Jane G. Goldberg, "Wired for Why: How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning" (2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network — Jane G. Goldberg, "Wired for Why: How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning" (2025)

Date: October 31, 2025
Host: New Books
Guest: Dr. Jane Goldberg

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Main Theme

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Jane Goldberg about her new book, Wired for Why: How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning. The book explores the intricate relationships between the brain, thought, emotion, narrative, and the essential question of "why" that drives psychoanalysis and human meaning-making. Dr. Goldberg discusses the genesis of her book, blending personal narrative, neuroscience, and psychoanalytic insight, and reflects on holistic health, collective intelligence, and the healing power of curiosity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why This Book Now? The Motivation and Shift in Focus

• Dr. Goldberg shares that her previous works were rooted in psychoanalysis, focusing on emotions, but Wired for Why is more “thought driven.”
• The book’s evolution—from an initial focus on the brain ("A Revolutionary Brain") to integration of thoughts, feelings, and the sense of self.
• Reflection on aging and thought: “As your hormones...diminish, the capacity of thinking increases.” (Dr. Goldberg, 03:34)

2. Intended Audience and Structure

• The book is written for a lay audience, driven by narrative—personal stories and stories of others, both famous and not.
• Goldberg emphasizes storytelling’s primal role: “The brain is wired for narrative...we teach through stories. We learn through stories.” (05:26)
• The title “Wired for Why” came from her deep love of the question “why,” a cornerstone of the psychoanalytic process.

3. The Centrality of ‘Why’: Curiosity as Cure

• Dr. Goldberg traces the etymology of “curiosity” and “cure,” revealing their shared root, and posits: “Curiosity is the cure. And ‘why’ is the metaphor—the word of psychoanalysis.” (08:54)
• She shares her three favorite words: “why,” “but” (inspired by Oliver Sacks, as an invitation to contradiction and complexity), and “no” (marking individuation).

4. The Power of Metaphor & Abstract Thought

• Goldberg: “Metaphor represents...the ability to think abstractly.” (09:39–10:50)
• She recounts how even animals (her dog Petey) can understand basic associations, but humans uniquely develop metaphor and abstract thinking from about age six onward.

5. Neurology & ‘Wiring’ the Mind

• Thought as electricity: “Everything that happens...is electrons. It’s all electricity...they create a community of neurons, and that’s thought.” (11:30)
• Brain facts: processes 1,000 interactions per millisecond, never switches off, operates via 100 trillion calculations per second.

6. On the Restless Brain and Sensory Deprivation

• Citing John Lilly’s flotation tank research, Dr. Goldberg discusses how the brain, even when unstimulated, generates vivid mentation and remains active (13:00–15:18).
• The flotation tank demonstrates that “the brain will figure out how to keep itself interested and interesting, even if you do nothing to stimulate it.” (15:18)

7. The Importance of Not Paying Attention

• Free association, a psychoanalytic technique, is likened to “paying attention when you’re not paying attention.” (16:04)
• The challenge—and magic—of introspection through free association is explored, referencing Adam Phillips: “We’re not cured by free association, we’re cured by the ability to free associate.” (16:14)

8. Failure, Struggle, and the Creative Brain

• Goldberg reflects on being a B student and recounts famous figures who struggled academically.
• She shares her traumatic experience with violence (rape in college) and her subsequent curiosity about the mind of her attacker as the beginning of her fascination with emotional struggle and psychoanalysis (17:00–19:33).

9. Psychoanalysis Meets Holistic Health

• “The merging of holistic health and my interest in emotional pain came when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer...she reversed [it] through holistic health interventions.” (19:33–22:11)
• The personal story leads to her professional integration of psychoanalytic and holistic approaches for cancer patients.

10. Cancer, Curability, and the Mind-Body Link

• Dr. Goldberg describes starting each case with “Why do you think you have cancer and what do you think will help?” not for a factual answer, but to understand a patient’s thought process (24:06).
• Contrary to her mentor Spotnitz, she does not believe cancer is incurable and shares a striking case of a patient who reversed both cancer and infertility after reclaiming her life narrative (25:03–26:36).

11. Emotional Avoidance and Societal Defenses

• The widespread desire to “kill emotions” (Google query: “how do I kill my emotions?”) is discussed.
• Goldberg and host discuss societal dynamics: “Feelings are awful…but when you can think about your feelings…you’re not tortured by them…Feelings move like water.” (28:19–32:16)

12. Polarization and the Role of Group Psychoanalysis

• Dr. Goldberg describes managing political divisions within a long-term therapy group and acknowledges the crucial need to process differences rather than avoid them for the sake of social survival (28:36–32:40).

13. Individual vs. Collective Intelligence

• The Bell Labs example: almost all scientific breakthroughs there were results of collaborative work; “Out of hundreds of papers, there were only three that [George Sperling] wrote by himself. Everything else was collaboration.” (38:33–41:24)
• Group analysis is championed as essential for self-discovery and collective intelligence, which “help[s] our patients to find the me in them.” (37:44)

14. The Nun Study & Complexity of Narrative

• The Nun Study (David Snowden): Autobiographies written by nuns at 19 predicted later cognitive functioning. “The complexity of narrative predicted cognitive longevity.” (41:38–45:17)
• Highlights the importance of narrative complexity for brain health.

15. Hyperbinding: The Analyst’s Talent

• Hyperbinding: the ability to connect disparate ideas, which Dr. Goldberg identifies as her special talent, applicable in both psychoanalysis and writing (45:53–47:10).
• Freud’s struggle with hyperbinding is contextualized by his historical/ethnic posture in Vienna.

16. Paranoia, Intelligence, and Vigilance

• Paranoia (within limits) can foster intelligence: “Paranoia is a very good builder of intelligence.” (49:53)
• The challenge of relaxing vigilance in psychoanalysis and the danger/freedom in free association—likened to Howard Stern’s on-air presence post-analysis (50:09–51:10).

17. Pre-Language Memory and Twin Studies

• The work of Alessandra Piontelli on twins: patterns of interaction in the womb are preserved postnatally, testifying to pre-birth consciousness but complicating traditional notions of memory (52:22–54:58).
• The concept of repeating early relational patterns in group and analysis (repetition compulsion).

