Challenging how we think about extreme mental states and the institutions that claim to treat them. Essays, conversations, and more from Dr. Michael R. Montgomery, international Existential Psychoanalyst.
Discover shows related to psychophobia* podcast, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
What if the institutions designed to help us understand the human psyche are actually afraid of them? Hosted by Dr. Michael R. Montgomery, this podcast explores the uncomfortable questions. Together, we’ll examine how the mental health systems meant to heal us instead perpetuate cycles of dependency. Welcome to the Psychophobia* Podcast.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience- including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the Psychophobia podcast.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit psychophobia.substack.com
Episode 02: When the World Goes Quiet - Invisible Disabilities, Radical Sensitivity, and the Healing Power of Silence
Season 1 · Episode 2
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • Duration 54:39
psychophobia* podcast
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal
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Inside one of the quietest roomson earth, the usual assumptions about the mind begin to break down. The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories was originally built for acoustic research, but it has become something else entirely - a place where people encounter their own perception in ways they rarely have before.
In this conversation, Emma Orfield, Director of Therapeutics at Orfield Laboratories, explores how extreme silence can reveal hidden dimensions of sensory experience. We discuss invisible disabilities, sensory sensitivity, autism, PTSD, and the possibility that what psychiatry often labels as a disorder may sometimes be a response to a world that has become overwhelmingly loud.
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Episode 01: Self-Stigma - When the Diagnosis Becomes the Prison
Season 1 · Episode 1
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 • Duration 01:27:22
psychophobia* podcast
“Madness need not be all breakdown.It may also be breakthrough.” — R.D. Laing
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What if the institutions designed to help us understand the human psyche are actually afraid of them? Hosted by Dr. Michael R. Montgomery, this podcast explores the uncomfortable questions. Together, we’ll examine how the mental health systems meant to heal us instead perpetuate cycles of dependency. Welcome to the psychophobia* Podcast.
Leah Giorgini has lived on both sides of the psychiatric system - as a patient diagnosed with psychosis in her teens, and as a clinician working inside the very institutions she once feared. In this conversation, she and Dr. Montgomery pull apart the seams of modern mental health care: the DSM’s grip on human suffering, the silent violence of self-stigma, and why the fire truck shows up when all you needed was someone to sit with you for two hours. They confront the uncomfortable truth that care, real care, can’t be billed, coded, or timed. And they ask the question the system refuses to answer: what if recovery isn’t about fixing someone, but returning their agency to them?
“No one is coming. And when people find their own agency, they are liberated.” — Dr. Michael R. Montgomery
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Episode 04: Alcohol and Agency - The Question of Informed Choice
Season 1 · Episode 4
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 • Duration 01:36:07
psychophobia* podcast
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”— Samuel Johnson
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Alcohol is one of the most culturally protected forms of psychological escape - normalized, celebrated, and rarely examined with the seriousness it demands. Beneath its social acceptability lies something more unsettling: a substance that numbs not only pain, but possibility. Michael sits down with Gary Allen, nearly eight years alcohol-free, to explore what happens when someone steps outside drinking culture entirely. Together they examine the mythology surrounding alcohol, the quiet ways it becomes a solution to existential discomfort, and how removing it often reveals deeper psychological terrain beneath. Moving beyond addiction narratives, the conversation turns toward informed choice, cultural conditioning, and the illusion that alcohol helps us face life when it may actually help us avoid it. If alcohol numbs across the board - dulling anxiety, but also clarity - what happens when the numbing stops, and you’re left with yourself?
“If people are liberated to see that they have agency and they have choice, they are empowered and potentially self-liberated.” — Dr. Micharl R
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Episode 03: Psychedelic Narcissists - Why taking a chainsaw to the psyche requires more than good intentions
Season 1 · Episode 3
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 • Duration 01:39:44
psychophobia* podcast
“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”― Terence McKenna
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The psychedelic renaissance is being sold as a revolution in healing- but beneath the hype lies something far messier. Michael sits down with Noah Cebuliak to explore the promise, peril, and commercialization of psychedelic therapy, from ketamine telehealth to integration, trauma, narcissism, and the dangerous fantasy of a shortcut to transformation. Together they ask what it actually means to prepare for an altered state, why some people come back more inflated rather than more whole, and what happens when capitalism collides with the sacred. At the heart of the conversation is a deeper challenge: if these substances amplify what is already present, then what exactly are we bringing to them- and what are they bringing out of us?
