Joseph Scalia III and Lynne S. Scalia, "Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education" (Routledge, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Interview with Joseph Scalia III and Lynne S. Scalia

Episode Title: Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education
Host: Ben Greenberg
Guest: Dr. Joseph Scalia III
Date: February 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network features a deep, searching conversation with Dr. Joseph Scalia III, co-author (with Lynne S. Scalia) of Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education (Routledge, 2025). The episode explores how environmentalism, psychoanalysis, and education have become stuck in stale dogmas and systems, calling for radical democratic transformation across these fields. With frank reflection, Dr. Scalia discusses his journey as a psychoanalyst, activist, and educator, challenging ossified institutions while emphasizing the need for humility, self-inquiry, and genuine collective transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Motivation Behind the Book

(02:42 – 07:11)

• Ossification in Institutions: Dr. Scalia identifies a pervasive stagnation across the fields of psychoanalysis, environmentalism, and education—institutions becoming self-replicating and resistant to genuine change.
• Democratic Practice: Both Scalias are committed to not just theorizing about democracy, but practicing it, especially within their own psychoanalytic institute.
• Failures Across Movements: Mainstream and grassroots environmentalism often fail to adapt and communicate effectively with society at large, perpetuating outdated or insular strategies.

“Can we at the Institute for Democratic Psychoanalysis be democratic?”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (04:19)

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2. Intertwining of Activism, Psychoanalysis, and Pedagogy

(07:11 – 13:47)

• Cross-Pollination of Disciplines: The book synthesizes lessons from Scalia’s roles as environmental activist, psychoanalyst, and educator, revealing parallel impasses in each sphere.
• Education’s Complicity: Lynn Scalia’s chapter highlights how educational institutions have served neoliberal capitalism rather than real transformation.
• Need for Collective Transformation: The conversation identifies society’s urgent need for new ways of relating and acting, a motif threaded throughout the book.

“There’s so many attacks on this need for collective societal transformation, which is one of the main themes…”
— Ben Greenberg (08:52)

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3. Democracy, Mondialization, and the Common Good

(13:07 – 15:34)

• Inspiration from Castoriadis & Apollon: Scalia discusses the concepts of true democracy (from Castoriadis) and mondialization (from Apollon; contrasted with globalization)—both advocating for societies oriented toward the common good, not mere political or economic alignment.
• Civic Transformation: True democracy requires individuals and societies to be mutually constitutive and actively engaged in recurring self-inquiry and collective responsibility.

“I as an individual have been made democratic by society and then democratic individuals make a democratic society. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (12:34)

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4. Human Transformation & The Risks of Dehumanization

(13:47 – 19:09)

• The Threat of ‘Homo Roboticus’: Dr. Scalia and Ben reflect on the perils of reducing humanity to mechanisms—whether by AI ideologies or ossified institutions—and losing sight of the subjective core of being human.
• Psychoanalytic Subjectification: Authentic psychoanalysis should foster individuals' emergence as unique subjects, not mere products of dogma or groupthink.

“What’s at risk here if we don’t live up to the definition of homo sapiens… Homo roboticus… the desire to allow the death drive to just let us destroy the source of life…”
— Ben Greenberg (13:47–15:31)

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5. The Institute for Democratic Psychoanalysis (IDP) & Psychoanalytic Education Reform

(15:34 – 21:37)

• A New Psychoanalytic Model: The IDP is structured to break from traditional, hierarchical, or authoritarian psychoanalytic training—pushing for truly democratic, pluralistic, and self-reflexive practices.
• Reforming Analyst Formation: Dr. Scalia calls into question the sufficiency of classical psychoanalytic education and emphasizes the need for analysts to undergo a genuine process of becoming, entailing personal transformation and openness to multiple schools of thought.

“What is possible to do instead of those two things [authoritarianism or laissez-faire]? And so that’s why we formed... [IDP].”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (16:58)

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6. Authority, Ossification, and the Analytic ‘Mystic’

(21:37 – 29:26)

• Challenges to the Establishment: Both Scalia and Greenberg recount resistance met when pushing against entrenched psychoanalytic authorities.
• Christopher Bollas’ Ethical Mandate: Bollas’ influence is discussed—particularly his insistence that analysts immerse themselves in multiple theoretical schools, avoiding “one truth” dogmatism.
• The Outlier’s Burden: References to figures like Rollo May and Foucault’s parrhesia—the courage to speak truth against power.

“He [Bollas] said it is an ethical obligation… for all psychoanalysts to immerse themselves in the theoretical orientation of the major schools…”
— Ben Greenberg quoting Christopher Bollas (23:40)

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7. The Loneliness and Necessity of Companionship on the Analyst’s Path

(29:26 – 35:42)

• The Solitary Journey: Scalia describes the emotional weight and occasional loneliness inherent to analytic work and institutional critique, and the importance of enduring relationships with colleagues willing to journey with him across traditions and challenges.
• Personal Examples: Cites his ongoing, decades-long dialogue with Charles Turk as an example of mutual support and intellectual growth.

“It’s a tough journey in some ways and joyous in others… fueling of life… but there’s a loneliness.”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (31:03)

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8. Terra and Demos: Rethinking Human/Nature Relations

(35:42 – 40:49)

• Personal Narrative and Wildness: Through evocative storytelling, Scalia describes his transformative immersion in the Montana wilderness—coming into adulthood and selfhood through direct, risky, and humbling experience of the “real.”
• The Human in Nature: He critiques the false division between humanity and nature that persists in environmentalism, advocating for a unified ethic informed by psychoanalytic self-examination.
• Facing Death as Life’s Affirmation: The proximity to danger and death in wild places is understood as a vital confrontation—the very opposite of the deadening effects of technological and institutional detachment.