18. Embodiment and Somatic Illness

• Failures to take up “space” psychically and physically may contribute to illness, including cancer (56:18–57:23).

19. The Multitasking Myth

• Research affirms: “You’re alternating really quickly…but the research shows that it’s not really multi[tasking].” (57:36–58:15)

20. Personal Reflections and Next Book

• The book is deeply personal and reflects on aging, mortality, and sharing experiential wisdom.
• Dr. Goldberg’s upcoming book: Wired for How, a companion volume focused on exercises for body, mind, and brain—“Brainercise.” (59:52–60:52)
• Importance of envisioning a future, even in later life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Curiosity is the cure. And ‘why’ is the metaphor—the word of psychoanalysis.” (Dr. Goldberg, 08:54)

• “Everything that happens to us, within us, by us, for us, is electrons. It's all electricity... and that's thought.” (Dr. Goldberg, 11:30)

• “When nothing is stimulating you...the brain will figure out how to keep itself interested and interesting. Even if you do nothing to stimulate it.” (Dr. Goldberg, 15:18)

• “We're not cured by free association. We're cured by the ability to free associate.” (Host referencing Adam Phillips, 16:14)

• “If we can't have that conversation with these polarities of feelings and opinions...nobody on earth can do it. The future of Earth and mankind depends on our ability to have differences and to be able to talk about them.” (Dr. Goldberg, 32:00)

• “Hyperbinding…is that I can take two disparate ideas and I can find an intersection between them.” (Dr. Goldberg, 45:53)

• “Out of hundreds of papers, there were only three that he wrote by himself. Everything else was collaboration.” (Dr. Goldberg on George Sperling, 41:24)

• “The complexity of narrative predicted cognitive longevity.” (Host summarizing Nun Study, 45:17)

• “Paranoia is a very good builder of intelligence.” (Dr. Goldberg, 49:53)

• “You’re alternating really quickly [between tasks]…but the research shows it’s not really multi[tasking].” (Dr. Goldberg, 58:14)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:27 – Dr. Goldberg on the evolution from writing about the psyche to focus on thought and the brain
• 05:26 – The importance of narrative and the book’s title genesis
• 09:39 – Metaphor as a marker of abstract thought
• 11:30 – Electricity and the brain’s ‘wiring’
• 13:00–15:18 – Flotation tanks and the restless brain
• 16:04 – Free association and the value of not paying attention
• 17:00–19:33 – Personal trauma and professional motivation
• 22:51–26:36 – Working psychoanalytically with cancer patients
• 28:19–32:16 – Societal defenses against feeling and group analysis
• 38:33–41:24 – Bell Labs and collective intelligence
• 41:38–45:17 – The Nun Study: narrative complexity and brain health
• 45:53–47:10 – Hyperbinding: psychoanalytic creativity
• 49:53 – Paranoia and intelligence
• 52:22–54:58 – Prenatal consciousness and twin studies
• 57:36–58:15 – Multitasking debunked
• 59:52–60:52 – Next book preview (Wired for How)

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Closing Thoughts

Wired for Why is a hybrid of psychoanalytic insight, neurological research, and holistic philosophy, seasoned with personal narrative and clinical wisdom. Dr. Goldberg invites readers—and listeners—to embrace curiosity, story, and feeling as the core of human development and healing. Her unique synthesis offers a wide-ranging, accessible bridge between scientific, analytic, and personal meaning-making.

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End of Summary

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Transcript

[Marshall Po]

Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast, or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Okay.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome back to New Books in Psychoanalysis, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Our guest for the episode is Dr. Jane Goldberg. Dr. Goldberg is known widely in both the psychoanalytic and holistic health communities. Her first spa, La Casa Resort SPA, established in 1986 in the Puerto Rican rainforest, was one of the earliest spas in that country. As a result of Dr. Goldberg's prescience, she is recognized as being a leader in the spa industry, continuously in the forefront of advances in holistic health as well as being involved in the spa industry. Dr. Goldberg is a practicing psychoanalyst and writer. As a psychoanalyst, she has served and continues to serve on several faculties, including the center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, the Boston Graduate school of psychoanalysis. Dr. Goldberg has specialized in working with cancer patients and has successfully integrated her psychoanalytic work within the field of holistic health. As one of the most prolific living writers in the field of psychoanalysis, she joins us today to talk about her new book, Wired for How We Think, Feel, and Make meaning, published by Dr. Goldberg in 2025. Welcome to the podcast.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

You know, as you were saying what you were saying about me, I had a thought about why this book now? Because my previous books were much more psychoanalytic and much more about the psyche and thought feelings and emotions and, you know, more about how it is that we're constructed emotionally. And this book, the original title was called A Revolutionary Brain. And so I did, and I worked 15 years on this book. So for basically almost 15 years, I conceptualized that I was writing a book about the brain. I finally decided to change the title of it because I realized there's no point in writing about the brain. And I wasn't really only writing about the brain. You can't write about the brain or think about the brain without talking about emotions and feelings. But the book is more. I don't really want to say it's more intellectual, but I think it's more thought driven than other books that I've written, as opposed to feeling driven. And so as you were talking, what came to my mind was the Orthodox Jews believe that you should only study Talmud after you're 50. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so I've wondered about that and why are they saying that? And in writing this book and in thinking as much as I did about the book, as opposed to writing about how I felt or thinking about how I felt or feeling about how I felt, this was really a very thought driven book. And Obviously I'm over 50, I'm going to be 80 in a few months. But I think that the reason why is because as your hormones which drive your emotions, as they diminish, I think the capacity of thinking increases. So it is a very thought driven book, and it is about the brain, but it's also about the integration of how we use the brain with our thoughts and feelings and emotions and sense of self, really. It's about what it means to have a self.

