Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. So today I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to have Alan de Bautan on the show. Alan
Speaker 1: is a writer of essayistic books that have been described
Speaker 1: as a philosophy of modern life. He's written on love, travel, architecture,
Speaker 1: and literature. His books have been bestsellers in thirty countries.
Speaker 1: Alan also started and helps to run a school in
Speaker 1: London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new
Speaker 1: vision of education. Alan's latest book is The Course of
Speaker 1: Love and Meditation on Modern Relationships. Thanks for chatting with
Speaker 1: me today, Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to begin with someone like you.
Speaker 1: The topics you study are about as striking to the
Speaker 1: core of human existence as possible. Like you don't really
Speaker 1: mess around, do you? Like? Oh, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: you know, study like this one archaic philosophical idea and
Speaker 1: nitpick it to death. Instead, you're like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pick the grandest questions of human existence and give people
Speaker 1: insight into them. Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I feel that we're all short
Speaker 1: of time, and I'm quite practical guy, and I want
Speaker 1: the questions that I look at to have real world applications,
Speaker 1: and they often come in me from pretty urgent questions
Speaker 1: that I'm wrestling with. You know, I'm trying to understand myself,
Speaker 1: the people around me, the world I see around me,
Speaker 1: and there tends to be often a problem that I
Speaker 1: want to try and solve. You know, why is this
Speaker 1: thing so painful? Why is this so confusing? Why? Is
Speaker 1: dangerously vague. It's the opposite of an academic exercise. So
Speaker 1: even though I deal with a lot of material that
Speaker 1: academics deal with, my emotional motivations are entirely different. I am,
Speaker 1: you know, putting myself and humanity and the planet on
Speaker 1: the couch and I'm out for answers. So that explains
Speaker 1: a lot of the way in which I go about
Speaker 1: my work. You know, I'll not spend too long on
Speaker 1: one topic, I'll rove around, I'll keep it focused, I'll
Speaker 1: keep the main question in view pretty much all the time.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. Sure, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: But what were you like as a kid. Did you
Speaker 1: used to sit in your bed at like age ten
Speaker 1: and think about death religion? Not at all. But what
Speaker 1: I did used to do was to tidy things up.
Speaker 1: I was a kind of tidy kid and a builder kid,
Speaker 1: So I love nothing better. I was had a huge
Speaker 1: imagination and was always building worlds out of lego, and
Speaker 1: I love lining up the trees in precise symmetry and
Speaker 1: writing books where you know, everything was kind of neatly
Speaker 1: laid out. And I think for me it was a
Speaker 1: way of controlling anxiety. And as I look back on it,
Speaker 1: and I think that it grew out of that that
Speaker 1: I became interested in ideas, and I saw ideas and
Speaker 1: the life of the mind as the ultimate way of
Speaker 1: arranging trees in a neat row. I really resonate with that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it has anything to do with OCD. Probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, why not? You know, I think you
Speaker 1: can sort of divide humanity by what people do with
Speaker 1: their anxiety. After all, we all carry a lot of
Speaker 1: anxiety with us. What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1: You know? Do you take it on the stage, Do
Speaker 1: you go jogging with it? Do you get drunk with it?
Speaker 1: Do you sing it out? You know? What do you
Speaker 1: try and do? And for me, mastering things intellectually is
Speaker 1: my way of dealing with anxiety. So it's really not
Speaker 1: coming from any particularly noble or you know, pure place.
Speaker 1: It's a survival strategy. It's a way of dealing with
Speaker 1: a kind of mental disorder. You know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I really the way you put that. So before we
Speaker 1: get to things like sex and religion, and I would
Speaker 1: like to start with Love. That is your most recent book,
Speaker 1: and I really did find it to be quite profound,
Speaker 1: you know, per capita sort of thing, Like every page
Speaker 1: was like a new insight that I got about human nature.
Speaker 1: And what perplexed me about that is that, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a psychologist. I'm a scientist. I've studied I wrote
Speaker 1: a book on the science of well sex of meeting.
Speaker 1: But I reviewed that literature and love, and I thought
Speaker 1: I understood the science of love. I read your book
Speaker 1: and it just really gave me such profound insights. How
Speaker 1: can your sort of writing and the kind of evidence
Speaker 1: that you bring to bear on the topic and insights?
Speaker 1: How's it given me so many more insights than I've
Speaker 1: gotten from being one hundred peer of your journal articles.
