Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby and Patrick welcome novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind. They discuss the novel’s protagonist Dorothy (who hires a second therapist to talk about her relationship with her first therapist) and Christine’s approach to psychoanalysis as a framework for thinking about everyday life. Then they turn to Wilfred Bion’s landmark 1961 book Experiences in Groups. They discuss the ways that group life and group experiences are frustrating and emotionally intense, from group chats to reading groups to classrooms to parties to military maneuvers; Bion’s notion of the various “basic assumptions” that underlie every group; projection versus projective identification; and counter-transference as a source of genuine insight. Plus, Dan explains how Bion helped him life-hack (and exit) corporate America!You can find The Life of the Mind here:https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-life-of-the-mind-christine-smallwood/14793178 Links to some of Christine’s recent writing mentioned in the episode are here: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/04/06/the-exorcist-the-shards-bret-easton-ellis/https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/04/06/poor-torvey-a-dolls-house/And here is a recent NYRB interview with her: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/04/22/infiltrating-literature-christine-smallwood/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, Patrick, and Dan get into the great Oedipal drama of our times: Succession. They discuss a ludicrously capacious number of versions of the Oedipus story; the development of the Oedipus complex throughout Freud’s writing; Freud’s notion of the primal father and the band of brothers who gather together to overthrow him; the real-life billionaire primitive accumulation monster dads who want to reverse-age themselves and live forever; Succession’s Oedipal double binds and Oedipal victories; how the show thematizes patrimony, inheritance, and destiny; what it is to have “the phallus” (and why the Roy kids don’t have it); Shiv as thwarted phallic mother; and Kendall’s symbolic castration.The Atlantic article referenced in the episode is, “The Secret Fears of the Super Rich,” by Graeme Wood: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/308419/  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

The three of us talk problematic faves, guilty pleasures, comfort food (literal and metaphorical), and the dangers of nostalgia. We focus on thinkers who have been crucial to our own intellectual formation – and who have likewise been meaningful to so many people who have turned to psychoanalysis for answers and ideas. Plus: ridiculous stories about Derrida and Zizek! Subscribe to get access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessHave 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessTwitter: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Abby and Patrick introduce a new series: the Standard Edition. That’s right; they’re going to read and discuss the entire Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. In this episode, Abby and Patrick discuss why they’re undertaking this project; the origins of the Standard Edition and the cast of characters who brought it into being, including Ernest Jones, Anna Freud, and James and Alix Strachey; the allure of becoming a completist; the pleasures and surprises of rereading; what a canon is and how it gets created; enticements of and resistances to systematicity; and Freud’s obsessive, wonderful footnotes and countless intertexts. (The Standard Edition will be a regular Patreon-only series; to follow along, subscribe to the Patreon at patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness!)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 puts Patrick on the hot seat to talk psychoanalysis and politics. They discuss how psychoanalytic concepts can help bypass partisan political explanations; the construction of a “we”; identifications and disidentifications with individuals, groups, and social orders; pleasure and the disavowal of pleasure; the church and the military; why more people don’t steal from Target; the rhetoric of how weapons of war “don’t belong on our streets”; why political legitimacy is like clapping for Tinkerbell; repetition compulsion, the death drive, and human disposability; and the concepts that animate Patrick’s writing on gun violence and mass shootings, especially political economy and libidinal economy. They return repeatedly to the case of Jordan Neely, who was killed on an F train in New York City on May 1st, 2023.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 return to Freud’s idea of the “uncanny” as an unconventional path to their real target: the unconscious. They talk about the limits of our rationality; “kettle logic” and how it operates; Freud as a “master of suspicion”; narcissistic wounds; family secrets and intergenerational trauma; and the child as the symptom of the parents.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! 484 775-0107A 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, Patrick, and Dan sneak up on the idea of the unconscious by tackling Freud’s concept of the “uncanny,” and its relationship to anxiety, fear, and the “omnipotence of thoughts.” They talk horror movies, doubles and doppelgangers, talking dolls, bleeding trees, Instagram face and the creepiness of mirrors, déjà vu, imaginary friends, ghosts, revenants, repetition, and the enchantment/disenchantment of the world. Part II coming next week!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

Continuing the conversation on transference started in Episode 2, Patrick and Dan discuss free guitars, transference as defense, magical thinking, and why experiencing transferential relationships is better than not having any relationships at all. Subscribe to get access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessHave 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessTwitter: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

We 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. (We are also unexpectedly haunted by the example of the fantasy of wanting to kill your boss.) Subscribe to get access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessHave 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

Abby and Patrick welcome Hannah Zeavin and Alex Colston, founders of the Psychosocial Foundation and Parapraxis magazine. The four discuss their paths to psychoanalysis; speculate about why Freud is back (or if he ever really left); and offer copious reading suggestions! Plus, Hannah talks about being both the child of analysts and a historian of psychoanalysis and Alex discusses his status as a “faithless Lacanian” and its implications for clinical practice.https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/Reading suggestions in the order that they were offered:Lisa Appignanesi & John Forrester, Freud’s WomenJohn Forrester, Freud & Psychoanalysis: Six Introductory Lectures (new edition forthcoming)Camille Robcis, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar FranceDaniel José Gaztambide, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation PsychologySigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on PsychoanalysisSigmund Freud, “Observations on Transference-Love”Jacqueline Rose, “Where Does the Misery Come From? Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and The Event”Sigmund Freud, “Fragment of An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (AKA the “Dora” case study)Sigmund Freud, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”Malcom Bowie, LacanShoshana Felman, Lacan and the Adventure of InsightJonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, DeconstructionSigmund Freud, Totem and TabooSigmund Freud, The Interpretation of DreamsWilfred Bion, Experiences in Groups and Other PapersJordy Rosenberg, “Gender Trouble on Mother’s Day”Jonathan Culler, “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative”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