Thinking With Somebody Else's Head

I've talked before on this podcast about my personal journey to treading a more Judeo-Christian theology path in my life -- inspired by my almost 25 years in Brazil working with Norberto Keppe's science of Analytical Trilogy.That was a surprise. I full expected a deep psychological dive into my own psyche and a continuous analysis of my actions and motivations and successes and failures. Psychoanalysis is, of course, Keppe's field, and he's a master there.But because Keppe deals with the inner life of the human being, that inevitably leads those who are serious about discovering what's going on with them to delving into the more spiritual parts of their lives. Those inevitable questions of purpose and meaning and even life after death.In philosophy, that's an understanding of cause and finality. Where do you come from, and where are you going? And that journey has been banalized in our modern world.  The Origin of Ourselves, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.Click here to listen to this ep

The N.Y. Time, Dec. 21, 2025 edition, has an opinion piece entitled "Christianity Is a Dangerous Faith."That might stop you in your tracks even if you're not a practicing Christian.Dangerous faith? Really? During Christmas week?My initial thought on seeing the headline was, "Is that really necessary?"The article goes on to make the usual rather pedantic points about fanaticism and religious intolerance. Which are, of course, legitimate concerns. But what causes pause, I think, is the driving force underneath the article. That things of God, in many circles, are still ridiculed and sneered at, and faith in a Creator is evidence of an "inferior mind", as some scientific thinkers would have us believe.At this time of the year especially, maybe we should stop to consider what the man who gave rise to Christianity actually had to say. And maybe by reflecting on His example and teachings, we might just uncover the validity of his story.The Hidden Repugnance Toward God, today on our Therapeutic Theology Series.

It's been impressive to see the various attempts to re-write history so it fits into a politically correct vision of reality. The New York Times 1619 Project comes to mind, the removal of statues and monuments to take out those associated with slavery or colonialism, the re-evaluation of historic personalities based on a modern view - these are all in full vigor. And criticizable -- although not politically correctness makes them closed to much critique. We must be careful with all of these. Our fears of winding up on the wrong side of history can lead us to slant things too far in the other direction, thereby skewing our view of history too much. After all, if we're going to expect the figures from history to be saints and totally politically correct on every social issue, we're going to find slim pickings for historical heroes.And we need to be really careful in our evaluation of Christianity. I know lamentable things have been carried out in the name of God -- and continue to be carried out today

Working with clients in psychoanalysis, one of the hardest tasks is helping them to see the negative things they do without realizing it. Self-destructive habits, procrastination of important activities, reckless or careless behaviors -- these all have causes from deep inside that we can't get to without help.Freud mistakenly linked these to what he called Thanatos -- a death drive -- proposing that we had a drive of destruction directed against life. Freud saw it as a complement to the life drive -- Eros -- and he saw both as part of our nature.That's a tough one to wrap your head around.But chew on this: Freud was an atheist. The idea of a struggle between life and nothingness was probable for him. Keppe, though, takes us back a step: we're not programmed for death, so to speak. We're infused with and immersed in life and goodness. Happiness and success is our natural inheritance then. Keppe's eminently hopeful perspective sees problems and anguish as common, but not inevitable parts of nature. For Kep

Back in the 1950s, the CIA and Kremlin got it into their collective heads that figuring out how to brainwash and modify human behavior was a good idea.Totally illegally, of course. And damaging to any who were submitted to their personality control experiments.Out of this abusive and paranoid climate came such films as The Manchurian Candidate and Wormwood and even Jason Bourne.Some have linked various high profile murderers to mind control experiments, but it's difficult to get any final conclusions on those. The whole subject is very secretive, and you get the feeling if you go down that rabbit hole of really sleazy, dark and evil intentions masquerading as national security imperatives.In Norberto Keppe's scientific work, there is an even more nefarious program going on here on Earth - and it's been happening since the dawn of time. Demonic Mind Control.And just like it's difficult to find out about those shadowy CIA and Kremlin programs, it's also difficult to find out much about the shady activities occu

