Podcast Summary: Between Us – Episode 54: Everybody Stays Chill (July 9, 2025)

Overview

This episode of Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast, hosted by John Totten with regular cohost/producer Mason Neely, features a compelling conversation with Harvard psychologist and psychoanalyst Lynn Layton. The core theme is the relationship between psychoanalysis and social theory—how social forces, power, and ideology shape both individual psyches and the therapeutic encounter. The episode interrogates debates within psychoanalysis about whether issues like privilege, racism, patriarchy, and neoliberalism truly “belong” in therapy, or whether therapy should maintain a focus on the individual mind. Layton brings decades of expertise in feminist, Frankfurt School, and relational psychoanalytic perspectives.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Social World and the Psyche: No Separation

• Layton’s Intellectual Formation

  • Layton traces her path from comparative literature to psychoanalysis, steeped in Frankfurt School and feminist thought.
  • She describes her realization that “the social world has everything to do with the psyche and that it's actually an unconscious enactment to separate the social world and the political world off from any thinking about unconscious process.” (02:05)

• Psychoanalysis’ Institutional Resistance to the Social

  • Totten and Layton discuss the persistent resistance within psychoanalytic circles to socially-informed or critical approaches, noting that many institutes remain wary of integrating these perspectives.
  • Layton notes, “I still think that in mainstream [psychoanalytic circles], there is maybe a backlash against it. Well, for sure there's a backlash, but I'm not sure there was ever a deep interest in it.” (17:06)

2. Relational Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Queer Theory

• Widening the Lens of Psychoanalysis
  • Relational psychoanalysis (Stephen Mitchell, Jessica Benjamin, Adrian Harris, et al.) opened the possibility for the social and political to shape psychic development and enactments in therapy.
  • Layton: “As soon as you say [the psyche is formed through relationships], it doesn't have to be just familial relationship, it can widen into peer groups. ... There's always the possibility that the therapist will be enacting or colluding in alignment with whatever the social norms of their particular culture and subculture end up reproducing status quo, unequal relationships.” (13:51)

3. The “Normative Unconscious” and Social Reproduction in Therapy

• Layton’s Concept: The Normative Unconscious

  • Layton explains her idea that therapists and patients unconsciously enact cultural norms—around race, gender, sexuality—within the therapeutic space, often reproducing the very inequalities that made people sick.
  • “What I had been starting to think about after reading a lot of psychoanalytic feminist work, [was] having split conceptions of what a proper female and what a proper male should be ... only one person was allowed to be the dependent one, and it was the female.” (38:53)

• Unconscious Collusions

  • Layton: “The more aware we become of those just things that have formed us and that we have taken as normal, and that we're trying to normalize the patient into, the better psychoanalytic work that we will do.” (46:59)

4. Critiques of “Wokeism,” Neutrality, and Bad Faith in Psychoanalysis

• Pushback from Within the Field

  • The episode discusses critics like Jonathan Shedler and John Mills, who argue that bringing politics into the consulting room is either unprofessional or destructive (e.g., Mills’ article equating “wokeism” with hysteria and house-burning). Totten critiques these stances as hiding political investments behind a veneer of neutrality.
  • Totten: "Is psychotherapy simply a surgery? Move the scalpel and your beliefs about the person on the operating table don't matter. Can we fix their insides without our insides being involved?" (06:28)

• Mason Neely’s Reaction:

  • Neely: "Is this some, like, misguided attempt to return to, like, fucking Victorian neutrality? ... Who the fuck are you, pal?" (25:57)
  • “To even use that word [woke] at this point, what the fuck are we even talking about? That's not a clear, coherent debate. ... It's certainly not a revolutionary discourse.” (28:02, 31:07)

5. Neoliberalism as the Umbrella Oppression

• Neoliberal Ideology in the Clinic

  • Layton dissects neoliberalism’s psychological effects, emphasizing that it breeds insecurity, defensive autonomy, and internalized pressure to “concentrate for 10 hours a day at work.”
  • “People are suffering economically. ... The narrative [used] is that Black people have cut in line and are getting everything. That was key to Reagan's administration—the ‘welfare queen.’ Racism gets used to deflect from the real sources of the economic sparing and sexism.” (67:03)

• The Role of Therapy: Individual “Failure” vs. Systemic Critique

  • Totten: “My problem is that I can't concentrate for 10 hours a day at work. Where I see Layton's work being important is for a therapist to say ... let's talk about who is oppressing you within your own mind.” (29:44)

