— Rendering Unconscious Podcast with Dr. Vanessa Sinclair
The co-directors of IDP, Lynne and Joseph Scalia, were recently interviewed by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair for the 396th episode of Rendering Unconscious. Here, they speak about their lives’ ongoing work in the fields of Education, Environmentalism, and Psychoanalysis, as well as the role and responsibility of institutions in society-at-large, from K-12 public schools to psychoanalytic centers and associations.
They highlight the challenges in mainstream education and environmentalism, the potential of psychoanalysis, and the need for societal transformation. Lynne and Joseph emphasize the importance of small pockets of resistance on a local level, and propose the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis as a platform for facilitating necessary discussions addressing the intersections of environmentalism, psychoanalysis, and education, as well as training future psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic scholars, and active citizens of the Earth. Attention is brought to the invisible, uneven structures that overdetermine everyday life in and out of school and work, be they psychical, socio-economic, or relating to the ideologies and passions of groups. The joys and tribulations of dogs are also talked about 🙂
Dr. Sinclair gave IDP the green light to share the full video of the interview here, although if you are able and feel moved to support her amazing work, you can become a patron of her Substack!
You can listen to and view Joseph’s previous appearances on Rendering Unconscious as well:
—RU115: DR JOSEPH SCALIA III ON WILDERNESS CONSERVATION
—RU59: JOSEPH SCALIA, PSYCHOANALYST, ENVIRONMENTALIST & SOCIAL CRITIC
“We all know people…who are at loggerheads with existence; unhappy people who never get what they want; are baffled, complaining, who stand at an uncomfortable angle when they see everything askew. There are others again who, though they appear perfectly content, seem to have lost all touch with reality. They lavish all their affections upon little dogs and old china. They take interest in nothing but the vicissitudes of their own health and the ups and downs of social snobbery. There are, however, others who strike us, why precisely it would be difficult to say, as being by nature or circumstances in a position where they can use their faculties to the full upon things that are of importance. They are not necessarily happy or successful, but there is a zest in their presence, an interest in their doings. They seem to be alive all over. This may be partly the result of circumstances — they have been born into surroundings that suit them — but much more is the result of some happy balance of qualities in themselves so that they see things not at an awkward angle, all askew; nor distorted through a mist; but four square, in proportion; they grasp something hard; when they come into action they cut real ice.”
—Virginia Woolf, “The Narrow Bridge of Art”
On April 12, 2026, in Fort Collins, IDP psychoanalyst Joseph Scalia III and Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering Tom Sale will lead a discussion with community members on the confluence of their streams of inquiry, research, and writing.
Joseph and Tom will concurrently describe motivations for and key themes in their recent books. The books are founded in the domains of psychoanalysis, environmental engineering, environmentalism generally, and education. The modern world is fraught with ever-mounting great worries. Miraculously, converging paths forward for solving problems in disparate fields are found. In the end, intellectual honesty, openness, and hope are our ethical paths to salvation.
As the impasses and struggles of our epoch call for collaboration across seemingly disparate disciplines, Joseph and Tom enact here one of the ways we might come together in service and concern for both terra and demos, the site and substance of life, as well as a mode of sociocultural being necessary for the evolution of the collective human adventure.
We look forward to the talk and a lively conversation.
Dr. Tom Sale is Emeritus Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering/ Colorado State University. CSU STRATA 2024 Innovator of the Year. His book, Modern Subsurface Contaminant Hydrology, is co-authored with Joseph Scalia IV.
Modern Subsurface Contaminant Hydrology
Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D. is a psychoanalyst and a social and environmental activist, and writer. He is Co-Director of the Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis, and past president of both Montana Wilderness Association and the Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance. Dr. Scalia has a keen commitment to looking beyond narratives to what unconsciously motivates the human. His book, Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education, is co-authored with Lynne S. Scalia.
Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education
Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis
This event will take place on Sunday, April 12, 2026 at:
Wolverine Farm Publick House
4 – 6 PM Mountain Time
316 Willow Street, Fort Collins, Colorado 80524
Featuring art by Jocelyn Catterson, “Making the Visible Invisible: Groundwater in the San Luis Valley”
You can find David’s creative work, apart from though not exclusive of his work as a psychoanalyst, by searching David Exley Music. Here are the links to his Spotify and Apple Music profiles.
A new interview with Joseph Scalia III and Ben Greenberg available through the New Books Network.
A poem from IDP member Alex O. Dolabi.
