David J. Schlosz

02/11/2026

One pound for a skull in good order. In a Cape Town museum, Dr. David Schlosz stands in front of a 1923 letter pricing human remains and faces how much he was never taught.

Sarah Baartman was a Khoekhoe woman from the Gamtoos Valley. She was taken to London in 1810 and put on display, then exhibited in Paris, then dissected after her death, and her remains stayed on show in a French museum for generations.

In this episode, Dr. Schlosz tells her story through Homecoming: Ancestral Returns, Museum Reckonings, and the Future of Care, an exhibition at the Iziko South African Museum made by Khoi and San descendants. It fills the room that once held the museum’s Bushman Diorama. From there, the episode widens from one woman to the system that measured, classified, and priced a people. Then it turns to what this asks of us now.

One pound for a skull in good order. In a Cape Town museum, Dr.

21/10/2026

One pound for a skull in good order.

I read that line in a 1923 letter at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, my home city, three weeks ago. It changed how I think about the way my profession looks at people.

I wrote about Sarah Baartman, the exhibition Homecoming, and what a white South African therapist was never taught.

One pound for a skull in good order. I read that line in a 1923 letter at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, my home city, three weeks ago. It changed how I think about the way my profession looks at people. I wrote about Sarah Baartman, the exhibition Homecoming, and what a white South Af...

11/10/2026

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/project-i-am/id1777441455?i=1000753641294

Podcast Episode · Project I Am · March 6 · 51m

05/10/2026

So grateful for the opportunity to offer this workshop in Cape Town this week.

04/10/2026

28/09/2026

There's a moment where someone stops being a person to you and becomes a situation: a difficult client, a high-maintenance friend, a problem your partner needs to solve. And there's a quieter, more common version of that same moment: where you stop being a person to yourself, and become a body to manage, a performance to monitor, a project that should be doing better by now.

In this episode, Dr. David Schlosz explores intersubjectivity, the practice of meeting another person, or yourself, as a full presence rather than an object to be managed. Drawing on Martin Buber's I-Thou / I-It framework, Donald Winnicott's false self, Murray Bowen's differentiation of self, and Carl Rogers' core conditions for change, this episode walks through what objectification actually looks like, why we do it, what it costs us, what it gives us, how culture trains us into it, and, most importantly, how we practice our way back out.

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21/09/2026

What if therapy is not about fixing what’s broken… but about retrieving what was lost?

In this deeply reflective episode of the Project I AM Podcast, David explores the idea that therapy is a modern form of soul retrieval, the gentle, relational process of helping clients come back into connection with the parts of themselves that had to go into hiding in order to survive.

Whether you are a therapist, a student, or someone on your own healing journey, this episode invites you to reconsider what growth really means, and what it feels like to finally come home to yourself.

If you’ve ever felt successful but not fully alive… connected but not fully known… this conversation is for you.

Welcome home.

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16/09/2026

The hardest moment usually isn't the showing up. It's the quiet afterward.

The drive home. The empty room. The voice that waits until you're alone to ask, "was that really okay?"

Most of us learned early how to leave ourselves. How to get smaller, quieter, more acceptable. That wasn't weakness. You were not broken, you were adapting.

But what was learned for survival can be unlearned in safety.

This week on Project I Am, something different: no teaching, no notes to take. A 20-minute guided meditation on staying on your own side. On not abandoning yourself in the moment you feel afraid, in the moment you're seen, and in the quiet afterward when the second-guessing begins.

A practical note: this practice invites your attention inward, so please don't listen while driving. Save it for a moment when the time is yours. And do save it. It's built to be returned to.

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Keep becoming.

14/09/2026

There is a particular kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. You can be loved, married, surrounded, texted-back-within-the-hour, and still feel that no one in the room is meeting the real you. Just the version you sent ahead. The easy one. The capable one. The one who's fine.

For a lot of us, that gap wasn't an accident. We built it. Because somewhere along the way, being seen stopped feeling safe.

In this episode, Dr. David Schlosz explores the need to be seen: why it's biology rather than neediness, why we run from it even as we ache for it, and what happens in the body when someone finally stays long enough to witness us and doesn't look away. As he says, "We were made for the dance."

The Empathic Witness: The Reaching

There is a particular kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. You can be loved, married, surrounded, texted-back-within-the-hour, and still feel that no one in the room is meeting the real you. Just the version you sent ahead. The easy one. The capable one. The one who's fine.For...

10/09/2026

I had the opportunity to chat with Megan Yale, LMFT-S, LPC-S, LCDC, CCST-AC-T, RPT about her educational journey, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Sandtray therapy, and how two things can be true at the same time. Read more here

Reflections from my Project I Am conversation with Megan Yale, LPC-S, LMFT There's a Carl Rogers line I find myself sharing with clients almost weekly, "The curious paradox that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change". I've known Megan Yale for well over a decade.