6. Social Character, Intersectionality, and Belonging

• Intersectionality Over Singular Social Character

  • Layton draws on Fromm, but differs in seeing multiple, intersecting social characters depending on class, race, gender, etc.
  • "Where I differ from the idea that there is one dominant social character ... there’s a dominant social character, but it is lived differently depending on where you are located socially.” (69:26)

• Belonging and the “Deal” with the Social

  • Layton: “Deals we make in order to be good boys and girls ... In exchange for being loved and socially legible, we tend to take up, consciously or unconsciously, identification with the way power hierarchies define ... social norms proper to where we are socially located.” (51:10 quoting Layton’s own writing + 53:43)

7. Moving the Conversation Forward: Clinical and Political Hope

• Psychotherapy’s Role and Limits

  • The group reflects on how—and whether—therapy can be a place for social liberation, not just adaptation.
  • Neely: “Whatever change can occur in this life ... is a product of interworking, of comrades, of collective engagement between people.” (31:56)

• Messaging, Empathy, and Coalition

  • Layton emphasizes the need for honest messaging and acknowledgment of suffering when communicating across political divides, inside and outside the therapy room:
    • “What's the suffering? Can we first connect on agreeing on what the suffering is?” (73:29)
    • “I think we should make [the attempt to connect even with those we disagree with]. It's kind of like what we do in treatment, right?” (81:37)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Neutrality and “Woke” Cries

  • Mason Neely: "Is this some, like, misguided attempt to return to, like, fucking Victorian neutrality? ... Who the fuck are you, pal?" (25:57)
  • John Totten: “Is psychotherapy simply a surgery? Move the scalpel and your beliefs about the person on the operating table don't matter. Can we fix their insides without our insides being involved?” (06:28)
  • Neely: “To even use that word [woke] at this point, what the fuck are we even talking about?” (28:02)

• On the Normative Unconscious

  • Lynn Layton: “The more aware we become of those just things that have formed us and that we have taken as normal, and that we're trying to normalize the patient into, the better psychoanalytic work that. That we will do.” (46:59)

• On Desire and Social Formation

  • Neely: “Desire, the things we want ... are not the product of something that was missing. ... Desire in all its forms is produced. It's a product that emerges through interaction. ... What we want, what we're moving towards, who we are is not ... a beautiful internal eye that existed. No, it's a thing that's produced through our engagement with the world.” (35:04)

• On Belonging and Compromises

  • Layton: “Deals to belong ... at the expense of the belonging of others.” (53:24–53:29)

• On Therapy’s Social Responsibility

  • Totten: “It's not in my mind, proselytizing my clients to become woke protesters. It's understanding what forces are oppressing them from within.” (34:53)

• On Hope for Conversations Across Divides

  • Totten: “In my most optimistic dreams, there is this framework there for a new kind of belonging.” (72:36)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Layton’s intellectual and activist origins – 02:05–13:38
• On the relational school & feminist theory – 13:38–17:06
• Resistance to social critique inside psychoanalysis – 17:06–22:00
• Critiques from within the field (Shedler, Mills, “wokeism”) – 20:00–26:00
• Discussion on neutrality, role of “woke” rhetoric – 25:57–31:07
• Normative unconscious and unconscious reproduction of hierarchy – 38:53–49:31
• Intersectionality and social character – 69:26–73:02
• Neoliberalism and the structure of suffering – 59:54–71:16
• Hope, coalition, and messaging – 73:53–81:37

Tone and Language

The episode is intellectually rigorous but accessible, marked by moments of irreverence (Mason Neely’s expletives), sharp critique, and vulnerability about the hosts’ and guest’s own subjectivities. The tone is questioning, dialogical, and committed to integrating political realities with deep clinical work.

For Listeners

If you missed this episode:

• Expect a dynamic, dense, and at times combative journey through the present-day culture wars in psychotherapy, with historical context, clinical vignettes, and sharp-eyed looks at the profession’s blind spots.
• You'll hear from a leading scholar-practitioner (Layton) on why social critique is not just an “add-on”—it is fundamental to understanding the formation of self, distress, and the work of therapy.
• The episode pulls no punches on internal professional politics, bad faith neutrality, and the myths of psychotherapeutic purity.
• It challenges clinicians and lay listeners alike to consider: What do we risk by “staying chill”? At what cost do we maintain the status quo?

Key Takeaway

Psychoanalysis—and psychotherapy more broadly—cannot, and should not, insulate itself from the social, political, and ideological forces that shape both therapist and patient. Doing so reproduces unconscious enactments of power and hierarchy. True liberation in therapy, and in society, depends on facing these realities together—even, and especially, when discomfort arises.