53: Broke Psychoanalysis: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic feat. Kevin Duong

May 18, 2024

In this insightful discussion, Kevin Duong, a politics professor, dives into his research on Harlem's Lafargue Clinic, a radical psychoanalysis project from 1946 to 1958. He highlights how the clinic aimed to provide free mental health care to marginalized communities, merging Freudian concepts with Marxist principles. The conversation explores innovative therapy methods, the idea of 'class unconsciousness,' and the connection between individual suffering and social conditions. Duong emphasizes the clinic's legacy in transforming both therapy and community organizing.

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 2min

Turtles, Direction, and Personal Growth

02:19 • 4min

Unpacking 'Broke Psychoanalysis': A Journey Through Theory and History

06:10 • 24min

Innovative Psychoanalysis at Lafargue Clinic

29:42 • 22min

Therapy Beyond the Chair

51:45 • 20min

Interplay of Individual Symptoms and Societal Patterns in Community Health

01:11:20 • 2min

Healing and Collective Resistance

01:13:24 • 19min

Gratitude and Support: The Closing of an Insightful Discussion

01:32:28 • 2min

Patrick and Abby welcome politics professor Kevin Duong to discuss his research on the history of the Lafargue Clinic (1946-1958), an experiment in radical psychoanalysis aimed at providing free care to marginalized community members in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Bringing together American notables like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison alongside a colorful array of expatriate European clinicians, including antifascist partisans and refugees, the clinic sought to fuse Freud’s calls for “psychotherapy for the people” with a Marxist attention to the material dimensions of suffering. Duong walks Abby and Patrick through how the clinic functioned and what therapy there was like, from group analysis of children at play to evening seminars in which everyone involved with the clinic worked with a consenting patient to explore their distress. They also unpack the clinic’s theoretical contributions, from the notion of “class unconsciousness” to “social neurosis,” and the implications of its work on our ideas about transference, scarcity, and abundance; the ways in which authority is constituted in both therapy and social movements; how organizing and therapy relate to the recognition of suffering and the realization of desires; the Cold War, contemporary memory, the repressed histories of radical psychoanalysis and what it would mean to “repeat with a difference”; and more.

Kevin’s article, “Broke Psychoanalysis: In Memory of Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic” is here: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/broke-psychoanalysis

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music