|
David Van Nuys, Ph.D. - Guest
David Van Nuys, Ph. D. is past-chair and professor emeritus in Psychology at Sonoma State University, a department with an international reputation for humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology. He also taught at the University of Montana, the University of Michigan, and the University of New Hampshire. In addition, David runs a market research business, e-FocusGroups, which has served a distinguished list of clients, including The New York Times, Apple Computer, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and QuickenLoans, among others. He leads personal growth workshops at various growth centers around the U.S. and abroad. David earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and has worked as a licensed psychotherapist in both New Hampshire and California. A frequent public speaker, he has also published in professional journals, popular magazines, and co-authored a book on the infamous Zodiac serial killer. He also produces two popular podcasts: Shrink Rap Radio and Wise Counsel. David is a longtime dreamworker himself and a past IASD presenter and for many years taught a course on Myth, Dream, and Symbol at Sonoma State University. In 2018, he received an award from the American Psychological Association for his pioneering podcast, Shrink Rap Radio. The award was presented at Harvard University by the APA president before a crowd of several hundred educational podcasters. Since 2005, he has conducted around one thousand interviews with movers and shakers around the broad world of psychology (including dreamworkers , dream researchers, and Jungian analysts). |
|
W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D. - Host
Dr. Sutton has always had an interest in learning from multiple theoretical perspectives, and keeping up to date on innovations and integrations. He is interested in the development of ideas, and using research to show effectiveness in treatment and refine treatments. In 2009 he started the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing a one-way mirror training in family therapy with James Keim, LCSW. Next, he added a trainer and one-way mirror training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and an additional trainer and mirror in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The participants enjoyed analyzing cases, keeping each other up to date on research, and discussing what they were learning. This focus on integrating and evolving their approaches to helping children, adolescents, families, couples, and individuals lead to the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's training program for therapists, and its group practice of like-minded clinicians who were dedicated to learning, innovating, and advancing the field of psychotherapy. Our podcast, Therapy on the Cutting Edge, is an extension of this wish to learn, integrate, stay up to date, and share this passion for the advancement of the field with other practitioners. |
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (00:24)
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy at the Institute, the Advancement of Psychotherapy. We provide training in evidence-based models, including family systems, cognitive behavioral therapy, emotionally focused couples therapy. I'm open into sensitization reprocessing, motivational interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings on-demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-Way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, which are each grounded in evidence-based approaches with our lifespan centers, our Center for Children's, center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically. Our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using emotionally focused couples therapy and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and then EMDR for trauma.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (01:26)
And our center for ADHD and our oppositional and conduct disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches. Additionally, we have our associated nonprofit Bay Area community counseling, where we provide treatment for those in financial need who can afford the licensed experience therapists in the institute, but can work with associates and clinicians developing their expertise through our nonprofit. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the family in suit of Berkeley, where we provide treatment training and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. Learn more about training, treatment, or employment opportunities. Please go to SF iap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training and evidence-based treatment, BACC is a 501 C3 nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (02:21)
Today I'll be speaking with David Van Nuys PhD, who is the past chair and Professor Emus and Psychology at Sonoma State University,
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (02:29)
The department with an international reputation for humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology. He is also taught at the University of Montana, university of Michigan, and the University of New Hampshire. In addition, David runs a market research business, EFO groups, which has served a distinguished list of clients, including the New York Times Apple computers, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Quicken Loans, among others. He leads personal growth workshops at various growth centers around the United States and abroad. David earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and has worked as a licensed psychotherapist in both New Hampshire and California. A frequent public speaker is also published in professional journals, popular magazines, and co-authored a book on the infamous Zodiac Serial Killer. He also produces two popular podcasts, shrink Rep Radio and Wise Counsel. David is a longtime dream worker himself and a past IASD presenter, and for many years taught a course on myth, dream, and symbol at Sonoma State University. In 2018, he received an award from the American Psychological Association for his pioneering podcast, shrink Wrap Radio. The award was presented at Harvard University by the APA President before a crowd of several hundred educational podcasters. Since 2005, he's conducted around 1000 interviews with movers and shakers around the broad world of psychology, including Dreamworks Dream researchers and Youngian analysts. Let's listen to the interview. So, hi David. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (04:02)
Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here. You have the shoe on the other foot.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (04:08)
I know, right?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (04:09)
Yeah. I interviewed you on my podcast not very long ago.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (04:13)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I, I know of your work, 'cause gosh, back when I was in grad school, listening to your different podcasts, different interviews of different therapists, I really just was, you know, soaking it up and really enjoyed, and I actually reached out to you and asked if you could maybe interview some family therapists, and you kind of turned the tables and said, “oh, well, how about I interview you?” And that was back in 2009. And yeah, you've been doing incredible work with your podcast. And actually, I followed up most recently because I couldn't find that old podcast. And you said, well, hey, let's do another one. So that was really great to do that the other week. Yeah. And I think I was in episode like 800 and something or other. So you have been doing this a long time, interviewing lots of different people.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:06)
I think I've got over a thousand interviews, frankly, because I did another set of interviews, maybe around 125 or 130 interviews under the banner of Wise Council.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:19)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:20)
I've been hired by a web portal and you're aware of that?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:28)
That's great.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:29)
So they actually paid me to do, uh, those, those early interviews, not, not a princely song. Sure.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:35)
Sure. Yeah. Right.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:36)
Right. Had enough to be, uh, to, to motivate me and make me feel good.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:40)
Good, good. Well, yeah, and I think the medium of these podcasts and getting information out there is so important. And I wanna find out about your kind of, you know, your work, but first, you know, I always like to find out about folks, kind of evolution of their thinking and how they got to doing what they're doing and thinking about what they're thinking about.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (06:03)
Yeah. Well, let me tell you about how I got into podcasting and how it is that I have so many interviews available to listeners online. The way that that happened is that I'm maybe the very first person in psychology to have a podcast. I make that claim. I can't absolutely prove it. But nobody has come along and shot me down. I've sort of embraced it, at this point, I'll resist if they make that claim. But I got started the very first year that psychology that podcasting became got on the map. And I thought, "Podcast, what the heck is a podcast?"
