Ordinary Unhappiness

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick power through COVID brain fog to process Sunday’s announcement and the past few weeks of relentless breaking news. What do times like these do to our ability to process time in general? What do the timelines of presidential campaigns, news cycles, and breaking stories do to our subjective experience of time and the other timelines that structure our lives? What did Freud mean when he said the unconscious was “timeless”? Plus: the denial of death, survived assassinations, terminal narcissism, political theology, and Kamala Harris as phenomenologist.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

Joseph Earl Thomas, an acclaimed writer and academic behind the memoir Sink and a novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, joins the conversation. He discusses the complexities of trauma, both in literature and real life, challenging oversimplified narratives. The interplay of food, gaming, and family dynamics adds depth to the dialogue, revealing how personal experiences intertwine with broader societal issues. Thomas also reflects on the significance of virtual spaces and their influence on identity, blending humor and depth throughout.

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessThe season is here. The time is now. It’s the most important election of our lifetimes (again). And to help navigate it all, Abby, Patrick, and Dan are launching a new series: Gerontophallocracy 2024. In this first installment, they outline the goals for the series, explain what the Goldwater Rule is and isn’t, and unpack how psychoanalysis can help us get some purchase, if not on what’s going on inside either candidate’s head, then on how our society is collectively metabolizing the spectacle and stakes of the whole thing. They then look at Thursday’s debate through the lens of psychic defense mechanisms in general and Melanie Klein’s notion of “splitting” in particular. Splitting, they explain, is a fundamental concept for understanding not just what went down that night but how our media and political elites have subsequently reacted, and for starting to get a handle on our contemporary moment in all its mind-bending rhetorical and emotional dimensions. 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/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan are joined by writer, academic, and cruciverbalist Anna Shechtman (author of the recent book The Riddles of The Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle) to unpack the dense knots of overdetermination and fantasy that make up the recent rom-com "The Idea of You" (2024). It's a world where Anne Hathaway is a 40-year old divorced mom in mid-life crisis, Nicholas Galitzine is a 24-year heartthrob boy band pop star, and their meet-cute sets off sparks and a whirlwind romance. But if desire truly is the desire of the Other, what happens when the desire of the mother extends to a member of her daughter's favorite boy band?  Is there too much incest in this film, or not enough? Plus: rom-com typologies, symptoms that can't be enjoyed, and more.Plus: If you want more Anna on OU, please check out last week’s episode, in which Abby and Patrick interview her about crosswords, French feminism, and the sexual politics of wordplay!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

Writer and cruciverbalist Anna Shechtman discusses the sexual politics of language, feminist history of crosswords, and the pleasure in creating and solving puzzles. Topics include écriture feminine, psychoanalysis, Lacan's advice on crosswords, and the complexities of language, feminism, and sexuality. Plenty of puns, frank talk about therapy, and insights into the unconscious mind through crossword puzzles.

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan turn to one of Freud’s earliest and strangest works: an untitled “psychology for neurologists,” begun in shorthand on a moving train, which went unpublished until 1950. Grappling with the text in terms of its significance and genre, they explore how abandoned experiments and seeming dead-ends can still yield insight and how, when it comes to the tricky interfaces between mind and brain, theories and metaphors can illuminate precisely in how they fall short.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

Scholar and literary critic Rebecca Ariel Porte joins Abby and Patrick to delve into Freud's pleasure principle. They discuss the complexities of pleasure, its relation to pain and the reality principle, and its role in mental development. The conversation explores Freud's theories in depth, from pleasure and neurosis to the transition to the reality principle. Plus, a Freudian analysis of a sequence in Milton's Paradise Lost!

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan sit down for a postgame analysis of Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Challengers”, a torrid tale of a trio whose shared passion is tennis – and who would rather spend their days on the court than simply go to throuples therapy. The conversation ranges from tennis to desire to how desire is the desire of the Other and what exactly that means. Along the way, they also get into triangulation, betrayal, undecidable endings, 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! 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

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.

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIn the final installment of the Fliess Extracts portion of the Standard Edition, we are joined by novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. These last letters see Freud really feeling himself as a stylist – and, not coincidentally, ruminating about masturbation, sexual dysfunction, and his mounting frustration with his interlocutor. We discuss the disintegrating Freud-Fliess friendship; an adorable dream from 1½ year-old Anna Freud; primate analogies, embodied metaphors, and noses turned up, turned down, and turned away; censorship both by “Russians” and the Stracheys; horrifying case studies and salacious gossip; and whether Freud’s much-trumpeted “self-analysis” would have ever been possible without a overdetermined transference with his nose-besotted friend.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