Addiction, discusses female sex addiction and women's infidelity, profiling the provocative insights of Michelle Langley, author of Women's Infidelity: Living in Limbo, and highlighting that book's compatibility with psychoanalytic theory