Technology and the Mind

In this episode Dr. Linda Michaels, Chair and Co-Founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAn) discusses grassroots efforts to provide public information and advocacy for therapies of depth, insight and relationship. She discusses the role of marketing as a major source of information to the public about treatment options for mental health. Further she emphasizes that psychoanalysts and psychodynamically-oriented clinicians should advocate and educate the public, particularly while there are significant strategic interests in among tech apps, investors and insurance companies in shaping the marketplace for consumers.

In this episode Catherine Saldutti, founder of EduChange, an innovative EdTech firm that is re-engineering formal secondary academic systems for increased equity describes the values and motivations that drive her team's design of The Integrated Science Program. This program creates the conditions for expert STEM learning. She discusses the power of systems thinking, circular economic principles, sustainable practices and the value of the unknown, creativity and a focus on process. In this episode we philosophize about what technology is, how it is impacting us, we discuss its implications for teaching and learning and for adolescent development and we draw connections to psychoanalytic theory. For additional reading please see: Study on Social Media ad revenue earned from teens in 2022: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295337 How to ban phones effectively [in schools]: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/how-ban-phones-effectively The 2024 National Educational Technology Plan: https://tech.ed.gov/files/2024/01/NETP24.pdf By Sarah Lewis: The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure and the Search for Mastery: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Creativity-Failure-Search-Mastery/dp/1451629249 Common Sense Media’s Impact of AI on Kids: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ai EDSAFE AI Alliance: https://www.edsafeai.org/ EduChange on Assessment https://educhange.com/functional-assessment/

Dr. Stein discusses his work consulting with executives and teams as a psychodynamic strategy consultant. He discusses the impact psychoanalysis can have on people and dynamics between people within business contexts. He centers decision making and caring in his work and muses about AI and the future from the perspective of the C-suite advisor role. His work is ultimately about how psychodynamic strategy consulting can be used as an intervention for social good and business success at scale. Introduction 2:58 — Professional Trajectory + Origin Story 7:33 — From Practice to Deployment 8:10 — Call to Retire Idea of Applied Psychoanalysis 11:25 — Considering the Social in Working with Leaders 13:35 — Differences Between Clinical Psychoanalysis, Conventional Consulting, & Psychodynamic Consulting 18:03 — Value + Benefits of a Psychoanalytic Approach with Executives and Teams: Creating Optionality 23:12 — Scaling Expectations + Meeting Goals 25:09 — Organizations as Human Ecosystems 26:03 — Approaching Varieties of Problems + Issues Across an Array of Practice Areas 27:47 — The Nodal Axis in Multiple Domains: Focused Delivery of Expertise in Decision-Making 29:14 — Human Architecture + Psycho-Social Dimensions in Cybersecurity 31:38 — Multidisciplinary Collaborations in Fraud Matters 33:11 — Psychoanalysis as a Technology to Solve Complicated Problems: Overcoming Challenges + Leveraging Value 35:30 — Building Solutions + Mitigating Risks in Socially Responsible + Commercially Profitable Technologies 40:05 — What Will the Future Hold? Barriers + Upsides to Bringing Psychological Expertise into the Technology Space at Scale 44:33 — AI: Risks, Benefits, Potentials 46:15 — A Critical Assessment of AI as a Project to Replicate + Computerize Human Thought 50:10 — Countering the Deficiency of Care in Developing Technological Applications & Services: Balancing the Psychological + Philosophical 52:25 — More on AI: Implicit Disdain for Humanity as a Driving Force 55:32 — Adverse Consequences of Divestiture of Human Connection 58:02 — How to Course-Correct: Technology Issues are Fundamentally Human not Technological 1:00 — The Value of Care: Shared Moral Responsibilities for Harms & Benefits 1:02:42 — Concluding Remarks + Calls to Action You can find Dr. Stein at: Dolus Advisors: www.dolusadvisors.com/ LinkedIn (individual): www.linkedin.com/in/alexandersteinphd/ LinkedIn (company): https://www.linkedin.com/company/dolus-advisors/ Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexanderstein/#1c06a3246220 The Dolus Advisors Briefing (a periodic newsletter providing analysis, counsel, and firm updates): https://www.dolusadvisors.com/subscribe + https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7025507656970694656/?displayConfirmation=true

Morgan Venable, inventor, product developer and former Ideo, Google, Microsoft and Amazon senior tech product developer discusses his current projects including his work on the Datahand, an ergonomic keyboard that prevents and heals repetitive stress injuries from keyboarding and the future of tech including its impact on our mental health and social landscape.

