THE FUSE

Six years ago, an Esalen student showed me the PDF files she had just received for subscribing to the Holistic Psychologist's newsletter at $20 per month. To put this in context, I should confess up front that as a psychotherapist I am the worst businessperson anyone has ever met, loathing any and all marketing, never buying Google Ads, never paying for SEO stuff, and hopelessly confused about finance in general—unable to comprehend why the same person who complains about a $17 movie ticket for two hours of entertainment will gladly spend $17 for a bottle of water at the Chateau Marmont or a smoothie at Erewhon. In addition, having studied Lacan for the last 12 years, I consider my views about psychology to be somewhat subversive, but perusing the Holistic Psychologist's handouts I could see that what was being sold in those PDFs wasn't the psychology that we studied academically.