What if the problem isn’t psychedelics—but the culture using them?
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Episode 08 Part I: When Treatment Becomes the Problem - How modern psychiatry lost the human being
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 • Duration 56:20
"These are not the side effects of the medication. These are the effects of the medication." — R.D. Laing
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The former head of the American Psychiatric Association once called Robert Whitaker "a menace to society." Bob says he'd put it on his gravestone. In this conversation, Michael traces the through-line from the unlikely apprenticeships that taught Bob to take seriously the people most of the world had discounted - driving a New York cab with no partition in the late 1970s, working the overnight desk at an SRO hotel, running a tutoring program inside Attica prison after the riots - to the 1998 Boston Globe investigation where he found himself holding two irreconcilable narratives: one from the experts, one from the patients. The book that followed, Mad in America, did something simple and unforgivable. It took the patients' story seriously, followed the data, and found that the data agreed with them. They walk through the World Health Organization's own cross-cultural findings, the Harvard study showing long-term outcomes had declined, the Harrow-Jobe data Bob brought back to the researchers themselves, and the central tragedy his decades of work circle back to: a model of care that transforms what could be episodic difficulties into lifelong chronic conditions.
The good news, Bob argues, is that the official narrative has collapsed in the research literature. The bad news is that prescribing practices haven't.
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"We have a form of care that transforms what could be episodic problems into chronic conditions." — Robert Whitaker
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Episode 07: Use It or Lose It - The Brain, Lifelong Learning, and the Courage to Stay Curious
Season 1 · Episode 7
Tuesday, June 2, 2026 • Duration 01:16:28
“I am still learning.“ — Michelangelo, at age 87
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Sandy Halperin was a Harvard professor so brilliant he could deliver two-hour lectures from memory. A decade into his early-onset dementia diagnosis, Steve Orfield says he was still sharper than most people who didn’t have the condition. When Steve asked CNN’s producers why their ongoing feature kept telling the story of Sandy’s decline rather than what he was still able to do, they refused. It’s the kind of story that runs through every part of this conversation. The founder of Orfield Labs in Minneapolis is a polymath in the old sense -- self-taught in acoustics, lighting, architecture, philosophy of science, and at seventy-something, he says he learns twice as fast as he did in his fifties. He and Michael walk through the principle that anchors his work -- that the parts of the brain you use grow, and the parts you don’t shrink -- and the design philosophy it has produced: facilities for people with dementia where residents start engaging, socializing, and moving like they’re ten years younger; autism buildings that look “boring” to architects because they are quiet and simple, and work for that exact reason; an entire body of evidence that what we call decline is often the environment failing the person, not the other way around. Along the way: the autistic artists whose gestalt perception has taught Steve more than psychology departments, his fractional self-diagnosis of HD without the AD, the international dementia research award his first project won outright, and the worry that AI is quietly making us less able to finish our own setences.
If decline is not what we have been told it is -- if the right room can give a person with dementia ten years back, and the wrong room can take them -- then the harder question is what we have agreed to call inevitable, and who pays the price for it.
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“In my 70s, I can learn twice as fast as I could in my 50s.“ -- Steven Orfield
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Episode 06: The Seduction of Certainty - Curiosity, Complexity and the Unknown
Season 1 · Episode 6
Tuesday, May 26, 2026 • Duration 01:25:46
“I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” -- John Keats
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Certainty is seductive. It simplifies a noisy world, ends evaluation, and offers the relief of a settled answer. But the moment we feel certain, something else quietly closes down: curiosity, and with it, the capacity to perceive what is actually in front of us. In this follow-up to her first appearance, Emma Orfield returns to the conversation after Michael’s visit to Orfield Laboratories, and what began as a discussion about silence widens into a meditation on perception itself - how the anechoic chamber doesn’t add awareness so much as subtract the noise that obscures it, why contrast is the precondition for seeing anything at all, and what happens to a mind when the external world falls quiet enough that it begins to observe itself. From there they move into more uncomfortable terrain: hypersensitivity and the years spent masking it, the over-pathologizing of difference, the McDonaldization of clinical encounter, and the political fragility of nuance in a culture that rewards the tribal answer. They ask what it would take to build environments - therapeutic, social, even internal - where people feel safe enough to tolerate complexity rather than collapse it into judgment.
