Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Canada. Prior to U of T, Peterson held a professorship at Harvard University.

Jordan Peterson has been one of the most productive psychologists of his generation - completing his PhD program with 3x the usual amount of research papers. He has authored and co-authored over a hundred scientific papers - on the subjects of alcoholism, personality psychology and the Big 5 Model. In 1999, Peterson published his first book Maps of Meaning which he began work on 13 years prior. In 2018, Peterson made his debut in the self-help category with 12 Rules for Life, which has to date sold over a million copies. In 2021, Peterson released a sequel Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life after recovering from Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Syndrome (BWS).

Peterson is my most controversial guest yet. He initially rose to fame as a consequence of his opposition to Bill C-16 - a Canadian bill of rights that offered protections for Transgender individuals. Peterson argued the bill would compel speech via requiring the use of preferred pronouns. Additionally, Peterson continues to release cultural/political commentary.

Consequently, we deliberately decided to keep the conversation to psychology. We begin by addressing Peterson's opposition to Bill C-16 and the aftermath. We talk about psychology as a career and Peterson's academic pathway, the psychology of religious belief and Peterson's ontological argument for God, conscious and unconscious cognitive processes, the differences between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and The Oedipal Complex: one of Freud's most controversial theories.

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References:

Book list – Jordan Peterson. (2016, November 3). https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog/book-list/

Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_the_Unconscious

Gray, J. A. (1982). The neuropsychology of anxiety: An enquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Print), 5(3), 469–484. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00013066

Peterson, J. B. (1999). Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Routledge.

Peterson, J. B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to chaos. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB28311325

Peterson, J. B. (2021). Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. Penguin.