Dr. Keppe has said many times over the more than 2 decades I've been here in Brazil studying and working with him that no one is good alone. That means we act from influencers in our lives -- and I don't mean to social media kind. Friends and family, lovers and mentors, teachers and priests and padres -- all have had their positive effect on us.And then, since we're dealing with theology in this series, we have to consider the influence of spiritual forces, too. Those transcendental bodies, like guardian angels and souls that have passed on but reach back through the ether to inspire and direct us.Beethoven used to say that God was shouting in his head, and the only thing that gave him any relief was to write it down.And just look at the legacy that left us!The other side of that statement about not being good alone, of course, is that we're not bad alone either. Negative influences are listened to in our society, from envious critique offered freely at the water cooler at work, to oft observed corruption in

Growing up in a modern developed, secular society means limited access to theological understanding. There is some spirituality mixed into the stew of science and legislation and jurisprudence, but it's of a modern kind -- meaning a blend of concepts and ideas pulled from Eastern philosophy, New Age imaginings and Quantum physics. And as such, there's lots of talk about influences from numbers and planets and collective consciousness, and even some room for mind over matter miracles.But there's precious little consideration of old-fashioned sin. And obviously no acknowledgement of the influence of evil in our lives.Admittedly, sin is a loaded word in this modern environment, so a science that accepts theology -- like Norberto Keppe's Analytical Trilogy (or Integral Psychoanalysis) -- renames sin as psychopathology. However, to really understand human activity in the world, we need to expand to a consideration of spiritual influence in our personal and social lives. Especially to negative spiritual influe

Our modern world, often driven more by reason and logic than by faith and revelation, has few answers for the mysteries that more spiritual leanings point to as evidence of God. Where the scientific materialists advocate for blind, pitiless indifference to explain the development process of life and the universe, other scientists are seeing unmistakeable evidence of design.Design means a Designer, right? And things like digital codes in the DNA that provide instructions for building the large protein molecules that are crucial to keeping living cells alive suggests a much more intentional "hand-at-play" than just the undirected chemical process used as an explanation by the scientific materialists.The biological realm certainly offers elegant examples of harmony of processes that point to a Designer -- a God that created everything -- but the problems of man that we are facing in our modern world certainly raise the question of how a good Designer could ever have created something so filled with evil. And in

There's a lot of certainty in scientific circles about how science and religion can't go together. In fact, consensus that empirical science has made God unnecessary, and that religion, with its strange elements of faith and ritual, is irrational and harmful.If you've been listening to our series, you'll realize we don't walk down that road. While we certainly agree that superstition and fanaticism have reared their heads in religious life, we could just as easily also ascribe those unhealthy aspects to many human institutions and schools of thought.Many of the pioneers of scientific investigation, like Galileo and Kepler and Newton, were deeply religious men after all, who embarked on a study of the natural laws under the conviction it would lead to evidence of a Divine Creator of all the phenomena in nature and the universe.Faith, for them, then, was not blind, but reasoned analysis looking to understand God's Creation rather than challenge theological understanding.On faith and the Certainty of God, in our

We've been looking at the deep spiritual questions that rise in the human breast in our series. And we've been doing that through the lens of theology, which has been so dismissed, even despised, in our modern science. To our great detriment. As we'll hear in this episode, Dr. Keppe accepted his clients' questions and admissions in his practice right from the beginning, thus liberating them to talk -- and be heard. We're talking experiences with angels and demons, brushes with good and evil illustrating real influences in human lives. This openness contributed formidably to Keppe's expansive psychoanalytical vision, producing practical tools for dealing with those existential questions that come to all of us at varying moments in our lives. With Keppe's science, we manage to understand ourselves and the world we live in, which has become problematic precisely because we have not re-integrated the theological reality into our science, which is subsequently operating from a reduced, materialistic pers