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (07:02)
I was hearing the word because of an article that I read. And so, I thought, "What the heck is a podcast?" And I was intrigued about that because I was a amateur radio operator, or ham radio operator as a kid in my teens and so on. I learned Morse code and studied for all these FCC exams and so on. So I had made heath kits back in the day. There was a company called Heath Kit and you were able to build amateur radio equipment if you couldn't afford to go out and buy the expensive stuff, which as a kid, I couldn't. And, I knew something about transmitters and how transmitters work. I had an early iPod, probably one of the very first iPods, and I knew it didn't have a transmitter in it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (08:04)
So, podcasts, how in the world could this thing cast? So, as I looked into it, I found out that it was really like internet radio. Where you could have your own kind of internet radio station. And I thought, “Oh, wow, that sounds kind of intriguing,” because I had a technical interest early on, as you can tell, from the amateur radio background. My plan was to become an electrical engineering engineer. And in fact, I was originally accepted into an electrical engineering program with a full scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. So I had this technical bent and interest in technology. And so that's partly what grabbed me. And the other piece of it was, I thought, “Well, what could I have a podcast about?” Well, I'm a psychologist already at this time, point in time and in a very interesting psychology department that is oriented towards humanistic psychology.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (09:30)
Is this when you were teaching at Sonoma State, or?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (09:32)
At Sonoma State University. And so I thought, well, we have some pretty weird people in the department, and, and I know some very interesting psychologists in the Bay Area and so on. Maybe I could do interviews. And I'd actually already published some interviews. So, I'd already started with interviewing people and had been able to publish. There was a magazine called Human Behavior that's no longer out there, but I was feeling competitive with a friend who published an interview and I thought, “Well, I could do that.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:21)
And what year was this that you learned about podcasts and started your first time?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (10:26)
This all happened during this first year of podcasting, which was 2005.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:31)
2005. Okay. Wow.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (10:32)
Yeah. And I spent so much time—I had a friend who was kind of tracking me in at a distance and what I was up to. I was trying to figure out how to create a website. I realized I was gonna need a website and I was gonna have to do it myself again. It was low budget. And he said to me at, at one point, “David, you gotta stop just fooling around and get going on this thing. Get started.” I wish I had, because I would've been even sooner, at the very beginning of 2005. So I think I actually got the podcast running maybe in August or so. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:20)
Oh, great. Very cool.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:21)
2005.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:22)
Yeah. Now, can I go backwards a little bit and find out:. How you got from electrical engineering to psychology?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:29)
Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:33)
Yeah, there's a great whole story. You know, as I look back over my rather long life at this point, I see all of these connections and how things are interrelated and so on. But at any rate, not to leap ahead. I got accepted into electrical engineering, and I had gone to a small private, Protestant Christian high school—and the math and science preparation wasn't all that strong. Even though I somehow showed up well enough on paper to get admitted into that program, I quickly discovered that particularly one of my first classes in the engineering program was, of course, in calculus, and this is went way over my head. It was going too fast.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (12:41)
High school had been so easy for me. I had—fortunately and naturally—a certain amount of natural intelligence, which I am comfortable saying at this point in my life, without feeling like I'm bragging. But, I had not developed study skills, cause I didn't have to study to get through high school. So, college kind of turned that around in some way. So, I ended up dropping out of engineering. Fortunately, I didn't lose the scholarship. I thought that would be a danger. But, thank God, the scholarship people at Penn were very generous. And, so I thought about psychology as an option because, I was one of these people in high school, people like to tell me their problems, their issues. I would talk and I would enjoy that and interact with them at that level.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (13:44)
And so I thought, “Boy, psychology would be great. I'd never been in therapy or counseling.” So, I'd not had not much of a gauge to anticipate what that field might involve. I took Introduction to Psychology, which was one of these big classes in a tiered auditorium—with a famous psychologist teaching way down at the bottom there. And he said, “Okay, this is an introduction to Psychology, the science of behavior of animals and humans. So if you are signed up for this course because you think you're gonna find out about your own quirks or those of your friends, you're in the wrong place.” I thought, “Oh, geez, this is bad news.” Because that's what I wanted to find out about. So he, he proceeded to make it clear, he kept his word, and it was all about, rats and mazes and so on. It was a very behaviorist orientation that totally turned me off.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (15:01)
So, I ended up majoring in creative writing, which turned out to be a good thing because writing played a big role in my career as I later went on. Then as it started to get close to graduation, I realized, “Wait a second. I might need to have a career.” I could quickly starve to death as a writer, you know? I wasn’t thinking, “I'm gonna write the Great American novel or something.” I had that summer gotten together with a friend and we got together over a beer. I asked him, “Well, what are you gonna do? What are you studying?” He was going to USC or someplace at the time, and, he said, “I'm gonna be a clinical psychologist.”
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (16:11)
And I said, ‘Well, what's that?” He said, “Well, a clinical psychologist is like a psychiatrist, only, you don't have to go to medical school.” I thought, “Oh, well, that sounds good—not having to go to medical.” And he said, “Yeah, I'm a Rosa.” I said, “Well, what's that?” He said, “Well, whatever the person says, you just have to say the same thing back to them.” I thought, “Well, I could do that.” That sounds easy, believe it or not. That was kind of what planted the idea: “I'm gonna start taking some more psychology.” And so, I was able to get into abnormal psychology. Now we're talking, very interesting. Here are all the quirks, personal and friends, et cetera, and all of that. So I did that. I took some other psychology classes and I did well in them.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (17:13)
And I found it really interesting. But then again, I was confronted with, “Wait a second, I'm gonna have to get a job very soon now.” Because I've done this in my senior year. And so I thought, “Well, it's not gonna be easy.” Since my major wasn't psychology, I don't have all that many psychology courses. So as I looked into it, I found that it was gonna be hard. So I went to the library. I got a bunch of catalogs from others and I thought, “I'm gonna have to get a master's degree at this point in time.” You had to have a PhD if you wanted to be a psychologist and to call yourself a psychologist, and do psychotherapy. So, in the library, I saw this catalog that showed, a couple of guys tossing a grizzly bear into the back of a pickup truck. And I thought, “Well, this, this place might let me in.” So I applied. They let me in provisionally, they said, “You'll have to take a bunch of remedial courses in our psychology program.” And they immediately set me to teaching.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (18:42)
At the time, I had to teach out of an Intro to Psych book that was required. I learned so much psychology from Hill Guard's introduction to psychology.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:02)
And you, which graduate school is this? Or where was this?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:06)
The University of Montana. At the time, it was called Montana State University, Missoula, Montana
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:12)
Got it. Okay.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:13)
Tons of stories about all that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:15)
So, as a grad student, they were having you teach undergrad courses.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:19)
Yeah. And so as a result, I learned enough psychology that when I went to take the graduate record exam in psychology, I did really well. I was like in the 98th-99th percentile. So I got into the University of Michigan as a result.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:43)
Uh-huh.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:45)
For clinical Psychology. Montana had an inferiority complex at the time. “We may be in Montana, but we're gonna have the toughest little program in the world.” So I just learned so much psychology, not clinical, but other areas that I could do. What I didn't know once I got into the University of Michigan, was their particular take on clinical psychology at the time: They were a bastion of psychoanalytic thought—pne of the of the academic programs to be totally psychoanalytic. I was pretty turned off to that. Even though, I studied, I finally developed some study skills, read hard, and so on.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:56)
Yeah. I was curious about how you got to the humanistic. It sounds like your friend was but--
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:02)
I was looking for alternatives.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:03)
Yeah. Like going out?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:06)
Yeah. I took lots of workshops and there was a very active student-led program called Project Outreach. I became part of that, and we got involved with Encounter Groups.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:29)
What year is this?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:30)
That thing? In the seventies?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:32)
In the seventies. Got it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:33)
Well, middle sixties to late sixties, I would say.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:37)
Yeah. Got it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:39)
And it was almost like there were marathon sessions. You'd stay up all night and you would have some real emotional encounters. That was the idea: That you would break through all of your usual, persona stuff. And, it was like a psychedelic experience. I would have to say, your doors of perception were kinda washed clean. And I remember encountering another graduate student outside of this and his name was Sonny Citrin Baum. And, I said, “Sonny, you and I have never really sat down and talked together. What's going on with you?” And so on. It put me in that place. So that made a big impact on the kind of psychology I was interested in. And when it came time to find a school to go to again, I found myself realizing “Oh my God, I'm going to graduate.” Surprise, surprise. After six years, it's a long program at Michigan, because they had us doing halftime, internships the whole way. So, I worked at a counseling center at the university, and also at VA hospitals.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:23)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:25)