Speaker 1: Well that's very moving and touching. What you say. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it, I do mean it. Yeah, Well, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, your job
Speaker 1: is much harder than mine because I can go off
Speaker 1: and just have theories and h pothesies, and I don't
Speaker 1: need to test them tall stringently. I just need to
Speaker 1: you know, float them. And the ultimate sense of you know,
Speaker 1: approval is going to be whether they ring a bell
Speaker 1: with the reader. But we don't have to do, you know,
Speaker 1: peer reviewed tests. So in a way, philosophers and writers
Speaker 1: and essayists have this kind of freedom to run ahead
Speaker 1: of science. And you know, I like the view that
Speaker 1: essentially science always catches up because of the burden of
Speaker 1: proof that scientists put upon themselves. Thank god. It means
Speaker 1: that sometimes you know, we look sometimes you know, I'm
Speaker 1: shure this hame to you. You'll read a paper by
Speaker 1: a psychologist and an aspect of love, and you'll think, huh,
Speaker 1: I knew that already, but you won't think that. But
Speaker 1: for some people might think that, to which the answer is, well,
Speaker 1: of course, you know it felt true already, but the
Speaker 1: point of the experiment was to prove it beyond certain,
Speaker 1: to actually properly prove it. And I don't need to
Speaker 1: do that, so I can use very kind of fly
Speaker 1: by night techniques. I can use myself as my first
Speaker 1: and only test case, you know, so I can just
Speaker 1: go into my own heart and soul and fish things
Speaker 1: out and try them out. That's a kind of freedom,
Speaker 1: sort of the irresponsibility of the creative writer next to
Speaker 1: the scientists, which is from where you're staying, I canly imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, both liberating and a bit madden. Then you
Speaker 1: kind of think, oh, what are these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: having all the fun, but you know, there's a price
Speaker 1: on every side. I appreciate that. But this idea that
Speaker 1: sciences catches up with what we have known, what you know, literature,
Speaker 1: these common themes that are in literature and poetry and
Speaker 1: philosophy thousands and thousands of years. It's almost like who
Speaker 1: are science is to think that, you know, we'll ascertain
Speaker 1: the truth in one generation. Almost like, maybe we need
Speaker 1: to be more humble as scientists when we read poetry
Speaker 1: or great literature that have these themes because the themes, look,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be honest, the themes obviously, the themes
Speaker 1: in the Course of Love are new. But you know,
Speaker 1: what I think is so interesting about and what I
Speaker 1: really tugs at my heartstrings when I read this story
Speaker 1: of this couple that forms the main narrative of your
Speaker 1: book is just how relatable. It's almost like you've identified
Speaker 1: this like temp you call it the chorus of love,
Speaker 1: but it's like a template that is in our DNA
Speaker 1: that almost like we as humans were kind of like
Speaker 1: destined to unfold. It's like destined to unfold. But when
Speaker 1: we're in it, we don't have that perspective to really
Speaker 1: see it that way, do we. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe another way of looking at it is
Speaker 1: to say that it's not just what you say, it's
Speaker 1: how you say it. And you know, I came from
Speaker 1: an academic background, and I was always struck by the
Speaker 1: way in which you know, it seemed to me that
Speaker 1: there were great truths in a lot of academic books,
Speaker 1: but they weren't getting out there. They weren't hitting home
Speaker 1: because of the way they were expressed. And in a way,
Speaker 1: that scene is an incidental issue by most scientists, definitely,
Speaker 1: but even by many scholars in the humanities. You know,
Speaker 1: the line is, it doesn't really matter how you're putting
Speaker 1: it down, so long as the idea is solid, that's
Speaker 1: what matters. But of course the audience is emotional and
Speaker 1: is responding with their senses. And in a way it
Speaker 1: strikes me as a communicator, you've got to make sure
Speaker 1: not just that what you're saying is correct, but that
Speaker 1: it's delivered in a form which will hit home and seduce,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's the word seduction is kind of
Speaker 1: a word that's under suspicion in a way. It seems
Speaker 1: like you would only ever try to seduce with a falsehood,
Speaker 1: But of course you can also try to seduce with
Speaker 1: the truth, just as importantly. And I guess what I
Speaker 1: try to do with this book. You know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: you mentioned that it's not a psychological treatise. I could
Speaker 1: have written it as a psychological treatse. I could have
Speaker 1: written it as an essay. It seemed to be important
Speaker 1: to write it as a novel so that it could
Speaker 1: have an emotional impact on the reader, so that there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a need to you know, tick various you
Speaker 1: know boxes that are company nonfiction and that what could
Speaker 1: just get sort of straight to the point. And so
Speaker 1: you know, often as a writer, I'm asking, what's the
Speaker 1: book book four? What's it really trying to do? And
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I don't see myself as a scientist,
Speaker 1: so I'm not in that game. So really I'm in
Speaker 1: the game of trying to make the ordinary reader think
Speaker 1: and feel. And I've succeeded if I've done that. So
Speaker 1: it's just I guess it's just sort of underlying priorities, really,
Speaker 1: and I think we often don't think enough as writers
Speaker 1: about what our implicit or explicit goals are with our work.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, maybe the historian has been laboring
Speaker 1: for twenty years on a large tone might think, oh,
Speaker 1: why is my book not in the best seller list,
Speaker 1: to which my answer would be, well, did you really
Speaker 1: want it to be? Really? Really, is that really what
Speaker 1: you were doing? And they might after a moment of
Speaker 1: reflection and think, well, actually, maybe not really, So you
Speaker 1: can it's good to clarify ultimately what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do with work. I think it's a really great point,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to let's use an example. You know,
Speaker 1: John Alaia wrote a book about love recently. There was
Speaker 1: supposed to be kind of like the latest scientific Summary
Speaker 1: of love. But the major ricism of that book was,
Speaker 1: you know that it wasn't I didn't tuget anyone's heart,
Speaker 1: made it made love dry. I mean, there is a
Speaker 1: particular danger of sounding dry right around love. And there's
Speaker 1: also you know, because moments of love are moments when
Speaker 1: we encounter our own irrationality most intensely, there can be
Speaker 1: something a little grating about a you know, from thirty
Speaker 1: thousand feet view of the dynamics of the heart that
Speaker 1: doesn't in any way acknowledge that this is a sort
Speaker 1: of you know, folly that befalls us all. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just almost a rhetorical move that if
Speaker 1: one allows oneself to as the creator, to admit that
Speaker 1: one's kind of crazy with everybody else, you know, along
Speaker 1: with this, it can just create a very useful feeling
Speaker 1: of identification. So yeah, that's a very clear thing I
Speaker 1: got from your book, is that we're all crazy that
Speaker 1: the love is picking the best of the most suffering options, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm strung by the way. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was younger, I'd see lots of relationship problems around,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot of hope always in me
Speaker 1: and in other people that you know, it would just
Speaker 1: take a little bit of time to sort itself out.