Our intention in this podcast series is to bring some consciousness about something that only a few desire knowing about: there are evil spirits organizing and guiding our lives.Already I can hear the howls of protest. I have a young teenage student from Europe who gets very agitated if anything metaphysical gets put forward as the cause of anything. Only the scientific explanations work for him, and by scientific, he of course means what he can validate through the 5 senses. However, anyone who works deeply with human beings will know that there are deeper currents running in the inner life that go beyond what we can see or touch or measure. Human beings long for a more complete explanation of man’s behavior than just genetics or upbringing. In fact, the continued presence of war and persecution and cruelty demands a more complete investigation. We had a movement in a different direction at the end of the nineteenth century with the work of Sigmund Freud, who demonstrated that most of what we are l

The idea of Creation. The new atheists rail against that. "It's not rational," they insist. The product of a weak mind.Yes, I've heard all that before. In fact, I'm quick to admit that may have been my mind some years ago. I say "may" because I'm not sure what I thought about the origins of all this we see around us in the natural world. I think I didn't give it so much thought actually. I remember looking on theological discourse as something out of date somehow. Like hardly pertinent in a modern world with more sophisticated concerns.And now I can sheepishly acknowledge that I knew nothing about something I thought I knew everything about.Well, a little humility goes a long way after all. And in Episode 2 of our Therapeutic Theology series, we delve into the nature of a Creation that comes and is sustained by an Intelligence. By a Being actually, Who has created us in His image.Perfect knowledge for those who have the courage to admit they don't know it all yet.Click here to listen to this episode.

 What we're trying to do in our new series here is offer a scientific analysis of spiritual phenomena, especially looking at mental illness and demonic possession. But not the demonic possession we see in the movies. Rather, we delve into the negative diabolical influence that’s a factor for all of us everywhere in our modern society. And this is totally a new approach, because the official exorcists and exorcism protocols have not included this transdisciplinary science that Dr. Keppe has developed. Which means that we are not treating this issue in our modern world. In fact, religions all over the world are not even speaking about the devil anymore.  Keppe entered into the area of psychotherapy to try to treat clients individually and in group sessions in scientific ways. And this meant dealing not only with their economic, health, work and relationship problems, but with their existential or spiritual problems as well.  And to do that, Keppe found materialistic psychoanalytical the

Anyone who's been even peripherally involved in the self-help movement will be familiar with the literature promising solutions. The three steps to this, the pathways to that, the enumerated habits that lead to accomplishment or resolution or bliss. FinallyThe great Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Dr. Norberto Keppe, is not of that persuasion. His work is deeply psychological and spiritual and works with each individual, treating specifically the problems of each one. Because while there are general psychopathologies we all exhibit -- like envy, pride, and megalomania -- how those manifest during the individual incidents in our lives is particular. So no formulas for Keppe. That being said, there are universal principles of a healthy and productive life that Keppe counsels. And habits based on those principles can truly bring fulfillment. We'll touch on one aspect of this in this episode. Self-development Requires Sacrifice, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.Click here t

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. The debate between talent and hard work is a dynamic one. Is it raw talent that carries the day or practice and dedication that reigns? I remember deciding when I was 11 or so, on hearing my recorded singing voice played back on my cousin's new cassette recorder, that I couldn't sing.How that marked my life, because I thought, wrongly, that you were born with singing talent or not.Wish I could redo that decision.Later in life, I heard about Vladimir Horovitz’s statement late in his life that if he hadn't practiced for one day, he would hear the difference. For two days, his wife would hear the difference. Three days with no practice, and the audience would notice.A poster child for hard work.Because becoming good at anything requires both talent and dedication, right? And probably not in equal measure. After all, we get in the way of our own success a lot, don't we?Performance and Free Will, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.Cl

