Psyche

Quique Autrey
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A psychotherapist explores topics relating to psychotherapy, philosophy, culture, and religion.  

  1. Traumatic Secret

    -2 H

    Traumatic Secret

    In this solo episode, I explore what Jeffrey Kripal calls the traumatic secret — the uneasy coordination between trauma and transcendence in mystical literature — through the philosophy of Georges Bataille. I reflect on how Kripal shaped my own intellectual and spiritual development during a season of deconstruction, teaching me how to remain open to mystery while staying critically grounded. From Bataille’s ideas about eroticism, death, and transgression to Huxley’s filter theory and the destabilization of the ego, I examine the possibility that rupture does not “cause” mystical experience but may sometimes allow it to appear. This is not a romanticizing of trauma or a defense of supernaturalism. It’s an inquiry into thresholds — those moments when the structures of the self tremble and something larger presses in. The shell must be broken. What emerges remains a mystery.

    17 min
  2. Loose Chains

    -2 J

    Loose Chains

    I don’t believe in astrology. But while reading I Don’t Believe in Astrology by Deborah Silverman, I found myself unexpectedly confronted — especially by the fact that Capricorn is traditionally associated with The Devil card in the tarot. Not evil. Attachment. In this solo reflection, I explore ambition, purpose, materialism, and the subtle chains we don’t realize we’re wearing. I talk about being a terrible boss but deeply driven, about the difficulty of being still, about the constant hum of productivity in my nervous system, and about Freud’s death drive and the superego’s demand to produce. This isn’t a book review. It’s a meditation on compulsion, freedom, and what it might mean to loosen the chains without abandoning ambition. I don’t take the symbols literally. But I do take what they reveal seriously.

    16 min
  3. What is Pleasure?

    -4 J

    What is Pleasure?

    I’ve been using the phrase ethical hedonism in recent episodes, but I realized I hadn’t slowed down enough to ask a foundational question: what do I mean by pleasure? In this solo reflection, I think out loud about pleasure as subjective, embodied, relational, and psychologically complex. I explore the neuroscience of dopamine, the difference between craving and deep presence, and how culture shapes what we’re allowed to enjoy. This episode isn’t definitive. It’s a work in progress. A serious attempt to ask whether pleasure — when it enhances vitality, connection, and coherence — might actually be an ethical guide rather than something to mistrust.

    16 min
  4. Winsome Traps

    -5 J

    Winsome Traps

    In this solo episode, I explore a tension that I’ve encountered both personally and clinically—the way some high-control religious communities can feel deeply warm, relational, and inviting at first, and yet over time reveal a much more rigid and exclusionary structure underneath. I begin with a personal reflection on being re-exposed to Douglas Wilson while listening to conversations about Christian nationalism, and how his winsome, calm, and disarming tone stands in stark contrast to what I see as deeply dangerous ideas—especially when it comes to democracy, pluralism, and the ability for real difference to exist. From there, I unpack what I’m calling aesthetic hospitality—the way warmth, attentiveness, and belonging can function as a kind of soft power that draws people in before they’ve had the chance to fully discern what they’re stepping into. Drawing on psychoanalytic insights, including Todd McGowan’s critique of community and James Hollis’ distinction between internal and external authority, I explore how belonging in these systems is often conditional, particularly for LGBTQ+ individuals, and how exclusion is frequently reframed as truth, morality, or righteousness. This episode is ultimately an invitation to develop a deeper kind of discernment—not just asking whether a community is kind or welcoming, but whether it can actually tolerate your full existence without requiring you to become someone else in order to belong.

    14 min
  5. Vital Pleasure

    -5 J

    Vital Pleasure

    What if suffering isn’t the clearest sign I’m on the right path? In this episode, I explore the legacy of high-control Christianity and its elevation of pain as virtue, contrasted with a different ethical vision rooted in aliveness, pleasure, and embodied experience. Drawing on David Congdon, Linn Tonstad’s resurrection-centered theology, and Carrie Jenkins’ work on love, I begin to reframe pleasure as something deeper than indulgence—as a guide toward a more fully lived life. This is an exploration of ethical hedonism, not as an escape from suffering, but as a way of no longer centering it.

    15 min
  6. The Uses of The Erotic

    18 FÉVR.

    The Uses of The Erotic

    I’ve been reading Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown as a way of making sense of what I’ve been calling my own ethical hedonism — not indulgence, not impulsivity, but the question of whether pleasure might actually function as guidance. Included in that book is Audre Lorde’s classic essay The Uses of the Erotic, which I recently told a group chat might be one of the best essays I’ve ever read. In this solo episode, I unpack why. Lorde reframes the erotic not as performance or spectacle, but as a form of embodied knowledge — a deep connection to our capacity for joy that becomes a lens through which we evaluate our lives. When we reconnect with that internal hum of aliveness, she argues, we can no longer settle for what is merely safe, conventional, or externally approved. Along the way, I explore a resonance I can’t ignore — the connection between what Lorde calls erotic knowledge and what James Hollis describes as inner authority. They are not saying the same thing. They are not operating in the same tradition. And yet both point toward an internal guidance system that asks us to live from alignment rather than expectation. This episode weaves together ethical hedonism, embodied joy, clinical reflections, and the responsibility that comes with knowing your own capacity for depth. Once you know your capacity for joy, you are responsible to it

    13 min
  7. Blue Flame

    16 FÉVR.

    Blue Flame

    In this solo episode, I return to James Hillman’s chapter on the puer aeternus and pothos from Loose Ends — and explore how longing may not be a problem to solve, but the very engine of being alive. Building on Jung’s reflections on the wanderer while moving beyond a mother-centered interpretation of desire, Hillman reframes longing as structural to consciousness itself. I weave his insights together with Lacan’s notion of lack, Jaak Panksepp’s SEEKING system in affective neuroscience, Emmanuel Coccia’s reflections on fear as the death of desire, and even a Rumi quote I strongly disagree with. This episode is also deeply personal. I reflect on my own journey in therapy, the suspicion of desire within Christian spaces, the demonization of the puer archetype, and why I’m learning to trust longing again — including how erotic pursuit can become a conscious participation in that blue flame rather than a distraction from it. What if wandering isn’t immaturity? What if desire isn’t deception? What if depression is, at least sometimes, the extinguishing of the flame that keeps us reaching? Not all who wander are lost.

    17 min
  8. The Erotic Mind

    13 FÉVR.

    The Erotic Mind

    Esther Perel has named Jack Morin as a major influence on her thinking about desire — so I returned to The Erotic Mind. What emerged was a theory of passion that feels even more relevant now. In this episode, I explore Morin’s Erotic Equation — attraction plus obstacles equals excitement — and connect it to psychoanalytic reflections on lack, resistance, and the structure of desire. Drawing on Todd McGowan and Fichte’s concept of Anstoß, the obstacle that functions as both barrier and propulsion, I examine why desire often thrives in tension rather than total security. This is a deep dive into longing, ambivalence, power, and the paradox that keeps erotic life alive.

    14 min
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A psychotherapist explores topics relating to psychotherapy, philosophy, culture, and religion.  

Informations

  • Création
    Quique Autrey
  • Années d’activité
    2022 - 2026
  • Épisodes
    291
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © Quique Autrey
  • Site web de l’émission
    Psyche

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