Speaker 1: And obviously, the generation of one's parents, I mean they
Speaker 1: were crazy, but then they were old, so obviously they
Speaker 1: were kind of crazy, like like old cars and went
Speaker 1: very good, and so old people weren't very good. So
Speaker 1: you know, we were the modern people, and so you know,
Speaker 1: what we needed to do ultimately was find the right person,
Speaker 1: and then soon as we found the right person, then
Speaker 1: things would fall into place. And then, of course, like
Speaker 1: every generation, what you discover is hut's a little bit
Speaker 1: more complicated. And the conclusion is that there really doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be anyone having a normal relationship out there.
Speaker 1: So we've got this idea of what a normal relationship is.
Speaker 1: It's a very strong idea, marked by mutual respect, satisfying sex, life,
Speaker 1: you know, great passion, forgiveness, all these things, and we
Speaker 1: have it in our minds. And yet you know, you
Speaker 1: hunt for it in vain, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you know, that has to force the kind
Speaker 1: of reflection on our hopes. And so, you know, I've
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that really everyone is unbalanced in
Speaker 1: one way or another. It's not a question that somebody
Speaker 1: is not unbalanced, they just all are. That the human
Speaker 1: makeup is, you know, really quite perverted. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about religion, I've read quite a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff by Saint Augustine, and Augustinism starts with
Speaker 1: this unusual idea that we are all sinners, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've been marked since the time of our births by
Speaker 1: original sin Now I'm a totally secular Jew and at
Speaker 1: the standard at first completely very eccentric, but in a
Speaker 1: way it's a very warm hearted philosophy because ultimately it says, look,
Speaker 1: it's not just you, frankly, it's all of us. All
Speaker 1: of us are a bit broken in one way or another.
Speaker 1: We will have all have come through the gauntlet of childhood,
Speaker 1: We'll all been navigating our emotional lives with quite a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble, quite a lot of baggage. And so
Speaker 1: the issue isn't to try and aim for perfection but
Speaker 1: to try and understand imperfection and within a couple, explain
Speaker 1: it to one in a way that is comprehensible, is
Speaker 1: not offensive, and is early enough, comes early enough in
Speaker 1: the relationship or particular moments as not to cause you know,
Speaker 1: lasting damage, because human beings can forgive each other a
Speaker 1: huge amount. I think, so long as it's explained in
Speaker 1: a certain way. You know, if you arrive on a
Speaker 1: date and say, well, I'm perfect, and I hope you're
Speaker 1: perfect too, you know you'll be in for trouble. But
Speaker 1: if two people say, look, obviously I'm kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: you're kind of crazy too, I think that was a given,
Speaker 1: and you know, in what way are you crazy? I'm
Speaker 1: going to come on to me in a minute, But
Speaker 1: you know what about you that's an excellent starting point
Speaker 1: for a more realistic and you know, properly ambitious relationship.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. I think that. I love that you
Speaker 1: call out things about us humans that are It's like
Speaker 1: you're like calling it, you know what I mean? I
Speaker 1: like it. But let me play Devil's advocate for a second.
Speaker 1: So I've done some research on attachment styles, and you
Speaker 1: talk about attachment styles in the book In Kind of
Speaker 1: your penultimate chapter or so. Could it be I'm just
Speaker 1: a person thing out there, and then just tell me
Speaker 1: if I'm right or wrong. Could it be that your
Speaker 1: book really is the course of love parentheses when you
Speaker 1: have a couple that's avoidant insecure, Do you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Could it be that your book is really
Speaker 1: just the course of love a particular combination of attachment styles,
Speaker 1: because when you actually look at secure secure, they actually
Speaker 1: don't really have that as much drama as you think. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean attachment theory is a big underlying part of this.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I'd say you'll know much better
Speaker 1: than me about how much secure, secure love there is
Speaker 1: out there. I guess I don't see too much of
Speaker 1: it around if there is, you know. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I do make a claim that this is an ordinary relationship.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, avoidant and anxious still qualifies as
Speaker 1: normal enough. So it's maybe I'm looking at a relationship
Speaker 1: that is an everyday neurotic relationship that is not, you know, dramatic,
Speaker 1: but that you know, it's not totally healthy. And I
Speaker 1: guess I wanted to write a book that I wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on a couple where things are not brilliant,
Speaker 1: but they're not terrible. They are you know, interestingly and
Speaker 1: you know, almost in a banal way tricky. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to tease out the issues that and you did that.