So when it came time to graduate, I realized I've gotta find something that's gonna be a good fit for me. And because I had looked so much into alternative kinds of approaches, I had heard about humanistic psychology. I didn't know a whole lot about it, it, but it had the right ring.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:47)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:48)
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:48)
What grabbed you about humanistic? Or what did you find that for you?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:55)
It had the right sound? Plus it sounded humanistic existential. I had done some reading in those areas. I had exposure through friends who had gone out to the eSalon Institute which was a big thing at that time in California, you know? And a growth center.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (24:23)
And can you actually describe humanistic existential for listeners that might not know a lot about it?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (24:31)
Well, at the time, it was said that there were three mainstreams of psychology and one was psychoanalytic Freudian psychology.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (24:46)
The other was behaviorism or Skinnerian psychology. And the third was this sort of humanistic approach, which did not have as large a following, but it was because there was a craze that was going on of workshops that were being done across the country. I'm sure people maybe have heard of Warner Earhart and Est—their Heart Seminars training. That's that sort of set the model.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:24)
Is this like the human potential movement?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (25:26)
Exactly.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:28)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (25:28)
That's what I'm talking about. The human potential movement. And I was knee deep in human potential movement and really felt “Okay, these are my people.” This is the kind of psychology I'm interested in—the way I wanna be with people in a self-revealing, a source of ways to interact with people. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:54)
And actually, can you tell me a little more about that? Because I've heard a lot about these things. It was before my years, and what was that like, or what was going on in the human potential movement? This was just a time period of where people were maybe trying to be more insightful, more aware of what their own experiences were, kind of digging deeper which was maybe very different from the previous years that were more 1950s conservative, just kind of follow the cookie cutter.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (26:26)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so this is happening in the sixties right. Around, when things in Vietnam is happening, while it started, I was in my doctoral program. And I ended up getting student deferment and also was married. And so that helped not to have to go to the Vietnam War. I had friends who risked becoming actually psychotic and went to huge lengths to fail the draft. So we were right on the cusp of a time of great protest. Looking for anti-authoritarian alternatives, the beginnings of distrust of government. And so, there was a quest for new ways of being new institutions.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (27:34)
And so I would say that places like Esalen and other growth centers that's popped up around the country, people would get together in groups to explore new ways of being to look into. Often there were academics there who were exploring philosophies and so on, and new approaches to therapy. So Fritz Pearls was famous for Gestalt therapy. And new therapies were propping up, like wild flowers. That was the time when I was coming up. And so the podcasting, I wanted to interview. I thought, ”What can I do?” Well, I can interview these kinds of people. And so I thought I would start with people that I knew, but I quickly realized that I could reach out to people that I didn't know.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (28:38)
And so, the department—the humanistic psychology department—was very diverse in terms of the other faculty. Each of us had different trainings and, and interest areas and so on. So it wasn't really like a solidly altogether coherent thing. As time went on, I got interested in big fish. Yeah. I looked at it like fishing. I wondered “Who I can get, who could I talk to?” And I became interested in talking particularly to some of these very high profile famous psychologists, that I think if we had met at a conference, “Well, who are you?” It would be hard to engage them, but the power of the microphone I quickly discovered was, was very powerful because they wanted to get their work out. They had something that they wanted to release to the world, and I could help them do that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (30:03)
Definitely.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (30:05)
And it sounds like too, that during that time in the human potential movement, you were kind of interested in looking for different ways of thinking. And part of your podcast is talking to all these people that have very different ways of thinking, different perspectives, and such.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (30:20)
Exactly. And also, I developed skills, the skills of counseling and psychotherapy certainly were relevant. I quickly discovered that I had a much better education than I realized.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (30:43)
I had absorbed enough information that I could interview these high power to high performers in our field, and be on fairly equal footing. I could have an intelligent conversation with then. I could understand what they were trying to say and help them articulate it. And then the other major thing that we probably don't have time to deal with, but at some point, I was already a full professor after a few years, And I thought, “Well, what else can I do?” And the personal computer thing was just starting to happen. This is in the late sixties, I think. No, it's further along than that. But at any rate--
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:38)
Like eighties, with the personal computer.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (31:41)
I think so. Early eighties. And, the Apple computer was out there, there was other competing brands. It was very whimsical at that time. And so I was thinking, “Well, what else could do?” I went, “Oh, darn, I should have become an engineer. This looks like a very exciting area. How could I get involved in that?” So I started chatting people up, networking. “Who do you know that's doing something with computers that's in the industry?” I ended up meeting a fellow who was also sort of in the humanistic realm. Did he have a master’s? I'm not even sure. He had a master's degree, may have only been a MA—a bachelor’s.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (32:42)
But at any rate, he was sort of a genius guy with a silver tongue who got me involved in market research. in doing focus groups, it turns out that focus groups here very group oriented. Focus groups are a business approach in which you can talk to people who've hired behind a one way mirror. And you're gonna try to get information from consumers of their products, software, or whatever to help the decision makers in these companies.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:25)
Qualitative kind of research.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (33:27)
Yeah, qualitative research. I discovered that, qualitative research, like hypnosis, one of the other major areas that I was involved in clinically for a number of years, and dreams. I was always interested in these borderline phenomena.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:46)
Sure. Sure.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (33:47)
And, because they seemed to have the excitement of the potential. So here I was, and focus groups have had a up and down reputation in the business community for years. Because, there's always that hunger for quantitative truth, on the one hand. But the subjective is still so important.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (34:16)
The kind of phenomenological experience.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (34:19)
Yes. It's so, so important. So I did focus groups for about 15-18 years. The guy I was working with eventually retired. He was like six years younger than me, or eight years younger than me, but he was just very sharp. He really trained me well because he would hold my feet to the fire, and he would insist on the best. I started out writing reports for him—again, the creative writing. I was able to write these very dynamic reports which he could pass off as his own very quickly. That made me valuable to him. At some point I realized, “Well, wait a second, this could be happening online.” So again, I was in the vanguard of people who started to do online qualitative research. I rose high in an organization called QRCA, the qualitative research consultants associate.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:33)
Is this like, doing it over webcam?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (35:37)
Iinitially it was. It was before Zoom.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:42)
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (35:44)
Yeah. But certainly it moved into Zoom very quickly, and it used some other early tools. I can't even remember what,
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:56)
Yeah. We were using Skype back when we did our interview in 2009.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:00)
Using what? Skype? So I've done Skype as well. Skype groups. So, this drew upon my writing.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:12)
Uhhuh.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:14)
And in the graduate program, I had to write reports, testing reports, diagnostic reports. And again, I had a flare for that. That made me stand out. And then here I am, and then all of the group work. So everything came together.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:36)
Yeah. Great.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:37)
I feel blessed that my career blossomed in so many areas and that everything that I did ended up having utility.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:54)
And all these different pieces came together.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:57)
Yeah. Just this past year, I've officially closed down my online research called Efo Groups.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:07)
Got it. Okay.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:08)
I like that name. That was a good name. Efo.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:10)
A good name. Yeah. Well, one of the things that, for me, when I first started grad school, I took a course that looked at all the different theories of psychotherapy. And I just got so interested in every different one. And that's kind of how I got on my road. I think Albert Ellis was coming to town, so I wanted to go do a training with him. And I was like, “Oh, I wanna go out and train with all these masters.”
