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In the latest installment of the Standard Edition – and our penultimate episode on the Freud-Fliess letters! – we are joined by novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We ask what “phantasy” is as opposed to our everyday senses of the word “fantasy,” and then embark on Freud’s catalog of his and his patients’ many fantasies, which involve everything from mushrooms to abortions to compulsive gift wrapping. As we see, Freud is clearly struggling, and not just with the question of how fantasies in general relate to memories, conscious or otherwise: he's confronting some difficult material from his own dreams and self-analysis. These anxieties have everything to do with paternity and sexual violence, with Freud’s own father and with Freud as a father – and they lead him to turn, for the first time, to the myth of Oedipus.

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:

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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
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