When the Great Depression wiped out the myth of the rugged, self-made American hero, the country was left with a massive psychological void. Right on cue, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis arrived in the U.S. with refugees fleeing Europe. Freud famously warned that he was bringing America a "plague," but America didn't catch it. Instead, we domesticated it.

In Part 2 of Psychotherapy on the Couch, Joel explores how the deep, messy, and uncomfortable theories of the human soul were repackaged to fit American consumerism. We look at how Edward Bernays weaponized his uncle Freud's ideas to invent modern PR and advertising, how a bizarre 1940s contest to find the mathematically "average" person gave birth to the suffocating myth of Normalcy, and how the brutal logistics of World War II forced the military to create a standardized checklist for human suffering—laying the exact groundwork for the modern DSM.

If you've ever wondered why we treat mental health like a checklist, the answer starts here.

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Why do we treat our minds like broken machines?

In The Psychohistory of American Psychology traces the birth of modern American psychology back to its dark, industrial roots. Before therapy, Americans processed suffering through community, religion, and the union hall. Then came the stopwatch and the assembly line.

This isn't a story about healing; it’s a story about optimization. We explore how engineers like Frederick Winslow Taylor and behaviorists like John B. Watson systematically stripped away the "messy" human soul to build a more compliant worker. We also unpack the era's defining paranoia—the "Money Trust" and the secret banker meeting at Jekyll Island—to reveal that the true conspiracy to steal human agency wasn't hiding in the shadows. It was walking right out in the open on the factory floor.

Psychology didn't emerge to cure the trauma of the 20th century. It emerged to make us function inside the machine.

Listen to discover:

• What Americans used to make sense of suffering before therapy existed.

• How the invention of standardized "machine time" literally rewired the human nervous system.

• The dark truth behind John B. Watson’s Behaviorist Manifesto.

• Why the paranoia over the Jekyll Island Federal Reserve meeting missed the real conspiracy of the Gilded Age.

In this episode, I’m thrilled to share a very special preview with you all! I recently had a short story published in The Running Wild Anthology Number One, a fantastic collection of unique and captivating tales.

Tune in as I read an exclusive excerpt from my story. If you enjoy this sneak peek and want to find out what happens next—as well as discover a whole bunch of other amazing short stories by talented authors—please consider grabbing a copy of the book!

Get your copy of The Running Wild Anthology Number One here: 👉 https://amzn.to/4sWlbDS (Note: This is an affiliate link. Using it helps support the show at no extra cost to you!)

Read this excerpt as a blog article:

Thank you so much for your support, and I can't wait to hear what you think of the full story!