[Podcast Host]

And you say something in the beginning of the book. It is my hope that reading this book will be an experience of joining me in my search for answers about my own brain as well as all the other brains on the planet that keep my own brain company. What is your hope for the reader? You said you've previously written psychoanalytic books. Who do you want your book to find? Who's this for?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I want it to find everybody on the planet. But I know all the other brains. Yeah, but no, it's a lay book. It's meant to be a. And it's very narrative driven. In other words, I tell a lot of stories. I begin with a story, I end with a story. And there's stories that. And some of the stories are personal stories about me and my life. And other stories are about famous people and not famous people. And the reason why I tell stories is because the brain's the title. I'll tell you how I came to the title. Wired for why. But the brain is wired for narrative. The brain is wired for stories. We live through stories. We teach through stories. We learn through stories. From the beginning of the development of the human brain, we've been wildly attracted to stories. So why I went from our revolutionary brain to Wired for why, when I decided I didn't want to have brain in the title, I really. You and I were just talking about AI a minute ago before we started recording. And so I decided to search on AI and see if it could come up with a title. And it came up with some. Yeah, they were okay. But it came up with one that was really brilliant, that I fell in love with, called Wired for Wonder. And I love the idea of wonder because as well as being wired for stories, we also are wired for curiosity. And I'm going to come back to that in a minute because curiosity and cure related to each other. But Wired for Wonder was. I did a search, and there was already a book by that title. So that was out. And it took me about two days before I knew I'm in love with alliteration. And I loved the word wired because it does suggest the kind of neurological background, the brain background, that is the foundation of the book. And then it came to me like a lightning bolt. Wired for why. And the reason why. Why is because. Why is the most important question that we analysts have. Why is what we ask our patients in every which way. You know, why did you feel that way? Why did you do that? Why do you think he felt that way? We're always asking why? So why? We're hardwired for why. Because we're hardwired for curiosity. And this is what I'm also kind of in love with. Etymology and looking at the origin of words. So it turns out that curiosity and cure come from the same root word. Cure. C U R A. So I've decided that curiosity is the cure. And why is the metaphor the word? I mean, words are all metaphors. I mean, words aren't things. So of course they're metaphors. And in fact, words, language. The ability to discover metaphor and use metaphor, it's what uniquely distinguishes our human brain from all the other brains on the planet. I love the word why. It's my first favorite word, but my second favorite word is but. And that was Oliver Sacks first favorite word. And the reason why Oliver Sacks was in love with the word but is because it suggests contradiction. It suggests Opposition. It suggests opening up to another way and so but suggests complexity. And the third favorite word that I have is no. And the reason why I love no is because no is the first word of breaking the symbiotic bond. No is, you know, spitting out the breast, no, mommy, I'm not hungry anymore. That would be the language. But the no is in action. And as we develop language and as we learn to say no in all the various manifestations that we have of saying no, we develop a sense of our unique individual self. So Y is my first favorite word because Y is the word of psychoanalysis.

[Podcast Host]

I want to go back to what you said because you mentioned metaphor. Can you just expand on this? Because you write in the book, you say, and of course, we invented the greatest thing so far, the metaphor. What makes the metaphor the greatest thing so far?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

So that's a quote. I think it's from Aristotle. Do I say it's a matter?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Oh, I wrote it down. I didn't. Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Because it allows us to do abstract thinking. Children don't develop the ability for abstract thinking until they're six years old. So my two year old grandson, his brain is a little like you can't see him, but Pete is right next to me. His brain shares a lot of commonality with Pete's brain. It's very kind of stimulus response and it's understanding. Pete understands when I say I'm not going to say the word because it'll activate him because he knows this word B O N E. When I say, where's your B O N E? He could have put it two levels above where I am now, two floors above, you know, hidden under a pile of dirty laundry. And he knows exactly what I'm asking him. And he will go and get. Because that's where he hid it. You know, he's hiding it and every time he hides it a different place. And I say, where's your B O N E? And he goes and gets it wherever it is. So the ability to think abstractly is. Metaphor represents that. Metaphor is that there is something that means something as opposed to being something.

[Podcast Host]

And do we know what happens in the brain when someone, because I'm thinking about a patient, comes up with their own metaphor? They go, oh, this is, this is a metaphor for this. And you can feel an expansion, an opening up. They have a way of working with themselves and it becomes a touchstone when they make a connection. Is there something that we know that happens specifically in the brain when a metaphor creates, say, an aha? That Allows them to know or feel or think something new.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, that brings me to why I wanted to use the word wired in the title. Because we are electrical beings, and everything that happens to us, within us, by us, for us, is electrons. It's all electricity. And so the electrons, they fire, and then the neurons find each other, and then they conglomerate together, and then they create a community of neurons, and that's thought. Thought is a collection of neurons finding each other through the firing of the electrons. So that's the neurological explanation of what your question is, that it all happens through electricity. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

[Podcast Host]

It is. Well, I want to. When you were doing the. Over the 15 years, there are. These are just fun facts about the brain that I really love. The brain processes a thousand interactions every millisecond. The brain is never in an off state. The brain receives one pint of blood every minute. The brain can execute 100 trillion calculations each second. And the brain produces 26,728 pints of cerebrospinal fluid over a lifetime. It's really remarkable. But thinking about.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Let me go into the. In an off state for a minute because that brings me back to my holistic healing stuffing. So the center in Puerto Rico, the first one, is Casa de Vita Natural. I think at one point it was La Casa Resorts Bar, but its real name is La Casa de Vita Natural. And then I started one in New York City, which was La Casa Spa. And I had a flotation room. So John Lilly, he was very interested in neurology. Do you know that name? John Lilly? So he did a lot of work with dolphins. He was the original one that worked with dolphins and dolphin language. But he was really interested in understanding what the brain does when nothing is stimulating it. And that's why he created the flotation tank or the flotation room. We had a room, but originally he did a flotation tank. So you go into this tank, and it's like a. When you go, you're in this coffin, like, thing, you know, you're in this thing that has a lid on it, and you're inside, but it's filled with water. And in the water is lots of, like, £600 of Epsom salts. So the water is heated to your skin temperature. The Epsom salts keeps you afloat, so you don't have to worry about sinking. There's no. Because the water is the same as your skin temperature. There's no nerve transmission from your skin to anywhere else in your body. It's not like Oh, I feel this is cold. Or I feel this is hot. It's you. You and the water merge with each other. So Lily thought that would be a really good way of understanding. When nothing is stimulating, you know, tactilely, neurologically, sensorily, what happens? Does the brain go on off? It doesn't. It gets really stimulated by itself. I mean, people go into all kinds of. We had one guy that came, and he always wanted to spend the night in the flotation room that we had because his mentation became so vivid. You know, people, sometimes they would do it to have kind of cosmic experiences. The brain will figure out how to keep itself interested and interesting. Even if you do nothing to stimulate.

