Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for The Impossible Profession
Society & Culture

The Impossible Profession

Richard B. Keys

The Impossible Profession is a monthly podcast that invites writers, theorists, and psychoanalytic clinicians to explore psychoanalysis as both a contemporary clinical practice and a lens for understanding the wider world. The show is hosted by Richard B. Keys, an Aotearoa-based psychoanalyst-in-training and writer.

Play
Open in
  • 4 episodes
  • Avg 1 hr 1 min
  • English

Episodes 4

NewestOldestLongest
All4Unplayed4In progress0Played0
  • #4
    Tuesday · 1 hr 11 min

    Making a Scene with Avgi Saketopoulou

    In this episode, Richard talks to psychoanalyst, author, and educator Avgi Saketopoulou about the silence of psychoanalytic institutions over the genocide in Gaza. We discuss the wave of disinvitations and the pleas of neutrality, what Avgi reads in that silence, and her turn from critique to construction in P-HOLE, the liberatory education project she co-founded as an alternative to the training institute. Along the way, the myth of analytic neutrality, the relation of clinic to politics, and what it means for the field to be broken open.

  • July 28 · 55 min

    Fanon and Psychoanalysis with Derek Hook

    For the return of the show, Richard talks to professor of psychology and psychoanalyst Derek Hook about his book, Fanon, Psychoanalysis, and Critical Decolonial Psychology. We discuss the various waves of reception of Frantz Fanon and the recent turn to his clinical writing, the notions of the psycho-political and the sociogenic unconscious — the idea that the unconscious is shaped by social and political forces, most notably colonialism and its legacy — and the vital importance of his thought for the practice of psychoanalysis today.

  • #2
    Dec 18, 2025 · 1 hr 13 min

    Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy with Stijn Vanheule

    In this episode, Richard talks to clinical psychologist, professor, and psychoanalyst Stijn Vanhuele about his recent book, Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy. They discuss critiques of the prevailing biomedical model of psychosis and explore what psychoanalysis uniquely offers in understanding and treating it. Drawing on Lacan’s ideas, they delve into the concept of madness as an expression of human freedom, while also examining the crucial roles played by creativity and community in the treatment of psychosis.

  • #1
    Nov 26, 2025 · 44 min

    On Breathing with Jamieson Webster

    In our inaugural episode, Richard talks to psychoanalyst, professor, and writer Jamieson Webster about her latest book, On Breathing. From the central theme of breath and breathlessness that orients Jamieson’s book, we discuss practising psychoanalysis under exceptional circumstances, Covid-19 and the climate crisis, questions of style in psychoanalytic writing, and even talk a little baby talk.

Showing 1–4 of 4 episodes