“When I am there, I am alive and I am a human… I know… that I am alive and human in a way that would be impossible without such places and things.”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (36:53, from his own writing, read by Greenberg)

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9. Failings & Aims within Psychoanalysis and Environmentalism

(40:49 – 52:49)

• Limitations of the Profession: Dr. Scalia levels a hard critique: most psychoanalysts, and indeed most people, never reach the ‘end’ of their own analysis, nor the capacity for true independent thought—often unknowingly “pretending” at liberation or critical consciousness.
• Critical Consciousness as a Project: The book aims to shock both mainstream and grassroots environmentalists (and psychoanalysts) into seeing how their reflexive certainty blinds them to unexamined assumptions and thus stymies genuine change.

“Most psychoanalysts… are only, as Apollon has put it, pretending to be psychoanalysts, that is, have not reached the ‘end of analysis’.”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (44:04)

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10. New Conservation Ethics & Radical Self-Inquiry

(51:17 – 52:49)

• Terra and Demos Revisited: Scalia calls for “a new conservation ethic that is linked inextricably with an evolved ethic for human relations,” insisting on the inseparability of environmental and human liberation.
• Lifelong Self-Examination: The conversation returns repeatedly to the importance of humility, recognizing our own potential for split, projection, and stagnation.

“Only an ethic that pairs the good of all people and the good of every component of the earth… offers humanity a chance.”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III (Reading, 52:08)

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11. Small Pockets of Resistance and Hope

(56:03 – end)

• The Importance of Companionship: In referencing Thomas Ogden, Scalia highlights the necessity of “small pockets of resistance”—solidarities between individuals committed to thinking and living otherwise, supporting each other against mainstream conformism.
• Hope as an Ethical Stance: With Franco “Bifo” Berardi, the episode ends on a call to persistence—not because victory is probable, but because continued meaningful action is fundamental to living ethically.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever get there, but we must behave as though we can… because… what else is there to do?”
— Dr. Joseph Scalia III quoting Franco Berardi (60:15)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Institutional Failure:
  “Mainstream environmentalism… has failed, but grassroots, too, is stuck in the past… it just is like, ‘this land is beautiful, we should preserve it.’ And I’m like, well, duh. But… it’s not working.”
  — Scalia (05:25)

• On the Analytic Journey:
  “It’s a tough journey in some ways and joyous in others… but there’s a loneliness and to have some very close colleagues… that’s for me has been very important and is.”
  — Scalia (31:03)

• On Wildness and Humanity:
  “When I am there, I am alive and I am a human in a way that would be impossible without such places and things.”
  — Scalia (36:53, quoting his own prose)

• On the Deadening Effects of Institutes:
  “There really is something… dead deadening… about psychoanalytic institutes.”
  — Greenberg (19:12)

• On Critical Consciousness and Humility:
  “It’s a lifelong journey to be examining ourselves… to detoxify from what gets projectively identified and lodged inside of us, often in isolation.”
  — Greenberg (51:30)

• On Hope and Action:
  “We must behave as though we can [achieve liberation]… What else is there to do?”
  — Scalia (60:15, channeling Berardi)

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Key Timestamps for Essential Segments

• [02:42] – Scalia outlines motivations for the book & notes institutional ossification
• [04:39] – Mainstream vs grassroots environmentalism; failures and missed opportunities
• [09:26] – Host prompts deep discussion of societal ‘transformation’
• [13:07] – Democracy, Castoriadis, and mondialization introduced
• [15:34] – Founding of the Institute for Democratic Psychoanalysis (IDP)
• [21:53] – Christopher Bollas’ influence on Scalia and psychoanalytic ethics
• [35:42] – Scalia discusses coming-into-being in wilderness, read-aloud from book
• [40:49] – The paradox of “pretending analyst” and crisis of psychoanalytic formation
• [51:17] – Call for a new Terra and Demos-based conservation ethic
• [56:03] – Small pockets of resistance as seedbeds of real change
• [60:09] – Conclusion: holding onto hope and the imperative to act

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Final Reflection

This is a passionate and nuanced exchange, refusing easy answers and continually interrogating the self, the group, and the world. The necessity of radical self-inquiry, humility, and new forms of democratic practice—across psychoanalysis, environmentalism, and education—resonates not just as intellectual critique, but as an existential imperative. The conversation invites listeners to imagine themselves inside these “small pockets of resistance,” and challenges them to ask: Where, and with whom, will I commit to a more vital, honest, and transformative way of living?

