Peter Carnochan Podcast Transcript
Peter Carnochan joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Dr. Peter Carnochan. Dr. Peter Carnochan is a California-based psychologist, psychoanalyst, executive coach, and author whose work spans clinical psychology, leadership development, and psychoanalytic scholarship. After studying philosophy at Harvard, he later became a fully accredited clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst.
Carnochan has spent more than three decades helping clients navigate emotional challenges, personal growth, and executive leadership. He has published widely on psychoanalysis, including 2013’s Looking for Ground: Countertransference and the Problem of Value in Psychoanalysis, and today works with senior Silicon Valley executives and technology leaders.
More recently, he gained wider public recognition through his appearance in the acclaimed Sundance 2025 documentary Andre Is an Idiot, where he offers compassionate and deeply insightful guidance as a longtime client embraces a terminal cancer diagnosis. Well, good afternoon, Peter. Welcome to the show.
Peter Carnochan: Happy to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. I know you’re based out of the Bay Area, Marin California. I’m in Kansas City, so just a two-hour difference. But again, I always appreciate you making the arrangements and jumping through hoops to get onto this podcast, so thank you. And Peter, your path is unusual.
You studied philosophy at Harvard before becoming a fully accredited clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and today you work everywhere from the therapy room to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley. How did philosophy shape the way you understand the human mind, and what took you from that abstract academic foundation into the deeply personal work of clinical practice and executive coaching?
Peter Carnochan: Well, I mean, I think I studied philosophy as an undergraduate because I sensed that I needed to get to the bottom of things. So while it is in– at one level quite abstract, it was also very personal for me to study philosophy, to understand both what does it mean to know something and what is the nature of reality itself.
So I studied Nietzsche as an undergraduate who has a constructivist understanding of both ontology and epistemology. At the same time, while I was at studying philosophy, I began working with very troubled kids in a summer program called Wadeka. And so there was a way from the very beginning that the conjunction between the therapeutic and the philosophical were there for me.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Nietzsche and the child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott about how is the self-structured relationally. And this is something that very much carries forward into my work today
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. The backstory’s always great. People wanna know more about you, and I like what you said about the philosophy.
You got into that because you had that curiosity. You wanted to get to the bottom of things. I thought that was pretty cool. But in that whole time period there, early on, you had the opportunity to start to work with troubled youth, and that kinda led to one thing to another. And, and again, you just have a really illustrious career in this space, so thank you for sharing.
And Peter, your book, Looking for Ground: Countertransference and the Problem of Value in Psychoanalysis, wrestles with how a therapist’s own reactions and values enter the room. Yeah. For listeners, for listeners who aren’t clinicians, why does countertransference matter so much, and what does it mean to search for ground in work that’s inherently uncertain and deeply human?
Peter Carnochan: Yeah. Well, the, the book in some ways was a, very much an extension of the work I had done as a philosophy major. It takes on… freud starts psychoanalysis with the notion that the analyst, the psychoanalyst, should be neutral and objective, and that to be able to do the work, the analyst needs to rise above his own subjectivity, his own emotional response, to b- present, in some ways, a pure mirror to the patient, reflecting only back the patient’s material and not introducing anything of their own.
Over the last close to 150 years from when Freud begins psychoanalysis, it’s, it’s become very clear that that kind of neutrality is not only impossible, it, the attempt to uphold it can become destructive. It’s a kind of sterility. And so people who are working in the field ha- came to see that not only did they have emotional reactions to their patient, that these reactions became a way of understanding who their patient was and how they were impacting other people in their relational field.
So, so now when I’m working with executives, I wanna pay close attention to how they’re impacting me, what it feels like to be in the room with them, because this is a way that I get a direct experience about how people in their boardroom may be experiencing them. One, one of the analogies I like to use is that the transference and the countertransference allows a much more direct encounter with who the client is.
You wouldn’t if you were working on your golf stroke, you wouldn’t wanna call up the golf professional and say, my, my balls keep hooking to the left.” Now, the, the pro might be able to say something of value there, “You’re probably closing your head face too quickly,” but it is gonna be a very rough approximation.
You wanna be out on the range with them, observing the full arc of the swing. And the countertransference is one of the ways that a psychologist, psychoanalyst gets to observe the direct impact of somebody’s personality.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Really appreciate that. You talked a little bit about your book.
Obviously, that book was your experience or an extension of the prior work you had done. But you talked about the way that you, again, how that analysis needs to, needs to rise above the work they’re doing sometimes in order to understand really that interaction. I know that this golf analogy that you just shared I know it’s important.
Some things you just can’t do over Zoom, but you talked about your executive and leadership coaching and the curiosity that helps you really dig into the issue and, and really see, body language gives away a lot of, lot of information, obviously, in your business, but I really appreciate you unpacking some of that for us.