[Podcast Host]

It, he stay overnight. Is that tolerable? What happens?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

He had some pretty interesting experiences that he wanted to repeat over and over again that I would probably say something like a description of cosmic consciousness experiences. Yeah. He was the only one. We were alive for 30 years. We were the longest and oldest healing center, holistic healing center in New York City. And he was the only one that wanted to spend the night. But my manager then allowed him to do it.

[Podcast Host]

Should write it up. Would be interesting.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

So the thing of the brain not turning off. I think this actually may be a chapter, but you write about the value of not paying attention and to pay attention when you're not paying attention.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Isn't that kind of what we do in analysis with free association? Yeah, yeah. We're just letting our mind wander and following it. We're seeing where it goes.

[Podcast Host]

Right. Well, I'm thinking of the British analyst Adam Phillips, who says we're not cured by free association. We're cured by the ability to free associate. Because it's hard if you've never done it. It's not natural. And there's the demand of making sense, being understood, relinquishing. I mean, it's not easy, but when it happens, I think it's magic.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I think it's hard to be introspective. Even the free association leads us to introspection.

[Podcast Host]

Yes. Yeah. Why is it better to be a B student than an A student?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, there's lots of evidence for that. I'd have to look for the book to cite all the evidence. All of the famous people, including not just B students, but F students like Einstein, failed three subjects. Language, botany, and what was the. Maybe it was chemistry, something like that. Anyway, they were the same three subjects that I got D's in in college. So I don't feel so bad about the fact. I mean, I was Only a B student. I wasn't an A student, but I didn't feel great about actually getting Ds in subjects. But the same I had to do French because had to have a foreign language for my PhD. So I plowed through French and passed the French test by a really great English dictionary. But yeah, the science is. My brain just was not either interested or capable of thinking in those ways. So, yeah, our different brains work different ways. And for whatever reason, my brain, I mean, it's not for whatever reason, they're good reasons, which if I went into my history, I would know what they are. But I was very interested in emotional pain actually from a young age. And I had a very traumatic death threatening experience my senior year in college. I was raped at knifepoint. Actually it was a razor had my neck sliced open. He just missed my jugular and I was beaten up. I mean, it was bad. And the thing that I wanted in order to feel more resolved and cured from this experience. It's going to sound odd. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to find out what history, what is the constitution of a man that would feel compelled to do that to another human? So I've just been interested in struggle, emotional struggle my whole life.

[Podcast Host]

And then how, how did sort of this is a chicken and egg question. The, the interest in emotional struggle coming out of that experience or your whole life experience, how does that get into the holistic spa? Like, what comes first? And then how do they tie together? Or how did you. How did they, how did you. What did you learn as they came together?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, I'll tell you how and why they came together. They came together because I, when that happened to me, the pervading thought, I thought I was gonna die. He said, if you make a sound, I'm gonna kill you. And I screamed in spite of that. And so I thought I was gonna die. And I tasted blood in my mouth and there was blood from the neck wound. And I felt just so sad that I was going to die without being with my mother. So that tells you something about my relationship with my mother when I work with my patients. And historically we go back to what the relationship between their parents and the relationship of the mother to them and their siblings. We're recreating, revisiting their history to understand why they develop the defenses that they have and the psychological structures that they have. And I think about how come I've never really been interested in doing that. I didn't do it because I didn't have challenges and I, I had A wonderful childhood. I felt so loved by my mother that there was just no issue for me until that horrible experience where I never had been encountered a person that was willing to do that to another person. So the merging of the holistic health and my interest in emotional pain came when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I said, and I was too young. I was in my 30s. I said, this can't happen. I can't lose my mother. I have to figure out how to save her life. And I did. I went into holistic health. And she became a very devoted patient to holistic health. We found a doctor in California and went out there every six months. And he told. He kind of revamped her life for her. You know, changed how she ate, did lots of detoxification. She started meditating and reversed terminal cancer. She had breast cancer metastasized to her pelvic bone. And when the doctor, after she'd been on this program for a while, the doctor did an X ray, and he said, this is weird. I've never seen this before. Where the cancer had eaten away the bone. That bone looks perfectly normal. That's odd. So I was training to be an analyst and also working with a cancer organization simultaneously after I moved to New York. So the two fields kind of just merged for me in terms of what I was learning.

[Podcast Host]

Right. And I want to talk a little bit more about the cancer because the training. You and I share a training background. The work of a man named Hyman Spotnitz, who originally was interested in. In curing cancer. He moves on to schizophrenia. But it was the idea of curing through psychoanalysis. You talk about in the book that when you work with cancer patients, you work psychoanalytically. What is that like? Where is the talk therapy in the treatment of cancer?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I have to think about that question because I'm stuck on spotnets right now.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, we can stay with Spotnitz.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah. So my first appointment with Spotnitz was right after. It was the week his wife had died of cancer. And I wanted to talk to him about cancer. And I felt like this. I can't do that. I can't put this man through that, you know, talking about. Anyway, the point about that, Wyatt, is that he didn't go in that direction is because he ultimately decided the cancer was not curable. And even though it was thought that schizophrenia was not curable through psychological means, he decided that was wrong and that one could cure it through psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. And he did find a means to do that. And thus the institute that we both trained at does present that as a theory and a technique. So I don't even remember what question you asked me.