If the mind retreats to simple categories the moment it feels threatened, then the deeper question isn’t how to argue people into nuance - but how to make the world quiet enough that they can bear it.
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Episode 05: Fierce Compassion - Mystification, and the Living Lineage of R.D. Laing
Season 1 · Episode 5
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 02:01:35
psychophobia* podcast
'“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves." — Etty Hillesum
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In a Rome Bookstore, Nita stumbled on R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self in her early twenties. She never quite recovered. What followed wasn’t a career path - it was a calling. Drawn to London in the early 1970s, Nita Gage entered the orbit of Laing’s radical communities, living inside households where people emerging from psychiatric institutions were met not with control, but with curiosity and compassion. Those years dismantled everything she thought she knew about healing, sanity, and what it means to truly be with another person.
Fifty years later, Nita and Dr. Montgomery move through breathwork, altered states, and the imaginal journey - into the harder territory of microaggressions, self-righteousness, forgiveness, acceptance, and why detoxing off a substance puts you at Ground Zero with your pain staring back at you. At the center of it all is a single, quietly radical idea: the healer was never the therapist. It was always you.
"If you do this well, your students will leave you, do much better than you in the world, and forget they ever learned any of it from you. That's the sign." — Nita Gage
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Episode 09: Part II - When Treatment Becomes the Problem - How modern psychiatry lost the human being
Season 1 · Episode 9
Tuesday, June 16, 2026 • Duration 01:15:57
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” — Václav Havel
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Stevie Nicks lost her creativity, her zest for life, and her body to a benzodiazepine cocktail prescribed by a psychiatrist she trusted. A friend who tried the same regimen was on his back by evening. It took three months in a clinic to detox - and her life came back. Stories like hers are the ground Michael and Robert Whitaker walk in the second half of their conversation, alongside Tony Stanton’s residential center for the “worst of the worst” kids who “came alive again” once the medications stopped, and the polypharmacy patterns that, as Bob puts it, have “zero, zip” evidence behind them. From there the conversation widens into what Mad in America has built, the alternatives operating at scale in Norway and Israel, and a philosophy of care that fits on a notecard: how can I be of help to you? If recovery and hope have somehow become the conspiracy theories of modern psychiatric culture, perhaps the revolution is simpler than a new model of care.
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“When did recovery and hope become conspiracy theories?“ — Dr. Michael R. Montgomery
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Emma Orfield-Johnston is a researcher and executive at Orfield Laboratories, a multi-sensory design and research firm focused on human perception. Her work explores how environments, sound, light, temperature, and other sensory factors shape human experience and well-being. Emma leads the lab’s therapeutics program, researching the psychological effects of extreme silence using the facility’s renowned anechoic chamber, often described as the quietest place on Earth. Her work focuses particularly on sensory sensitivity and invisible disabilities, including autism, PTSD, and other perceptual differences.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience, including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is faculty, and a supervising analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, CA. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the psychophobia* podcast.
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Episode Chapters
0:00:05 – Introduction: Psychophobia and the Anechoic Challenge
0:00:37 – Setting the Scene at Orfield Labs
0:02:00 – What Is Orfield Labs? Multisensory Design & Human Perception
0:02:20 – Inside the Anechoic Chamber – From Product Testing to People
0:04:27 – Invisible Disabilities, Sensitivity, and Self-Selection
0:07:02 – Debunking the “You’ll Go Crazy” Myth
0:10:58 – First-Time Reactions & “Doing More by Taking Away”
0:14:27 – Perceptual Silence and Autism-/PTSD-Informed Design
0:19:25 – Measuring the Unconscious & the Harley-Davidson Case Study
0:43:53 – Intuition, Embodiment, and the Body Teaching the Mind
Send us a message: https://www.speakpipe.com/psychophobia
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Leah Giorgini is an occupational therapist and a person with lived experience of psychosis. She serves as Executive Director of ISPS-US (the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis), an organization that questions whether conventional psychiatry has misunderstood some of the most extreme states of mind. Her work focuses on trauma-informed and recovery-based approaches that attempt to understand psychosis as a human response to overwhelming experience rather than simply a disease to be medicated away.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience, including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is faculty, and a supervising analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, CA. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the psychophobia* podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:00 — Introduction & What Is Psychophobia?