Dr. Paul Slovic, decision scientist and accomplished academic and researcher discusses human decision making, judgements, and risk with an emphasis on the role of feelings as applied to genocide, war, smoking, advertising, addiction and nuclear arms.

In this episode we interview Stephen Cognetta, CEO of Exponent, a firm that helps tech workers land their dream job. We discuss his career development including running HackMentalHealth, the world's largest mental health hackathon, his thoughts on the future of tech and the role psychoanalysis might play in helping tech workers to develop.

This the a short trailer describing the focus of season 2 of Technology and the Mind. In this season we broaden our discussions by interviewing leaders in the tech sector, techno ethicists, business consultants, venture capitalists, politicians, philosophers and academics in dialogue with psychoanalysts about consumer tech products and services and the impacts these may have on our minds, relationships and society. We will consider the unconscious dynamics we may be participating in individually and socially via technology and whether or not these are important to analyze.

In this episode long time friends and collaborators, Drs. Richard Frankel and Victor Krebs carry on a decade long conversation in person and in google docs resulting in the book, Human Virtuality and Digital Life, a delightful and rich discussion of the philosophical understandings of virtuality as well as implications for the psyche. Their discussions are far reaching and deep leveraging myths, critical thought, important philosophers and psychoanalytic theorists. In the end we discuss AI, thinking, dreaming, and the generational divide and post-truth political landscape that is fueled by technology. For additional resources please see: Dreaming in the Digital Age, Thoughts on the Technological Pharmakon. POLIGRAFI , 28 (109/110), pp. 59-82.: http://ojs.zrs-kp.si/index.php/poligrafi/article/view/404 Digital Animism. Towards a New Materialism, Religions 2023, 14(2), 264; https://www.mdpi.com/2140582 The Power of Ghosts, Jung Journal Culture and Psyche September 2013 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272120809_The_Power_of_Ghosts Frankel, R. “Dreaming Life in the Digital Age” in Goodman, D and Clemente, M. (eds). (2024) The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Technology. London: Routledge. Frankel, R. "New Introduction to the Classic Edition of The Adolescent Psyche” in Frankel, R. (2023) The Adolescent Psyche: Jungian and Winnicottian Perspectives. London: Routledge. Frankel, R. “Digital Melancholy” in Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche. 2013, Vol. 7, No. 4.

In this episode Dr. Leary discusses psychoanalytic ideas about race, bias, equity and belonging and how technology may play a role in how people and our communities experience race and belonging.

Dr. Jeremy Soh discusses creativity and dreams - what they are, why we should care about them and how technology may impact our capacity to be creative and to dream.

Dr. Millar shifts the question of is AI conscious to the question of does AI enjoy. She explores areas of sexuality, consent and suffering in AI and suggests that Kantian ethics and Lacanian notions of jouissance may be helpful in understanding how we might secure freedom and privacy as we relate to AI.

Dr. Patricia Gherovici discusses perversion, sexuality and porn. She discusses the use of technology and muses about its impact on our ability to dream and imagine.

Dr. Mitchell Wilson discusses a few cases that illustrate the importance of materiality, embodiment and proximity in psychoanalysis and muses about the meanings for our profession and the future.

Dr. Todd Essig discusses the differences between teleanalysis and traditional in person psychoanalysis and how this may be useful in understanding tech-mediated relating outside of the consulting relationship.

In this episode, Professor Jan Abram discusses the Winnicottian notion of playing and the use of an object and how these ideas apply to our thinking about video game addiction and liveliness in our relationships.

Dr. Tom Wooldridge discusses narcissism and how consumer technology can influence our sensitivities to narcissistic injury in both positive and negative ways. He offer several interesting examples of the use of technology in clinical cases.

Dr. Stephen Lugar discusses the Kleinian notion of the depressive position, why it is of value and how consumer technology may facilitate a mindset of what he calls cruel optimization which then impacts our capacities to value and achieve the depressive position.

An interview with Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst Dr. Catherine Mallouh about negative capability, what it is, why it is important and how it is developed. Dr. Mallouh will also consider how consumer technology may impact the development and maintenance of negative capability and creativity.

An interview with Lacanian psychoanalyst, Dr. Fernando Castrillon about the Lacanian notions of desire, lack and jouissance and how these ideas can help us to think about our use of consumer technology.

Guest host, Dr. Susi Ferrarello, a philosopher, and ethicist, will interview the host of Technology and the Mind, Dr. Nicolle Zapien about what psychoanalysis might have to do with technology and how both disciplines might benefit from being in dialogue.