For thousands of years, philosophers and religious traditions have wrestled with the same questions that eventually entered the consulting room: Why do we suffer? Why do we repeat the same mistakes? What makes us jealous, resentful, anxious, ashamed, or afraid of abandonment? What is the self? What does it mean to love another person? And why is knowing how we ought to live rarely enough to make us live that way?

Philosophy on the Couch brings philosophy, religion, and psychodynamic psychology into conversation. Each episode takes an idea from thinkers and traditions ranging from Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, and examines it alongside contemporary psychodynamic thought.

Rather than asking which side is right, the podcast explores where these traditions unexpectedly converge, where they fundamentally disagree, and what each can teach us about the hidden forces shaping ordinary human life.

Philosophy has long asked us how we should live. Religion has asked what our lives ultimately mean. Psychodynamic psychology adds another uncomfortable question: Why is it so difficult to become the person we already know we should be?