00:45 — The DSM-5: Bible or Blunt Instrument?
02:28 — Defining Psychosis — and Leah’s Own Story
04:13 — Stigma, Self-Stigma & Identity After Diagnosis
09:16 — Medication, Hospitals, and the Pharmakon Idea
11:29 — The Pharmakon Paradox: When Treatment Is Also the Poison
14:17 — Culture, Anti-Psychiatry, and Carceral Trends
16:23 — Crisis, Containment, and Systemic Failure
19:26 — Crisis Response: the Fire Truck, Police Car & Ambulance
23:41 — Trauma, Meaning, and “No One Is Mad”
26:49 — UK vs. US Systems & McDonaldization of Care
29:29 — No Tick Box for Love
32:47 — What Actually Helps in Crisis?
36:30 — Iatrogenic Harm and Tick-Box Care
39:55 — Agency, Iatrogenic Harm & What Recovery Actually Requires
41:36 — Clozapine, “Treatment Resistance,” and Medication Dogma
49:20 — Love, Therapy, and Dependency vs. Self-Efficacy
51:44 — Homelessness, Housing First, and Basic Needs
59:58 — Agency, Suicide, and the Limits of Non-Intervention
1:06:53 — Radical Agency, Neurodiversity, and Knowing Your Mind
1:09:56 — Rediscovering Agency as the Heart of Recovery
1:14:02 — “No One Is Coming” and the Fear of Suffering
1:16:30 — The Painful Work of Healing & Safety as a Precondition
1:24:58 — Informed Consent, Polypharmacy, and Veterans
1:26:08 — Closing Reflections: Hope, Momentum & Mutual Support
Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Gary Allen, PCC is an alcohol-free coach, group facilitator, and advocate for a more conscious relationship with substances. After stepping away from alcohol nearly eight years ago, he experienced profound shifts across his emotional, physical, and professional life, ultimately transitioning from a 30-year career in IT into coaching and human development work. Today, Gary helps individuals examine their relationship with alcohol, explore ambivalence without shame, and reclaim agency in a culture where drinking is often treated as the default, emphasizing informed choice, curiosity, and sustainable change over rigid labels or all-or-nothing frameworks.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery Dr. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst with international expertise in complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and conflict resolution. He trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us, and his clinical work is primarily community-based, focusing on patients typically excluded from quality care. A regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US, he has over 30 published peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside this podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:05 — Intro to Psychophobia & Meeting Gary Allen02:50 — Eight Years Alcohol-Free & Life Transformation06:39 — One Day at a Time & Building New Habits09:56 — Reframing Sobriety & Drinking Culture17:39 — Alcohol, Numbing & Underlying Mental Health22:24 — Gary’s Story: Disability, IT Career & Coaching38:27 — Agency, Relapse & Curiosity Over Shame49:58 — The Cost of Drinking vs. The Cost of Not Drinking53:29 — Alcohol, Habit & Informed Choice1:19:54 — How to Start & Where to Get Help
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Send us a message: https://www.speakpipe.com/psychophobia
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Noah Cebuliak is a coach, educator, and former psychedelic therapy practitioner specializing in integration, inner work, and transformational experiences. He previously worked as a guide in ketamine-assisted therapy programs, supporting hundreds of individuals through altered-state experiences and their psychological integration.Today, Noah works independently with clients on personal development, psychedelic integration, and nervous system awareness. Alongside his coaching work, he is also a music producer and collaborator on transformational music projects designed to support meditation, breathwork, and psychedelic-informed therapeutic settings.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery Dr. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst with international expertise in complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and conflict resolution. He trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us, and his clinical work is primarily community-based, focusing on patients typically excluded from quality care. A regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US, he has over 30 published peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside this podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:05— Intro to Psychophobia & Reconnecting with Noah03:21 — Noah’s New Path: Coaching, Independence & Transformational Music04:55 — The New Psychedelic Wave: Hype, Harm & Commercialization12:30— Allostatic Load, Respect for Medicines & Somatic Stress16:54 — What Is Integration? Bridging Trip Worlds into Daily Life23:00— Psychedelic Narcissism, Set & Setting & Container Design43:18 — Foundations: Meditation, Nervous System & Walking the Razor’s Edge1:03:02 — The Industry: Roots to Thrive vs. McDonaldized Ketamine1:24:11 — Breathwork as a Safer Doorway & Group Healing1:33:32 — Music as Medicine & Practical Music Tips for Sessions
Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author who has won numerous awards as a journalist covering medicine and science, including the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers' Award for best magazine article. In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His first book, Mad in America, was named by Discover magazine as one of the best science books of 2002. Anatomy of an Epidemic won the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism. He is the publisher ofmadinamerica.com. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor (Adjunct) in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science.