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Transcript

[Ben Greenberg]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to this episode of New Books in Psychoanalysis. I'm your host for today's program, Ben Greenberg, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and founding director of the center for Dynamic Practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is my absolute privilege and honor to introduce to you our guest for today's program, Dr. Joseph Scalia III, who is quite graciously here with us today to discuss his just recently published contribution in 2026. Co authored with Lynn Scalia, Critical Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education, and Just a few words about our guest, an introduction. Joseph Scalia, Doctor of Psychoanalysis, is a psychoanalyst, environmental activist, and co director of the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis. He has served as president of both Montana Wilderness association and the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance. In addition to Critical Consciousness, the volume we'll be discussing today, Dr. Scalia is the author of Intimate Attacks upon Psychic Interiority and editor of the anthology the Vitality of Objects, Exploring the work of Christopher Bolas. Scalia is the winner of a Gravida Award in Psychoanalytic Writing and has written and published extensively in Environmentalism. His interviews, presentations, and writings can be found at scaliapsychoanalysis.com library Understanding the World through a merging of psychoanalysis, environmentalism, and education, all as mutually informing, is a cornerstone of his project. Another way to say this is that we must understand both how we are unconsciously destroying ourselves and how the greater world affects our conscious and our unconscious minds. Dr. Scalia conceives of his work as both radical and militant in the following ways. Radical is meant here to refer to the need for a complete and integrated overhaul of humanity and civilization instead of a piece by piece one a transformation that cannot afford to leave any stone unturned. Militant in the sense that he brings an unflinching, even if an attemptedly sensitive one, confrontation to radicalism aiming to agitate complacencies and constrain uncomfortable self examination. And to start our interview here today, I now pose to you the obligatory opening question of this podcast. As far as our motivation is, anything we can ever fully know. What motivated you to write this book?

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

What a great question, challenging question. I think it was very much a place in my history and world history, in the world that I most immediately occupy as well as the larger world. What I see is really an ossified institution of psychoanalysis, censorship of thought of speaking within psychoanalytic institutes, unconscious enactments by both faculty and students, and an awareness of the challenge involved in doing anything different than that I mean, the old notion of the oppressed, once they're freed, tend to then become the new oppressor. And so Lynn Scalia, who's co director with me, and, and, and I will say so. Lynn is a life adult, lifelong educator and educational leader, and has been through her own extensive psychoanalysis, which I think is the most important part of being an analyst. And so she's a great co director in that way, as well as numerous other ways. Like, we've been together for 50 years, which helps. I know it's a long time and we're married as children, basically, so. Yeah. Can we at Institute for Democratic Psychoanalysis be democratic? And then in environmentalism, I've been so disappointed and disturbed by what I've seen there.

[Ben Greenberg]

So.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Right. I've been president of two different wilderness advocacy organizations, one a mainstream one, that when I became a board member, was transitioning from really, protection of wilderness uncompromised by big money to the acceptance of big money, and then their narrative changing in a way that was more aligned with neoliberal capitalism. And so I went through that and had to realize that was going on, and then later became president of rift, so that I call that mainstream environmentalism. And then president of Galina Yellowstone Wilderness alliance, which is a grassroots organization, as in, has not given into big money and remains hardcore defender of wilderness. So wilderness, as in capital W, wilderness lands that are set aside in certain ways of protection as Designated by the 1964 Wilderness act of the. Of the United States, you know, done by the US Congress. And so both sides of those, the grassroots and the mainstream. So I've said that kind of obvious way, the mainstream has failed, but grassroots, too, it's stuck in the past and it can't take account of. So it just is like, this land is beautiful. We should preserve it. And I'm like, well, duh. But that's like the strategy is keeping on saying that and saying that and saying that to the public, and it's not working. And so the need for an address to society at large, and not just to that small piece of society that wants to protect wilderness, it refuses that. I mean, refuses it, because I've entered into that arena. So those are the two main things for me, those two broad areas that got me towards the book. And then as Lynn and I talked, I mean, the parallels are very clearly there for Lynn, too, in her career and how much the education institution has followed along with, again, neoliberal capitalism and, you know, educating quote, unquote students to fit within that, that establishment so all of those things.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah, really quite an extraordinary synthesis of many different professional practices that people may typically consider to be related. But this book really synthesized something that incorporated your. Both your activism and the breakdowns that have happened therein along the way in ecology and psychoanalysis. And then also I'm myself a pedagogue as well. And so to see Lyn describe that in her very substantial chapter was quite rewarding as well.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Interesting. I didn't know that last aspect of you, really. I mean, as you say it, it's like. Well, of course I do know it, but hadn't considered categorized it that way.

[Ben Greenberg]

I was A K through 12 certified music education teacher.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah. Oh, but specifically, I did. No. Oh, where are you? In New York, you said New York. Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

And so I student taught. I got my teacher's license, and then I was actually educated at a school where Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed was.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

Part of the main curriculum. So Len's chapter felt really, for me, like coming back to a place that felt quite a foundational home base for me throughout the years I taught in Mexico as a college professor, I taught in the Middle east with Israeli Palestinian youths, which. And you mentioned even the Israeli Palestinian crisis. I think I would imagine that was what was happening in Gaza unfolded while you were writing this book. And yeah, there's so many attacks on this need for collective societal transformation, which is one of the main themes throughout all the different threads.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, Yep. That word transformation. Yep. Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

Elaborate, if you could, about that.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

