Ordinary Unhappiness

Delve into the poignant case of Fräulein Elisabeth von R, where the ordinary intersects with deep psychological insight. Explore how family dynamics shape personal identity and the impact of familial expectations on individual growth. Discover the complexities of desire and the constraints families impose on forming new connections. Abby and Patrick discuss the role of therapy in navigating these challenges, highlighting the nuanced relationship between one's past and therapeutic change. A reflective journey into the psyche awaits!

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan discuss and apply Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection. It’s an influential and powerful idea in its own right, but it also generates clarifying insights into our present cultural and political moment. To get there, the three first do some necessary ground-clearing on reading Kristeva’s notoriously complex style, the broader status of language in French poststructuralist thought, and the etymology and connotations of “abjection” and the “abject” themselves. As they discuss, abjection does more than describe an object or a state of being – it also describes a set of experiences, a fundamentally embodied suite of affects, and, above all, an ongoing set of processes that simultaneously consolidate and threaten our most taken-for-granted ideas about subjectivity, the body, other people, and political life. From trans bathroom panics to misogyny to abortion to immigration to Alligator Alcatraz and beyond, the three show how the work of abjection runs through a panoply of reactionary programs; how the continual creation of abjected, “revolting” populations and the conjuring of feelings of revulsion against them works to subvert revolutionary possibilities; and how abject groups have sought to both name and resist their oppression and to reclaim and redeploy its terms.References include: Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection” in Powers of HorrorNoëlle McAfee, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and PsychoanalysisRyan Thorneycroft, Reimagining Disablist and Ableist Violence as AbjectionEyo Awara. The Psychic Life of Horror: Abjection and Racialization in Butler’s ThoughtDarieck Scott, Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary ImaginationKelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Unravelling the Double Bind.Mark Miller. Cast Down: Abjection in America, 1700-1850Imogen Tyler, Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal BritainCalvin Thomas, Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and FilmA 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

Delve into the fascinating world of group dynamics with writer Lily Scherlis. The conversation explores how projection and transference transform from abstract ideas into tangible experiences in group settings. Discover the complexities of group relations compared to individual analysis. There’s a playful take on early group dynamics and the sensation of sizing each other up. Language is highlighted as a vital tool to articulate overwhelming emotions. Finally, ponder why some group experiences feel almost paranormal yet offer profound insights.

Patrick Blanchfield, a cultural critic and co-host of the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast, dives deep into the televised memorial for Charlie Kirk, exploring its theatrical elements and political ramifications. He discusses how biblical texts and martyrdom narratives are manipulated to create a powerful political spectacle. The conversation highlights the normalization of evangelical rhetoric in mainstream politics, the role of grief in mobilizing communities, and the broader implications of selective mourning in America. Patrick's insights bridge theology, politics, and emotional performance.

Michael Clune, an insightful writer and academic known for his memoirs and critical works, joins the hosts to explore his novel, Pan. The narrative follows Nick, a 15-year-old grappling with panic attacks and life’s complexities. Clune discusses how gaming shaped his childhood and the imaginative landscapes in his writing. The conversation touches on adolescence's intensity, the impact of 1990s culture, and how panic can alter perception. They delve into the connections between myth, consciousness, and the transformative experience of growing up.

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick read the shortest, strangest, and arguably saddest entry in the Studies on Hysteria – the case of “Katharina.” This case history sees Freud on Alpine vacation and approached by a local girl suffering a shortness of breath and episodes of anxiety, symptoms that have nothing to with altitude and everything to do with sordid goings-on in her family. Proceeding in ad-hoc, hypnosis-free dialogue, Freud traces the roots of Katharina’s distress back to her witnessing – and suffering – incestuous transgressions and public scandal. Yet certain details of Katharina’s story remained ambiguous and controversial for decades. Abby and Patrick unpack the story of Katharina as Freud initially presented it, as he dramatically revised it thirty years later, and as later excavated by psychoanalytic historians. Between the two versions of Katharina, and between these and the actual biography of the real-life Aurelia Kronich, Abby and Patrick grapple with challenging questions about trauma, memory, and abuse; the limits of what we can ever know, clinically and historically; what is or isn’t speakable, and how that troubles our ideas about validation, recognition, action, healing, and more.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! (646) 450-0847  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