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:40)
Yeah. And I didn't train with him, but I definitely was aware of him. I saw him do a presentation and a demo.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:48)
Sure. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:49)
So I would check that stuff out for myself too. And that was one of the things that I really was struck by in interviewing you, was how hungry you were to explore and develop.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (38:08)
And I was curious with your podcast, is that also a similar hunger to kinda learn from all these different people and all these kind of various perspectives where some people just kind of pick one and they stick with it. I always loved kinda learning from all these different angles. And I had a great teacher in grad school. We would almost do like the United Nations of like theories and each of us would have to talk about cases and do a little card that would bend and kind of come from a different theory. Say, “Well, yeah, in a CBT way I would think about it this way,” and so on. But this idea of looking, and I'm wondering if that was part of the podcast and what you were doing was looking at various ways of thinking. Because your podcast was not on just one track of say, humanistic. You have gone all over, you know?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (38:55)
That's right. It wasn't even one track in terms of being devoted to psychotherapy. People that I interviewed, many were researchers, professors, authors was the thing that kind of emerged. A lot of people who had written books, and so they needed to promote their book.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (39:24)
I remember you did one on a shaman.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (39:29)
Yeah. Multiple shaman ones.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (39:32)
Multiple shamans. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (39:33)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I even took a shaman workshop myself, because, one of my students spun off in that direction and developed a shaman company, wrote many books on shamanism and so on. So yeah. It's forced me to be open-minded and puts me on the edge of “How open-minded can I be?” I want it to be academically respectable, if I can, to feel like there's some substance here. There are lots of other podcasts now. There are over a million of podcasts out there. So there are other podcasts where people seem a little wacky.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (40:27)
They can find other places to to be, so, I turn some people down that wanna be interviewed. But, I try to not be too close-minded. I think that figuring out what is real. It's funny that we're forced in today's world to figure out what's real.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:55)
Because there's so much content out there?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (40:58)
There's so much content. There's so many points of view struggling, so many different senses. People have different realities that they're working from. Is there a god, is there a purpose to it all? Did it all just happen by accident? What are the different divisions and threats that we are finding in our society? The whole knowledge is up for grabs. And so it's hard to keep your footing and.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (41:48)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (41:50)
A challenging time that we live in.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (41:52)
There’s a lot of misinformation and, and really, taking it as the truth with a capital T when there's maybe not so much kind of backing it up.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:04)
And the internet turns out to be a dangerous place, you know? And technology is not as benign as I would've reflectively reflexively accepted in my youth. I've become aware of the dark side of technology. Just about everything out there has a dark side and a light side.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:33)
I was curious too, do you get much feedback about your podcast or about its effect on therapists or the clinical community, or even lay people? Like what kind of feedback have you gotten?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:48)
Well, in the early days I used to get a lot more feedback than I do now, partly because, there's so many podcasts out there that people can choose from
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:57)
Yes. Yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:58)
There are more than a million podcasts and there are tons of podcasts about psychotherapy. So, people have a lot of choices. And also everybody is time starved these days.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:22)
Yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (43:22)
I think they don't have a lot of time to respond. And so, I don't hear get as much feedback. One important source of feedback is people, like you, that I didn't know were out there listening. I hear from people when I get around to interviewing them and they say “Oh, yeah, I've been, I've been following Amp Radio for years.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:50)
Well, I was listening in grad school, and I used to run back then. I would be listening to your podcasts and run along, just learning all these different ideas and just eating it up. And now, as I've been training people for many years now, and oftentimes, I’m referring to different podcasts that you've done to like “Oh, you know, there was a podcast on this. You should check that out because this would be really helpful with your client, or something like that.” Because it's such a nice way to get a quick overview. And for me, at least now that I've got kids, it's very hard to find time to read. And so, being able to listen to a podcast and kind of have the condensed version of these ideas—of course, you're gonna get way more depth in reading about it—-
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (44:36)
But it's just a nice way to connect with these ideas and get a sense of what you might be interested in, and going deeper. And your work was the inspiration for this podcast and really me interviewing folks, particularly in areas that I'm interested in, areas that I think are important for other clinicians to get out there, and areas where I just don't have time to read all the research on this. So, interviewing the person and getting their overview, and, and it's just been a wonderful medium, and you've really been a pioneer in this for our field, for psychology—particularly too, for many clients. My podcast that you interviewed me on oppositional defiance back in 2009, for years, people would contact me and say, “Oh, I heard this podcast and I really wanna come and get help. We didn't quite understand what was going on with a kid. This makes a lot of sense.” And so I think it's really helpful for, for clients that are confused of what's going on.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (45:43)
Yeah, definitely. I think a podcast is good for people who are shopping for therapy. Checking out different potential therapists or different potential approaches and trying to figure out what it's all about. It is such a powerful educational tool.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:05)
Definitely. And I think you also received an award from the American Psychological Association.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (46:11)
Yeah, yeah, I did. I think I persuaded them that I was the first psychology podcaster and the award was really recognition of being a pioneering person, and using this to spread the word about psychology and teaching.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:41)
Yeah. And I'm wondering about the tenets of humanism and how that plays out into this work. Beause I imagine, even doing this podcasting, bringing in all these different perspectives was led by part of that. And I guess I don't know if that's true at all for you. Do you feel at all that some of the values of the humanistic approach or perspective has guided at all to you in creating this great resource?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (47:12)
Well, it’s definitely guided me. And one of the fascinating developments is the advent of positive psychology. So here, positive psychology comes along. And my initial response was, “Wait a second. That's what we were doing.” That was the vision of humanistic existential psychology. So there was a little bit on some quarters, people really had a difficulty coming to terms with that and accepting that. So I started going to some, PA conventions where, I think it may have been at the very first one where the then president of PA was Martin Seligman.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:14)
Yeah. Seligman.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (48:15)
And he announced at that, I think that he was announcing the creation of humanistic psych of a positive psychology. And it was sort of a mixed message because he also created a coaching program. “Wait a second. Now this is a new thing that in a university setting.” You know, he's at the University of Pennsylvania.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:51)
Yes, yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (48:52)
Which I had gone to. A graduate and had been in a totally different camp. So there's the coaching program and so on. I try to interview him and he turned me down a couple of times and he kind of batted me away, you know. It was hard to persuade him that I was legit.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:20)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (49:21)
But positive psychology. So what's happened is that the ideas of positive psychology are so integrated into the culture now that people don't recognize it as a separate thing. A lot of it is “ho hum, you know, oh, we're gonna do trust falls.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:44)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (49:45)
“And we're going to you know, we're going to try to listen better, et cetera, et cetera. Try to be more open.” And corporate trainings routinely put all of those elements in for their executives.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:02)
My wife used a strength finders exercise at a recent tech company event that she was at.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (50:10)
Yeah. People don't even recognize it as a separate thing, which is good. So in a way, it's succeeded so well as to create its own demise.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:24)
Yeah. But it's kind of gone beyond just the name of the approach or so on.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (50:29)
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:30)
Almost part of the fabric of the corporate world or the different kind of areas led in that way. Well, that's great. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you about all this. You've just had an incredible career and and really just have had such an impact on the field, I think whether you hear about that much or not, I think, it's definitely a really huge ripple effect. I know in my own podcast, I’m sometimes not hearing feedback, but you know, you're looking at the numbers of people downloading and see, all around the world that people are downloading or listening to it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:10)
That's one of the gratifying things too, isn't it? To discover that: Wait a second, I've got people, all over the world and unexpected places.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:20)
Definitely. Yeah. Is there any last piece that you wanna add that you'd like listeners to know about?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:30)
Well, I wanna thank you for this opportunity. I hope I haven't talked too long and too much, and I would just refer people to check out shrinkrapradio.com. Rap is spelled RAP
David Van Nuys, Ph.D: (51:49)
I pride myself on coming up with clever names. I thought these focus groups were great. Shrink Rap Radio has been a great name, I think.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:01)
Well, wonderful. Yeah. And I definitely encourage people to check it out. I was episode 876, and I think you've even had a couple more episodes come up since then. There’s just a great amount of resources out there for folks and clinics, clinicians who are developing or have heard about certain things, but wanna kind of learn more. I really appreciate it. You've been an inspiration and you've done just wonderful work. I wanted to thank you very much.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (52:38)
Thank you.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:39)
Okay. Thanks for coming today. Take care.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D: (52:42)
Okay.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:43)
Bye-Bye
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (52:44)
Bye.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:46)
Thank you for joining us today. If you'd like to receive continuing education credit for the podcast you just listened to, please go to therapy on the cutting edge.com and click on the link for ce. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, where we provide trainings for therapists in evidence-based models through live and online workshops, OnDemand workshops, consultation groups, and online one-Way Mirror trainings. To learn more about our trainings and treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults, with our licensed experienced therapists, in person in the Bay Area, or throughout California online and our employment opportunities, go to SFIA p.com. To learn more about our associateships and psych assistantships and low-fee treatment through our nonprofit Bay Area Community Counseling and Family Institute of Berkeley, go to sf bcc.org and family institute of berkeley.com. If you'd like to support therapy for those in financial need and training and evidence-based treatments, you can donate by going to BCCs [email protected]. BCC is a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible. Also, we really appreciate your feedback. If you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of psychotherapy, and you think therapists out there should know about it, send us an email. We're always looking for advancements in the field of psychotherapy to create lasting change for our clients.