Speaker 1: I want to make a very clear you did a
Speaker 1: very good job of that. And I might even sure
Speaker 1: what I said is true. I wanted to throw it
Speaker 1: out there, and I just want to throw that idea
Speaker 1: out there because you know, it's funny. A lot of
Speaker 1: people with like avoidant or anxious attachment style will report,
Speaker 1: you know, being very uncomfortable around secure attachment style individuals
Speaker 1: if they're in a relationship. It's like very far into them,
Speaker 1: you know. Yes, I mean I think I find that fascinating.
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating how people will say things like,
Speaker 1: you know, I went on a date with so and so,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're great, and you know they're they're
Speaker 1: really you know, good looking. But I just felt and
Speaker 1: the language is interesting, you know that people say things
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I felt they were a bit boring,
Speaker 1: And that word boring is often used to explain health, yes,
Speaker 1: like exactly who were not very healthy emotionally or less healthy.
Speaker 1: And I think the way, it's it's true. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's a correct word boring, but it's
Speaker 1: a lovely kind of boring. It's it's like Switzerland is boring. Yeah, great,
Speaker 1: and we want more of that, especially US Americans right now.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, like that's almost the conclusion of
Speaker 1: your book, is that, like these two individuals with these
Speaker 1: attachment they went through this counseling and they almost like
Speaker 1: the thing that's kind of saved the relationship in a sense,
Speaker 1: or that I think, not that they were really seriously
Speaker 1: I don't think seriously on the verge of divorce. But
Speaker 1: the thing that really kind of contented them, I should say,
Speaker 1: is kind of moving towards more of a secure attachment style. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, what saved them, I think is a
Speaker 1: kind of understanding, and understanding requires, you know, a drop
Speaker 1: in levels of anxiety, an increase in safety. You know,
Speaker 1: they gradually acquired the courage to sort of face up
Speaker 1: to how tricky they were, how their own first responses
Speaker 1: were really pretty unhelpful, or how their analysis of what
Speaker 1: the other one was doing was involving them in some
Speaker 1: pretty bad patterns of behavior. So I don't think they
Speaker 1: you know. Look, I think it's enormous progress. If someone
Speaker 1: can go, look, I have a tendency to feel quite abandoned,
Speaker 1: and when I do, I get quite controlling. If somebody
Speaker 1: can know that about themselves, oh my god, that's an advantage.
Speaker 1: Or if somebody can go when I feel hurt, I
Speaker 1: just want to be alone and not tell anyone what
Speaker 1: the problem is. Again, if you know that, if that
Speaker 1: information is circulating within the relationship, it is the most
Speaker 1: romantic thing in a way, to be able to give
Speaker 1: someone a present, to give your lover, the present of
Speaker 1: an insight into your own flaws, that is an enormous gift. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you do talk about how intimacy, real intimacy, real
Speaker 1: love really comes. It's almost like a linear correlation with
Speaker 1: how much you feel like you're under fully understood by
Speaker 1: the other person or accept did yes and understood any
Speaker 1: that's right. And the problem is that we're always, of course,
Speaker 1: so hard on the other person's you know, bad behavior,
Speaker 1: and what we call bad behavior is you know, usually
Speaker 1: a kind of trauma, a kind of immaturity. But both
Speaker 1: parties tend to be so ungenerous towards each other's frail
Speaker 1: teams that what could be a journey of growth becomes
Speaker 1: stuck in a cycle of complaints. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: heartbreaking because so often arguments between couples, for example, are
Speaker 1: desperate attempts by two people to teach each other things
Speaker 1: about each other, things that are very legitimate and quite sensible,
Speaker 1: but the way in which the lesson is delivered is
Speaker 1: so hysterical, so mad, so doomed to failure, that you know,
Speaker 1: you end up in kind of cycles of nagging on
Speaker 1: one part, shirking on the other, and that sort of thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I have a slightly tragic view of life.
Speaker 1: I think that there are some very dark things right
Speaker 1: at the center of existence, starting with the fact that
Speaker 1: we're going to die at a time not of our own,
Speaker 1: choosing in a manner of potential, you know, calamity and horror,
Speaker 1: and that our loved ones are always at risk. You know,
Speaker 1: that's just the kind of starting point. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, you add, we've got very little understanding
Speaker 1: of ourselves. We're forced to make big decisions way before
Speaker 1: we really have the data necessary. We have to choose
Speaker 1: a job, a vocation, a lover in situations of real vagueness,
Speaker 1: and uncertainty, so we make lots and lots of wrong
Speaker 1: choices naturally inevitably, and on and on it goes. We're
Speaker 1: you know, we're fragile human beings. We're trying to navigate
Speaker 1: with this faulty walnut between our ears, and we've got
Speaker 1: only that to interpret everything reality, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very flawed instrument. Speak for yourself, Speak for yourself, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And what's more, it's an instrument that has a really
Speaker 1: hard time recognizing that it is flawed. It thinks it's
Speaker 1: giving us accurate and accurate picture of reality, and yet
Speaker 1: it actually is constantly you know, So we'll go you know, no,
Speaker 1: it's all your fault. Way before we realize, hey, my
Speaker 1: blood sugar is much too low. You know, we'll have
Speaker 1: a very well worked out hypothesis about why it's you know,
Speaker 1: what is going on, you know, irrespective of reality, which
Speaker 1: is incidentally speaking to you as a scientist. You know
Speaker 1: why science is such an amazing piece of emotional maturity,
Speaker 1: you know, way before it's anything else. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of it represents the discovery and the development of the
Speaker 1: scientific method, is the kind of maturity of the human mind.
