Philip Cooke
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philipcooke.bsky.social
Philip Cooke
@philipcooke.bsky.social
710 followers 460 following 360 posts
Psychoanalysis. Licensed psychologist. Anti-Fascist. Progressive politics. (Musical) Theatre.
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philipcooke.bsky.social
Opening night for @jcclementz.bsky.social 5th Broadway show. So proud of him ☺️
October 30, 2025 at 10:23 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Psychoanalysis changes people’s worlds for the better every single day.

Some thoughts on psychoanalysis, fascism, and changing the world, with assistance from Adam Phillips🧵
A prominent intellectual is delivering a lecture in the question, "Can psychoanalysis change the world?" And honestly I think this has already been repeatedly and definitively answered with, "Yes, but only for the worse."
October 23, 2025 at 8:18 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Surely my neighbors are pleased with me driving through the neighborhood with my windows down and Mandy Patinkin blasting.
October 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
This photograph captures most of my personality.
Couple's Therapy host Orna Guralnik with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln (from Oh Mary)
September 30, 2025 at 2:35 AM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Pritzker speaking plainly, directly, and urgently about the present danger of authoritarianism.

Jeffries speaking about... healthcare subsidies.

Truly delusional and shameful for Jeffries and Schumer not to be joining Pritzker and other governors in fighting back against authoritarianism directly.
Governor JB Pritzker bluesky post: In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let's not pretend it's something else when it happens in our American cities. Hakeem Jeffries: Bigotry will get you nowhere. Cancel the Cuts. Lower the Cost. Save Healthcare. We are NOT backing down. A photo of Jeffries and Chuck Schumer outside the white house.
September 30, 2025 at 2:32 AM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Might make some enemies saying the following, but here goes: 1. Really short-term therapy benefits therapists in various obvious ways. 2. Really short-term therapy, e.g. CBT or whatever, is an easy target for criticisms of unfalsifiability. If there's progress on outcome measures, therapists can usually justify terminating and feel narcissistically gratified, and if there isn't progress, they can defend against insinuations that it's ineffective because it’s the “gold standard treatment.” It usually lacks scientific rigor because studies are designed with the capitalistic incentives of researchers and insurance companies in mind. 3. I suspect that the more therapists that are trying to bill 3rd parties for therapy that goes on for this short are, cumulatively, probably increasing the likelihood that said payers are going to increasingly clamp down on all providers in general, pushing more of us toward stricter and stricter value-based care guidelines, which has
September 18, 2025 at 5:54 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
The performance of “debate” has become worse than not debating at all.

Charlie Kirk et al perform debates to gain legitimacy for their noxious ideology while actively suppressing speech and people they don’t like.

Establishment liberals only hurt society by going along with the performance.
September 11, 2025 at 5:49 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
"It deprives the individual student of the agency to craft their own program of study, a right that we routinely accord to 18-year old undergraduates but which for some reason most institutes see fit to deny to middle-aged people with doctorates."
Finally: because psychoanalytic institutes don’t actually earn much money from tuition, and because teaching is an infomercial there, they have an incentive to offer coursework in a manner that is easy to administer. This leads most of them to run on a cohort model, with a fixed group of students proceeding stepwise through a fixed curriculum. This is a horrible educational setup; they pretend it is great, but this is frank bullshit. It deprives the individual student of the agency to craft their own program of study, a right that we routinely accord to 18-year old undergraduates but which for some reason most institutes see fit to deny to middle-aged people with doctorates. It also creates an emotional hotbox among the cohort members in which
September 11, 2025 at 3:32 AM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Yes I did! Wish I could have stayed longer!
June 28, 2025 at 8:34 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Dril: “i let my son punch me in the head and i tell him the day you can kill me in one blow is the day you officially become a Teen”
May 31, 2025 at 5:05 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Happy 95th birthday to this man whose words and music keep helping me make sense of being alive.
March 22, 2025 at 9:09 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
I needed a break from reading psychoanalysis this weekend, so started reading this new Sondheim book my husband got me for my birthday.

Turns out I can’t not read psychoanalysis even when I try.
"Being Alive," the final number in Company, is Bobby's late-in-the-game plea for intimacy and love. It's up for debate whether Bobby is truly ready for someone to hold him too close, but the song itself declares what the theatre of Stephen Sondheim is all about: being alive. Being alive not in the sense of controlling our life, but of bearing witness to it; being fully present to its terrors as much as to its joys, to its conflicts as much as to its concords, and to its mysteries as much as to its banalities.
March 17, 2025 at 7:07 PM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Five show weekend complete! Not a dud among them.
A playbill for Stereophonic is held up from a seat in the front mezzanine with the stage in the background. A playbill for The Hills of California is held up from a seat in the front orchestra with the stage in the background. A playbill for Cult of Love is held up from a seat in the front mezzanine with the stage in the background. A playbill for Maybe Happy Ending is held up from a seat in the rear orchestra with the stage in the background.
November 25, 2024 at 2:29 AM
philipcooke.bsky.social
Stunning production of a, well, lumbering musical.
November 23, 2024 at 4:00 AM