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy at the Institute, the Advancement of Psychotherapy. We provide training in evidence-based models, including family systems, cognitive behavioral therapy, emotionally focused couples therapy. I'm open into sensitization reprocessing, motivational interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings on-demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-Way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, which are each grounded in evidence-based approaches with our lifespan centers, our Center for Children's, center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically. Our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using emotionally focused couples therapy and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and then EMDR for trauma.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (01:26)
And our center for ADHD and our oppositional and conduct disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches. Additionally, we have our associated nonprofit Bay Area community counseling, where we provide treatment for those in financial need who can afford the licensed experience therapists in the institute, but can work with associates and clinicians developing their expertise through our nonprofit. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the family in suit of Berkeley, where we provide treatment training and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. Learn more about training, treatment, or employment opportunities. Please go to SF iap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training and evidence-based treatment, BACC is a 501 C3 nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (02:21)
Today I'll be speaking with David Van Nuys PhD, who is the past chair and Professor Emus and Psychology at Sonoma State University,
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (02:29)
The department with an international reputation for humanistic, existential, and transpersonal psychology. He is also taught at the University of Montana, university of Michigan, and the University of New Hampshire. In addition, David runs a market research business, EFO groups, which has served a distinguished list of clients, including the New York Times Apple computers, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Quicken Loans, among others. He leads personal growth workshops at various growth centers around the United States and abroad. David earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and has worked as a licensed psychotherapist in both New Hampshire and California. A frequent public speaker is also published in professional journals, popular magazines, and co-authored a book on the infamous Zodiac Serial Killer. He also produces two popular podcasts, shrink Rep Radio and Wise Counsel. David is a longtime dream worker himself and a past IASD presenter, and for many years taught a course on myth, dream, and symbol at Sonoma State University. In 2018, he received an award from the American Psychological Association for his pioneering podcast, shrink Wrap Radio. The award was presented at Harvard University by the APA President before a crowd of several hundred educational podcasters. Since 2005, he's conducted around 1000 interviews with movers and shakers around the broad world of psychology, including Dreamworks Dream researchers and Youngian analysts. Let's listen to the interview. So, hi David. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (04:02)
Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here. You have the shoe on the other foot.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (04:08)
I know, right?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (04:09)
Yeah. I interviewed you on my podcast not very long ago.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (04:13)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I, I know of your work, 'cause gosh, back when I was in grad school, listening to your different podcasts, different interviews of different therapists, I really just was, you know, soaking it up and really enjoyed, and I actually reached out to you and asked if you could maybe interview some family therapists, and you kind of turned the tables and said, “oh, well, how about I interview you?” And that was back in 2009. And yeah, you've been doing incredible work with your podcast. And actually, I followed up most recently because I couldn't find that old podcast. And you said, well, hey, let's do another one. So that was really great to do that the other week. Yeah. And I think I was in episode like 800 and something or other. So you have been doing this a long time, interviewing lots of different people.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:06)
I think I've got over a thousand interviews, frankly, because I did another set of interviews, maybe around 125 or 130 interviews under the banner of Wise Council.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:19)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:20)
I've been hired by a web portal and you're aware of that?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:28)
That's great.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:29)
So they actually paid me to do, uh, those, those early interviews, not, not a princely song. Sure.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:35)
Sure. Yeah. Right.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (05:36)
Right. Had enough to be, uh, to, to motivate me and make me feel good.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (05:40)
Good, good. Well, yeah, and I think the medium of these podcasts and getting information out there is so important. And I wanna find out about your kind of, you know, your work, but first, you know, I always like to find out about folks, kind of evolution of their thinking and how they got to doing what they're doing and thinking about what they're thinking about.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (06:03)
Yeah. Well, let me tell you about how I got into podcasting and how it is that I have so many interviews available to listeners online. The way that that happened is that I'm maybe the very first person in psychology to have a podcast. I make that claim. I can't absolutely prove it. But nobody has come along and shot me down. I've sort of embraced it, at this point, I'll resist if they make that claim. But I got started the very first year that psychology that podcasting became got on the map. And I thought, "Podcast, what the heck is a podcast?"
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (07:02)
I was hearing the word because of an article that I read. And so, I thought, "What the heck is a podcast?" And I was intrigued about that because I was a amateur radio operator, or ham radio operator as a kid in my teens and so on. I learned Morse code and studied for all these FCC exams and so on. So I had made heath kits back in the day. There was a company called Heath Kit and you were able to build amateur radio equipment if you couldn't afford to go out and buy the expensive stuff, which as a kid, I couldn't. And, I knew something about transmitters and how transmitters work. I had an early iPod, probably one of the very first iPods, and I knew it didn't have a transmitter in it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (08:04)
So, podcasts, how in the world could this thing cast? So, as I looked into it, I found out that it was really like internet radio. Where you could have your own kind of internet radio station. And I thought, “Oh, wow, that sounds kind of intriguing,” because I had a technical interest early on, as you can tell, from the amateur radio background. My plan was to become an electrical engineering engineer. And in fact, I was originally accepted into an electrical engineering program with a full scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. So I had this technical bent and interest in technology. And so that's partly what grabbed me. And the other piece of it was, I thought, “Well, what could I have a podcast about?” Well, I'm a psychologist already at this time, point in time and in a very interesting psychology department that is oriented towards humanistic psychology.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (09:30)
Is this when you were teaching at Sonoma State, or?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (09:32)
At Sonoma State University. And so I thought, well, we have some pretty weird people in the department, and, and I know some very interesting psychologists in the Bay Area and so on. Maybe I could do interviews. And I'd actually already published some interviews. So, I'd already started with interviewing people and had been able to publish. There was a magazine called Human Behavior that's no longer out there, but I was feeling competitive with a friend who published an interview and I thought, “Well, I could do that.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:21)
And what year was this that you learned about podcasts and started your first time?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (10:26)
This all happened during this first year of podcasting, which was 2005.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:31)
2005. Okay. Wow.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (10:32)
Yeah. And I spent so much time—I had a friend who was kind of tracking me in at a distance and what I was up to. I was trying to figure out how to create a website. I realized I was gonna need a website and I was gonna have to do it myself again. It was low budget. And he said to me at, at one point, “David, you gotta stop just fooling around and get going on this thing. Get started.” I wish I had, because I would've been even sooner, at the very beginning of 2005. So I think I actually got the podcast running maybe in August or so. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:20)
Oh, great. Very cool.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:21)
2005.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:22)
Yeah. Now, can I go backwards a little bit and find out:. How you got from electrical engineering to psychology?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:29)
Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (11:33)
Yeah, there's a great whole story. You know, as I look back over my rather long life at this point, I see all of these connections and how things are interrelated and so on. But at any rate, not to leap ahead. I got accepted into electrical engineering, and I had gone to a small private, Protestant Christian high school—and the math and science preparation wasn't all that strong. Even though I somehow showed up well enough on paper to get admitted into that program, I quickly discovered that particularly one of my first classes in the engineering program was, of course, in calculus, and this is went way over my head. It was going too fast.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (12:41)
High school had been so easy for me. I had—fortunately and naturally—a certain amount of natural intelligence, which I am comfortable saying at this point in my life, without feeling like I'm bragging. But, I had not developed study skills, cause I didn't have to study to get through high school. So, college kind of turned that around in some way. So, I ended up dropping out of engineering. Fortunately, I didn't lose the scholarship. I thought that would be a danger. But, thank God, the scholarship people at Penn were very generous. And, so I thought about psychology as an option because, I was one of these people in high school, people like to tell me their problems, their issues. I would talk and I would enjoy that and interact with them at that level.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (13:44)
And so I thought, “Boy, psychology would be great. I'd never been in therapy or counseling.” So, I'd not had not much of a gauge to anticipate what that field might involve. I took Introduction to Psychology, which was one of these big classes in a tiered auditorium—with a famous psychologist teaching way down at the bottom there. And he said, “Okay, this is an introduction to Psychology, the science of behavior of animals and humans. So if you are signed up for this course because you think you're gonna find out about your own quirks or those of your friends, you're in the wrong place.” I thought, “Oh, geez, this is bad news.” Because that's what I wanted to find out about. So he, he proceeded to make it clear, he kept his word, and it was all about, rats and mazes and so on. It was a very behaviorist orientation that totally turned me off.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (15:01)
So, I ended up majoring in creative writing, which turned out to be a good thing because writing played a big role in my career as I later went on. Then as it started to get close to graduation, I realized, “Wait a second. I might need to have a career.” I could quickly starve to death as a writer, you know? I wasn’t thinking, “I'm gonna write the Great American novel or something.” I had that summer gotten together with a friend and we got together over a beer. I asked him, “Well, what are you gonna do? What are you studying?” He was going to USC or someplace at the time, and, he said, “I'm gonna be a clinical psychologist.”
