Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions Podcast

About Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions Podcast

Gamer posing as therapist. Dogs, video games & politics since 1969. Think of me as the therapist version of your cranky GenX older brother who wants to hang out in the basement rumpus room, talk about questionable things and plot rebellion. mikelanglois.substack.com (https://mikelanglois.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Mike Langlois

Category

health & fitness · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Dec 2024

Latest episode

29 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

22 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Jun 2026

   The Language of Tenderness and the Language of the Algorithm:

   This was a webinar I did earlier this month, on ways to think about digital life without falling into the trap of casting technology as the aggressor. The confusion of tongues in the digital age is not between child and algorithm — it is between the child and the adults, institutions, and economic systems that deploy algorithms without adequate care. When a venture capitalist rushes an AI companion to market without safety testing, that is the language of passion imposed on tenderness. When a parent surveils a teen’s phone rather than tolerating the anxiety of not-knowing, that too is a confusion of tongues. But when a teenager uses a game to explore gender, or an isolated emerging adult uses an AI to bridge a gap in human infrastructure, or a young person of color uses a smartphone to document injustice — that is the technology functioning as transitional space, not as aggressor. I hope you enjoy the video, and I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. I never hide any of my material behind a paywall, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate you support my work as a paid subscriber! Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe (https://mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   9 Mar 2026

   On Transience

   Some of you are aware that I have a friend and colleague in Iran, a bright graduate student who I have been mentoring. When the Twelve Day War began and Zoom failed we used Instagram and email. Now, during this current war, when email and Instagram have failed us, and my words have failed me, I turned to AI music composition, to translate a section of Freud’s essay “On Transience” into Farsi, and the result was the video you can listen to here. If, like me you do not speak Farsi, Freud’s original excerpt is written below. I wonder what he would have made of all of this. I wonder what history will make of us. “My conversation with the poet took place in the summerbefore the war. A year later the war broke out and robbed theworld of its beauties. It destroyed not only the beauty of thecountrysides through which it passed and the works of art whichit met with on its path but it also shattered our pride in theachievements of our civilization, our admiration for manyphilosophers and artists and our hopes of a final triumph overthe differences between nations and races.It tarnished the loftyimpartiality of our science, it revealed our instincts in all theirnakedness and let loose the evil spirits within us which wethought had been tamed for ever by centuries of continuouseducation by the noblest minds. It made our country smallagain and made the rest of the world far remote. It robbed us ofvery much that we had loved, and showed us how ephemeralwere many things that we had regarded as changeless.We cannot be surprised that our libido, thus bereft of so manyof its objects, has clung with all the greater intensity to what isleft to us, that our love of our country, our affection for thosenearest us and our pride in what is common to us have suddenly grown stronger. But have those other possessions, whichwe have now lost, really ceased to have any worth for us becausethey have proved so perishable and so unresistant? To many ofus this seems to be so, but once more wrongly, in my view. Ibelieve that those who think thus, and seem ready to make apermanent renunciation because what was precious has provednot to be lasting, are simply in a state of mourning for what islost. Mourning, as we know, however painful it may be, comesto a spontaneous end. When it has renounced everything thathas been lost, then it has consumed itself, and our libido is oncemore free (in so far as we are still young and active) to replacethe lost objects by fresh ones equally or still more precious.It is to be hoped that the same will be true of the losses caused by thiswar...” Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe (https://mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   2 Mar 2026

   Free Webinar On Video Games For You

   Hi Folks, Here’s a webinar I did a while back on Video Games in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. It doesn’t get you any CEs, as I am trying to minimize how much I participate in the CE industry. Knowledge should be available to all, and although I do hire myself out and accept paid subscribers, I also try in parallel to offer people access to things regardless of if they can pay.If you want to hire me as a consultant I won’t say no, and if you purchase a paid subscription here I’ll say “Thank You.” But I’ll never hide stuff here behind paywalls, and I hope that it benefits you and the therapists, patients and gamers in your life. Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gamer Therapist: Playful Subversions at mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe (https://mikelanglois.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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