Cathie Bird
Militant Humility – Streams of (Un)consciousness
The Insufficiency of Wolf “Management”
We trophy hunt and trap the phenomenally evocative subject that we call canis lupus. Throughout history, the grey wolf – like the wilderness itself – has stirred diverse human imaginings, from a figure of terror, nightmare, and disdain, to one of great awe and respect.
Organized collectives of “wolf advocates,” both academics and activists, typically argue for more ecologically defensible policies than those grossly insensitive and often sadistic and even genocidal practices that have recently resurged in governmental sanctioning and hunter-trapper values and practice.
But practitioners of “ecologically defensible policies,” advocating within the Establishment as they do, still use the discourse of the haters and exploiters. That is, they argue for better numbers of “take,” of “harvest,” and of improved “resource management” – THRoM. They seek to make peace with the insensitive contingent, the insensate political wing. They want to convince them of the intelligence of better “management.” Yes, their advocacy and their research are valuable and help to hold the line for survival of canis lupus. We cannot responsibly undervalue it.
And yet, crucially missing is a concomitant calling out of the immorality of all “sport” hunting and trapping of the wolf, of any calling it what it is: ignorance of desubjectifying the wolf, anthropocentric ignorance of THRoM. Like those philanthropic foundation-dependent wildlands advocates who defend as “practical and realistic” their collaborating and compromising about wildlands-destructive legislative designations, the wolf advocates I’m critiquing here paradoxically and ironically give credence to societal resistance to creating a profound respect for the wolf.
It is an oddity, although not surprising in contemporary culture, that both “wolf and wilderness advocates” – yes, both uncompromising wilderness advocates and their compromising contingent – do not openly and politically contextualize their work in terms of the human’s unprecedented point of inevitable and inherently continuous transformation. That is, we are at a point of far-reaching collective destruction or collective advancement hitherto impossible. We will transform one way or the other. Our increased ability to improve life concomitantly contains potential, technical destruction of the earth and of ourselves.
We positively transform our individual and civilizational worldviews and values – who we are and what we are, or we die.
The act of leadership often does, actually, require calling things by their real names. True human evolution, collective and individual, does not happen by passively going along with the immorality of the human subject and of civilization. For activists to work solely within the Establishment while eschewing an unrelenting call for the kind of transformation I am enunciating here, is – in brief – philosophically short-sighted and both ethically and aesthetically irresponsible.
by Joseph Scalia III
January 1, 2026
Join us for a Book Talk
By: Therapists of New York
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Critical Consciousness — Unconscious & Ideological Determinants in Institutional Rigidity
Introducing Joseph & Lynne Scalia’s Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education
Thursday, January 8, 2026 • 1:00–2:00 PM EST • Virtual (Zoom)
Read about the authors and register below.
Critical Consciousness Book Talk — Eventbrite
Drawing on their experiences in environmental leadership, psychoanalytic training, and education, Joseph and Lynne Scalia illuminate how unseen group dynamics impede creative self-discovery and meaningful change. This talk explores how unconscious resistances shape stagnation in institutions, social movements, and group life.
Lynne Scalia, Ed.D.
Last week the New York Times published an alarming, but not surprising piece on the uptick of psychiatric diagnoses in youth. The essay is by Jia Lynn Yang, America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? Some of the stats the author lays out are:
- Nearly 1 in 4 boys aged 17-years bear an ADHD diagnosis. This is 1 million more in 2022 than in 2016.
- In the early 80’s 1 in 2500 children had an autism diagnosis. It is now one in 31.
- Nearly 32% of teens have been diagnosed at some point with anxiety; the median age of “onset” is 6 years old.
Even preschool tends to look more like early elementary as children are expected to sit and focus on academic material for longer periods. The essay understandably points to the need to fix schools, not necessarily kids. Today, even real estate listings rate schools, with “test scores as proxies for profits.”
Yang does a creditable job of describing untenable choices for parents. If a child has a psychiatric diagnosis, a school is “forced” to attempt to make adaptations. In some states, as many as 21% of students qualify for a plethora of accommodations so that they might “fit in.” For anyone who has spent much time in a classroom in an underfunded and understaffed public school, one knows the madness of this exercise.
As an educator and educational leader, and I would challenge, as a psychoanalyst activist, while we are willing to take up the work that is needed to assist the individual child or family, it is also necessary to see that which is not easily seen or solved. This is the unconscious of the institution, which is enveloped and protected by a culture that would decry the unknowing violence it inflicts or perpetuates.
The Institute for a Democratic Psychoanalysis (IDP) has been granted Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP No. 8070) status by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC). Classes that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. IDP is solely responsible for its course offerings.