[Podcast Host]

Well, this is for your own work, I think. You say that when you meet somebody with cancer that you ask them, why do they think they have cancer and what do they think will help that you try to get at something right away.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, all I'm trying to get at is where they're at in terms of their thinking and their feelings. I'm not looking for a real answer. I'm looking for their thought process that also leads to feelings. So, yeah, I just want to know what's in their mind. And usually, as I'm sure you've experienced in your own psychoanalytic work, where you begin with a patient is not necessarily where you end with the patient. You know, I hate my father. My father is the bane of my existence. And that, oh, I had a great father. At the end of the analysis, you know, patients change their perceptions and their experience and their memories. And so when I ask those questions, what do you think caused your cancer and what do you think will cure your cancer? It's not because I expect them to know the real answer. I just want to know what they're thinking and feeling.

[Podcast Host]

You agree with Spotnitz that cancer is incurable?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Absolutely not.

[Podcast Host]

Right?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

No, I've worked with many. So one of my cancer patients, she's Israeli, and her two brothers were. This was at least 30 years ago, if not 40 years ago, it was illegal for an Israeli to have kind of structured, planned discussions with Palestinians about peace. And both of her brothers did that. They were very peace oriented, and they wanted to build a bridge between Israelis and Palestinians. And they were both arrested. And so she spent some years of her life, early on going to prison and bringing food for them and doing their laundry for them and taking care of these brothers that were in prison. And then she was diagnosed with cancer. She found out that she had cancer because she was trying to get pregnant and couldn't. And then they found out that she had cancer. And her first response was, thank God. She understood that the life that she had committed to in terms of taking care of her brothers and sacrificing her own life was untenable and leading to a death process. And she had to change everything about. And that was when she got into. She became a patient and then she became an analyst.

[Podcast Host]

She reversed it.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

She reversed it, and she also reversed her not being able to get pregnant. She has grandchildren now.

[Podcast Host]

So realizing that and realizing that there was a working towards A death. One of the things and thinking about the wiring and the pervasive sort of mechanistic, non story way you looked at Google searches around emotions and you find Google searches that say, how do I kill my emotions? How do I not feel? And it's widely known.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

And I didn't have to do the Google search. You know that by knowing how many people are on psychotropic drugs.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. So this desire though, to not feel, to not know is just so intense. And in fact, at one point I was working with somebody and even though it seemed obvious to me what we were up to, something came up in the treatment and I said, oh. I said, we're working at cross purposes. I want you to have all of your feelings and you don't want to have any. She goes, yes, I'm here to not feel.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Wow.

[Podcast Host]

She said, I'm here to not feel. That was what she had come to analysis for, but not even spoken. This idea of not feeling. And there's a really brilliant article or an opinion essay in the Times, I think New York Times a few weeks ago, it was in the month of October that said that the current global political moment, the authoritarian moment, is a defense against feeling loss. Which I thought was really an interesting way to look at where we are.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, in looking at the political picture right now, I run groups. I really believe in group analysis. I think patients. I don't think you have a complete psychoanalytic experience without being in group.

[Podcast Host]

I agree.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

So this is a way of going into the political divide and the separation, the really severe separation between the people that believe this and the people that believe that. I mean, I grew up in the civil rights era. I marched in Selma, so I know what it means. I remember when Kent State, the kids were killed at Kent State. So I know what it means for the country to be divided because I lived through that period. Historically, this period is worse than that period was. This period is worse than the Vietnam War, which I also was in college. And we were standing in front of the library every Friday, Friday night with plackets against the Vietnam War. Yes. So in terms of this group, a lot of the group, they're very left and democratic and very ardent in their beliefs. And there's somebody in the group that is on the opposite political spectrum. And Charlie Kirk had just been killed and they started talking about that. And I understood that there was going to be a very strong difference of feeling and opinion about that event. And I got nervous that this was going to be really difficult and going to stimulate a Lot of negative feelings about each other in terms of the polarities of their opinions and their feelings about it. And I decided it was too dangerous. By dangerous, I mean it was going to be. Bring up too much feeling that was not going to be processed in a kind of harmonious way. And so I made some. I don't remember what I said, but I made some, you know, kind of smart psychoanalytic interpretation and intervention, you know, to change, you know, the thrust of the conversation. And that was successful. And so we never went to that place. And I couldn't sleep that night. And I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking I made a mistake. And I thought if we. This group has been together, I mean, two patients in the group. I've been with them for, I don't know, 50 years. You know, some of them I've been with 30 years. Some of them, you know, the newest one I've been with three years. I mean, we are a very harmonious, committed group of people. It is not unfair to say we love each other, we're devoted to each other, we're. We're respectful of each other. And I decided, if we can't have that conversation with these polarities of feelings and opinions, if we can't do it in this group, nobody on earth can do it. We have to be able to do it. The future of Earth and mankind depends on our ability to have differences and to be able to talk about them. So in terms of your patient who doesn't want to feel. Feelings are awful. You know, the nuts of a feeling. Oh, my God. You know, it's pain and it's anxiety and it' suffering and it's loss. It's all of that. But when you can think about your feelings and understand your feelings and accept your feelings as being like breath. I mean, feelings, they really should have a very short lifespan in your life, in your body and your mind and your psyche. If you're holding onto them longer than a short period of time, you're holding onto them for a different reason than your natural lifespan. And so when we can help our patients to kind of breathe through their feelings, they're not tortured by their feelings. They're just having them, and then they move on to the next feeling. Because feelings move like water.

[Podcast Host]

Hopefully. Yeah. Did you or have you had the opportunity to sort of address what you said was a mistake? Is the group able to talk about it now?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

It was only a couple of weeks ago, and the one person that I was most concerned about, um, actually, in the last two weeks she's had to cancel and, and not be in the group. So I have not. But, but it is in my mind.

[Podcast Host]

It's interesting. This is.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Freud says there's no time in the unconscious, so it doesn't matter. Can we can bring. Right.

[Podcast Host]

No, there's, Yeah, I, yeah, the commitment. It's so interesting. I mean, I, I, I agree that an analysis is not complete until group. And this will be. We'll go back into the book here with this in just a minute. The, the members of my group were broadly left of center, but politics came up, as it does. It's everywhere now. They desire the opposite. They would love to have somebody on the right, broadly. They're sort of thirsty for the conversation, so maybe that will happen.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, I would say that's a tribute to you as an analyst, that you have helped them to be open in that way.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they are open. I love my group. And you said the word committed. They really are committed to being together and working through. So it's really.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

When I was training, I was in four groups a week. I loved group. Changed my life. Group is what gave me the ability to be introspective and to talk about what I was seeing, feeling, observing, experiencing. Until then, it was all internal.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I mean, we mentioned the Leap Sharon Institute. It's called the center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. And it's basically group. The classes run through group process. And yes, there are readings, there's literature to talk about, but it's basically group.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I think it should be a requirement for graduation. And it's not.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, to be in a group.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah. It's a requirement to be in an individual analysis. Why not to have a requirement for group analysis?