Memories of paradise. That's not just a great dream sequence or catchy movie title. That's something that resonates through almost every culture on Earth. The Roman poet, Tacitus, wrote in the first century A.D. about how humans lived following the prompting of their own nature, which led to righteous actions.In India, the story has been passed on of how all humans were saintly.The Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu, wrote about an age of perfect virtue.And of course, the Biblical story speaks about Eden, a Garden of harmony and peace and oneness with God.In Portugal, there is a beautiful word that doesn't really have a translation into English: saudades. It means a state of deep yearning for someone or something that's absent, and "indolent dreaming wistfulness." This is what we feel in relation to Paradise. That memory resonates in our hearts and somehow is behind our drives to accomplish and improve.Paradise as Reality, not Imagination, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.Click here to listen to th

Freud believed we were often influenced by memories, traumas and instincts we had repressed, but they influenced our behaviors anyway. He got there by studying hypnosis, analyzing dreams and paying attention to those slips of the tongue that reveal what we try to keep hidden. "No mortal can keep a secret," Freud maintained. "If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." Poetic language that. And the idea has weaved its way into our modern psyche. All of us have used that excuse along the way. "Man, I was completely unconscious. What was I thinking?!"The great Brazilian psychoanalyst, Norberto Keppe, has advanced Freud significantly with his concept of inconscientization. It's not that we're naturally full of hidden indecent desires and animal instincts. For Keppe, we banish from our consciousness what we don't want to admit. That means, we know what's going on, but we deny what we know. And that has serious consequences.The Perils of Living U

There's an old Chinese phrase that goes, "It's better to be a dog in peaceful times than a man in a time of chaos." Wishful thinking, some may call that, for it's difficult to see peaceful times at any moment in human history. Most of us with a bit of life experience hearken back to when times were easier, and end up moralizing to any who will listen that our times back then were superior. And while that may be superficially true, it's not all that helpful. And complaining doesn't make the young fold feel any better.In fact, your and old may just end up pointing fingers at each other as to who's to blame for the world as it is.We'd like to dip our feet into those tumultuous waters in this podcast to suggest that all those lamentations and blame apportioning miss the fundamental point: we've been on an inverted path for millennia. We've reached the end of the road in a literal sense.Can any sense be made of the correct way to go now?Love, Consciousness and the Troubled World, today on Thinking with Somebo

I've been in Brazil going on 24 years, using Norberto Keppe's psychotherapeutic methodology in education and communications, and also as a psychoanalyst at Keppe's school. The positive results available to anyone who studies with us and accepts the consciousness that comes through our classes and therapy sessions are noteworthy. From overcoming learning blocks to resolving long-standing or acute personal or professional conflicts to curing from medical conditions, Keppe's on to something.Where Freud initiated psychoanalysis with the idea that neurosis was caused by cultural and moral values, and Jung wanted to integrate our shadow side into our personality, and Alfred Adler helped clients with their feelings of inferiority, Keppe has reached conclusions about the human problematic with his great discovery of inversion.The Final Frontier of the human psyche, and the way to finally understanding ourselves and resolving our greatest problems. Inversion in Everyday Life, today on Thinking with Somebody Else'

Sometimes, when I have something important to do, I must confess I feel a little resistance. It's an interesting phenomenon because it's like a general lethargy. Like the energy has drained away and there's nothing left for the job at hand. In those moments, all sorts of other activities suddenly appear infinitely more appealing. YouTube's a quick click away, and the algorithms have numerous suggestions that seem interesting and even, if I'm honest, urgent.And there's research to be done, too. New equipment for the studio or books on Amazon.And hey, I haven't played my guitar in a while!Not that any of these things are wrong, of course. It's just that they are far from more important than the project I need to work on.Procrastination. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only guy plagued with that.In fact, it's historical. Even St. Paul, prodigious achiever that he was notwithstanding, lamented about that. Let's see if we can get somewhere in looking at this.Why Do I Do the Things I Don't Want, today on Thinking