Home on David Godot

About Me

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I completed my doctorate from Adler University in Chicago in 2013, with a dissertation on hypnosis and clinical training. I trained for a year at an in-patient unit for chronic headache pain; for a year at a dual-diagnosis IOP; for a year in private practice (with my mentor Edward J. “ Fast Eddy” Frischholz, Ph.D.) working with dissociation, conversion, and neuropsychiatric disturbances; for a year at a VA Medical Center in a Texas border town; and for a year at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed adolescents. It was a lot of training and a long time.

Recording

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the future home of original audio projects and podcast feeds. For now, the Speaking archive gathers interviews, guest podcasts, talks, and other recorded conversations.

Search

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How to Succeed or Fail as a Psychotherapist

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Mentalizing is a key foundational concept in attachment-based therapy, and even most therapists struggle to understand what it really means in practice. Put simply, it is an attitude where we assume that the subjective experience has gone through some unconscious interpretation before it reached awareness. In slightly more technical language, it is a stance toward experience (a reflective stance) in which we treat all experience as a product of the mind, rather than a raw input of objective reality.

Mentalizing As Functional Inquiry

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Every therapist knows the feeling of a well-placed, reflective question falling flat. I might ask “What do you think that feeling is about?” as a way of trying to guide a patient toward the deep and unknown connections driving their emotional life — and instead receive a lengthy story about the events leading up to the feeling. Or an intellectual explanation of how the feeling connects with their interpretation of events. If the patient is fairly concrete or disconnected from emotion, they may shut down the inquiry with a simple “I don’t know.” Or, worst of all, the question may come off as a criticism, as though I were asking “Why do you feel that way?”

Why Recording Sessions Makes You A Better Therapist

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There are few things more likely to make a therapist squirm than the suggestion of recording their sessions. People see it as a dreadful assignment that supervisors force them to do a few times, and then they mercifully get to forget the grating sound of their own voice. I really want to help reframe that, because reviewing session recordings is actually one of the surest ways to improve as a psychotherapist.

Holding the Pen Lightly: On Getting Things Done When You Don’t Really Exist

Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.” -Anaïs Nin — The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955

On Thinking in Public

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Admit it, you aren’t like them…” -Timothy Leary

We live in an age of isolation.

We have all the technology needed to share ourselves freely across time and space, but lack the cultural preparation to be able to do so.

As I write this, my own thoughts are wanting to habitually reserve, edit, and censor themselves for you. There’s an impulse to give you an objectified form of myself: Doctor So-and-So, Expert in This-and-That. Personal savior for whatever neurosis du jour is occupying the attention spans of the desperate and lonely masses. Inspirational guru plucking wisdom from the ages and delivering it in digestible nuggets to hold you up as you carry yourself through these trying times. Untamed mystic calling out from the wilderness.

A Symbolic Therapeutic Gardening Group for Adolescents

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This morning I led a gardening therapy group for my 25 residential teenagers. I introduced the group by teaching them how to work with the plants, by way of some Ericksonian metaphors:

When a baby is born, no one knows what it’s going to turn into. It’s just this bald, screaming, helpless little thing… it could grow up to be anything. And nobody can make it become anything in particular — an artist, or a scientist, or an engineer. You just have to give it the right amount of care, so you can enjoy learning what it is going to become over time. When you plant a flower bulb, you might not have any idea what sort of flower you’ll get, what color or shape or size. You have to wait, and make sure it gets the right amount of water and sunlight so that it will become whatever its true inner self is supposed to become.Now sometimes a flower plant starts out growing in one sort of container, like this [held up a planter], but after a while it tends to outgrow that tiny plastic shell. So it’s necessary to transplant it to more suitable ground. And when you’re going to do that you have to be gentle in extracting the plant from its planter. You have to squeeze the sides gently to loosen up the root system, and then gently pull it out just slowly enough that the whole foundation of the thing will not be too disturbed. You can see how smoothly and easily it becomes ready to find its new home.But notice that the roots have taken on the shape of their planter; they’re all bound up together. So you want to just gently pull them apart a little bit so that when it gets a little fresh soil it’ll begin to naturally and automatically reach out to find new sources of nourishment and stability. To really become established in the ground and ready to grow up into whatever its true nature may happen to be.Now I could just stand this little plant up here and leave it [set the plant down on the ground], but it wouldn’t do very well because it needs care and support and connection. So when you’re placing it in the ground, make sure that you’ve dug out enough room for it to sit really comfortably in place. And then push enough soil in around the roots to make it nice and snug. Not too firm, but just firm enough that it will be held up securely while it works on settling its new roots into the ground on its own.