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (16:11)
And I said, ‘Well, what's that?” He said, “Well, a clinical psychologist is like a psychiatrist, only, you don't have to go to medical school.” I thought, “Oh, well, that sounds good—not having to go to medical.” And he said, “Yeah, I'm a Rosa.” I said, “Well, what's that?” He said, “Well, whatever the person says, you just have to say the same thing back to them.” I thought, “Well, I could do that.” That sounds easy, believe it or not. That was kind of what planted the idea: “I'm gonna start taking some more psychology.” And so, I was able to get into abnormal psychology. Now we're talking, very interesting. Here are all the quirks, personal and friends, et cetera, and all of that. So I did that. I took some other psychology classes and I did well in them.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (17:13)
And I found it really interesting. But then again, I was confronted with, “Wait a second, I'm gonna have to get a job very soon now.” Because I've done this in my senior year. And so I thought, “Well, it's not gonna be easy.” Since my major wasn't psychology, I don't have all that many psychology courses. So as I looked into it, I found that it was gonna be hard. So I went to the library. I got a bunch of catalogs from others and I thought, “I'm gonna have to get a master's degree at this point in time.” You had to have a PhD if you wanted to be a psychologist and to call yourself a psychologist, and do psychotherapy. So, in the library, I saw this catalog that showed, a couple of guys tossing a grizzly bear into the back of a pickup truck. And I thought, “Well, this, this place might let me in.” So I applied. They let me in provisionally, they said, “You'll have to take a bunch of remedial courses in our psychology program.” And they immediately set me to teaching.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (18:42)
At the time, I had to teach out of an Intro to Psych book that was required. I learned so much psychology from Hill Guard's introduction to psychology.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:02)
And you, which graduate school is this? Or where was this?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:06)
The University of Montana. At the time, it was called Montana State University, Missoula, Montana
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:12)
Got it. Okay.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:13)
Tons of stories about all that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:15)
So, as a grad student, they were having you teach undergrad courses.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:19)
Yeah. And so as a result, I learned enough psychology that when I went to take the graduate record exam in psychology, I did really well. I was like in the 98th-99th percentile. So I got into the University of Michigan as a result.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (19:43)
Uh-huh.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (19:45)
For clinical Psychology. Montana had an inferiority complex at the time. “We may be in Montana, but we're gonna have the toughest little program in the world.” So I just learned so much psychology, not clinical, but other areas that I could do. What I didn't know once I got into the University of Michigan, was their particular take on clinical psychology at the time: They were a bastion of psychoanalytic thought—pne of the of the academic programs to be totally psychoanalytic. I was pretty turned off to that. Even though, I studied, I finally developed some study skills, read hard, and so on.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:56)
Yeah. I was curious about how you got to the humanistic. It sounds like your friend was but--
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:02)
I was looking for alternatives.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:03)
Yeah. Like going out?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:06)
Yeah. I took lots of workshops and there was a very active student-led program called Project Outreach. I became part of that, and we got involved with Encounter Groups.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:29)
What year is this?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:30)
That thing? In the seventies?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:32)
In the seventies. Got it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:33)
Well, middle sixties to late sixties, I would say.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:37)
Yeah. Got it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (21:39)
And it was almost like there were marathon sessions. You'd stay up all night and you would have some real emotional encounters. That was the idea: That you would break through all of your usual, persona stuff. And, it was like a psychedelic experience. I would have to say, your doors of perception were kinda washed clean. And I remember encountering another graduate student outside of this and his name was Sonny Citrin Baum. And, I said, “Sonny, you and I have never really sat down and talked together. What's going on with you?” And so on. It put me in that place. So that made a big impact on the kind of psychology I was interested in. And when it came time to find a school to go to again, I found myself realizing “Oh my God, I'm going to graduate.” Surprise, surprise. After six years, it's a long program at Michigan, because they had us doing halftime, internships the whole way. So, I worked at a counseling center at the university, and also at VA hospitals.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:23)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:25)
So when it came time to graduate, I realized I've gotta find something that's gonna be a good fit for me. And because I had looked so much into alternative kinds of approaches, I had heard about humanistic psychology. I didn't know a whole lot about it, it, but it had the right ring.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:47)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:48)
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:48)
What grabbed you about humanistic? Or what did you find that for you?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (23:55)
It had the right sound? Plus it sounded humanistic existential. I had done some reading in those areas. I had exposure through friends who had gone out to the eSalon Institute which was a big thing at that time in California, you know? And a growth center.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (24:23)
And can you actually describe humanistic existential for listeners that might not know a lot about it?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (24:31)
Well, at the time, it was said that there were three mainstreams of psychology and one was psychoanalytic Freudian psychology.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (24:46)
The other was behaviorism or Skinnerian psychology. And the third was this sort of humanistic approach, which did not have as large a following, but it was because there was a craze that was going on of workshops that were being done across the country. I'm sure people maybe have heard of Warner Earhart and Est—their Heart Seminars training. That's that sort of set the model.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:24)
Is this like the human potential movement?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (25:26)
Exactly.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:28)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (25:28)
That's what I'm talking about. The human potential movement. And I was knee deep in human potential movement and really felt “Okay, these are my people.” This is the kind of psychology I'm interested in—the way I wanna be with people in a self-revealing, a source of ways to interact with people. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:54)
And actually, can you tell me a little more about that? Because I've heard a lot about these things. It was before my years, and what was that like, or what was going on in the human potential movement? This was just a time period of where people were maybe trying to be more insightful, more aware of what their own experiences were, kind of digging deeper which was maybe very different from the previous years that were more 1950s conservative, just kind of follow the cookie cutter.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (26:26)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so this is happening in the sixties right. Around, when things in Vietnam is happening, while it started, I was in my doctoral program. And I ended up getting student deferment and also was married. And so that helped not to have to go to the Vietnam War. I had friends who risked becoming actually psychotic and went to huge lengths to fail the draft. So we were right on the cusp of a time of great protest. Looking for anti-authoritarian alternatives, the beginnings of distrust of government. And so, there was a quest for new ways of being new institutions.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (27:34)