Speaker 1: Because it requires so many things that don't really come
Speaker 1: naturally to us. The capacity to admit that we're wrong,
Speaker 1: the capacity to accept reality even when it's very unpleasant,
Speaker 1: the patience required, et cetera, et cetera. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: Have you writ any of irv Alum's work? No, No,
Speaker 1: you create this feel I think you would resonate with
Speaker 1: it a lot. He created this field, a big part
Speaker 1: of the field, existential psychotherapy. He wrote the text, the
Speaker 1: main textbook on the outlines the givens of existence in
Speaker 1: the introduction, and basically, I mean that's he starts with,
Speaker 1: you know, these existential facts as the starting base for psychotherapy.
Speaker 1: So it's really cool, interesting, very interesting. So tell me
Speaker 1: more about your academic background then, well, I mean, when
Speaker 1: I was a young guy, I dreamt of being a
Speaker 1: professor of something, and I loved the idea belonging to university.
Speaker 1: This is when I was like seventeen or something, and
Speaker 1: I loved the idea. And then I studied at Cambridge.
Speaker 1: I did a history degree, which was really a history
Speaker 1: of ideas and it was sort of fulfilling. And then
Speaker 1: I'm bought on various misshaping PhDs and gave them up,
Speaker 1: and I realized ultimately that my mind was not going
Speaker 1: to fit in with the kind of academic demands. But
Speaker 1: I loved You know, there's a broad sway that people,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've come across them, who'll say things like,
Speaker 1: you know, there'll be twenty two, there'll be good students,
Speaker 1: they'll be curious about the world, they'll be curious about themselves,
Speaker 1: and they won't know what to do with their lives
Speaker 1: because they've loved the kind of material they've studied as undergraduates.
Speaker 1: But they can see what academics doing for their whole
Speaker 1: lives and that's not quite right. And then at that
Speaker 1: point they sometimes think of becoming journalists or whatever, and
Speaker 1: they are I know, this tribe. They write to me
Speaker 1: every day asking me what they should do, and you know,
Speaker 1: I feel for them, and there isn't thank you. There
Speaker 1: isn't really necessarily a place there should be. You know,
Speaker 1: in past ages those people might have joined the church maybe,
Speaker 1: But today they start podcasts. They start podcasts, or they
Speaker 1: become like a therapist, or they try a bit of
Speaker 1: this and a bit of that, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's fine. That's the liberation of our times. In a way.
Speaker 1: But that's where I was, certainly, and you know, I
Speaker 1: felt my way towards doing what I do now, But
Speaker 1: it was I think I was in an agony of
Speaker 1: anxiety pretty much every day in my twenties, just questioning
Speaker 1: what I was doing, feeling very very isolated, writing books,
Speaker 1: but outside of any structure, just it was a horrible
Speaker 1: time in many ways. Yeah, I totally resonate with a
Speaker 1: lot of what you're saying. There's many things I would
Speaker 1: have to talk to about it, and I want to
Speaker 1: be respective of your time. So let's move on to sex.
Speaker 1: Is that okay? Can we talk about sex? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: you make this interesting argument in one of your books
Speaker 1: about sex, saying that it's really we're kind of thinking
Speaker 1: about it in the wrong way. Is that right? Look,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's missed is, you know,
Speaker 1: Freud made this move where he taught us to think
Speaker 1: that a lot of things that seemed quite innocent were
Speaker 1: in fact quite sexual, that the sex motive was kind
Speaker 1: of everywhere, and that kind of invigorated and frightened a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I make it a way a sort
Speaker 1: of different claim. What's the opposite claim, which is that
Speaker 1: a lot of sex looks like it's about sex, but
Speaker 1: it's out of fact not, It's about everything else that
Speaker 1: we care about in life. And that you know, if
Speaker 1: you analyze a lot of the pleasure of sex, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is very continuous with our pleasure in
Speaker 1: others areas. So we don't become somebody completely different in sex.
Speaker 1: We're exploring our interests, our desires, our longings in other ways.
Speaker 1: And so you know, for example, I look at kind
Speaker 1: of lingus, what is that? Like? What the hell you know?
Speaker 1: Why does that exist? Obviously, you know, darwinists that a
Speaker 1: slightly hard time understanding what it is. Might do turtles
Speaker 1: not do come the lingus? I don't know, maybe maybe,
Speaker 1: But you know, the way I analyze it, along with
Speaker 1: other things, is it's all about trust. In other words,
Speaker 1: here is this pretty far out so called inverted com
Speaker 1: is a disgusting thing that the people are doing, but
Speaker 1: it symbolizes an unbelievable degree of acceptance. So the normal
Speaker 1: dichotomy that we suffer so much from between dirty and clean,
Speaker 1: you know, and who is a good boy and a
Speaker 1: good girl and all that that is kind of erased
Speaker 1: in oral sex, where suddenly everything about a person is
Speaker 1: deemed acceptable, and that involves an enormous kind of increase
Speaker 1: in pleasure and satisfaction, which is not really a kind
Speaker 1: of a sensory pleasure, it's a psychological pleasure. It's, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this really is acceptance. You know, this really
Speaker 1: is a little moment of paradise because of what it symbolizes.