Positive and Negative Aspects of Shame

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Shame is one of those emotions that a lot of people label “negative,” and talk about simply wanting to banish or let go of. I will argue that all emotions are useful, and only take on a positive or negative connotation in the way you’ve learned to relate to them.

What are emotions?

An emotion is an experience that puts a person in motion. It comes up in response to a situation that calls for action, and gives an intuitive sense for what type of action to take — a motive. The label given to an emotion is literally just a name for the feelings and thoughts associated with the action tendency which comes up in the body under particular circumstances.

The Problems With Evidence-Based Psychotherapy

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There has been a tremendous movement toward evidence-based treatment in clinical psychology over the past decade. On its face, this is a good thing — the idea that we should use scientific findings to make sure the types of treatment we’re using in psychotherapy actually work. My own clinical training included a wide array of these empirically based treatments, and I happily use many of their key techniques. I also continue to pay close attention to new clinical research, and frequently review the literature in the course of formulating treatments for my patients.

An Egodynamic Model of Hypnosis

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Hypnosis is a spooky phenomenon. Through mechanisms that are not fully understood, this technique allows seemingly impenetrable barriers to be bypassed: repressed material can be recovered or manufactured; moments of imprint vulnerability can be relived and rewritten; psychological and physical symptoms can be alleviated or created; even involuntary physiological processes can be dramatically modified. In this article, we will explore hypnosis from a psychodynamic perspective in order to gain insight into the phenomenon’s effects on defensive functioning, and vice-versa.

Early Recollections And The Lifestyle

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A few years ago, when I was only just beginning to learn about Adlerian theory and therapy, I attended a workshop given by Al Milliren for the Chicago Adlerian Society. The topic was the evolving nature of the lifestyle.

At this time I had barely begun taking doctoral classes at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, and had not yet had any formal education in Adlerian psychology. Some of the powerful ideas that I learned at this workshop greatly influenced the way that I would later learn and incorporate the use of early recollections and lifestyle assessment in my own clinical practice.

Re-Branding Psychotherapy: Why Therapists Have Got It All Wrong & What We Can Do About It

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The field of psychology is suffering a crisis of identity which is devaluing its services and damaging its practitioners. The problem, in my opinion, is the paradigm of mental health versus mental illness. “Mental illness” is a terribly stigmatizing descriptor, and “mental health” is not a sufficiently attractive construct to warrant the average person subjecting themselves to the stigma of association with the mentally ill.

Who Are The Mentally Ill?

My discussions with contemporary psychologists lead me to believe that most therapists use terms like mental health and mental illness in an attempt to normalize their patients’ experiences. They conceive of mental illness as a spectrum parallel to that of medical illness, and assume that their patients feel the same way. And, for patients who are cultivating a dependency upon the mental healthcare system, this is the case.

Hermann Rorschach & The Amazing Technicolor Inkblot

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

On a psychodiagnostic residency, where your job is just to understand people, one of the tools you use is the famous Rorschach Inkblot Test. In this test, the patient is shown a standard series of pictures created by squirting ink onto a page and then folding the page over. They are then asked to describe what they see in the blots. The answers contain all the keys to the patient’s perception. You may not see, at first, how an explanation of this technique can be of any practical value to you unless you are training to be a psychologist, but if you’ll read on I can promise you there is a payoff for us wayward seekers of personal growth.

We Live in Memories and Dreams

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In my recent article on hypnosis, I mentioned that we don’t live in the present moment. We live in memories and dreams. This is an idea that will not be unfamiliar to those with a mystic bent, but the rest of you may suspect that there is some craziness going on here. In fact, there is! But it is a craziness that is supported by a tremendous amount of neurological and psychological research.

8 Facts About Hypnosis

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hypnosis is a sort of spooky and misunderstood phenomenon. Most of what people generally know about hypnosis comes from movies and stage performers, not real clinical hypnotists.

You may not even realize that clinical hypnosis is a very well-established and scientifically validated medical practice. It’s used by psychotherapists, physicians, nurses, dentists, and anesthesiologists to produce a profound sense of serenity in patients who might otherwise be really freaking out.

As it turns out, hypnosis is an incredibly versatile and powerful psychological technique, so it would be in your best interests to know a little bit about it and to be open to the idea. With that in mind, I’ll dispel some of the major myths about hypnosis and tell you some far-out realities about it as well:

Knowing Your Tells: Body Language and Unconscious Communication

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

People communicate with each other constantly, and in ways we hardly ever even realize. You heard that right: even a truly prolific writer is unlikely to ever match in written words the sheer volume of information that is constantly transmitted to the people around them, in the form of body language, expressions, small gestures, barely detectable fluctuations in muscle tone, in vocal cadence. Beyond these measurable types of physical communication, there’s another level of communication buried under and between the language itself. It occurs just as automatically as body language and just as pervasively. And, like body language, we usually don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Hypno-Oncology: Hypnosis in the Treatment of Cancer

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Clinical hypnotherapy has been soundly established as an effective treatment for the symptoms associated with cancer and its related therapies, including chronic and acute pain, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and mood disturbances. Its use produces strong tendencies toward improvement of patients’ quality of life and of treatment cost. As the etiology and progression of various forms of cancer become better understood, the potential of hypnotherapy for increasing survival rates by improving medication response and even slowing or reversing the progression of the disease increases. Given the lack of risks to patients and the wide potential for benefit, additional research and clinical experimentation into this area are encouraged, and recommendations for this type of hypno-oncological exploration are discussed.

The Medical Model of Psychology

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The “medical model” that currently guides the majority of psychological research, assessment, and treatment is a deeply entrenched historical, social, and political phenomenon (Maddux, Snyder, & Lopez, 2004; Laungani, 2002) which has no empirical support whatsoever (Wampold, 2001). This article will outline some of the problems that the widespread acceptance of the medical model poses for the field of psychology.

Wampold, Ahn, & Coleman (2001) list five components of the medical model of psychotherapy: to begin with, the patient presents with symptoms of a classifiable disorder or disease; from the existing research and accepted materials, a psychological explanation for the disorder is available; the knowledge of this specific disorder and the theoretical conceptualization of such are sufficient that a potential mechanism for psychological change can be identified; having identified these properties, the therapist logically derives a set of specific psychotherapeutic ingredients and administers them to the patient; these specific ingredients are responsible for the benefits of the psychotherapy thus administered. “The last component,” Wampold, et al. (2001) explain, “which is often referred to as specificity, is critical to the medical model of psychotherapy and gives primacy to the specific ingredients rather than common or contextual factors.” This is particularly significant in that no research has yet to provide any empirical backing for this principle of specificity in psychotherapeutic interventions, whereas a growing body of research is being accumulated in support of alternative, contextual models of psychotherapy (Wampold, 2001).

Repressed Memory Phenomena

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The issue of repressed memory is surprisingly heated, and comes loaded with the weight of several fundamentally different conceptions of the human mind. The real issue, hidden away in the word “repressed,” is whether a memory once repressed can be unleashed, or “recovered.” Thus we find ourselves in the awkward scientific predicament of having, for each paper published presenting evidence of repressed and recovered memories, at least a few papers published expressly to disclaim it. This article will attempt to make some sense of the available literature, drawing in alternative paradigms in addition to empirical studies.

Jonestown and The Social Psychology of Accepted Truth

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Everybody “knows” what happened in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. At the behest of their charismatic leader, all the members of the Peoples Temple religious cult—the residents of Jonestown—“lined up in a pavilion in front of a vat containing a mixture of Kool-Aid and cyanide” and “drank willingly of the deadly solution” (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2005, pp.4-5). That citation is taken from a popular Social Psychology textbook, and is a resounding demonstration of the phenomenon that this paper will attempt to explore: you see, the authors of that textbook feel so secure in their knowledge of the events surrounding the deaths in Jonestown that they feel no need to provide a reference for it. It is entered into the student consciousness as common knowledge. The fact that the popularly-accepted truth that Aronson, et al are parroting in this example is plainly false is almost beside the point, although this paper will provide a brief examination of some of the evidence which contradicts that accepted truth. The problem is much broader than the debunking of a single myth, and demands that some very important and difficult questions receive systematic evaluation: how is it that entire populations “know” things that contradict all available evidence, and what can be done to mediate this effect?

Appearances

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Interviews, guest podcasts, talks, and other conversations, gathered into one archive. The audio recordings are kept with this site so they remain available even if the original publishers move or remove them.

LLM and the Subconscious

August 2025 · Center Point Radio

With host Ran Anbar and AI podcaster Ayush Parkash, I discuss artificial intelligence and how it might mimic the processes of the subconscious mind.

LLM and the Subconscious

Download the audio

Download audio