Abby and Patrick welcome Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, to discuss her new book, Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis, and the exhibition of the same name that opened this week. What does “fashion” mean, and why are so many psychoanalysts and cultural gatekeepers so resistant to think about the topic critically? How do society’s codes of dress reflect logics of identity, especially when it comes to gender, and how are those norms policed – and subverted? How does clothing mediate our first-person experience of our own bodies, how do clothes and nakedness recur in our fantasies and dreams, and how do we use attire to communicate with others while alternately armoring and revealing ourselves? A renowned historian and theorist of fashion, Dr. Steele masterfully walks Abby and Patrick through fashion as a field of overdetermined material commodities and complex articulations of identity and desire. From Freud’s anxieties about paying his tailor to Lacan’s florid wardrobe to ongoing debates over what therapists should and shouldn’t wear; from Elsa Schiaparelli’s mirror jackets to Jean Paul Gaultier’s bullet bras to Sonia Rykiel’s self-caressing knitwear to Timothée Chalamet’s Haider Ackermann halter; from commodity fetishism in Marx to fetish objects in Freud; from Lacan’s mirror stage to Joan Riviere’s theories of masking and masquerade to the “skin ego” of Didier Anzieu; from high culture to low, and from the runway to the consulting room and beyond, it’s a stylish and provocative grand tour of fashion, psychoanalysis, and the ways we all use clothes, like it or not, to literally fashion ourselves.The exhibition Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis runs from September 10th 2025 to January 4th 2026 at the Museum at FIT (227 West 27th Street, New York, NY) and is free and open to the public: https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/exhibitions/dress-dreams-desire/index.phpSteele’s book Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis will be released on October 30th 2025: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dress-dreams-and-desire-9781350428195/MFIT will host a Fashion and Psychoanalysis Symposium on Friday, November 14, 2025. Speakers include Laverne Cox, fashion designer Bella Freud, psychoanalysts Patricia Gherovici, Anouchka Grose, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, Chanda Griffin, fashion scholar Simona Segre, and MFIT Director Valerie Steele. Attendance is free but registration is required: https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/events/symposium/fashion-and-psychoanalysis/index.phpHave 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! (646) 450-0847 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

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Dan, and Patrick conclude their viewing of Sophie Fiennes’ and Slavoj Žižek’s A Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006). It’s the last stretch of the film, the part where Žižek tries to bring everything together, and it thus gives Abby, Dan, and Patrick a chance to assess the Guide in its entirety. How compelling is the film’s grand unifying theory of subjectivity, lack, and the work of film as a medium that teaches us “how to desire”? What does it mean that all films are ultimately, per Žižek, about the “impossibility of making a film” as such? What’s at stake in for Žižek in the film of Hitchcock and Lynch specifically, and why do the films so neatly showcase the perils of both getting exactly what you want and not knowing what you want after all? What are Žižek’s blind spots vis-à-vis gender, violence, and comedy? And what’s really going on with that favorite adverb of his – “precisely”?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! (646) 450-0847  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

Abby and Patrick are joined by Dr. Josh West to talk about some remarkable developments in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in Australia. Josh explains to Abby and Patrick how the clinical trials he describes are better understood as an experiment in sustained psychotherapy rather than just testing a new drug, and how that experiment has profound psychoanalytic and psychodynamic salience. From the process of patient preparation to the details of “dose day” to the work of subsequent sessions of “integration,” Josh walks Abby and Patrick through how he and other clinicians do their work, and how they tackle the unique demands of maintaining a holding environment, navigating transference, precipitating psychic change, and providing help to patients who are working through end of life crises, longstanding pathologies, and other kinds of profound distress. Along the way, he provides vital context about the history of lab-based psychedelic research and the (mis)appropriation of indigenous traditions while assessing the practical, ethical, and legal challenges that arise when psychedelics become objects of psychopharmacological study, routinized treatment, and corporate investment. Josh’s suggestions for further reading include: Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind Marc B. Aixalà, Psychedelic Integration  Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life Roberto Lovato, The Gentrification of Consciousness Other sources cited include:Robert Gordon Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom,” Life Andrei Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western ImaginationHave 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! (646) 450-0847A 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessTwitter: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick turn to the next of Freud’s cases in Studies on Hysteria: the story of Miss Lucy R. It’s a short treatment – nine weeks – and an even shorter read – fifteen pages – and so the story of this English governess haunted by phantom smells often goes neglected. But as Abby and Patrick explain, her case marks a key shift in Freud’s clinical practice (away from hypnosis) and a succinct demonstration of his core therapeutic techniques. Lucy R’s case also suggests something profound about the interlocking relationships between memories and repression, and between the history of symptoms and the course of treatment. Plus: noses, a rare novel about Lucy’s nose, and tantalizing connections to Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw about the haunting (or madness) of an English governess.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! (646) 450-0847  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