The Shrink & the Pundit

Conversations with Jeff Salzman at the Daily Evolver

Integration Of Defensive Line Of Development

Defenses are how we automatically and consciously protect ourselves. Most relevant to the integration-of-defenses line are defensive states, which happen to all of us daily....

Mirroring the Integral Awakening

Giving our attention to the most beautiful, good, and true helps grow all of us....

IFS Part 2: How IFS and Dr. Keith Crossed Paths

The whole system is organized to constellate and strengthen Wise Self in charge and caring for all parts....

A Turquoise Psychology

Turquoise psychology is a meta-psychology. In the Integral epistemology, progressive developmental stages are characterized by colors, and turquoise is where wise people bond with like-minded...

Cancel Culture and Freedom of Speech

Is there any newscaster, journalist, or politician you dislike enough that you dismiss anything they say? You are cancelling this person....

The Cambrian Explosion and Riding Evolution’s Whirlwind

Something strange is happening with evolution—it’s speeding up. Every few years we’re doubling the volume of human knowledge....

Couple Holding Hands

The Intentional Love Affair

The three foundations of satisfying relationships are the friendship, the love affair, and problem-solving. An intentional love affair sustains eroticism and expanding love....

Are The Kids Alright The Shrink The Pundit

Are The Kids Alright?

Dr Keith Witt, integral psychotherapist extraordinaire, joins me to take a look at our next generation: the kids, teenagers and people entering their twenties....

Playing and Fighting: The Keys to Sociability The Shrink The Pundit

Playing and Fighting: The Keys to Sociability

Keith introduces me to his theory of human sociability. As he sees it, human relationships can be seen on a spectrum of playing and fighting....

HEXACO: The Quality that Leverages All Others The Shrink The Pundit

HEXACO: The Quality that Leverages All Others

Dr. Keith and I marvel at an exciting new (to us) typology system developed by Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton: the HEXACO system....

The Three Sources of Suffering The Shrink The Pundit

The Three Sources of Suffering

There are at least three distinct sources of human suffering, all related, and none reducible to the others....

The Enchantment of Science The Shrink The Pundit

The Enchantment of Science

Dr. Keith and I notice a growing attempt in the culture to bring meaning and purpose into the realms of science....

Transgenderism and Abortion The Shrink The Pundit

Transgenderism and Abortion

In this episode, Dr. Keith and I take on two hot-button issues in the culture wars, each of us coming up on different sides of...

Trauma to transcendence The Shrink The Pundit

Trauma to transcendence: Using life’s wounds to grow

In this episode of the Shrink and the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss a powerful realization emerging at the leading edge of culture...

Post-Issue Relationships The Shrink The Pundit

Post-Issue Relationships: Interpersonal development at teal and turquoise

Today’s topic is what Dr. Keith calls the “post-issue relationship”, and here’s how he describes it: In a post-issue relationship, each problem is an opportunity...

The Meaning of It All The Shrink The Pundit

The Meaning of It All: An integral look at grief and loss

In this episode, I take a look at the “ultimate questions” of religion and philosophy: Who are we? Where are we going? How does one...

Fighting and Friending The Shrink The Pundit

Fighting and Friending our Way Forward

All living processes exist in a rhythm of opposing forces which create conflict, resolving into either cooperation or domination. This dynamic of tension is the...

PUKE HIM OUT! The Shrink The Pundit

PUKE HIM OUT!

Last Wednesday we saw a mob assault the US Capitol Building in an attempt to stop the certification of November’s presidential election....

Breath and Body Vitality The Shrink The Pundit

Breath and Body Vitality

Dr. Keith and I rage against the dying of the light....

Life Beyond Outrage The Shrink The Pundit

Life Beyond Outrage

In our personal relationships we are pretty good at harmonizing differences. But when it comes to politics and culture it is a much harder task....

The Light in the Covid Tunnel The Shrink The Pundit

The Light in the Covid Tunnel

Dr. Keith Witt and I have way too much fun discussing the consequences, in all four quadrants, of life in the time of COVID-19....