And Peter, your work with senior Silicon Valley executives and technology leaders, which is a very different world from a clinical or end-of-life setting, what do high-performing leaders actually struggle with beneath the surface, and how much of your psychoanalytic training translates directly into helping them lead?
Peter Carnochan: Yeah. Well, I think as a psychologist, people come in because there’s something in their life that isn’t working so well. They’re suffering, and they want to address that. In the realm of executive coaching, people come in, in some ways thriving often. They’ve, they’ve started a company. They’ve taken on venture funding.
There’s great hope, and these people often have really exceptional skills. It’s what has allowed them to be in the position they’re in. But the demands of the, of the role are really Extraordinary. One has to navigate a great rollercoaster of success, which then leads to pressure, which needs to be managed.
And so, there, there is a world of coaching out there that seems to promise effortless success. Here are the ten bullet points of how to lead with conviction that to my mind are not realistic. That the goal is not to, in some ways, be so bulletproof that there isn’t struggle and difficulty, but how to welcome in the inevitable difficulties as a chance to– as expected and as an opportunity to learn new skills.
I’m working with one founder right now, a third-time founder, and his, his company has really taken off. They, they’ve taken on a, a large amount of venture funding, new, new VCs are pounding on their door trying to invest. And so, scaling is happening very rapidly, and he’s aware that this is…
while he, he’s founded two other companies, none of those companies got quite to this level, and that there is something both extraordinarily exciting about it, but that can have a shadow. There are moments where he is working way too long hours or a kind of desire to m-manage every inch of the unfolding product, and h-finding that place where he is able to make use of the very powerful tools of AI that is allowing him to build a product and a company very quickly, while not being carried away by that in a kind of Icarus-like moment.
And he, he has awareness of these temptations and the shadow of it, but the, the ability to find and stay within the human realm of learning and a-accomplishment, I think is very connected to the analytic project, the psychoanalytic project. We’re not trying to rise above being human. We’re trying to find and invent more fully the most creative and effective ways of being human.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And I thought that was interesting. You’re not trying to rise above being a human, but really understanding and, and being more in touch w- with humanity. And I like that. You talked about as a psychologist, generally you see people that are looking for help, right?
Therapy. In executive coaching, you see some of the opposite. And you talked about you help leaders learn new skills. Mm, you tell them that, hey, you just expect things… there’s some things that will disappoint, disappoint you, and of course, that they’re not bulletproof. And I liked your example of that recent executive that you’re helping to coach right now.
And, and again, using your experience, especially as a psychologist in this space, makes, makes a huge difference, I believe, in leadership coaching. So, thank you. And Peter, the last question of the day, you’ve spent more than three decades at the intersection of psychology, leadership, and the deepest human questions about value and morality.
As technology accelerates and more people turn to AI and apps for emotional support, where do you see the future of psychoanalytic work and human meaning-making heading? And what do you believe can never be outsourced from the therapeutic relationship?
Peter Carnochan: Mm-hmm. Well- I think that as human beings, we are always deeply mammals.
And mammals connect not just through their thoughts and their words and their thoughts, but also through their biology and their bodies, right? We are carried inside a mother’s womb. We are breastfed. And in this deep physical, emotional, and intellectual connection, that is how we develop a personality.
That is how we develop the affective relational skills that allow us to go out into the world and be effective. So while I don’t want to, in some ways, overly romanticize the human, I don’t think we know yet where AI is gonna go and how competent we’ll be. So it may become a profound help. I do think that that the human realm, the, the realm of attachment is where we get to the center of our own agency, where we can more clearly understand that as human beings, we have the freedom to keep reinventing what it means to be human.
There isn’t a fixed set of skills that was invented by the ancients and that we need to go back and relearn those skills. Those skills are good ones, but the world we live in keeps unfolding and the number of creative ways to be human are unlimited. And so part of what I really most wanna help leaders do is come to be authors of what it means to be a leader and to see that this is invented rather than merely discovered
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, at the end of the day, as human beings, we’re just mammals, right? But obviously we’re the, the most advanced species in, as a mammal. But you talked about this human realm or realm of attachment, and you said at the center of our agency as human beings, we can continue to be creative and be authentically human and explore and and be in touch with that human side.
AI is a, a whole different ballgame, as you talked about, and the future, who knows what that will bring. But at the end of the day, there is nothing like humans, and humans are here to stay. We’ve had other conversations on the podcast about whether or not humans will be eliminated by AI, but that’s another, another podcast.
But I really appreciate you helping us understand the human side of things, and it really helps when you do that because of your background as a psychologist. So thank you so much. And Peter- Great.
Peter Carnochan: You’re welcome.
Brian Thomas: you, you bet. It was certainly a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Peter Carnochan: Great. Great. Thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Peter Carnochan Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