[Podcast Host]

I agree, I completely agree.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

But within the psychoanalytic community, we are rather unique. So my uncle was a psychoanalyst. I grew up in New Orleans, and he was big honcho analyst in New Orleans. And so when I published my first paper, psychoanalytic paper, and, you know, mentioned it to him, and he said, what's it on? And I said, it's on group analysis. And he said, well, you know, group analysis is not really psychoanalysis.

[Podcast Host]

I know.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yes, it is.

[Podcast Host]

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But our discipline is sort of filled with everybody saying what is not psychoanalysis? Right. I was, I was at a conference just, I mentioned to you a conference two weeks ago, and there was discussions of in each country, what is. Oh, well, you know, not psychoanalysis. And in fact, somebody was saying that there's where they're from, that if the Patient, the patient must pay an actual cash, not even a check. Because Freud said that the handing over of money and feces and everything, that that is a part of the treatment. And I mentioned. I said, listen, my patients who are Gen Z's and Alpha, they're. They're sending Venmo. And someone said, well, you're not doing analysis. And of course I don't. Fine. That's an interesting attitude. But it's very interesting that our discipline sort of splinters off to say who is and who is not doing it. But group is definitely analysis. But let's talk about the group. To come back into the book talking about and I guess the wiring and the electricity.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Let me tell you why I committed to modern psychoanalysis. My first experience, first exposure, because I think it addresses what you were just saying. So I went to a. It was like a panel discussion. There were four modern analysts. Phyllis Meadow was one, Ethel Klavans, maybe Arnold Bernstein was one, maybe Stanley. I'm pretty sure Stanley Hayden was one. And each of them made a little presentation. And they were so wildly different from each other. You know, Meadow was fireworks and Hayden was. And Clevins was mature and smart, you know, and Bernstein was all over the place.

[Podcast Host]

Arnold Bernstein, no, I had a very strong transference to Arnold Bernstein.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah, me too. I loved him. I love them all. So what I came from that experience was that these four people were wildly different from one another. And they only had one thing in common, and that was the man who had analyzed them. And I decided that's what I want for me. I want to find out who I am. And this process is going to help me to be more me. That's what attracted me to Spotnets and to modern analysis. And I think it does do that. I think it delivers in spades to help our patients, to find the me in them.

[Podcast Host]

I 100% agree. I mean, I am a modern analyst. I'm on the faculty. Someone says, where should you train? I'm like, you should train at cmps. Do not pass Go. That's it. I'm a cheerleader. And these names, Spotnitz, Meadow, Hayden, Bernstein, both Arnold and June, certainly Clevens Marshall. For me, these are names to conjure by. Evelyn Liegner. Powerful people and all different. And I think it's August for the mill. But so then let's talk about then in your book. And you just sort of talk. I think we are talking about it. But to tie it to the book, what you found in the brain research, collective intelligence versus individual brilliance. And what Happens when brains get together.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, we really are talking about it, have been talking about it all along. That is what group does. You find yourself within the collective. So the story that I like to say that has to do with that is to talk about Bell Labs. So Bell Labs was pretty much everything that has been invented in the last 60 years arose out of Bell Labs. The research that they were doing, including how it is that we talk on the telephone. You know, they found out how much information you need to put through a wire in order for one person to speak and another person to be able to decipher what they're saying. So I actually had a boyfriend that worked at Bell Labs. So, so I have a kind of inside story on it. So they, they would have colloquium once a month and they would, and they had very eminent, you know, the people that were doing the, the cutting edge research in various fields were all. Everybody wanted to work at Bell Labs if they were really smart. So they had colloquium and, and they would, somebody would, you know, this guy would make a presentation about, you know, his chemistry stuff and this guy would make a presentation about his physics stuff and then they would all meet for lunch. And so there would be like a chemistry table and there'd be a physics table and there'd be a psychology table. And the architecture of the location of the buildings was such that you would randomly just run into people. They wanted you to just have these meetings with people. They wanted all of their scientists to be talking to all the other. So if you were a psychologist, you might be having lunch at the chemistry table. And then so you'd be talking to one guy and he got the Nobel Prize in chemistry. And so then he had to, you know, move on to, you know, another location or wherever. And so then you'd move to the physics table and it was always interchange. And so the. My boyfriend at the time, his name was, is George Sperling. I think he's going to be 100. So I talk about him from time to time in the book. And I decided to look at his resume and his resume was fascinating. It was fascinating because he's probably published 500, maybe 1,000 papers. I mean, he's one of the most highly published. He invented a memory system. He discovered a memory system that was originally called the Spurling memory. So his resume is pages and pages and pages of all of the studies that he's done, of all the papers that he's published. Out of hundreds of papers, there were only three that he wrote. By himself. Everything else was collaboration.

[Podcast Host]

Well, when you said Sperling. And then he's going to be 100. One of the stories in the book, which I'd love for you to tell, is the story of the nun study and what they found with that.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah, this is really interesting because you think that when your brain stops working, that there's a structural problem or a biochemical problem or a problem that would show up in the integrity of the brain. And so do you remember the name of the man that did the research?

[Podcast Host]

I might have it written down. Let me see here.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I do. He needed to publish a parish and, you know, he wanted to do something that was going to be easy. And so he lived right near a nunnery. So he asked the nuns, he said, look, guys, I want to do a study. You know, will you donate your brain to me after you die? And they said, yeah. Okay. So the one woman nun that you're talking about, I think she was like 100 years old when she died. And her brain was. She was fully functional. She was able to perform all of her duties. She was completely coherent. She could talk about her past life with great memory. But when they looked at the structure of her brain, it was riddled. It was like Swiss cheese. The structure of her brain would have predicted that she had pretty serious Alzheimer's. So the idea that there's a strict correlation between what it is that your brain looks like in terms of its physical integrity and how it's operating, it's not a one to one correlation. And then the man whose name we.

