Got Therapy?
What is self-esteem, really? In this episode of Got Therapy?, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose reconsider self-esteem through a psychodynamic lens — not as a high score you defend, but as the acceptance of a complex, often conflicted self.
The conversation moves through not-me states (the parts of ourselves we'd rather not own, from Sullivan and Bromberg), self-compassion, and why a rigid, always-positive self becomes brittle. Dan walks through normative narcissism after Kohut — why everyone feels a flash of "I don't measure up" driving past the neighbor's new car — the spectrum from healthy-level to disordered narcissism, and how mirroring and validation open the door to real change. Along the way: microtrauma and social comparison, holding a relationship with someone whose views you can't stand, and Fromm's question of having vs. being — the thread they carry into next week's "Cultivate Life."
Chapters and timestamps are in the pinned comment.
Got Therapy? makes complex psychological concepts accessible and practically applicable. New episodes weekly.
Got Therapy?
Latest Episodes
The First Rule of Therapy: You Have to Survive the Patient
There's a rule in psychoanalytic thought that comes before technique: you have to survive the patient. It doesn't mean enduring the hour. It means staying able to think while the person in front of you genuinely lands on you — because in most c...
JUST THE CLIPS _What Actually Makes a Good Therapist
When does therapy actually begin? Not at the first intervention — maybe not even at the first session. In this conversation we work through the opening pages of Good Therapy: The Process and the Journey and land on the things th...
What Actually Makes a Good Therapist
What makes therapy work — before any technique? In Episode 82, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose start drafting the opening chapter of a book on good therapy and land on a bigger question: what does a good therapist actually do beneath the...
JUST THE CLIPS _ Homecoming — Trauma, Therapy & The Odyssey
What happens to the people who come home from the worst experiences of their lives — and never truly arrive?In Episode 81, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose use Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's Odyssey as a lens on trauma, PTSD,...
Homecoming — Trauma, Therapy & The Odyssey EPISODE: 81
What happens to the people who come home from the worst experiences of their lives — and never truly arrive?In Episode 81, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose use Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's Odyssey as a lens on trauma, PTSD,...