Afleveringen
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Abby and Patrick welcome philosopher OlĂşfáşšĚmi TĂĄĂwò on the occasion of the new edition of his book Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism. Reconsidering Reparations is a magisterial work that ties together global history, data from economics and public health, philosophy, and more, and dramatically cuts through many of our momentâs thorniest debates over identity, responsibility, and political change. Together, Abby, Patrick, and OlĂşfáşšĚmi contextualize and walk through the bookâs core arguments and their implications for audiences both psychoanalytic and otherwise. Beginning with how a truly transatlantic history of the African slave trade and an awareness of how European colonialism as a properly global enterprise can together shed new light on both domestic inequalities within the United States and relations between the contemporary Global North and South, the three unpack how the accumulation of material advantages and disadvantages have, over time, resulted in landscapes of suffering that are simultaneously far-flung yet fundamentally interconnected. Historicizing and grounding the present in terms of what TĂĄĂwò terms âGlobal Racial Empireâ renders uncanny the givenness of contemporary national borders, and throws into question many of our most foundational national narratives and even the givenness of the state form itself. Moreover, thinking seriously about history and oppression reveals what canonical philosophical accounts of the liberal social contract disavow, and what fantasies and concrete purposes so many contemporary invocations of meritocracy and justice as âfairnessâ serve. The conversation builds to OlĂşfáşšĚmiâs âconstructive viewâ of reparations, the centrality of climate justice to that program, and a series of crucial disambiguations and reconfigurations of prevailing notions of responsibility, accountability, guilt, liability, and more. Indeed, as the three describe, thinking about ourselves in terms of our ancestors, while understanding ourselves as ancestors, offers everyone a path forward, one that moves beyond the dead-ends of reflexive denialism and narcissistic injury to suggest new possibilities for identification, disidentification, and solidarity, and that powerfully clarifies goals, sustains motivation, and helps us imagine possibilities for change across social differences, geographical distances, and the span of time. Plus: âtheory versus practiceâ versus âtheory and practiceâ; the example and legacy of Frantz Fanon; the joys, perplexities, and embarrassments of being a philosophy nerd; and more.
OlĂşfáşšĚmi O. TĂĄĂwò, Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2538-reconsidering-reparations
OlĂşfáşšĚmi O. TĂĄĂwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture
OlĂşfáşšĚmi O. TĂĄĂwò, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/against-decolonisation/
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674000780
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674005426
Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt, and Reparation (And Other Works, 1921-1945): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Love-Guilt-a
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In the second half of our their hundred-episode Mailbag spectacular, Abby, Patrick, and Dan field some overdetermined questions best kept snug behind the Patreon paywall. Among other things, the three take on what thinking psychoanalytically suggests about our relationships to technology, from the pleasing familiarity of effective User Interface design and frictionless movement in video games to the ways anxieties about the existence other human minds appears to be driving ever more people to prefer the projections and grandiose claims of interactions with so-called âartificial intelligence.â They then turn to another space where the questions of friction, the possibility of pain, the promise of growth, and the role of transference loom large: the classroom. In particular, they explore the ethical and interpersonal stakes of teaching psychoanalysis, and teaching in general, with an eye toward questions of repetition, narcissism, Trauma Studies as a discipline, traumatic experiences of learning, what is or isnât âoutside the classroom,â the balance between taking things personally and meeting students where they are, and whether and how pedagogy and learning alike resemble therapy in all its possibilities and pains. Plus: turtles tortoises, a round of Fuck Marry Kill (yes), Wolfenstein, and more.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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:
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Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Theme song:
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Abby, Patrick, and Dan mark one hundred episodes of Ordinary Unhappiness! They start by looking back on the showâs run so far, and what theyâve gotten from engaging with psychoanalysis as a living body of knowledge, as a corpus of classic texts, as a way of seeing the world, and more. They then turn to the episodeâs primary focus: a mailbag chock full of questions, fantasies, and desires from Ordinary Unhappiness listeners who have made the show possible. These include questions about therapeutic modalities fast and slow, the history of psychoanalytic theories about autism, the place of queerness in contemporary psychoanalysis, and more. But the three biggest topics Ordinary Unhappiness listeners want to learn more about are about drugs (especially psychedelics), the relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism, and the work of Jacques Lacan. In classic Ordinary Unhappiness style, all this leads the hosts to recommend a ton of reading suggestions, admit to the things about which they do not know (but want to learn), and to promise a follow-up episode for Patreon supporters, where Abby, Patrick, and Dan will tackle those questions and topics that were a little too spicy â or letâs say âoverdeterminedâ â for a public episode. Enjoy â and thanks for listening!
For the reading list, please visit our Patreon page. It's too long to include here!
patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby and Patrick are joined by returning guest Sam Adler-Bell, co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast and columnist at New York magazine, to talk about the HBO series The White Lotus. From plotlines involving taboos like patriarchy, incest, and family violence to themes of alienation, class antagonism, and desire, the showâs last season offers plentiful grist for the psychoanalytic mill, and Abby, Patrick, and Sam tackle all these with gusto (and plenty of spoilers). In addition to discussing the text on its own terms, they reflect on its popularity as a social symptom that implicates collective fantasies and anxieties about friendship, sexuality, money, religion, and more. As the three explore, contextualizing the show in political and ideological terms reveals not just the idiosyncratic preoccupations of The White Lotusâs creator, Mike White, but the paradoxes of how American audiences and the prestige TV shows we love navigate questions of desire, identity, cultural and sexual difference, and the repressions that underwrite them.
