Ordinary Unhappiness

Friends! This week we are on deadline and/or under a terrifying pile of ungraded papers, so we're giving folks a chance to enter the wild world of The Standard Edition with this freshly unlocked episode that tackles Freud’s earliest work, his personal and professional anxieties, and the complicated disorder(s) he and his contemporaries called hysteria. (Please join us on Patreon if you like it!) And for our Patreon supporters, a lot more Fliess is coming soon in the next installments of the SE, plus Wild Analysis on settler colonialism and Thanksgiving…Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIn this second episode of The Standard Edition, we finally start doing the reading, tackling the first three texts in Volume I of the Standard Edition: “Report on My Studies in Paris and Berlin,” (1886), “Preface to the Translation of Charcot’s Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System” (1886) and “Observation of a Severe Case of Hemi-Anesthesia in A Hysterical Male” (1886). We do some ground-clearing about the history of medicine and the various disciplines in which the young Freud sought recognition and met with frustration; sketch out Freud’s biography and the world into which he was born and came of age; and discuss the figure of Jean-Martin Charcot and Freud’s time studying hysteria with him at the Salpêtrière in Paris. We pay close attention to an early case study of a male hysteric and how it prefigures some of Freud’s later case studies. Along the way, we also talk about Freud’s history with eels, anti-Semitism, cocaine, hypnosis, and his lifelong habit of making best friends and breaking up with them. We offer a handful of sources we’re consulting, whether for general edification or for reference for anyone who might be embarking on this project alongside us. 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

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIn the latest installment of the Standard Edition, we begin the Fliess Extracts section of SE Volume 1 in conversation with novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We discuss the figure of Wilhelm Fliess and what he meant to Freud; the history of the Freud-Fliess correspondence, only half of which survives; Fliess’s theories of noses, periodicity, and bisexuality; Freud’s anxiety about Fliess’s professional reputation and influence on his own ideas; Freud’s issues with condoms and coitus interruptus; and how Freud was thinking about categories like anxiety, depression, melancholia, and obsessional neurosis during this period.Articles discussed in this episode include:Young, Annie Riddington. "Freud’s friend Fliess." The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 116.12 (2002): 992-995: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-laryngology-and-otology/article/abs/freuds-friend-fliess/7F87416E73813F4EFEB9B46CB38B3D8BZucker, Arthur, and David Wiegand. "Freud, Fliess, and the nasogenital reflex: did a look into the nose let us see the mind?" Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery 98.4 (1988): 319-322: https://aao-hnsfjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019459988809800409Blum, Harold P. "Freud, Fliess, and the parenthood of psychoanalysis." The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 59.1 (1990): 21-40:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1990.11927262Have 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! 484 775-0107A 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 psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou and psychoanalyst and academic Ann Pellegrini to discuss their new co-authored book, Gender Without Identity. They talk about the genesis of the manuscript, from its beginnings in a painful case of child analysis to its distressing reception by psychoanalytic gatekeepers and “repressive forces within psychoanalysis itself.” They explore the difficulties queer and trans patients have faced in seeking psychoanalytic treatment; the resistances of institutional psychoanalysis when it comes to theorizing queer subjectivities; the struggles of queer and trans analysts themselves; and the implication of psychoanalysis in broader moral panics and political mobilizations against trans people. They discuss how theory is never just abstract, but bears upon urgent questions of care; the power and fantasies of rhetorical appeals to “protect” children; and how to conceive of gender as an experiment rather than an essential given or a predetermined teleology. Finally, Avgi and Ann offer a provocative approach to thinking about what trauma is and does, including questions of “traumatophobia” and the challenging ways trauma can be theorized and experienced in relation to gendered formations of all sorts.Gender Without Identity is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/gender-without-identity-ann-pellegrini/20606066Avgi’s recent book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sexuality-beyond-consent-risk-race-traumatophilia-avgi-saketopoulou/18390655?ean=9781479820252Ann’s book Performance Anxiety: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/performance-anxieties-staging-psychoanalysis-staging-race-ann-pellegrini/9006711?ean=9780415916868Have 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! 484 775-0107A 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessAfter a long chat about why people like and dislike horror – and an excursion into our childhood fears – we tackle John Carpenter’s 1978 classic film Halloween. We discuss sibling rivalry, bullying, uncanny objects, stranger danger, the boogeyman, the many meanings of Michael Myers, why everyone is always on the phone in slasher movies, and cultural fantasies and fears about infantile aggression and cruelty.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/OrdinaryUnhappinessTwitter: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