How? Well, I think I'll cite first Martin Luther King towards the end of. Well. Well, towards the end of his life. In an interview, he made very clear and explicit that he no longer thought that intervening in essentially identity politics was adequate. That there needed to be a transformation of society or even of civilization. And it's that for me. So, I mean, I look at. I've been very moved by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis and his work on democracy, which identifies what is democracy in his view. And so it is a space in which. Well, what Lynn and I tried to do at Park High School in Livingston, Montana, where there was this Confederate flag. Uproar going on between the left and the right. And there was also just an incredible amount of hatred and threats spewing after serial suicides. And the ways we intervened there were pretty much in Castoriadis notion of looking for the good of the all and for people to be able to move outside of the. Their rigidity of thinking and to so make A, a group space in which that is invited and, and for then those individuals who have been so invited and, and behaved democratically to generate their own democracy. So like, you know, a back and forth, I as an individual have been made democratic by society and then democratic individuals make a democratic society. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Sort of interestingly. And then last. Willie Apollon in Quebec and the Freudian School of Quebec and their parent organization gfreak is how it's popularly known, which is the French acronym, I'll try to lay it all out in English. The Interdisciplinary Freudian Group for Clinical and Cultural Research and Intervention. There has been a real rigorous unfolding of the concept mondulization, which is opposed to globalization. So it's like, yeah, we have this capitalistic thing going on that makes the world like one place, but what is that doing to culture and civilizations? And thus mondilization? So looking at both sides of that, instead of just globalization, which is what happens popularly, and again, it's looking for what is essentially a democratic society, what is, as they call it, the common good. So those things have been very influencing of me and then. So reorient me. Would you like? Yeah, go ahead.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah, well, well, first of all, if, if it feels like worldization as opposed to globalization will be a fair translation where almost like the globe is an object and something about the world as we inhabit it is a subjective experience. I was wondering if I heard that correctly and.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, you did. Yeah, that's very good. What, what is and what thus too? Or following out from that, maybe thus. Yeah, I guess what is the human? And so there's a challenge to the human. What, what are we going to become? Because we're not going to stay the same.

[Ben Greenberg]

Right. And you make a really potent warning against what we're becoming. And I don't know if you were aware when you were writing it, you know, about some of the recent stuff of these, you know, now AI, it used to just be tech billionaires, now it's AI billionaires that are saying things like, you know, humanity is really just the thing that's going to be allowing these greater, you know, machine brain type things to exist and evolve. But you mentioned what's at risk here if we don't live up to the definition of homo sapiens of wise man. Right. Like Homo robotic. As I felt where what we're in danger of, I thought a Lacanian notion of the automaton, of course, but also how contemporary and also how I think relevant in, in terms of all the many threads you're talking about in terms of what it really means to subjectify our experience, whether it's in combating or rather non combating, inviting in people who are waving Confederate flags at the edge of a school property, or if it's, you know, between different modes of environmentalism or like the grassroots versus, I guess, the more nonprofit that, you know, the public might know traditionally and. And really essentially in psychoanalysis as well. And so if. Yeah, a lot I want to get more into about that, particularly the. The Institute for Democratic Psychoanalysis is. Is if I have the acronym.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah. Yep, yep. Idp. That's right. Yeah, go. Well, that came out of these notions of like, so Castoriadis's notion of democracy, which by the way, he says. So let me say he was a psychoanalyst, was Lacanian, and then, I don't know, then developed his own line of thinking outside of Lacanian thought, but clearly carried it always with him, kind of like Guattari did. Felix Guattari. So he was a psychoanalyst. He was an economist, actually, and a political scientist. He looked at. He considered democracy to only have been approximated twice in history. Ancient Greece and then Western Europe, two millennia later, century or two behind us, and then, you know, fell apart. And so can we make a democracy? And so can we do it within a psychoanalytic institute where there isn't censorship, where there isn't authoritarianism, where there isn't just a laissez faire way of, oh, yeah, we can just all be, you know, together and happy in our ignorance what. What is possible to do instead of those two things? And so that's why we formed. And that means also a transformation of what, of how psychoanalysts are formed, of what is a psychoanalytic institute, what is the institution of psychoanalysis? Um, and. And like all institutions, be they all the way up to civilization, if you want to, you know, include that as an institution, which I think is a fair conceptualization. How does any group small to our largest known so far, behave democratically? Right. So in a way that people do become primarily driven in the social order for a common good or the good of the all. And so then let me say lastly about idp, two things then. What is a psychoanalytic education? To break out of the classical tripartite model. And you do, you know, these courses, this training analysis, this personal analysis, and then somehow, magically, you're an analyst. What. Who is that person who is formed as a psychoanalyst? What does it take to be that? What is that? What is the practice of psychoanalysis. And then so to answer those questions at IDP for ourselves anyway and hopefully in a way that can influence others if we answer it and then practice it in a defensible way. That's, that's what we're up to. Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

And, and, and which I should say is, is a, is a shared project, maybe complimentary in the way that you're, you know, fulfilling this and the way that I arrived at an attempt at starting something in the world that I feel to be aligned very much with those principles, that there really is something in the institutes that is dead deadening. Which, by the way, I love that you took that sense. I had an Andre Green more or less concept in my mind. Reading deads the chapter. Right. And, and in the end, even mentioning the grappling with the object of the analytic process of coming into being as a subject like a Greco Roman wrestler, there's something there about both, I think, origins of democracy, of grappling, of, of, you know, what you mentioned, the, the Western civilization and it's discontents that we all have to bear in our own way. And it really struck me how you talked through primarily through your main institute experience, but then also then through your secondary path, pursuing a Lacanian more, I guess, theoretical journey that you encountered a lot of resistance to becoming yourself.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, that's great. Absolutely. Yep. All over the place, which is the order of the day for anyone who pushes against any establishment beyond. Talked about the psychoanalytic establishment and its ruling caste and yeah, you challenge that, you're going to upset both the rulers and those who follow the rulers and are indebted to the rulers. Bolas talks about opportunities for group transformation and that either is taken or there is ossification, that it's like it's one or the other. Yeah, well, let me stop at that for the moment.