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, similarly, kissing, you know
Speaker 1: what is kissing about? I mean, kissing is not that
Speaker 1: fun looked at purely sensorily. It's the idea of privacy
Speaker 1: that somebody has allowed us into the most private zone.
Speaker 1: And it's an idea of acceptance. So it's that sort
Speaker 1: of thing that I like to locate in sex. Similarly,
Speaker 1: take another thing, take the idea of being able to
Speaker 1: be quite rough with a lover again, Like, what's that doing?
Speaker 1: What's that again? That's to do with trust. In most
Speaker 1: of life, we've got to be so gentle, so careful
Speaker 1: around other people. We've got to withhold our aggressive impulses.
Speaker 1: Imagine again the feeling of a trust and of mutual
Speaker 1: loyalty that's built up, and one person can say something
Speaker 1: very so called add to another can behave in a
Speaker 1: rougher way with them that is normally allowed. So all
Speaker 1: of these things deliver psychological pleasures via a physical medium. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really a great, a great insight. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: just like to think about, you know, contrasts with other animals.
Speaker 1: You know, once evolutionary psychologists study mating. I think that
Speaker 1: that's left out. I really do think what you're describing
Speaker 1: is left out of a lot of the evolutionary psychology
Speaker 1: accounts of human meaning. Although David Buss do this interesting
Speaker 1: paper where he outlines like over one hundred reasons why
Speaker 1: humans have sex, and he did fight male and female
Speaker 1: differences sex differences, but nevertheless, there's quite a bit of
Speaker 1: overlap and variability. The point there is variability that you
Speaker 1: don't see in other animals because of the psychological dimension.
Speaker 1: So I just love that you, I really do love
Speaker 1: you brought that up. You do talk about pornography in
Speaker 1: your book. I want to say, I heard a rumor
Speaker 1: yesterday actually that you are creating a pornography site. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? Well, the school of life that I run,
Speaker 1: we yes, we did a pornography site called porn as
Speaker 1: therapy dot com. I tell you the starting point. The
Speaker 1: starting point was so we run a psychotherapy division at
Speaker 1: the School of Life, and we started to see an
Speaker 1: unbelievable amount of people coming through where pornography was an
Speaker 1: issue in a couple or an individual life addiction, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so you know, what do you do
Speaker 1: about that? So one of you is pornography is fine,
Speaker 1: it is actually no problem with it. It's great, just
Speaker 1: leave it be. And the other view is it's terrible,
Speaker 1: ban it, block it, censor it, et cetera. And neither
Speaker 1: the impulse seemed particularly great, And so we were just
Speaker 1: trying to think about an answer, and I guess our
Speaker 1: feeling was the things that are wrong with pornography is
Speaker 1: that pornography excites the sexual impulse in ways that are
Speaker 1: then quite unhelpful to the rest of life. It disconnects
Speaker 1: sex from other things, other responses, patterns of thinking, ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the world that are then quite important.
Speaker 1: It cuts it off from communion with another person with intelligence,
Speaker 1: with sensitivity, et cetera, et cetera. And so we just
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of recontextualize sexuality in pornograpy and make
Speaker 1: a slightly different kind of pornography which has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it being light or it can still be
Speaker 1: quite extreme. In fact, some of the we basically we
Speaker 1: worked with a porn photographer and some actors and just
Speaker 1: shop a variety of scenarios as still images. What we
Speaker 1: like to do a life is not just theorized, but
Speaker 1: also inact and demonstrate. And so we were just trying
Speaker 1: to say, what would it be like to think of
Speaker 1: a better kind of pornography to try and correct some
Speaker 1: of the problems that we see in existing pornography. Not
Speaker 1: to ban it or escape it or run away from it,
Speaker 1: but to try and somehow work with the impulse that
Speaker 1: we have and train it in a kind of more
Speaker 1: fruitful direction. I mean, as a positive psychologist, I can
Speaker 1: say that's a topic that has never really been studied scientifically.
Speaker 1: Is the extent to its porn can increase well being?
Speaker 1: It's a tricky thing, but I mean, of course it can.
