A Podcast with Charlie Swenson - To Hell and Back

In this podcast Charlie recalls a piece of biological research he did 57 years ago, at college. He pursued the question: how is it that the 2 billion cells of the human heart, each of which has on its own the capacity to contract, beat in synchrony from birth to death every second or so? What are the biological structures that make that possible? And what does it teach us about cooperation, community, interdependency, and synchrony?









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In the wake of the recent killing by federal agents of two adults in Minneapolis, this podcast represents an attempt to deepen my perspective on these events, on Donald Trump, and on the forces in our country that have supported him. I close with some thoughts about how to counter him in the coming days.









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DBT’s emphasis on behavioral specificity, validation, and dialectical thinking, while effective for therapy, must be sufficiently grounded in deep moral convictions and motivational forces if it is to be used to address a fascist takeover of our society.









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In this podcast Charlie reviews the six categories of people in the United States insofar as they are actors in the drama between democracy and authoritarianism, highlighting where it might be possible to change the momentum. He then discusses the role of “bystanders” and the psychology of bystanders, with a plea to convert bystanders to more active participants









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In this podcast, Charlie reflects on a recent consultation as a window into the way in which memory is tethered to certain moments, as an example of Linehan’s metaphor for validation as finding a nugget of gold in a pile of sand, and as a segue into the integration of DBT and depth psychology in therapy.









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