Why Not to Have a Secret Affair The Shrink The Pundit

Why Not to Have a Secret Affair

Keith explains the reasons people have secret affairs (and how they justify them), how to recognize and derail the cascade of behaviors that lead to...

Cultural Evolution Goes Mainstream The Shrink The Pundit

Cultural Evolution Goes Mainstream

In this episode, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson’s latest book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution....

Considering Otto Scharmer’s “Axial Shift” political theory The Shrink The Pundit

Considering Otto Scharmer’s “Axial Shift” political theory

Many integralists are fans of Otto Scharmer, MIT professor and developer of “Theory U”, a brilliant tool for activating higher stages of consciousness that has...

Befriending Emotional Pain The Shrink The Pundit

Befriending Emotional Pain

What makes our distress difficult to accept, Keith says, is that we live in a culture that preaches zero tolerance for emotional pain....

The Quadrant Lens: How to See Your Blind Spots The Shrink The Pundit

The Quadrant Lens: How to See Your Blind Spots

I talk with Dr. Keith Witt about what he calls “the seductive power of quadrant absolutism,” riffing on the quadrant model (part of the AQAL...

The Beauty of Evolved Conflict The Shrink The Pundit

The Beauty of Evolved Conflict

Keith Witt and I discuss the evolution of human conflict, how it is manifesting in today’s world and what might be next as emerges into...

Is Masculinity Toxic?

In this podcast Jeff talks with Dr. Keith Witt about an evolutionary approach that liberates masculinity and femininity into a new integration that features the...

Post-Election Peptalk

The morning after this week’s US midterm election I got a note from Dr. Keith Witt, my Shrink and the Pundit podcast partner, suggesting we...

An Integral Understanding of Suicide

The gift of self-aware consciousness included the capacity for humans to anticipate and understand the inevitability of their own deaths, and all gifts come with...

The Power to Serve

Dr. Keith talks to Jeff Salzman about Integral Life’s recent “Tap Your Power” event in Denver, CO....

Helping Kids Grow Strong: A Conversation with Dr. Keith Witt

Dr Keith Witt talks with Jeff about how to better support children’s development....

The Care and Feeding of the Brain

Dr Keith shares new research about brain health and specific actions we can take to maintain cognitive capacities into elderhood....

Peering into the Post-Privacy World

Jeff talks with integral psychotherapist Dr. Keith Witt about the arising of big data and its effect on our individual and collective psyches....

The Future of Sex: More Fun, Less Creepy

Jeff talks with Dr. Keith Witt about the great consciousness raising our culture is going through regarding sexual harassment....

Intimacy, Longevity, and Happiness

Dr Keith Witt and I talk about how intimacy, longevity and happiness are programmed into the human genome, and accessible to all of us. But...

Transforming Trauma Into Power – A two-part conversation with Dr. Keith Witt

In this two-part podcast Transforming Trauma Into Power, integral psychotherapist Dr. Keith Witt explores what we now know about trauma and how it affects us....

Self-Love: Feeling whole in our incompleteness

Dr. Keith traces the relationship that each of us has with our own “self-sense” from birth (actually gestation)....

The Psychology of Politics

In this episode, Jeff and Dr. Keith look at the current presidential candidates through a psychological lense, and then turn it back on us....

From Midlife Crisis to a Deeper Sense of Self

“The difference between a crisis that makes us stronger or one that makes us weaker and diminishes us is how we resolve it,” says Dr....

The Integral Guide to Divorce

A higher divorce rate doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with our society. It more likely indicates our changing expectations of a primary partnership...

WHAT DEPRESSION IS TRYING TO TELL US – An Integral Conversation with Jeff Salzman [AUDIO]

On this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Jeff and Dr. Keith talk about one of the oldest and most dreaded of human afflictions,...

Spirituality and Psychotherapy: Integrating the Two Great Paths of Development [AUDIO]

In May of 2013, Dr. Keith had the privilege to speak with Jeff Salzman about the integration of Spirituality and Psychotheraphy....