Speaker 1: It must be. You know, look, most people, we know
Speaker 1: that it's an enormous release from anxiety. I mean that's why,
Speaker 1: like anything that's a essentially the root of the addiction
Speaker 1: is in the capacity to release anxiety. So you know,
Speaker 1: it can be so good at doing that that it
Speaker 1: then becomes a problem in itself, but it must have
Speaker 1: that role. And also I think, you know, to be
Speaker 1: benevolent towards it. You know, our relationships are incredibly burdened
Speaker 1: by emotional consequences, by feelings of responsibility, of duty, by
Speaker 1: feelings of guilt. And I think that pornography for men
Speaker 1: and women can be an encounter with a kind of
Speaker 1: guilt and responsibility free moment of sexuality, and that has
Speaker 1: a role to play perhaps in a life. Sure it
Speaker 1: could also of course have darker, sort of not as
Speaker 1: conducive elements as well. So I guess it's just like
Speaker 1: humans as well. We're very complex people. Sure, and I
Speaker 1: think it's look oddly, it's not received that much creative attention,
Speaker 1: you know, given the fact that this enormous industry, you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably fifty percent of the Internet. Maybe I'm exact rating,
Speaker 1: but it's an enormous proportion. You know, it deserves ongoing
Speaker 1: serious thought. I mean, there are few people doing this,
Speaker 1: and you know, we wanted to, We wanted to join
Speaker 1: in that debate and that investigation. Well, from an intellectual perspective,
Speaker 1: I had to say, it's extremely interesting you have porn
Speaker 1: as a cure for a willingliness, authority, seriousness, responsibility. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are topics that I appreciate you're doing this. These
Speaker 1: are topics that probably could get a lot more scientific
Speaker 1: attention than it currently does. So I think that's great,
Speaker 1: sounds good. So let's move on to religion. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: argue that there's kind of this middle we kind of
Speaker 1: put up this perifrication of an argument that the religion
Speaker 1: is either all nonsense or it's all not nonsense, that
Speaker 1: it's all true sort of thing. And you say, you
Speaker 1: call us a quote boring debate. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's boring for me, and I think it
Speaker 1: ultimately doesn't get to the root of the problem. The
Speaker 1: really interesting topic is where the hell does this come
Speaker 1: from inside human nature? You know, where does the impulse
Speaker 1: to believe come from? I take it as a fact,
Speaker 1: and for granted that the whole thing's not true, but
Speaker 1: it's deeply emotionally true. You know, so long after we've
Speaker 1: you know, discounted the idea that that there may be
Speaker 1: a father in the sky, I want to think about
Speaker 1: that longing for a father. And I think this is
Speaker 1: why the debate with atheism is so sterile because atheists
Speaker 1: will spend their time going, oh no, and there is
Speaker 1: no God and you know, by the way, there is
Speaker 1: no angel, et cetera. And I think only you're fine,
Speaker 1: you know there is actual But I want to go
Speaker 1: onto the other question, which is, why did we invent angels,
Speaker 1: Why did we invent sacred days, why did we invent
Speaker 1: you know, feasts of atonement, et cetera. Where does this
Speaker 1: stuff come from inside of us? And also where's it
Speaker 1: gone now in a secular culture? So those are the
Speaker 1: themes that interest me. Yeah, and then sort of what
Speaker 1: are the secular themes of religion that everyone would benefit from?
Speaker 1: You know, we're studying this topic are in our lab
Speaker 1: you know, awe, and it seems to be that seems
Speaker 1: to be like the friendly the religion for a seculars
Speaker 1: you know, is odd, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I think that's right. It's a very well, it's a
Speaker 1: very good work. Good first it's sort of something that
Speaker 1: everybody can agree on without getting from of it. It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I went to walk in the Arizona desert
Speaker 1: and felt or you know, so yes, it's it seems
Speaker 1: like a very useful starting point. Yeah, and I love
Speaker 1: you know, your book about religion, Friligion for Atheists, how
Speaker 1: you talk about all these benefits of religion like building
Speaker 1: u since community, making relationships, last, overcoming the feelings of
Speaker 1: envy and inadequacy, et cetera, et cetera. I always like
Speaker 1: to look for broader themes in my guests, you know,
Speaker 1: writings and things and and it really, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of these things you're talking about are really lie
Speaker 1: at the heart of human existence also really contribute to
Speaker 1: well being. You know, religion, sex, you are you, Sex
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways can contribute to well being
Speaker 1: in ways we don't think about love. All these things
Speaker 1: are simultaneously complicated and also conducive to well being. So
Speaker 1: that leads to the last topic today, happiness. You know,
Speaker 1: you have also written specifically about the architecture of happiness.
Speaker 1: And is there some way, you know, something we can
Speaker 1: kind of end on. We can talk about what would
Speaker 1: be the best way to architect society so that these
Speaker 1: a lot of these things which are taboo. You talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of things that are taboo, or a
Speaker 1: lot of things that bring us pain in life can
Speaker 1: also bring us the greatest joy. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: we are not systematic enough in our search for happiness. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we tend to believe that we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're all out for our own happiness, and we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing everything we can, and we sometimes feel a
Speaker 1: bit guilty that we're only out for ourselves. But I
Speaker 1: think we're you know, we're surprisingly slack in the way
Speaker 1: we go about it. You know, philosophy begins in ancient
Speaker 1: Greece with the idea that our impulses are probably wrong
Speaker 1: and that we need to submit to them to reason.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, take our two leading
Speaker 1: impulses around love and around work. So we want fulfilling
Speaker 1: work and we want fulfilling relationships. But the way we
Speaker 1: go about trying to find fulfilling work and fulfilling relationships
Speaker 1: is incredibly haphazard. You know, we don't this thinks systematically
Speaker 1: about you know, our psychees, the choices between us, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And therefore we get it wrong. And life's very short
Speaker 1: and we make big, big, big, big mistakes. And I
Speaker 1: think that you know, progress is all about trying to
Speaker 1: increase the amount of kind of reliable data on which
Speaker 1: people are basing their big life decisions on and it's
Speaker 1: sort of heartbreaking in a way when you think about
Speaker 1: how alone people are with their romantic lives, with their
Speaker 1: career choices. Despite all the chat et cetera. You know,
Speaker 1: we're still quite alone. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I've tried to do with my books and also
Speaker 1: with this organization I set up called the School of Life,
Speaker 1: is to try and give a kind of first port
Speaker 1: of call for you know, a lot of the hurdles
Speaker 1: that we're going to hit in our lives. These are
Speaker 1: unashamedly first world problems. In other words, they are the
Speaker 1: problems that you have when food and shelter have been
Speaker 1: taken care of. Now, most of the planets still struggling
Speaker 1: with those, but you know, most of the United States
Speaker 1: and Western Europe has you know, has passed that stage.