Abby and Patrick welcome Steven Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. We discuss Steven’s singular career trajectory (from Saturday Night Live to The Village Voice to academia); the difference between “having” or “owning” a body versus being a body; why pandemics are never just about biology, but implicate social realities, shared fantasies, and libidinal economy; the notion of the “viral underclass”; the changing landscape of HIV/AIDS criminalization laws and the case of Michael Johnson, a young Black man prosecuted for the “reckless transmission” of HIV; the origins, myths, and baggage of the term “Patient Zero”; logics of scapegoating and moral panics; hierarchies of social vulnerability and human disposability, especially as they implicate questions of race, class, sexuality, disability, incarceration, and housing status; our relationship to animals and our calculi about who gets to count as human; ideologies about health and disease, purity and pollution, infection and risk; and how viruses can help us reimagine our conceptions of borders, boundaries, permeability, autonomy, and interdependence.The Viral Underclass is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-viral-underclass-the-human-toll-when-inequality-and-disease-collide-steven-w-thrasher/17086534Have 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

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessThe Standard Edition will be a regular monthly series going forward – and here’s the latest installment! Working our way steadily through Volume I, we discuss: A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism (1892-93); the Preface and Footnotes to Charcot's Tuesday Lectures (1892-94); Sketches for the "Preliminary Communication of 1893" (1940-41 [1892]); and Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Motor Paralyses (1893 [1888-1893]). Along the way, we tackle a fascinating case study about hypnotism, feeding, and breastfeeding; will versus “counter-will"; tics, cursing nuns, imps of perversity, and The Little Engine That Could; why certain concepts catch on and others don’t; the brilliant Josef Breuer and his complicated relationship to Freud; early models and definitions of trauma; and a good Freudian reason for why you should always read the footnotes.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

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick take your calls and talk about dream interpretation, professional ethics, and visions of therapy for the world we live in versus the world we want to inhabit. (They are also unexpectedly haunted by the example of the fantasy of wanting to kill your boss.)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

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessWe talk about one of the biggest cinematic releases of the year: Barbie. We get into the film’s gender politics and vision of sexual difference; dolls, children’s play, and various forms of playfulness; dreams both literal and metaphoric; feminist utopian literature; how this movie is actually all about Ken; and why we read Barbie as a reaction formation against increasing public consciousness of gender beyond the binary.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

Abby and Patrick welcome academic and writer Ben Fong, author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge as well as Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism. They discuss the many different reasons people take drugs; American exceptionalism with respect to drug consumption; how drug policy and drug discourse is never really just about drugs; what the distinction between legal and illegal drugs both illuminates and obscures; the fundamental fantasies that accompany drug prohibition as well as the fantasies that surround particular drugs themselves; the very near future of psychedelic therapy and its relation to current treatments for anxiety and depression; individual versus social drug experiences; cocaine and neoliberalism; the not-necessarily-liberatory politics of psychedelics; how drug advertising has changed throughout the course of the last century; and the biomedical turn in psychiatry and its relation to shifting social, political, and economic conditions.Ben’s new book Quick Fixes is here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2981-quick-fixesHis previous book Death and Mastery is here: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/death-and-mastery/9780231542616You can read his recent article, “Who Deserves Amphetamines? A Social History of Stimulants” about the amphetamine shortage here: https://thepointmag.com/politics/who-deserves-amphetamines/And his new essay, “The Jobs and Freedom Strategy” is here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2023/08/the-jobs-and-freedom-strategyPlus if you’re in Chicago, you can catch Ben talking about Quick Fixes on October 13th at the Seminary Co-op bookstore: https://www.semcoop.com/event/ben-fong-quick-fixes-cedric-johnsonHave 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

Abby and Patrick welcome intellectual historian, writer, editor, and noted wordsmith Ben Wurgaft. They talk about Ben’s experiences with long-term analysis and discuss ways of accessing low-cost options for psychoanalysis before collectively digging into Freud’s 1905 book on humor, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious – especially Freud’s jokes about beggars, millionaires, and salmon mayonnaise. They get into Freud’s hydraulic model of jokes as a release of pressure; Freud’s obsession with Jewish humor; what makes jokes funny, what makes them pleasurable, and what emotions they can express; the relationship of jokes to play, childhood, and the process of education; and what it means to be a serious person. Ben’s essay “The Punning of Reason” is here: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-punning-of-reason/His essay “The Recline of the West: Couches and Psychoanalysis” is here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-recline-of-the-west-couches-and-psychoanalysis/His book Thinking in Public: Strauss, Levinas, Arendt is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/thinking-in-public-strauss-levinas-arendt-benjamin-aldes-wurgaft/11655520?ean=9780812224344His book Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/meat-planet-artificial-flesh-and-the-future-of-foodvolume-69-benjamin-aldes-wurgaft/16590129?ean=9780520379008His new book Ways of Eating: Exploring Food Through History and Culture, co-authored with Merry White, comes out later this month: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ways-of-eating-exploring-food-through-history-and-culture-volume-81-merry-white/19949891?ean=9780520392984 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