And so I would say that places like Esalen and other growth centers that's popped up around the country, people would get together in groups to explore new ways of being to look into. Often there were academics there who were exploring philosophies and so on, and new approaches to therapy. So Fritz Pearls was famous for Gestalt therapy. And new therapies were propping up, like wild flowers. That was the time when I was coming up. And so the podcasting, I wanted to interview. I thought, ”What can I do?” Well, I can interview these kinds of people. And so I thought I would start with people that I knew, but I quickly realized that I could reach out to people that I didn't know.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (28:38)
And so, the department—the humanistic psychology department—was very diverse in terms of the other faculty. Each of us had different trainings and, and interest areas and so on. So it wasn't really like a solidly altogether coherent thing. As time went on, I got interested in big fish. Yeah. I looked at it like fishing. I wondered “Who I can get, who could I talk to?” And I became interested in talking particularly to some of these very high profile famous psychologists, that I think if we had met at a conference, “Well, who are you?” It would be hard to engage them, but the power of the microphone I quickly discovered was, was very powerful because they wanted to get their work out. They had something that they wanted to release to the world, and I could help them do that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (30:03)
Definitely.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (30:05)
And it sounds like too, that during that time in the human potential movement, you were kind of interested in looking for different ways of thinking. And part of your podcast is talking to all these people that have very different ways of thinking, different perspectives, and such.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (30:20)
Exactly. And also, I developed skills, the skills of counseling and psychotherapy certainly were relevant. I quickly discovered that I had a much better education than I realized.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (30:43)
I had absorbed enough information that I could interview these high power to high performers in our field, and be on fairly equal footing. I could have an intelligent conversation with then. I could understand what they were trying to say and help them articulate it. And then the other major thing that we probably don't have time to deal with, but at some point, I was already a full professor after a few years, And I thought, “Well, what else can I do?” And the personal computer thing was just starting to happen. This is in the late sixties, I think. No, it's further along than that. But at any rate--
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:38)
Like eighties, with the personal computer.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (31:41)
I think so. Early eighties. And, the Apple computer was out there, there was other competing brands. It was very whimsical at that time. And so I was thinking, “Well, what else could do?” I went, “Oh, darn, I should have become an engineer. This looks like a very exciting area. How could I get involved in that?” So I started chatting people up, networking. “Who do you know that's doing something with computers that's in the industry?” I ended up meeting a fellow who was also sort of in the humanistic realm. Did he have a master’s? I'm not even sure. He had a master's degree, may have only been a MA—a bachelor’s.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (32:42)
But at any rate, he was sort of a genius guy with a silver tongue who got me involved in market research. in doing focus groups, it turns out that focus groups here very group oriented. Focus groups are a business approach in which you can talk to people who've hired behind a one way mirror. And you're gonna try to get information from consumers of their products, software, or whatever to help the decision makers in these companies.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:25)
Qualitative kind of research.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (33:27)
Yeah, qualitative research. I discovered that, qualitative research, like hypnosis, one of the other major areas that I was involved in clinically for a number of years, and dreams. I was always interested in these borderline phenomena.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:46)
Sure. Sure.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (33:47)
And, because they seemed to have the excitement of the potential. So here I was, and focus groups have had a up and down reputation in the business community for years. Because, there's always that hunger for quantitative truth, on the one hand. But the subjective is still so important.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (34:16)
The kind of phenomenological experience.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (34:19)
Yes. It's so, so important. So I did focus groups for about 15-18 years. The guy I was working with eventually retired. He was like six years younger than me, or eight years younger than me, but he was just very sharp. He really trained me well because he would hold my feet to the fire, and he would insist on the best. I started out writing reports for him—again, the creative writing. I was able to write these very dynamic reports which he could pass off as his own very quickly. That made me valuable to him. At some point I realized, “Well, wait a second, this could be happening online.” So again, I was in the vanguard of people who started to do online qualitative research. I rose high in an organization called QRCA, the qualitative research consultants associate.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:33)
Is this like, doing it over webcam?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (35:37)
Iinitially it was. It was before Zoom.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:42)
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (35:44)
Yeah. But certainly it moved into Zoom very quickly, and it used some other early tools. I can't even remember what,
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:56)
Yeah. We were using Skype back when we did our interview in 2009.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:00)
Using what? Skype? So I've done Skype as well. Skype groups. So, this drew upon my writing.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:12)
Uhhuh.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:14)
And in the graduate program, I had to write reports, testing reports, diagnostic reports. And again, I had a flare for that. That made me stand out. And then here I am, and then all of the group work. So everything came together.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:36)
Yeah. Great.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:37)
I feel blessed that my career blossomed in so many areas and that everything that I did ended up having utility.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:54)
And all these different pieces came together.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (36:57)
Yeah. Just this past year, I've officially closed down my online research called Efo Groups.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:07)
Got it. Okay.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:08)
I like that name. That was a good name. Efo.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:10)
A good name. Yeah. Well, one of the things that, for me, when I first started grad school, I took a course that looked at all the different theories of psychotherapy. And I just got so interested in every different one. And that's kind of how I got on my road. I think Albert Ellis was coming to town, so I wanted to go do a training with him. And I was like, “Oh, I wanna go out and train with all these masters.”