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Dr. Michael R. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience, including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent's University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is faculty, and a supervising analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, CA. He is the founder ofLogic23.com andPeacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the psychophobia* podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:00:05 – Intro & Why This Episode Took So Long
00:01:25 – The Yellow Cab: Driving New York 1978-1984
00:04:45 – No Partition: The Vulnerability of the Encounter
00:08:28 – The SRO Hotel, Orwell & The Stories Told at 3 AM
00:11:36 – Inside Attica: Tutoring After the Riots
00:17:59 – A Menace to Society: The Question
00:19:11 – The Boston Globe Series & Two Competing Narratives
00:24:48 – The Harvard Study & The WHO Cross-Cultural Findings
00:30:23 – Why Being Challenged Made the Work Stronger
00:31:27 – Anatomy of an Epidemic & The Harrow-Jobe Story
00:38:07 – Why Informed Consent Is Treated as a Threat
00:42:17 – Michael's Story: Walking Onto the Psychiatric Ward
00:43:39 – Malaysia & The Business of Big Pharma
00:48:25 – Two Impulses Behind Broken Care
00:50:04 – Episodic Problems Made Chronic
00:50:52 – Open Dialogue, The Collapse of the Narrative & Today's Mismatch
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Steven Orfield is a pioneering polymath whose work spans acoustics, lighting, architecture, and sensory science. Founder of Orfield Labs in Minneapolis, he has spent decades designing environments that enhance human perception, from dementia and autism facilities to cutting-edge research in silence and sensory processing. Orfield combines rigorous science with a deep understanding of human experience, challenging conventional approaches to mental health and neurodiversity. He reframes cognitive differences as “filters” rather than deficits, using research and design to improve quality of life. A lifelong learner and innovator, his work demonstrates how thoughtful environments can unlock human potential and transform perception.
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Dr. Michael R. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience, including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is faculty, and a supervising analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, CA. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the psychophobia* podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:00:05 – Intro & The Anechoic Chamber Challenge
00:02:00 – Peace, Polymaths & A Mind Without Boundaries
00:07:08 – 25 Years of Invisible Disabilities: Autism, Asperger’s & The Daily “Replay”
00:15:44 – Schizophrenia, Stubborn Children & The Limits of Diagnosis
00:18:44 – A Daughter Diagnoses Her Father: HD Without the AD
00:25:42 – How Orfield Labs Began: A Storefront, A Chamber & A Building Prince Walked Away From
00:34:51 – Use It or Lose It: The Brain at Seventy & The Sandy Halperin Story
00:40:44 – Filters, Not Deficits: Designing for Autism & Dementia
00:52:41 – Kumbaya Meetings, Veterans & Whale Sounds in the Chamber
00:56:54 – Carl Beam, Ojibwe Art & The National Gallery
01:01:32 – Objective Reality, The Frog & The Limits of Perception
01:10:59 – Stupidifying the Population: AI, Education & The Loss of Liberal Arts
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Emma Orfield-Johnston is a researcher and executive at Orfield Laboratories, a multi-sensory design and research firm focused on human perception. Her work explores how environments, sound, light, temperature, and other sensory factors shape human experience and well-being. Emma leads the lab’s therapeutics program, researching the psychological effects of extreme silence using the facility’s renowned anechoic chamber, often described as the quietest place on Earth. Her work focuses particularly on sensory sensitivity and invisible disabilities, including autism, PTSD, and other perceptual differences.
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Dr. Michael R. Montgomery* Dr. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst with international expertise in complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and conflict resolution. He trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us, and his clinical work is primarily community-based, focusing on patients typically excluded from quality care. A regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US, he has over 30 published peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside this podcast.