[Ben Greenberg]

Sure. And there's really so much to get into here. I, I, I would love to hear what it was like to have Christopher Bullas supervise it, because you did supervise the, the case that is, that's presented in Kevon.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so, so yeah, I'll say about Bolus, and I'll say then too that I moved into pretty serious immersion in Lacanian psychoanalysis and then also have broadened back from that while keeping both of those very much within myself. So, yeah, Bola supervised that case in a control analysis, which then led, by the way, to, so at an institute. He was an outside analyst from the institute. They gave me permission to Use him as a control analyst, supervising analyst. And then decided, after I had been very much influenced by him, that I no longer understood the theory of practice at the institute, who gave me permission to see Bolus. T is Bolus as the supervisor, and said I then had to take more coursework in their theory for me to be graduated by them. So I said, no, sorry, I'm not going to do that. So I went on and finished at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. So, yeah, BO is very, very much influenced me. And is there a specific way you're wondering about that influence on dads?

[Ben Greenberg]

Well, just in the sense I felt like if it was very true to my, I guess, personal. Christopher Bolas is much more through just reading and interfacing with his work. But there was a quote of his that you included that I feel you really did so much service to. You wrote that he said, it is an ethical obligation, in my view, for all psychoanalysts to immerse themselves in the theoretical orientation of the major schools of psychoanalysis. Freudian, Kleinian, Hartmanian, Cohosian, Bionian, Wanna and Lacanian. And at ccmps, we would add modern. And then you return to the three originating questions, but in terms of, yeah, the formation of yourself, this. I would imagine there's somewhat of a passageway between where the book leaves off with you taking helm at ccmps and then now directing idp. Just. Yeah, this journey of trying to bring something into being that is in service to this moral plurality, embedded group transformational process that doesn't ossify, that doesn't. In the place where the revolution might have started.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

But, yeah, that's great. Yeah. And to finish a question and then to lead and then to move into this one that you've asked, a previous one that you've asked or did ask too, you know, one who challenges the establishment and meets the kind of resistances that they meet. Many have talked about this beyond did. Bolas clearly has. Rollo May did. I mean, many, many, many. You know, Robert Lindener, Joel Covell, there's a, you know, a strong tradition within psychoanalysis about this. Just these are always outliers and always. Right. Those people beyond even called a mystic. And he kind of. He said, you know, I don't know whether I want to call this, oh, like a very intelligent person, a genius or. But I'm. I'm going to use the word mystic interestingly, quite an evocative word. Rola May's rebel. Well, I think even I don't know Foucault very well, but his Notion of pariestes is the person who engages in parrhesia. I think I have those pronunciations adequate. But, yeah, Bolas was very clear and remains very clear about that. I think he would even call it an obligation to immerse oneself in as many psychoanalytic schools of thought as one reasonably can. And then, you know, you make your own decisions about that. How, what. How full an immersion. And I mean, you know, you can't do it all. And to a certain extent, and as Adam Phillips talks about in the Cure for Psychoanalysis, always what you do in that regard will be a reflection of who you already are going into it. But, yeah, to not just stay locked into, oh, I have the one truth. You know, Melanie Klein had the one truth. We just follow out from Melanie Klein. Bolas would say the same thing about himself. Don't just follow out from me. Willie Apelon, you know, or Lacan. Don't just follow out from them. So, yeah, that's where Bolas was at. He influenced me greatly in that way. And that's where I remain. And, yeah, that's what I'm hoping IDP will be. One of the things I'm hoping IDP can pull off.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah. I think there really is something as you're sharing your experience that feels all too true for me. I've been involved in various institutes all throughout the country, and I've kind of gathered my own set of consultants and supervisors and analysts who really helped me along the way. But there's something about this book and your own personal relationship and time with Balas that you're talking about. I do want to bookmark and get back to the mystic notion, because I feel there's a beautiful dovetail back to nature, especially with your chapter Tara and Deimos, as well as the quote even you include about beyond naming when revolutionaries become ossified. But that there's something between all of that that I feel like being a candidate or even seeking a school to be a candidate at, even if it must really be this process of coming into being and being more who one fully is on their own. I think in a way that Tom Ogden writes beautifully about in a lot of his work, that there's something you portrayed in your writing that deeply problematic about what has become a default norm in institutes. Antithetical, I'd think, to the project and ethos of psychoanalysis that we're supposed to know the conclusion of who theoretically we will become in a mature sense from the moment that we enroll in a psychoanalytic program. And it really Seems like Christopher Bolas helped you find your voice in this way and that it was a different experience at the Colorado Institute versus with the Lacanians. And then you were able to finish your education in the Philadelphia school, if I understand.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. But I've never stopped. Right. And so then they called Freud in to Quebec and then onto the Lacanian school of psychoanalysis, where I became an analyst at the school, but then broke with them. And I want to say too, like part of my movement through all of this has been with a colleague who has similarly but not so publicly moved through different schools of thought and became an analyst at the school at the Ecole Freudian de Quebec and now is emeritus analyst of the school. Charles Turk. And Charles, who is now 89 years old. He and I have known each other for a long time, first through the acol and we, for God, I don't know how long now I'm going to come and I counted as roughly 13 years have been in a monthly meeting, just the two of us back and forth presenting a case to each other. And Charles went into Lacanian study from object relations, which of course is where Bolas is at, to object relations being very broad, multiple schools within that as well. But yeah. So Charles and I both emerged from object relations, generally speaking, and he too has been a tremendous influence, I think just to not travel through this thing alone, this journey of being a psychoanalyst through one's life. Yeah. I'm almost moved to tears at the moment. Interesting. That surprises me. That happens to me though now in a great while and. But it always surprises me. Yeah. That it's a. It's a tough journey in some ways and joyous in others, of course, mostly and I don't know fueling of life in many ways. But yeah, there's a loneliness and to have some very close colleagues who you travel with together for a lot of that journey. That. That's for me has been very important and is.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah, that it's really powerful that, that it moved you that much as you were as. As best as you could say. What is that thread through, you know, all you're sharing about and these, these life long companionships or these many years long rather, but with Len, I guess only a lifelong companionship and. But there's. There's something there that I don't know like, like this book really tries to get at the truer, deeper place.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Well, maybe, maybe to. Maybe I'll use instead of trying to answer it in. In a sort of specific and even overarching way of what you're asking. I'll move to like Tara and Deimos, as you mentioned earlier. Right. The Earth and the people. I realize one is Greek and one is Roman, but those were the words I latched onto. So, yeah, that's my title, Terra and demos. And it came out of my environmentalism work and just the kind of separation within environmentalism of what is the human and what is nature. As though really we don't have to integrate those in our environmentalism. In environmentalism. I mean, the Earth and my relationship to wilderness, that was really the beginning for me. That really so goes back to 1980, especially earlier, but especially then the beginning of an immersion in wild country for me took me very much out of as much as is possible for any of us anyway, out of the social order and into just a different world. Not only knowing I'm in nature and near, like wild and dangerous animals. I mean, Montana is where I'm talking about, and that's not Colorado. It's. It's a place. Well, especially emblematically of the grizzly bear, not the ubiquitous black bear, just. But the grizzly bear, which is very dangerous and. And does kill people on a routine basis in Montana. And so it was very clear we're not at the top of the food chain. And that was a marker of an immersion in the land. But then in the 40 plus years I lived in Montana, up until just two and a half years ago, it has changed tremendously. Civilization of. The civilization of neoliberal capitalism and globalization has just assaulted Montana's wildness. But at any rate, being immersed in that. That wildness was part of. Part of how I came into essentially adulthood, a real adulthood, the adulthood that Crow Indians say only happens to you by 60, 60 years of age. Maybe I came into it earlier, though in some ways I only came into it later, as in maybe it never stops.