Speaker 1: But we are still in the age of unbelievable emotional confusion,
Speaker 1: which spills out into politics. You know, what we call
Speaker 1: politics is really just you know, emotional life, you know,
Speaker 1: evaporate it and concentrated over a you know, over the
Speaker 1: whole land mass. But it's the same dynamics. And and
Speaker 1: here we're, yeah, we're pretty confused, and I see it
Speaker 1: as my kind of life's work to just try and
Speaker 1: figure out a few insights in this area. I love it,
Speaker 1: and do you There's a quote you say, furnishing your
Speaker 1: life is an art. Yes, where I said that or how?
Speaker 1: But that's how familiares No. I don't know. But I've
Speaker 1: said a number of things at the moment that over
Speaker 1: the years that I don't really can't really remember them.
Speaker 1: But do you agree with it? I do you agree
Speaker 1: with that? I'm not sure what it means. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was part of a longer sentence, is the beginning I've left.
Speaker 1: But look, I think that what we can try and
Speaker 1: do is, you know, create a sharper beam of consciousness
Speaker 1: over lots of parts of our mind. You know, most
Speaker 1: of our mind are sunk in darkness. This is the
Speaker 1: original idea of the sort of the mind as a
Speaker 1: dark cave. Mostly it is a dark cave, and we
Speaker 1: need as much which is possible to kind of shine
Speaker 1: the light of reason. But we also need a great modesty.
Speaker 1: This is where humor comes in. Humor is deeply important
Speaker 1: because it's the most gracious acknowledgment we can make of
Speaker 1: our incapacity, of our flaws, of our difficult sides, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So you know, a sincere and ambitious life is never
Speaker 1: going to be far from a joke, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's all we've been, Allie. You know, we haven't been
Speaker 1: allowed to understand very much. We can't understand very much. Mostly.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that old expression God love that man
Speaker 1: thinks God laughs. In other words, you know, man's thoughts
Speaker 1: are kind of, you know, very petty things when looked
Speaker 1: at from a sufficient height. It's so true, and your
Speaker 1: work does allows us to get out of that perspective.
Speaker 1: I just want to follow for a second. Isn't the
Speaker 1: subtitle of the book, The Architecture of Happiness though the
Speaker 1: Secret Art of Furnishing Your Life? Isn't that your subtitle?
Speaker 1: It may have been added on by my then naughty
Speaker 1: American publisher. Oh no, I think it may have. It
Speaker 1: may have. I think it's not a title I like
Speaker 1: or what have identified with. So I know that sounds weird,
Speaker 1: but you know, authors are fragile beings twisted by the
Speaker 1: corporate machine who whack on all sorts of things. Look Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the book The Architecture of Happiness is not about happiness
Speaker 1: per se. It's about the dependence of our moods on
Speaker 1: our physical environments our homes more narrowly, but then also
Speaker 1: more broadly, our streets, our cities, and the natural landscape.
Speaker 1: It's the way in which where we are influences how
Speaker 1: we feel. And this was a very sort of personal book.
Speaker 1: I live in London, which I know tourists like London,
Speaker 1: but basically it's one of the world's really ugly cities.
Speaker 1: And I was living one time I wrote the book
Speaker 1: in a really ugly part of town, and I was
Speaker 1: just struck by just how much and happiness was caused
Speaker 1: by the shape of the streets and et cetera. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to try and understand what's a well designed space,
Speaker 1: what's a space that can facilitate our better moods. And
Speaker 1: that's what the book is about. I love that. Where
Speaker 1: do you get your insights? Do you'd rely on your
Speaker 1: intuition a lot, your own personal experiences? Are you married,
Speaker 1: for instance, I'm married, and yes I do. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I'm my own best first observer, and yeah, I get
Speaker 1: the stuff mostly from problems. Really like it always starts
Speaker 1: with a problem. It's like, I'm unhappy here, I'm unhappy there,
Speaker 1: I'm anxious about this. I'm anxious about that. My wife
Speaker 1: jokes that, you know, we have an argument, and you know,
Speaker 1: twenty hours later it's an article in a YouTube film.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the line. I love it. Well, look,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for res Jennerius your time, and
Speaker 1: it really was such a delight for me to chat
Speaker 1: with you today. Oh it's a pleasure for me. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, and congratulations on your work. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with actor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just to
Speaker 1: start provoking and interesting as I did. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to read the show notes for this episode or hear
Speaker 1: past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast b