The Pathology of Power

Almost everything in life works to their benefit. They influence the laws ... and the lawmakers. While the rest of us are working and raising families and coaching Little League teams, they dedicate their lives to gaining direct control over the social institutions. Forget about sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. The real key to the so called kingdom on Earth ... is power.

Today, we're going to jump right into the fire of one of the most important issues in our society: the pathology of power.

When I moved from Vancouver to Toronto in 1995, Mike Harris' Conservative Party and their Common Sense Revolution had just been elected as Premier of the province in a huge majority. I was struck by how he used that majority to ram through often controversial legislation that sometimes was directly against what the citizens said they wanted. Not to bore you with details, but the amalgamation of the six cities of Greater Toronto into one huge megacity was pushed through over the overwhelming disagreement of the citizens of the cities involved, who had all conducted extensive referenda within their cities.

I began to think about the pathology of power, although I didn't have a name for it then. So when I discovered Dr. Keppe's Liberation of the People: The Pathology of Power, I devoured it.

Let's explore more about it with Dr. Claudia Pacheco, vice-president of Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy.

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Tags: news and politics politics psychoanalysis Dr Keppe

The Roots of Environmental Destruction

It's finally official. Global warming is unequivocal, and it's "very likely" human beings are the cause.

Al Gore's documentary hammers home the same point. The uncertainty is gone, the evidence is crystal clear for most: we have a serious problem looming directly in front of us.

but in all the statistics and graphs and scientific pronouncements, one thing eludes us ... what on Earth do we do about it?

An update first. We've been sending out copies of Dr. Keppe's "Liberation of the People" all over the place, to Europe and Asia and of course, North America, and I've decided to extend the offer, because I think Keppe's work in this book is vitally important in helping the greatest number of people possible to become conscious of the reasons why our human society is so messed up, so far from what it could be. A listener from Norway wrote recently that after listening to our New Economy Podcast, he couldn't help wondering what the world could look like. So write me at rich@richjonesvoice.com if you're interested in a free copy of Keppe's "Liberation of the People: The Pathology of Power."

I've been watching An Inconvenient Truth recently, Al Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary, and I continue to be impressed with the way the scientific evidence has been presented in this most excellent piece of work. It's extremely well done. And scary.

I wanted to add my voice to the discusssion, because I think one point has not been completely understood. Namely, the cause of human destruction.

Today, we'll try to do that.

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Tags: an inconvenient truth save the environment global warming quantum physics

The New Economics

Looking up economics in Wikipedia can bring you hours of reading pleasure. Explore micro and macro economics. Delve into the division between the mainstream theories, and Marxist thinking. It's a vast and, frankly, overwhelming area of study.

And in the end, it appears there are almost as many economic theories as there are economists. Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll explore the new economics arising out of Dr. Norberto Keppe's beautiful work in Analytical Trilogy, his comprehensive work that unites philosophy, theology and science to give us a new perspective on the human being and his society.

Someone, I'm not sure who, once said that if you lined up all the economists in the world, they'd all point in different directions. Maybe this was more prophetic than he or she intended. Truman pined for a one-armed economist that, as a result, could never say ... "on the other hand ..."

Economics drives our world in obvious ways through its influence on every aspect of human society. From sweating the family budget to the sophisticated polling and research of lobbyists and think tank academics, there's no area of daily life that's not impacted by it.

But arguably, there is no area where we have been influenced more by the thinking of other people's head than in this one. And some of the theories that have been thrust upon us from these heads have caused us a lot of personal and collective grief.

It's time for a new perspective on economics. And that's happening at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil.

Today we'll talk with the vice president of that dynamic and important organization, psychoanalyst, Dr. Claudia Pacheco.

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Tags:economics third world debt economic aid

The Healing Power of Music

Some have called it a collaboration between God and the artist. For others, it is a way to escape. It's been used to persuade, to manipulate and to seduce. Its stars' sins make headlines, and their victories make billions.

But its impact is much more than simply economic. Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, let get some perspective on music.

Music and art have an enormous influence on us, obviously. From babies in mother's wombs to teenagers listening to favorite artists on tinny headphones in a desperate attempt to understant what's going on inside and around them, to composers scoring love scenes in award-winning films, music impacts us much more that most of us think about in our day-to-day lives.

Let's turn a psychological eye to music today, with Italian journalist and musician, Fabrizio Biliotti.

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Tags: music health and wellness alternative health

Health and the Mind

Imagine two people with the same disease, same treatment, same relative social class. But one gets well, and the other doesn't. A mystery? A coincidence? A situation with multiple explanations? It's a question for which science has no ready answers. Now it appears, we can finally explain it.

We've been exploding some commonly-held assumptions on this show. And that makes for rather provocative stuff. None of us likes our belief systems challenged completely, especially when we feel the challenge impacting one of our bedrock philosophies of life.

But the work of Dr. Norberto Keppe does exactly that. Like Socrates addressing universal values and challenging the thinking of the citizens of ancient Athens, Keppe's work causes us to examine what we know about ourselves. But Keppe also leads us to discover what we don't know about ourselves - and this is a much dimmer journey. Most of us don't know that we are dominated by what we don't know. In this consideratin, strongly held views are best not held to with all you've got. Better to remain open and explore what you don't know yet.

Keppe's work has had a profound effect on many people, including Roberto Giraldo, a Colombian medical doctor and specialist in infectious and tropical diseases. Giraldo is the author of Aids and Stressors, and is currently working at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. But he's beginning the move to Brazil to study more with Dr. Keppe and develop his understanding of the psychological roots of disease.

In this podcast, we explore some of his thinking about the connection between the mind, body, society ... and disease.

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Tags: health and wellness alternative health life mind body connections

A Psychoanalysis of Society

Neurosis, sado-masochistic behavior, schizo-paranoid personalities. We've come to understand those terms applied to personal psychology. But seldom have we heard them applied to nations or even historical periods.

Until now.

Today, we'll dive into a fascinating study - the psychoanalysis of society.

A couple of weeks ago, we started the process of investigating the social structures and our inverted society in our program about Money and Power. And we made copies of Dr. Keppe's book, Liberation of the People, available to people who wanted copies. That offer still stands, so if you'd like to read this incisive analysis of the pathology of power, just e-mail me at rich@richjonesvoice.com.

Today's topic will probably whet your appetite for more of Keppe's extraordinary work in this area.

Frankly, to my knowledge, there has been relatively little study of sociopathology as Keppe defines it. Normally, the term is applied to the behavior of sociopathic or psychopathic personalities. Keppe is concerned with social difficulties where the social systems reflect the psychological problems of the human beings who created them, thereby creating a psychologically unbalanced society.

Prominent social critics have been trying to shine the light on abuses of power and injustice for decades, but none have Keppe's psychological and philosophical lineage, or his clinical experience. So you'll find much that stands alone in his work.

To focus our topic today, because it's an expansive one, I've asked Dr. Claudia Pacheco, the vice president of Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy, to join us again.

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Tags: psychoanalysis of society culture politics psychoanalysis

Some thoughts on relationships

I wish I had a dollar for every piece of advice in the world about today's topic. Apparently, men are from Mars and women from Venus. There's a secret language between you to understand. There can be perfect love, but imperfect relationships some say. There's help in the stars, soulmate consulting. For anyone who's looking for definitive answers, it's all a little overwhelming.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, let's see if we can get a little clearer on relationships.

As I've come to understand more completely the depth of the remarkable work of Brazilian psychoanalyst, Dr. Norberto Keppe, I've come to appreciated the crystal-clear comprehension he has of the human psyche. He is clarifying this like no one before him. And this gives us some real ground to stand upon in investigating any field of human endeavor.

This is especially true in the area of relationships. Dr. Claudia Pacheco's observations about love have been explored already in this blog/podcast (see Some Thoughts About Love), and her mind is a very precise one to pick on this important topic. Her book, Women on the Couch: An Analysis of Women's Pathology, is a seminal one in the field. And her thoughts about women and men and love are always fascinating and always worthwhile.

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Tags: romance and relationships relationships love and relationships love

Some thoughts on self-confidence

Some see it as a belief in your abilities and talents. Others that it's the result of what you've been told and taught.

We've heard that we have to earn it, but that we deserve it at the same time. That we can build it, that we need affirmations. Hypnosis. To unleash our power within.

But if you still question your self-confidence (and who doesn't?) strap yourself in. Today, what's really going on with our self-confidence.

My gosh, how we've struggled with this thing called self-confidence. We've meditated, we've diary-ed, we've seven stepped ourselves to death trying to grasp the damn thing. And it always hovers there, tantalizingly out of reach. Others we perceive as having it are constant reminders of our failure as they dangle the keys to the kingdom of riches and success and realized dreams just out of reach.

But today, a chance to see how far away we've been from even understanding self-confidence.

And big thanks to my dear friend, Susan Berkley, for providing the interview for this show. This is taken from Susan's excellent series, Magnetic Self-Confidence, which is available on her website.

Leo Lima is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst at Dr. Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy here in São Paulo, and he's our special guest today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head.

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Tags: self confidence self esteem self help

Money and Power

I was looking up synonyms for love the other day - arguably one of the most important words in the English language. As a verb, the word has about 40. Money - our topic today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head - has 56. (I didn't even bother looking up "love of money").

But whatever you call it - bucks, green, or bread - money today is so revered there's really only one appropriate synonym ... the almighty dollar.

Our topic today is an important one, and we're going to try to look at money in ways you may not have considered before.

I'll be talking today with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco, a psychoanalyst and vice-president of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo. Our discussions today will be based on Dr. Norberto Keppe's extraordinary book, Liberation of the People: The Pathology of Power. The book is an in depth and incisive psychological critique of money and power which reaches to the very root cause of our inverted and seriously pathological society and power structures.

It's essential reading, and I have some copies in English to give away to the first 25 people who email me at rich@richjonesvoice.com. Send me your name and mailing address and I'll let you know how you can get your copy.

A couple of weeks ago, we began the exploration of money in our program about Adam Smith. Today, let's go deeper into this area that impacts us all so deeply. Our society is dominated by it.

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Tags: money sociopathology economics work

The Law of Attraction

It's being called the great secret of the universe, passed down through the ages, the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love ... well, you get the picture. Newton knew it, it is said. So did Carnegie, Beethoven and Einstein. The implication being that if you don't have everything, the secret will give it to you.

Today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, we'll take a closer look at the Law of Attraction. That's the big secret that's being divulged in the viral video that's sweeping North America.

But do the ideas in this movie tell the whole story? I think not.

First off, I have to admit, I'm a little behind the curve when it comes to catching up on the trends sweeping North America. For one thing, I live in Brazil, which makes me at least six months late simply by virtue of geography. Stuff takes awhile to get here.

But I finally got a chance recently to see this "ground-breaking feature length movie", as they call it in the marketing blurb on the website - which was written in a manner suggesting that they were trying to capitalize on the success of the DaVinci Code's so called esoteric legacy.

The webpage and film are dripping with an implied mystical wisdom that uses a common technique: mixing universal truths with dialectical inaccuracy that winds up leaving everyone confused.

You know, in a recent teleclass I conducted in the U.S., this was something that came up again and again - people had read all the books, attended all the seminars, watched all the videos, listened to all the tapes, and were still totally confused about what was true or not.

I started this podcast and blog exactly to address that confusion, using the philosophical, theological and scientific knowledge coming out of Dr. Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy in Brazil.

Today, I talk with researcher Cesar Soós, a frequent contributer to Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, about the Law of Attraction.

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Tags: law of attraction the secret abundance

Adam Smith Missed the Boat

Our world is dominated by it. And so we tend to believe it's natural. Even that it's divinely ordained. It's created billionaires, and opponents would argue, systemized the destitution of the majority of the world's population.

It's evolved of course, but the origins of capitalism can be traced to one man ... Adam Smith.

I'm aware I'm wading into controversial waters by embarking on a critique of Adam Smith, but after living in a so called Third World country for the past five and a half years, I've seen the negative impact of his economic view first hand. And it's been illuminating, to say the least.

I remember an article years ago by Harvard theology professor Harvey Cox about how the stock market was being treated like God. This excellent article originated from Cox's spending a few months observing the business pages after a lifetime of studying religion. He expected to be in completely foreign territory flipping through the Wall Street Journal. Instead, he found the language in the business section to be remarkably similar to Genesis and St. Augustine's City of God.

Today, we'll explore the roots of capitalism through its first big proponent, Adam Smith. And we'll do it from an interesting perspective, because our guest today is an artist! Albeit an extraordinary one. Gilbert Gambucci is a classically trained pianist who's played professionally on three continents. He's also an incisive researcher on Dr. Keppe's work - particularly in the area of socio-pathology.

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Tags: adam smith economics capitalism economic theory

Thoughts on Success

We dream about it. We visualize it. We hire coaches to help us achieve it. We jeer at the soap opera villain who sells his grandmother to get it. We stand around the water cooler and shake our heads at the lives of those who have it, and destroy it.

This time on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, some perspective on success.

I'm a North American. It would be impossible not to be affected by the blinders-on-full-sheets-to-the-wind-hell-bent-for-leather single mindedness of the North American culture in its focus on achieving the promised land that is the state of success.

We treat the subject with the reverence and hushed tones that mystics from former times reserved for the awe of creation and poets for the sweet pains of love.

But perhaps, in our strivings for material success, we've lost something. It was Canadian writer, Mordecai Richler, who wrote one of the great stories on that very theme in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. And if you haven't seen the great 1974 movie with Richard Dreyfuss, you should check it out for a reminder of the perils to our souls of an unrelenting quest to fulfill me, me, me.

Susan Berkley is a very successful entrepreneur. She has her own company - The Great Voice Company - she's a highly sought after voice whose clients include AT&T, she's a trainer and a writer. She's going to help us get a little closer to understanding success and why it's often so elusive, today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head.

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Tags: success law of attraction

Some new thoughts on raising kids

Human beings have been raising kids forever. There are oceans of words on the subject. Mountains of theories. Even comic strips. You can pay to have child rearing advice, or get an earful of the unpaid kind every time the in-laws come over. But are there any final conclusions?

When you Google the topic, you'll be overwhelmed with pages to peruse. A search in Yahoo will yield thousand to books on the topic. There is certainly no shortage of perspectives out there. Still, it seems no matter what you do, sooner or later, some expert will pop up out of the blue and declare with absolute certainty that you did everything wrong.

But if we're finalizing the mapping of the human psyche here at the International Society of Integral Psychoanalysis in Brazil, we must be able to draw some more definitive conclusions.

Selma Genzani is a psychoanalyst at Dr. Keppe's Integral Psychoanalysis clinic in São Paulo. She sees a wide range of clients, including many children and their parents. She has a lot of great, and different from the usual, thoughts on raising kids.

Oh, and one more thing ... she's a parent, too. The combination makes for a very interesting program today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head.

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Tags: raising kids child rearing analytical trilogy parenting

Some thoughts on freedom

The greatest revolutions in human history have all had one over-riding objective in mind: freedom. Of expression. Of religion. Freedom from tyranny or injustice.

Personal freedom is something many of us take for granted. Others dream and scheme and protest because freedom's been denied them. Is there anything left to be said about freedom?

Actually, yes. Today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, we'll take a crack at discussing freedom in a new way.

Dante Alighieri, like all of humanity's greatest artists, had a number of things to say on the subject. He weighed in rather definitively, actually, with his observations that mankind is at its best when it's most free.

Adam Smith believed that if you just left people to do whatever they wanted they would rather miraculously do beneficial things.

That all sounds pretty conclusive.

But Shakespeare was a little more cautious: the wise man knows himself to be a fool, he cautioned.

And the great fathers of psychopathology in the twentieth century saw some murky stuff down in our psyches that gave them pause as well before declaring that human beings always do what's right when they have the freedom.

Is it possible that this much sought after condition called freedom hasn't been considered as much as it should have?

Let's find out. Join us for the discussion.

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Understanding Psychosomatics

After all the research and new ideas emerging in the area of health and wellness, it's safe to say we haven't fully understand the impact of our psychology on our health. Until now. The cutting edge research emerging out of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in Brazil is giving us a much clearer roadmap to this admittedly tricky area.

In a nutshell, we are what we don't know about ourselves. What's flying below our conscious radar has much more influence on every area of our personal lives and society that we've understood. As we've been exploring in our programs.

Let's take a step towards understanding the psychosomatic mechanism a little better today. My guest is Swedish journalist, Helena Melander. And I promise you will find the discussion intriguing, provocative ... and helpful.

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Tags: psychosomatic healing psychosomatic health analytical trilogy

Getting a handle on depression

The latest studies on depression tell us that the chemicals in our brains have gotten all screwed up, or that we've inherited the damn thing, or that we're burned or stressed out, or that some life trauma is affecting us. But as we're discussing regularly on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, the standard view on just about everything needs to be re-considered. Depression is no exception.

Today, we go beyond the usual to look at the real causes, and cures, of depression. My guest once again is Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco, vice-president of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil, and one of the pioneers in the area of psycho-somatic disease. You'll find her perspective refreshing, provocative ... and, not unimportantly, hopeful.

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Some truth about human intentions

When Sigmund Freud postulated that no mortal could keep a secret, that the betrayal of our real intentions oozes out of our every pore, it was a new vision of human behavior. Suddenly, you weren’t just doing something good or bad. With Freud, it was now possible to say, “You think you’re doing something good. But you’re not.” Because much, if not most, of human activity is being driven by something down deep that we don’t have much understanding of.

Until now.

Today on Thinking With Somebody Else’s Head, we’ll explore the latest research into the psychological roots of disease with Dr. Claudia Pacheco, psychoanalyst at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy and founder of the STOP the Destruction of the World Association.

Dr. Pacheco will offer us an incisive look into the latest discoveries in the science of psychopathology being put forward by the extraordinary psychoanalyst and social scientist, Norberto Keppe, with whom Dr. Pacheco has worked closely for the past 30 years.

The inescapable fact arising out of their research and clinical analysis is that, shockingly, human intentions are not good. This, of course, flies in the face of much of what we’ve learned from numerous big brains throughout history, but that doesn’t take away its validity. And it certainly explains why, in the middle of the largest media explosion in human history where more information is available about our destructive ways and the need to change them than ever before, we are continuing to destroy the planet at a skyrocketing pace.

Let’s learn a little more.

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Some truth about love

Love. How much do we really know about it? We've got love shops, love food, love travel. Love inspires us. Some say it even destroys us. Love is blind. Love can keep us together. Love is like an itching in my heart.

You see, we're surrounded by the word, but I wonder if we know the first thing about it. Today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head, some truth about love.

Maybe there's no subject that's been as much written about, thought about, sung about, and cried over than today's topic. But all of that only gives us the illusion that we know about it. You say the word enough times, you hear it enough, and you can think you know it. But how many of us have ever actually taken a hard look at love?

We'll do that today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head.

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Behind AIDS - virus or voracity?

As we explored in our last program about AIDS, the common beliefs about its causes are turning out to be myths. Omni-present, to be sure. Dogma even. But omni-present dogma does not scientific certainty make. There are a lot of very highly qualified people ascribing quite different causes of AIDS. We're going to hear about some of those thoughts today.

This is a more psychological perspective, perhaps, which we'll be exploring more. This will be a start.

My guest will be Swedish journalist, Helena Mellander, who has been researching psychosomatic medicine for the past three years and writing extensively about her findings both in Sweden and here in Brazil. Let's see if we can think with a different head about something that deserves to be re-thought.

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What we never hear about AIDS

It's common knowledge that HIV is the cause of AIDS, that it's sexually transmitted and that there's no known cure. Arguing against that can cost you dearly if you're a scientist (not to mention cause people to give you a very wide berth at parties). When world renowned virologist, Peter Duesberg, had the gall to question the efficacy of the virus testing process of the first supposed isolators of HIV, he was widely ex-communicated from the scientific community and denied future grant money to continue his research.

That kind of stuff should really make us sit up and take notice. Any fact that is incontrovertible can certainly withstand the scrutiny, can't it? But the complete ostracization of the would be scrutinizers is surely proof that there is more going on here than we are being led to believe. At the very least, we should take a closer, objective look. We'll do that today on Thinking With Somebody Else's Head.

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