[Ben Greenberg]

No beautiful idea as a way to put it in terms of us coming into being in our development as life continues to move along. And there's a number of passages of your book that came to mind as you were just talking one of them. And the interlude leading up to Terra and Deimos that I think captures some of what it sounds like you're describing now. If it's okay that I read.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, yeah, please.

[Ben Greenberg]

But, yeah, I woke up to hear their chainsaws close by and ran out to discover them only a few hundred yards away, mowing down trees in the beautiful and previously apparently pristine forest from which I had recently hunted our winter's Venison. The nightmare was awake. Things which cannot be verbally expressed and which cannot be registered empirically and cannot be measured have occupied humans attention from time immemorial. Religions have always tried to grapple with such matters. Socrates spoke of ideal forms. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called it. The real psychoanalyst Wilfred Leon, would not even give it a name, simply calling it O philosopher. Immanuel Kant called it things in themselves and noumena, distinguishing it from phenomena. Objects which could be apprehended with the senses. When I am many miles into the wilderness, far from trailheads, roads, machines and technology which could rescue me should I become endangered, far from sounds of civilization. When I walk upon two large black bear wrestling in the crazy mountains, as I did a few weeks ago, and reach for my camera without even a thought of reaching for bear spray, when I am there, I am alive and I am a human. When I have undertaken Murian journeys through wild places, I know, even though I cannot scientifically demonstrate it, that I am alive and human in a way that would be impossible without such places and things.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

See? So gave me goosebumps early on, and now let's move to tears again. That's crazy. That's wild. But, yeah, I lived so long in that. Yeah, that's great.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

I mean, what. What's. What's the earth going to be after we've denuded it entirely of. Of its wild beauty and. And sublimity? We're on our way.

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[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

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[Ben Greenberg]

What I love is that you make a home for these siloed beautiful imagineers of Western civilization way out there in the wild, when you're actually in it, you know, and even you evoked in a different passage, I think in the same chapter was a Beowulf you quoted. And the crunching of the bone house and the grizzly bears outside, and the Winnicottian, actually the quote from when it caught. Oh, God, may I be alive when I die. And that there's something that psychoanalysis has to say about this encountering the wild that you're that close to. When I say death, I think of you because it's very different than like the Homo roboticus, the desire to allow the death drive to just let us destroy the source of life. But to be so close to the source of life, as you describe it, essentially means to be close to a potential death.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

That's great. That's great. Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

And that risk we bear. And that's where you've lived, I mean, since. So you made a very conscious choice with your wife very early on to leave the sort of comfort or convenience rather of the cities to go live this life close to life, but also potential death.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