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:40)
Yeah. And I didn't train with him, but I definitely was aware of him. I saw him do a presentation and a demo.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:48)
Sure. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (37:49)
So I would check that stuff out for myself too. And that was one of the things that I really was struck by in interviewing you, was how hungry you were to explore and develop.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (38:08)
And I was curious with your podcast, is that also a similar hunger to kinda learn from all these different people and all these kind of various perspectives where some people just kind of pick one and they stick with it. I always loved kinda learning from all these different angles. And I had a great teacher in grad school. We would almost do like the United Nations of like theories and each of us would have to talk about cases and do a little card that would bend and kind of come from a different theory. Say, “Well, yeah, in a CBT way I would think about it this way,” and so on. But this idea of looking, and I'm wondering if that was part of the podcast and what you were doing was looking at various ways of thinking. Because your podcast was not on just one track of say, humanistic. You have gone all over, you know?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (38:55)
That's right. It wasn't even one track in terms of being devoted to psychotherapy. People that I interviewed, many were researchers, professors, authors was the thing that kind of emerged. A lot of people who had written books, and so they needed to promote their book.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (39:24)
I remember you did one on a shaman.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (39:29)
Yeah. Multiple shaman ones.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (39:32)
Multiple shamans. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (39:33)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I even took a shaman workshop myself, because, one of my students spun off in that direction and developed a shaman company, wrote many books on shamanism and so on. So yeah. It's forced me to be open-minded and puts me on the edge of “How open-minded can I be?” I want it to be academically respectable, if I can, to feel like there's some substance here. There are lots of other podcasts now. There are over a million of podcasts out there. So there are other podcasts where people seem a little wacky.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (40:27)
They can find other places to to be, so, I turn some people down that wanna be interviewed. But, I try to not be too close-minded. I think that figuring out what is real. It's funny that we're forced in today's world to figure out what's real.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:55)
Because there's so much content out there?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (40:58)
There's so much content. There's so many points of view struggling, so many different senses. People have different realities that they're working from. Is there a god, is there a purpose to it all? Did it all just happen by accident? What are the different divisions and threats that we are finding in our society? The whole knowledge is up for grabs. And so it's hard to keep your footing and.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (41:48)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (41:50)
A challenging time that we live in.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (41:52)
There’s a lot of misinformation and, and really, taking it as the truth with a capital T when there's maybe not so much kind of backing it up.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:04)
And the internet turns out to be a dangerous place, you know? And technology is not as benign as I would've reflectively reflexively accepted in my youth. I've become aware of the dark side of technology. Just about everything out there has a dark side and a light side.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:33)
I was curious too, do you get much feedback about your podcast or about its effect on therapists or the clinical community, or even lay people? Like what kind of feedback have you gotten?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:48)
Well, in the early days I used to get a lot more feedback than I do now, partly because, there's so many podcasts out there that people can choose from
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:57)
Yes. Yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (42:58)
There are more than a million podcasts and there are tons of podcasts about psychotherapy. So, people have a lot of choices. And also everybody is time starved these days.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:22)
Yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (43:22)
I think they don't have a lot of time to respond. And so, I don't hear get as much feedback. One important source of feedback is people, like you, that I didn't know were out there listening. I hear from people when I get around to interviewing them and they say “Oh, yeah, I've been, I've been following Amp Radio for years.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:50)
Well, I was listening in grad school, and I used to run back then. I would be listening to your podcasts and run along, just learning all these different ideas and just eating it up. And now, as I've been training people for many years now, and oftentimes, I’m referring to different podcasts that you've done to like “Oh, you know, there was a podcast on this. You should check that out because this would be really helpful with your client, or something like that.” Because it's such a nice way to get a quick overview. And for me, at least now that I've got kids, it's very hard to find time to read. And so, being able to listen to a podcast and kind of have the condensed version of these ideas—of course, you're gonna get way more depth in reading about it—-
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (44:36)
But it's just a nice way to connect with these ideas and get a sense of what you might be interested in, and going deeper. And your work was the inspiration for this podcast and really me interviewing folks, particularly in areas that I'm interested in, areas that I think are important for other clinicians to get out there, and areas where I just don't have time to read all the research on this. So, interviewing the person and getting their overview, and, and it's just been a wonderful medium, and you've really been a pioneer in this for our field, for psychology—particularly too, for many clients. My podcast that you interviewed me on oppositional defiance back in 2009, for years, people would contact me and say, “Oh, I heard this podcast and I really wanna come and get help. We didn't quite understand what was going on with a kid. This makes a lot of sense.” And so I think it's really helpful for, for clients that are confused of what's going on.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (45:43)
Yeah, definitely. I think a podcast is good for people who are shopping for therapy. Checking out different potential therapists or different potential approaches and trying to figure out what it's all about. It is such a powerful educational tool.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:05)
Definitely. And I think you also received an award from the American Psychological Association.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (46:11)
Yeah, yeah, I did. I think I persuaded them that I was the first psychology podcaster and the award was really recognition of being a pioneering person, and using this to spread the word about psychology and teaching.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:41)
Yeah. And I'm wondering about the tenets of humanism and how that plays out into this work. Beause I imagine, even doing this podcasting, bringing in all these different perspectives was led by part of that. And I guess I don't know if that's true at all for you. Do you feel at all that some of the values of the humanistic approach or perspective has guided at all to you in creating this great resource?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (47:12)
Well, it’s definitely guided me. And one of the fascinating developments is the advent of positive psychology. So here, positive psychology comes along. And my initial response was, “Wait a second. That's what we were doing.” That was the vision of humanistic existential psychology. So there was a little bit on some quarters, people really had a difficulty coming to terms with that and accepting that. So I started going to some, PA conventions where, I think it may have been at the very first one where the then president of PA was Martin Seligman.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:14)
Yeah. Seligman.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (48:15)
And he announced at that, I think that he was announcing the creation of humanistic psych of a positive psychology. And it was sort of a mixed message because he also created a coaching program. “Wait a second. Now this is a new thing that in a university setting.” You know, he's at the University of Pennsylvania.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:51)
Yes, yes.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (48:52)
Which I had gone to. A graduate and had been in a totally different camp. So there's the coaching program and so on. I try to interview him and he turned me down a couple of times and he kind of batted me away, you know. It was hard to persuade him that I was legit.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:20)
Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (49:21)
But positive psychology. So what's happened is that the ideas of positive psychology are so integrated into the culture now that people don't recognize it as a separate thing. A lot of it is “ho hum, you know, oh, we're gonna do trust falls.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:44)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (49:45)
“And we're going to you know, we're going to try to listen better, et cetera, et cetera. Try to be more open.” And corporate trainings routinely put all of those elements in for their executives.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:02)
My wife used a strength finders exercise at a recent tech company event that she was at.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (50:10)
Yeah. People don't even recognize it as a separate thing, which is good. So in a way, it's succeeded so well as to create its own demise.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:24)
Yeah. But it's kind of gone beyond just the name of the approach or so on.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (50:29)
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:30)
Almost part of the fabric of the corporate world or the different kind of areas led in that way. Well, that's great. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you about all this. You've just had an incredible career and and really just have had such an impact on the field, I think whether you hear about that much or not, I think, it's definitely a really huge ripple effect. I know in my own podcast, I’m sometimes not hearing feedback, but you know, you're looking at the numbers of people downloading and see, all around the world that people are downloading or listening to it.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:10)
That's one of the gratifying things too, isn't it? To discover that: Wait a second, I've got people, all over the world and unexpected places.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:20)
Definitely. Yeah. Is there any last piece that you wanna add that you'd like listeners to know about?
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (51:30)
Well, I wanna thank you for this opportunity. I hope I haven't talked too long and too much, and I would just refer people to check out shrinkrapradio.com. Rap is spelled RAP
David Van Nuys, Ph.D: (51:49)
I pride myself on coming up with clever names. I thought these focus groups were great. Shrink Rap Radio has been a great name, I think.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:01)
Well, wonderful. Yeah. And I definitely encourage people to check it out. I was episode 876, and I think you've even had a couple more episodes come up since then. There’s just a great amount of resources out there for folks and clinics, clinicians who are developing or have heard about certain things, but wanna kind of learn more. I really appreciate it. You've been an inspiration and you've done just wonderful work. I wanted to thank you very much.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (52:38)
Thank you.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:39)
Okay. Thanks for coming today. Take care.
David Van Nuys, Ph.D: (52:42)
Okay.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:43)
Bye-Bye
David Van Nuys, Ph.D.: (52:44)
Bye.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:46)
Thank you for joining us today. If you'd like to receive continuing education credit for the podcast you just listened to, please go to therapy on the cutting edge.com and click on the link for ce. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, where we provide trainings for therapists in evidence-based models through live and online workshops, OnDemand workshops, consultation groups, and online one-Way Mirror trainings. To learn more about our trainings and treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults, with our licensed experienced therapists, in person in the Bay Area, or throughout California online and our employment opportunities, go to SFIA p.com. To learn more about our associateships and psych assistantships and low-fee treatment through our nonprofit Bay Area Community Counseling and Family Institute of Berkeley, go to sf bcc.org and family institute of berkeley.com. If you'd like to support therapy for those in financial need and training and evidence-based treatments, you can donate by going to BCCs [email protected]. BCC is a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible. Also, we really appreciate your feedback. If you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of psychotherapy, and you think therapists out there should know about it, send us an email. We're always looking for advancements in the field of psychotherapy to create lasting change for our clients.