Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby lost her voice, so we're unlocking a favorite from behind the paywall! We'll be back next week with more Wild Analysis followed by an interview with the brilliant Sara Marcus on her book Political Disappointment. Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessBehind the safety of the paywall, we get worked up about trauma as a trope in some of the most influential media franchises of recent decades: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel’s Avengers, and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe in general. We talk about the device of traumatizing protagonists in lieu of character or organic plot development; irony that isn’t actually ironic, quippy banter, genre pastiche, and different versions of postmodernism; Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman; recent popular discourse around the use of the idea of trauma and its underlying politics (if any); and why we hate “resilience” when it’s praised by exploitative institutions and demanded by life under late capitalism in general.The excellent piece by Danielle Carr that we discuss is here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trauma-bessel-van-der-kolk-the-body-keeps-the-score-profile.html 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 – 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: 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 Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and author of The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. In our conversation, Ajay breaks down competing left- and right-wing versions of climate “realism” and how fantasy, cynicism, and opportunism explain the gaps between carbon goals in treaties, optimistic projections, and the grim facts on the ground. But as Ajay argues, contemporary capitalism mines far more than just fossil fuels: it taps psychic resources, too. Drawing on Fanon, a major influence on his work, Ajay explains how material and libidinal forces conspire to ensnare us in an “extractive circuit,” how the packaging of “resilience” mystifies exploitation, and how exhaustion itself might serve as a political force and touchstone for solidarity. The chapter on resilience we reference is here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/sick-and-tired-chaudharyThe Exhausted of the Earth is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-exhausted-of-earth-politics-in-a-burning-world-ajay-singh-chaudhary/19992842Have 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 take on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Parts 1 and 2, Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, and a loud noise that goes [BRAAAAM]. After a crash overview of the franchise universe and a synopsis of the series plot, we unpack our various investments in the original Frank Herbert source material (Abby has many, Dan, some, Patrick, none) and our reactions to the latest film (hated it, loved it, and indifferent, respectively). Abby addresses the centrality of interiority and overdetermination to the books’ tales of intrigue and galactic power politics, and Dan walks through Villeneuve’s process for translating the original texts to film. As becomes clear, Villeneuve’s adaptations have involved some ideologically suggestive erasures and narrative choices, including the elimination of “jihad” from the Fremen vocabulary, the creation of a “fundamentalist” tendency within the Fremen, and the characterization of Zendaya’s Chani as a “moderate rebel” standing against them. All these considerations and more bring our hosts to reflect on the political context of Herbert’s original books, the ideological contours of Villeneuve’s filmic vision, and what it feels like to watch these movies in 2024. If Dune is a dark tale of resource wars, indigenous revolts, fanaticism, and mass death wherein treasured prophecies, messianic expectations, and best intentions boil down to forced choices between godawful alternatives, then what does the runaway success of the franchise suggest about our present moment and the futures we can imagine?Works discussed:Frank Kermode, The Sense of an EndingKermode, The Genesis of SecrecyAdrian Daub, “BRAAAM!”: The Sound That Invaded the Hollywood Soundtrack,” https://longreads.com/2016/12/08/braaam-inception-hollywood-soundtracks/Aaron Bady, “Dune Two Little,” https://slate.com/culture/2024/03/dune-2-movies-frank-herbert-books-meaning-differences.html  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 writer Sophie Lewis and writer and psychotherapist M.E. O’Brien to discuss their recent books on family abolition, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation and Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care. They discuss the roots of “abolition” as a philosophical concept, why it doesn’t simply mean “destruction,” and the historical relationship of family abolition to movements for police and prison abolition. Turning to the “family form” itself, they juxtapose the family as an abstract social ideal with the actual history of the nuclear family as an institution fundamentally related to the political economies of property accumulation, slavery, and settler colonialism, and more. They explore how contemporary resistances to the mere phrase “family abolition” can reflect an investment in fantasy over and against the social realities of the family as a site of violence, abuse, and labor that is rendered invisible and even disposable. Drawing on Black feminist scholarship, they unpack how questioning the family as a form can in fact catalyze liberatory and even life-saving modes of care and solidarity from the austerity-ridden cores of Western social democracies to Gaza and beyond.Sophie Lewis’s books are available here:Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation: https://bookshop.org/p/books/abolish-the-family-a-manifesto-for-care-and-liberation-sophie-lewis/17862950Full Surrogacy Now: https://bookshop.org/p/books/full-surrogacy-now-feminism-against-family-sophie-lewis/12024545?ean=9781786637291M.E. O’Brien’s books are available here:Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care:https://bookshop.org/p/books/family-abolition-capitalism-and-the-communizing-of-care-m-e-o-brien/17561686Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, with Eman Abdelhadi: https://bookshop.org/p/books/everything-for-everyone-an-oral-history-of-the-new-york-commune-2052-2072-eman-abdelhadi/18166819Other relevant articles:Sophie Lewis, “Covid-19 is Straining the Concept of the Family. Let’s Break It.” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/family-covid-care-marriage/Lewis, “I’ll Do The Dishes,” https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n09/sophie-lewis/i-ll-do-the-dishesLewis, “Mothering Against Motherhood,” https://haters.noblogs.org/files/2022/03/Mothering-Against-imposed.pdfM.E. O’Brien, “The Family Problem, Now”: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-family-problem-outroO’Brien, “Trans Childhoods and the Family Romance,” https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/trans-childhoodsO’Brien, “Communizing Care,” https://pinko.online/pinko-1/communizing-carePinko Magazine: https://pinko.online/Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoana

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 discuss a number of the letters in the Fliess section of SE Volume 1 with novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We examine a complex letter about memory, repression, and what patients do and do not remember; what Freud means by “perversion” at this point in his writing; the way Freud transforms the question of heredity from a biological to a family-centered matter, and in so doing encounters the effects of we would now call intergenerational trauma; Freud’s obsession with witches and their broomsticks; a swooningly romantic letter to Fliess about Italy, dreams, and telegraphs; and much more. The (as of yet untranslated) novel Christine cites is Imago, by Carl Spitteler. 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

Exploring Lacan's mirror stage through a parable of mirror-besotted babies, psychosis, and ego psychology. How the mirror stage challenges identity claims and the potential for radical change. The interplay between self-perception, ego development, and fluidity in the formation of the 'I'. Critiquing traditional views of the ego in psychoanalysis and advocating for embracing individual otherness in relationships for more flexible interactions.

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIn a perfect pairing with our ongoing series on Lacan, we come in from the cold and go underground by watching Theodore Flicker’s neglected classic, “The President’s Analyst” (1967). James Coburn stars as a psychoanalyst drafted to serve as the president’s shrink, and who swiftly goes from starstruck to depleted to a fugitive on the run. This satiric romp hit a nerve with the FBI, was censored in post-production, and quickly disappeared from theaters. A loving sendup of psychoanalysis, an acid-addled dramatization of Cold War anxieties, and just a gonzo all-around-good time, the film gives us plenty to talk about, from the paranoic structure of knowledge to the Big Other of surveillance to unorthodox cures for “hostility” to J. Edgar Hoover’s secret flirtations with self-analysis and more. Beverly Gage’s biography of J. Edgar Hoover is G-MAN: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. You can listen to Barry McGuire’s “Inner-Manipulations” (featured in the film) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU7F_u9L5X8Have 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 podcast dives into Lacan's mirror stage and the concept of identification, exploring the complexities of assuming an image in the mirror. It also discusses the desire for knowledge, the role of mirrors in our lives, and the limitations of human knowledge. The chapter descriptions cover topics such as difficult texts, lack, desire, the concept of the Gestalt, the double in psychoanalysis, and the announcement of upcoming episodes.

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 valiantly soldier through more of the Fliess Extracts section of SE Volume 1 with novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We discuss the Freud-Fliess sibling dynamic; a case study of a recently married singer suffering from anxiety that reminds us of “Dora” in multiple ways, including Freud’s interrogation-style approach to her treatment; why Freud’s women patients keep fleeing analysis; the notion of a symptom as fundamentally a structure of compromise; an early discussion of the idea of “defence”; and Freud’s dream about his dead father. Also: Patrick unexpectedly breaks into an aria. Christine cites Juliet Mitchell’s book Fratriarchy: The Sibling Trauma and the Law of the Mother: https://bookshop.org/p/books/fratriarchy-the-sibling-trauma-and-the-law-of-the-mother-juliet-mitchell/18705733Christine’s new book on Chantal Akerman’s La Captive will be out in March, and in the meantime, here is an excerpt (about Akerman and Proust) in The New York Review of Books: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/02/08/time-unregained-la-captive-chantal-akerman/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