That's great. That's right. I didn't understand at the time how close the potential death it would be, but yeah, that made it all the. Oh, gosh, can you call that richer? I'll just call it that. You make me want to say two things. Yeah, it's interesting or self defining. I am struck by how self defining it is. I have been for some time that I have spent my career outside of the world's psychoanalytic centers and outside of cities where these centers exist, and instead spent it in very rural and very wild country. Yeah. There are things about me that wouldn't have been developed otherwise, and there are things about me that haven't been developed because of that. I'm not sure what those are, but I want to make one other point before I lose it or forget it. I want to say a hard thing and, well, I'll say it first. I have another thought about myself to add to it sort of in a humbling way. Most psychoanalysts, I will go that far as to say not just many, but most, and I don't know what percent most psychoanalysts really are only, as Apple has put it, pretending to be psychoanalysts, that is, have not reached the quote, end of analysis. You know, for Freud, it was to have Moved from instinctual satisfaction in a repetitive, compulsive way to sublimation right. To a higher purpose in life is what he meant in his later years of his life. And then other ways we've looked at it since, most analysts really have not gotten there. And that's part of what I see idp, by the way, as being partly centered around is to look at that and to talk openly about that and what do we do with that as individuals and as a group. But, but I want to say, to be clear, that I am not being derisive when I say that about most psychoanalysts. I include myself in that. Until when? I don't know, 10 years ago, 60 years of age then. Now, that's not to say I wasn't doing good work then. Before that, I mean, but, but as many other than just besides just me have said, we can only bring our patients as far as we have come at the best. That's all we can do. And you know, of course, not with, I say at the best because not with all, obviously, maybe not well, and not even with the highest percent. The. A greater percentage of our patients than otherwise. But yeah, so we can help people before this, but we don't have a chance of bringing people to the, again, quote, end of analysis unless we have reached there. And it's that the not having reached there that Apollon calls pretending. So yeah, that's the thing, I think is not very much openly acknowledged, conceptualized, articulated within the psychoanalytic field. And it struck me recently that's no more surprising than, than it is to say just most people never reach a sense of a capacity to truly think for themselves. Liberals might think in a liberal way and think, oh, you know, I think in a more advanced way than conservatives, but they're still within a group. And how much, how many of those are thinking for themselves? I mean, clearly not most. So psychoanalysts are like all people in that way.

[Ben Greenberg]

It strikes me as such a tragic failure in a way of the institutes and of the culture of psychoanalysis, that we were founded as a disrupting body about a humanity that became too complacent with seeing itself as the authority over its own conscious being. And I, in a way that's a lot of what, what the title Critical Consciousness came to mean for me throughout of the book, that it's really a treatise against a lot of the conformism and it's, it's not unique to psychoanalysis. But I think unlike pedagogy, which really does claim to prepare children to get into college and succeed in the real world or environmentalism, which is really more about preserving in, in whatever ethical frame it's aiming to do that nature for future generations and to preserve something about the active landscape. Psychoanalysis is always trying to help us position ourselves to come into what we don't know yet about what it means to be human.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, I'm scribbling notes as you write, so I don't forget to say certain things. I think we do. We have progressed as a discipline, not an institution, but as a discipline, the discipline of psychoanalysis. And it's only some who others then are very much moved by. And not that the some haven't been moved to by others before them because they have, but, but some move us forward and then another and another and another. It's clearly not the majority of us, but we are, I do believe, moving forward. And that. Oh, and then. I know what else I wanted to say. In critical consciousness, part of the aim is, is to awaken people to realize how much they have just adopted others notions and bought into things without really thinking for themselves. I think the most striking thing for me that made that an articulated reality and really hit, well, striking, I use the adjective, really hit me hard was in environmentalism and how the two camps, as I called them, mainstream and grassroots, just pound the table with we are right, we are right, we are right and don't realize how short sighted they each are. So critical consciousness in that in the environmentalism arena aims to challenge both of them, both of those groups. I spoke briefly at the Museum of the rockies in Bozeman, Montana to a pretty large group like 150 people. We had a film, the Galilee and Yellowstone Wilderness alliance had a film premiere there. And I was go, I, I had a major portion of the time allotted for this event other than just the film and was the event and my own group, which is supposed to be grassroots and emancipatory, knowing that I was going to speak in this actual emancipatory way, like getting people to look at how almost everyone in the dispute is behaving in censoring ways and is blinded, my very organization managed to flood the stage in a way that the audience didn't understand it was happening and cut off the time I had been allotted to, to make this kind of intervention with 150 people who are influential people in Bozeman, Montana. And it's just resistance to thinking outside the box is enormous. And so let me just say in Bozeman still right now, there's A big dispute over a large like 200,000 acres that border Yellowstone park right out north, coming out northwest from Yellowstone, from its northwest corner right to Bozeman. And the fighting and the not seeing is just shocking. And so people just keep going along with their same strategies before there's any denouement legislated by US Congress. Again, in. In just blind ways, in pretending to use Apollon's word about psychoanalysts pretending to be environmentalists.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah, yeah. No, and. And a quote from your book really comes to mind in terms of it.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Even though you.

[Ben Greenberg]

You really talk about unflinchingly these incredibly difficult moments. And I think one of the things that makes your book different for me than a lot of other volumes I might have read that try and link together so many disparate fields is the sense of self inquiry and humility that it's a lifelong journey to be examining ourselves is where we might fall into splitting or blame or where. How we might have to detoxify from what gets projectively identified and lodged inside of us, often in isolation, as you even said. But you make a really powerful rallying cry in Terra and Demos chapter where you say we need a new conservation ethic that is linked inextricably with an evolved ethic for human relations only. An ethic that pairs the good of all people and the good of every component of the earth. What deserves to be called an ethic of Terra and Deimos offers humanity a chance. Such an achievement most assuredly cannot come into existence on an efficaciously level, collective level, unless we look at every determinative factor we are capable of identifying and grappling with.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

That's great. Thanks for reading that. Yeah. Terra and Demos. Exactly.

