Thursday, October 25, 2007

My Three Shrinks on BlogTalkRadio


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This is a recording, also available on Blog Talk Radio, from Dr Anonymous' LIVE, call-in, internet radio show, which is broadcast every Thursday night from 10-11pm ET.



October 24, 2007: #36a MTS on The Doctor Anonymous Show on BlogTalkRadio


Topics include:
  • This is pretty cool technology, folks. All three of us called in to chat with Dr A and to answer questions from the listening audience. Most of the questions had to do with Halloween, such as:
  • why do we like to get scared?
  • what was your favorite Halloween candy to get?
To listen to more of Dr A's shows, go to his section on BTR to listen.





Find show notes with links at: http://mythreeshrinks.com/. The address to send us your Q&A's is there, as well.

This podcast is available on iTunes (feel free to post a review) or as an RSS feed. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com.

Thank you for listening.

5 comments:

Dr. A said...

Thanks so much for being on the show. I know I had a lot of fun....

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to leave some further musings about the psychodynamics of halloween and the horror genre. I am currently in the throws of a PhD on horror in trauma survivors, having already subject myself to a Master's thesis on the horror of horrors.

Our fascination with horror is in itself a fascinating area, and you're right it is about suprise, anticipation and thrill. It is also about our ability to gain a sense of mastery over our own demons. Externalised and objectified as monstorous we can watch others battle, slay, die, become posessed ... whilst we ultimately survive the experience. This is particularly poignant in that adolescents make up the majority of horror film go-ers. Adolescence is that time of our second individuation and separation comounded with our own doubts, impulses, and general intrapsychic turmoil. The horror film becomes a metaphore for the horror of adolescence. I had the privledge of interviewing film maker Adam Simon, director/writer of The American Nightmare - which explores the rise of the horror film cult at the time of the Vietnam War. I highly recommend this documentary. So, I think horror and halloween is more than the engagement with the joy of suprise, or Freud's Forte-Da, it's also about mastering our internal fears and bubbling toils and troubles.

Just some random thoughts from Melhourne Australia to My Three Shrinks,

Alphafunction

Roy said...

Excellent points, alphafunction. Thank you for the down-under tips. Hmm, I wonder if trauma survivors who are randomized to watching Saw 4 vs Mary Poppins many times do better over time.

ClinkShrink said...

Interesting. I wonder though, does the need to master one's fears really end with adolescence? It seems to me that the thing that lives under the bed just morphs into old age and fears about that suspicious mole or breast lump and financial worries and varicose veins. Maybe that's why adults still need Halloween.

Anonymous said...

Roy, interesting point about Mary Poppins versus Saw 4. I worked in adolescent inpatient psychiatry for over 10 years, this ivolved many occassions of sitting in a TV room with 10+ 14 to 17 year-olds watching volumous torturous amounts of music videos, teen road movies and horror flicks. Once I giggled during a horror scene, then attempted to educate the assembled plastic-minds the illogicality and imposibility of the event ... I was told by the kids, "Alpha, if you're not going to take this serioulsy you can leave!". I was clearly sabotaging some very serious self-directed therapeutic work. Now that never happened with Mary Poppins.

So, Roy you might be onto something - but it would need to be a self-selecting trial to avoid retraumatisation. I'm thinking now of the difference between the ability to introject and then modify painful affect (therefore growth) versus introjecting, escalating and then projecting even more bizarre objects in hieghtened fear and paranoia (antigrowth). AKA objects relations theory. Ethics approval ... I don't think so!

Clink, I think you're right. We slip down the Kleinian continuum to paranoid-schizoid position with extreme velocity even in adulthood.

Thanks for the blog and podcasts.
Alphafunction