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Episode Chapters*
00:00:05 – Psychophobia & Reunion with Emma Orfield
00:01:55 – Freud, Authority & The Unconscious
00:03:25 – Anechoic Chamber Aftermath & Public Reactions
00:52:22 – Nuance, Contrast & The Seduction of Certainty
01:23:31 – Scaling the Anechoic Chamber Beyond the Lab
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Send us a message: https://www.speakpipe.com/psychophobia
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Nita Gage is a psychospiritual teacher, retreat leader, and author whose work integrates psychology, embodiment, and shamanic practice. She trained in psychoanalysis in London with R.D. Laing and colleagues at the Philadelphia Association during the 1970s, an experience that profoundly shaped her understanding of consciousness and healing. Over the past four decades, Gage has worked in clinical settings, addiction treatment, and transformational retreat work. She is the author of Soul Whispering: The Art of Awakening Shamanic Consciousness and continues to lead workshops and retreats focused on personal transformation and expanded awareness.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery Dr. Montgomery is an existential psychoanalyst with international expertise in complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and conflict resolution. He trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us, and his clinical work is primarily community-based, focusing on patients typically excluded from quality care. A regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US, he has over 30 published peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside this podcast.
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0:00:00 – The Book That Changed Nita’s Life
0:02:30 – Entering R.D. Laing’s World
0:07:30 – India, Mysticism & Disillusionment
0:15:50 – The R.D. Laing Symposium
0:22:00 – Breathwork Explained
0:34:45 – Micro-Harm & Radical Self-Reflection
0:49:10 – Conflict, Fear & Human Needs
1:06:50 – Acceptance vs Forgiveness
1:23:00 – Addiction & Trauma
1:40:30 – Hoffman Process & Self-Compassion
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author who has won numerous awards as a journalist covering medicine and science, including the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers’ Award for best magazine article. In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His first book, Mad in America, was named by Discover magazine as one of the best science books of 2002. Anatomy of an Epidemic won the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism. He is the publisher of madinamerica.com. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor (Adjunct) in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science.
Dr. Michael R. Montgomery isan existential psychoanalyst whose work explores the far edges of human experience, including complex trauma, extreme states, addiction, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Trained at Regent’s University London, the Tavistock and Portman, and the Anna Freud Centre, his clinical work focuses primarily on community-based care for individuals often excluded from traditional mental health systems. He is faculty, and a supervising analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, CA. He is the founder of Logic23.com and Peacefire.us and a regular contributor to the Society for Existential Analysis, the R.D. Laing Symposium, and ISPS-US. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed works and is currently developing a new book alongside the psychophobia* podcast.
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Episode Chapters
00:00:05 – Intro & The Eli Lilly Admission
00:01:10 – Polypharmacy: The Rabbit Hole Without Evidence
00:04:20 – How to Get on More Medication: Try Coming Off
00:07:46 – The Interns, Stevie Nicks & Malaysia: Polypharmacy in Real Life
00:12:41 – Tony Stanton’s Residential Center & The Real Predictors of Distress
00:16:10 – A Thought Experiment & The Singer’s Demo CD
00:20:50 – What Actually Helps: Stories of Relationships
00:23:12 – The Broken Arm vs. The Human Condition
00:25:12 – The Creep of Risk & The Loss of Liberty
00:26:45 – Epistemic Destabilization & The Difference Between Real and True
00:31:03 – Crazy-Making: When Your Experience Is Discounted
00:33:30 – Mad in America the Platform: Origins, Mission & Global Affiliates
00:39:16 – Legacy & The Three Pillars of the Work
00:43:27 – When Did Recovery and Hope Become Conspiracy Theories?
00:46:15 – Othering as the Root of Cruelty
00:47:41 – Psychophobia, The Asterisk & The Centrality of Uncertainty
00:54:48 – Forced Treatment: The Hardest Question
00:57:40 – San Francisco, The Opioid Crisis & Societal Failure
01:06:06 – Open Dialogue in Finland & Why It Didn’t Export Well
01:12:59 – “How Can I Be of Help to You?”: A Philosophy of Care
01:15:09 – Closing: Hope, Optimism & The Future
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Please note that while I am a therapist, I am not your therapist. This podcast explores mental health and the human experience, but it is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or professional advice. Any decisions regarding your mental health, including changes to medication or treatment, should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare professional you trust.