[Ben Greenberg]

The environmentalist analyst. I feel like it's like you start the path in one place and you weave it through with the rest of you. I think that's one of the things. There's so many passages in this book that evoke more like. It's like a book of the evocative subject to have a plan always as the evocative object in a way where there's something where you really take the reader into it with you that I've so deeply appreciated in reading and rereading it a few times already.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Well, that's all really lovely to hear you say, Ben, and I feel quite a gratitude hearing you say that. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Moving for me now I'm. Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

To be able to.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

To.

[Ben Greenberg]

This is my first new books in psychoanalysis interview. And I think for me Interestingly, this podcast, when I was, I was a fellow both at Boston College in Psychology and I was a fellow at BIPSY at the Boston Institute as a candidate, essentially that this podcast, I think for me in the interviews with new ideas that are being generated out of people's lived experience, engaging with the theory and any number of different modes eclectically. And again, very big shout out to Tracy Morgan for her incredible work here through the years, but also for connecting us to be able to actually read Larson, just get the initial shout out for connecting us initially, but then Sue Morgan for getting us here to do this. So thank you, Tracy. But that there's something there of a revolutionary, and I think that is, I don't know if that's chapter one, but very early on in the book, there's something about evolution revolution at play on words in the text that again, I hope that you know, this episode embodies. I certainly feel like this podcast overall does. But I, I did want to also read. I think this is from page one, From Resistance to Revolution and, and we'll see where this takes us as we wind our way down for today. But you wrote in 1979, Wilford, beyond succinctly and grippingly wrote that when the revolution becomes respectable, it becomes a barrier against revolution. Old ossified truths enshrined as dogma become barriers against new truths we have yet to learn. This brief statement categorizes exactly what has happened in so much of the world of environmentalism, psychoanalysis and education. In what follows, Lyn Scalia and I demonstrate and interpret how in our areas of specialty, this has happened and how we might move beyond it. Then at what price to the critical thinker who calls out the dissimulation of dogma within any group to which she or he belongs. So you think you could.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

That's great. Well, you. I would just repeat that in different words, in a sense. So rather than doing that with commentary, I'll say, and this is a nice way to wrap up a way to deal with that isolation of the rebel. The revolutionary is, as Thomas Ogden put it, to find small pockets of resistance to whose members one can live closely with. So resistance to, you know, the advancement of humanity, small pockets of resistance. So like you and I, this is a two person pocket of resistance that, you know, we, we shared these insights, if you will. And yeah, Tracy Morgan, you know, Tracy's battle against what she characterized in her paper is very convincing as racism. At the center for Modern Psychoanalysis is another member of, you know, for, for me, for A very long time now. And. And now I know for you, too, another of a. An occupant of a small pocket of resistance.

[Ben Greenberg]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah.

[Ben Greenberg]

And it must be drowning the wake if you haven't read it. For all the listeners out there, it's a phenomenal paper about the. The Holmes commission that. An essential project of psychoanalysis to explore the question of how racist are we? And the answer, unfortunately, being much more than we'd like to acknowledge that we are. So it's a beautiful paper, and you cited it even in your last chapter. A fair amount. And at that, the Pocket of Resistance, too. We're here. I'm in support of this book that I really do feel, just to all the listeners out there, is a beautiful portrayal of any number of vertices as, beyond my, call it, any number of different perspectives, vantage points to examine various human journeys of how one contends with how we make this world a more livable place for humans and for the natural world that we are the stewards of. And here on this project of creating a more democratic, dare I say, liberatory psychoanalysis, I also feel it might be worth adding we're aligned in that project as well. Not just here for the purpose of this podcast today, but also that you're helping out my thing in the world, and I'm, you know, aiming to help out your thing in the world any way that I can, too. So.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yep. Not being alone.

[Ben Greenberg]

Yeah, yeah. Which is certainly something we. We. We have to bear a good portion of. But it's. It's always. I think there's something about the, The.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

The. The. This.

[Ben Greenberg]

This sense of coming together and the sense of whether dyadic or triadic or as a group in a mass, this collective sense of transformation, really, there's something about between the pocket of resistance and the greater collective, where I think so many of the threads of the book are woven together in that hope, even if you don't know how. I think it's even said. I don't know if you'd want to end on a few closing words about where you see that hope or how you know that that's held within you.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Yeah, I will. Thanks. Well, I'm gonna cite now Franco Berardi, who was a student, a colleague, and a friend, which is how I name Bolas for me, by the way, those three terms of. Of Felix Guattari. He finishes. Berardi does one of his books with talking about activism, efforts at transformation. And he said, unlike Freud, who says this is possible in a quote, distant, distant future, he says you know, we don't know if we'll ever get there, but we must behave as though we can because. And that, that is where we must hope that. Because as he says, and this is how he finishes. What else is there to do? So, yeah, I think for me, that's a nice way to wrap up.

[Ben Greenberg]

Beautiful. Beautiful. And at that, I wish to thank all of our listeners and please keep tuning in for more episodes in new books. And thanks so much again to just Galia, who we had the benefit and pleasure of hosting today.

[Dr. Joseph Scalia III]

Thanks. Thanks so much, Ben.

[Ben Greenberg]

Thanks, Joe.