[Podcast Host]

Can'T remember, we can't remember it. Oh, David. David Snowden.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Snowden, that's right.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

So then he decided, because they were nuns, they decided the future of their lives. They decided when they were like 19 years old, and in order to be accepted into the nunnery, they had to write an autobiography. Why do you want to be a nun? And so now these nuns are like 70 years old, 80 years old, some of them are dead, some of them are dying. And so they started comparing the health of the nun, then, now in vivo, with what they had written about themselves. And they found with almost 100% accuracy that in reading the papers that they had written when they were 19 years old, they were able to predict which nuns were going to come down with Alzheimer's dementia, which nuns were going to lose their cognitive functioning. And the reason why the thing that they used to make these predictions was the complexity of the narrative that these young women were writing when they were talking about why they Wanted to be a nun. The difference between, well, God is calling to me, and I've decided that it is in my future to be a nun versus I had an experience and it changed my life. And I was filled with color and the idea that doing this was going to give me a life that was going to be so interesting and complex. And she wrote a narrative that itself was very complex. And the women, the young women that wrote in that way about what they were doing and how they envisioned their future were the women that had futures that were brain good still had access to high mental functioning.

[Podcast Host]

That's incredible.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I had a back to the idea of narrative and storytelling. Our brains need. We need to make up our stories. We need to write our stories and write. I don't mean necessarily write on paper, but we need to create our stories and we need to listen to stories. Our brains need that.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, we're having a lot of associations to that. And there was a word, though, something that happens in the brain or an attribute, a word that was brand new to me. And I wonder if you could talk about the attribute of hyperbinding.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I can, because in terms of. I have a very personal association with hyperbinding. So as a solid B student and not somebody that grew up with a sense of having a high intelligence, but kind of mediocre intelligence, Even though my mother kept telling me I was brilliant, but she was my mother. What did she know? So, but in spite of being a mediocre student and in spite of thinking that my intelligence is kind of mediocre also, I do have a talent. And that talent allows me to write and it allows me to be a psychoanalyst. And that's hyperbinding, which is that I can take two disparate ideas and I can find an intersection between them. Now, I think Freud did that in various ways, but I think he should have done better. Because if he had done better than all of the other alternative theories that his followers were developing, you know, Reich on the sexuality and, you know, the. I forget who was doing it, but the order of birth was that Otto Ronk.

[Podcast Host]

Otto Ronk, yeah. Was.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah. Freud would have been able to incorporate that in a better way than he did to his own theories. If he had been better at hyperbinding.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I think I'm just associating to. The more that I read about Vienna at that time, turn of the century Vienna, that everybody. And certainly you can see it in Freud's writing is the worst thing that you could be accused of was being a pseudoscience. And so he's constantly trying to defend it as a science. And I think that that might have interfered with making connections that would have seen disparate, mythical. I just think that he was in an environment that I just found the.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Name of the film that we were talking about before we started recording, it's Freud, the Outsider. And again, the man that made the documentary is Israeli. And he really focused in on Freud's Jewishness and how that, you know, formed his life in pretty significant ways. And so I think what you're saying is, you know, I think he was a little paranoid, you know, in terms of. Because of being Jewish. But he wasn't paranoid enough because when the Nazis came, he was. He said, it's no problem. You know, they kept saying, you have to leave, you have to leave. He said, no. Nam Stang. And it was only after his daughter was arrested that he decided to leave. So he was. When he left Vienna, he was 78. So he was a year younger than I am now. And I think about making that monumental transition at roughly my age. I mean, it was huge.

[Podcast Host]

He didn't. Well, you would say he didn't want to know. But who would want to know? Who would want to know that horror?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yes, but you have to know. If you have to know life, you have to know, or if you don't know, you risk dying, being killed. I talk about Petey. So Petey is sitting next to me. Petey's my dog. And one of the chapters, I say, if Petey were a religion, he would be a Jew. Petey is so crazy smart because he is a rescue dog. I didn't get him until he was about 4 years old. So I have no idea what his life was for his first four years. But I do know by how he is now that he's so paranoid and he's so fearful that it couldn't have been an easy first four years. But in his paranoia, he's crazy smart. I mean, I told you about how he finds the B O N E wherever he hides it. He's really crazy smart. And paranoia does make, you know, you're vigilant. You're waiting to see, you know, what's around me. Where is the next blow going to come from? So paranoia is a very good builder of intelligence. I mean, good.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, a good builder.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Not psychotic paranoia.

[Podcast Host]

Not psychotic paranoia. But when you. It's so interesting then, because this goes back to the invitation to free associate, because it's asking you to relax your vigilance, and it's frightening to people I think.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah, yeah. All of the things that you're not supposed to think or it's supposed to feel.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Like, you know when a child says to a mother, I hate you, and the mother says, that's a four letter word. Don't say that, lady. That's like the worst thing you could say to your child.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, right, right. There's a modern analyst, I'm blanking on who it is, who says the problem is not hatred, it's our hatred of our hatred that gets us in trouble. We can welcome it. And Elliot Zyzel on his Vimeo, not Vimeo, the TV show group where he says, we say here things we do not say in polite company, which is great, but it's dangerous to release that vigilance. And I think it takes time.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

You know what I realized about Howard Stern? Howard Stern? I mean, I don't listen to him now, but I've listened to him a few years ago, I listened to a few of his shows. He's free, associating all the time. And I realized he's been an analysis.

[Podcast Host]

Yes. So he's a terrific advocate for analysis specifically. And in terms of what we're talking about, togetherness, your group, but being together. I heard an analyst say once, aggression is easy, intimacy is hard. Robert Stern was on the current. David Letterman has, I think it's a Netflix program where he interviews people. And Stern comes on and is able to talk about his hostility or his sort of fights with Letterman. And now post analysis, he has a very intimate, warm relationship and sort of a resolving of envy. And he speaks. It's a beautiful passage where these two men connect where they were once adversarial, not in a comedic way at all, who's very hurtful and very damaging to both. But Howard Stern talks about his analysis. We're talking about knowing who would want to know the horror of things. I want to ask a question from your book. Can we know slash remember our own birth?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Well, we have evidence. The answer is no and yes. So CNPS had. Her name is Alexandria Poncitelli, I think is how you say it. She's an Italian.

[Podcast Host]

Pontiatelli, the twin studies out of Italy. Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

So yeah. I'll just repeat in broad strokes what she found. So she did sonograms of twins, and so she would find two boys in utero and one would have his right arm over his twin's left leg. And then she followed them both in utero. And then she'd follow them in the crib and then she'd follow them in the plague pen and then she'd follow them in the bathtub. So she followed them post, you know, pre birth and post birth for a couple of years. And the patterns that she saw, like that was one pattern. Another one was, you know, one little girl was kicking her brother, you know, with her right foot, always in the left arm of the brother. The patterns that she saw of interaction in womb with the same patterns that she saw in the playpen in the bathtub post birth. So we definitely have consciousness pre birth. Memory is tricky because memory is a very complex phenomenon and it means different things at different life episodes and different things to different people. So I don't think I have any memory before any real memory before 7 years old. Most researchers say, and I think Freudians generally say you don't have memory before four. But people do claim to have memories before that. Whether they are really having memories or just fabrications, I have no way of knowing. But I do think that something changes neurologically and in the brain when you learn language. And so I think that whatever memory that you might have from one year old or from birth or two years old, once you develop language, the brain is doing something that it's never done before. And so I think it doesn't make sense to talk about memory in the same way as memories, language and post language. And of course, you know, that's kind of what Spatnitz was onto. He was onto what are the patterns that develop pre language. You know, we call it pre adipo, but he really was talking about pre language.

[Podcast Host]

Pre language, yeah. Well, I was thinking about the twins, because one of the things that she said that really liked, because I've seen it in twins, I know personally and professionally that they don't share the womb. One tends to dominate and take up most of the space. It's not equal space. And you watch that throughout life as well when you follow and that the twin that did not take up space, that had much less room, struggles in life to just take up space. And let's take about one of the sort of the. The directives in group is to take equal talking time. And you watch a twin struggle to take equal talking time and how deeply uncomfortable it can be for them. And it runs into, because you talk about this in the book, the repetition compulsion, the desire to return to not taking up space, and yet knowing that growth broadly is to take up space, not more than anybody else, but to share and you see it play out. So I think that the preverbal gets enacted in the treatment in life so.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

That'S leading me to think back about cancer. And that taking up space means not only taking up your psychic space and being most fully a psychic self, but it also means being embedded in your body, you know, within your skin boundary. And I think that there are dysfunctions that come about from not doing that. And I think cancer. Is cancer a psychosomatic disease? No, it's a biochemical thing that happens. But might there be psychosomatic components or precursors that lead to biochemical dysfunctions, physiological dysfunctions or whatever? Sure. I mean, we can pretty much say that about everything. So if there could be, I think, in some cases, a sense of not fully living through, living in and living with your whole body, taking the space within yourself, within yourself, within your own body boundaries.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, we're coming near the end. But there's something that I have. This is my own personal bugbear about. Is multitasking a real thing?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

It seems not.

[Podcast Host]

Right. Thank you.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah, it seems that you think it is, but you're really just moving back and forth. And I think if you, you know, if you try to text while you're driving, I think, you know, I'm not looking. I'm looking at the phone. I'm not. So I'm not really driving. I'm not paying attention to driving when I'm texting. And, you know, you could say the same about any kind of multitasking thing. You're alternating, and maybe you're alternating really quickly between different functions, but the research shows that it's not really multi.

[Podcast Host]

Not a thing.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

I asked. This is a very idiosyncrating personal question because I had the great misfortune of working for a time in corporate America and the demand to multitask, and I always wanted to fight back and say, that's not a thing, but then they fired me. So.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

What worked in your favor?

[Podcast Host]

It so worked in my favor. Oh, my gosh. Before we have to stop, what else would you like the listeners to know about the book?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

I think I would like the book to know that while I think it gives really good information and I think unusual information also that is not covered in other places. And so that's all really interesting, but it is a very personal book. So I think I am presenting myself through again. I'm almost 80 here, so I think about the end of my life in a way that I never did before. I was too busy living my life, being in the middle of it. But now I'm seeing that there is an end that I don't know Whether it's eminent in five years or 20 years. But I know the end is coming. And so I think that I decided to kind of be more open about all of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences that have led me to where I am today.

[Podcast Host]

And what are you working on now? What's your next book?

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Oh, it's called Wired for How. So originally it was our revolutionary brain, and then that got too long, and I realized it had to be two volumes. And I had developed a whole set of exercises called Brainercise, where. And it's not just exercises for the brain, it's for all aspects of being. And so then I realized, well, that could be like a workbook, so it could be two volumes. So it was our revolutionary brain, our evolutionary mind, and that I like, you know, the kind of contradiction of those two. And so then when I came up with Wired for why, I decided, well, I had to have kind of the companion to Wired for why. So the second volume, that is. I mean, because originally it was one book. The second volume, which is called Wired for How the Brain of Size solution, it's basically 80% written already. Because it was part of this book.

[Podcast Host]

It was part of the first book. Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

So hopefully that will be out in a few months.

[Podcast Host]

Great. All right.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

Thank you for asking.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

It's always good to have a future plan. You know, if people say, patients say, you know, I'm going to Europe and I don't know, you know, what I'm going to do when I get back, I say, you need to know what you're going to do when you get back. You need to be able to envision a future for yourself. So even if the future turns out to be quite different than what you're envisioning, it's good to think about life continuing. So I am happy that I have my next book that I'm working on.

[Podcast Host]

Wonderful.

[Dr. Jane Goldberg]

This was lovely. Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you. It took us a while to get to it, but we did it. We have been talking with Dr. Jane Goldberg. Her new book, Wired for why How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning, published October this month, 2020. Thank you for joining.