Know Your Enemy: A Podcast About the American Right: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy
Sam Adler-Bell, âThe Movie Industryâs Confused âEat the Richâ Fantasyâ: https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/the-movie-industrys-confused-eat-the-rich-fantasy.html
Neil Websdale, Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/familicidal-hearts-9780199325849
Imogen Binnie, Nevada: https://bookshop.org/p/books/nevada-imogen-binnie/17839995
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby and Patrick are joined by writer and artist Lily Scherlis for a provocative reflection on the ideological subtexts, historical contexts, and real-world value of some of our momentâs most bandied-about concepts and terms. Beginning with her 2023 essay for Parapraxis, âBoundary Issues: How Boundaries became the Rule for Mental Health â and Everything Else,â the interview spotlights Scherlisâs nuanced yet relentless interrogation of how the vocabularies of research psychology have proliferated across popular culture and have become ubiquitous in the workplace, in bestsellers, on social media, and in our most intimate interactions. What exactly are âboundaries,â when did having (or not having) them become such an issue, and how does their invocation function? Touching on themes and topics across Scherlisâs body of work, from CBT and DBT to the legacy of Dale Carnegie and beyond, the conversation builds to a consideration of the case of attachment theory. Unpacking the history, key concepts, and findings of this interdisciplinary field of study, Abby, Patrick, and Lily explore how its terms and categories have become so central to a cottage industry of online quizzes and therapeutic interventions. How do ideas of self-improvement and self-help relate to economic shifts in modes of production, material realities of employment precarity, and our felt sense of being together â and being alienated? What work do these terms do in the abstract, and what work are we as subjects expected to do in learning and using them? And how can we square our skepticism vis-Ă -vis such models and vocabularies with the traction they can give us when it comes to understanding ourselves, tolerating distress, navigating a difficult world, potentially changing our circumstances, and connecting with one another?
Selected texts cited:
Lily Scherlis, âBoundary Issues: How Boundaries became the Rule for Mental Health â and Everything Elseâ
Lily Scherlis, âSkill Issues: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Its Discontentsâ
Lily Scherlis, âGoing Soft: Future Proofing the American Workerâ
Danielle Carr, âDonât Be So Attached to Attachment Theoryâ
Robert Karen, Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Ability to Love
Heidi Keller. The Myth of Attachment Theory A Critical Understanding for Multicultural Societies
Ruth O'Shaughnessy, Rudi Dallos, Katherine Berry, and Karen Bateson. Attachment Theory: The Basics
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
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Abby, Patrick, and Dan turn to the first case study in Freud and Breuerâs Studies on Hysteria: Fräulein Anna O. It is a paradoxical and deeply overdetermined text. This troubled young woman was a patient of Breuerâs, not Freudâs. The prose is exclusively Breuerâs, and the approach described reflects his unwavering commitment to hypnosis, the cathartic method, and an associationist model of the mind. But this famous case can also rightly be seen as the beginning of psychoanalysis; indeed, Anna O. herself coined the phrase âthe talking cure.â Yet even as the case of Anna O. would come to serve as a kind of skeleton key for unlocking Freudâs subsequent sensitivities to listening, transference, and the layered temporalities of psychic traumas, her story would also become an object of mischaracterization and myth-making for Freud and others. Abby, Patrick, and Dan thus begin by addressing the case history as a broader genre while establishing some working distinctions between âAnna O.â as a character in Breuerâs text, the real-life Bertha Pappenheim (the person behind the pseudonym), and the subsequent legend of Anna O. as an arch-hysteric whose distress culminated in a (fictious) phantom pregnancy. They walk through Breuerâs narrative on its own terms, tackling Anna O.âs many symptoms, especially those involving her intermingling of silence and speech in multiple languages, and the pivotal scene that, per Breuer, represented a breakthrough in the treatment. The questions this all raises â about the limits of knowledge, the contingencies of suffering, and what it means to be healed â set up the next episode, about the story behind the story, and the remarkable biography of Bertha Pappenheim herself.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
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Abby and Patrick welcome returning guest Hannah Zeavin â scholar, write, editor, co-founder of the Psychosocial Foundation and Founding Editor of Parapraxis magazine â to talk about her brand-new book, Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the 20th Century. Itâs an exploration of the complex relationships that have tied together the figure of the mother as an abstraction, the work of mothering as a practical matter, and academic and popular discourses about what mothers should be and how they should go about doing it. What does it mean to think about the mother as a âmediumâ for containing, nurturing, and shepherding the development of a child, and why do debates about mothering pivot so invariably around questions of media consumption and technological mediation? The conversation spans the history of academic research into parenting from behaviorism to attachment theory; clinical and popular discourses about mothers from Freud to Dr. Spock; the profusion of tools that promise to âhelpâ mothers with their kids; âgood-enoughâ mothering, mother-blaming, and vicious double binds; moral, political, and legal debates about nannies, âhelicopter mothers,â incarcerated mothers, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome; and much, much more.
Read and subscribe to Parapraxis here: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/
Learn more about the Psychosocial Foundation here: https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/
Mother Media is available here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049559/mother-media/
An excerpt from Mother Media in the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-heir-conditioner/
Zeavin, âComposite Case: The Fate of the Children of Psychoanalysisâ: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/composite-case
Zeavin, âUnfree Associationsâ: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-42/essays/unfree-associations/
Zeavin, âParallel Processesâ: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/politics/parallel-processes/
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
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By popular request, itâs the Ordinary Unhappiness Severance episode! Abby, Patrick, and Dan reflect on the hit show from the perspectives of political economy and libidinal economy, from Adam Smith to Adam Scott to Karl Marx to Mark S and beyond (with plenty of Freud and workplace war stories along the way). What ensues is less about answering plot mysteries (although spoilers abound) than it is about exploring how the show poses questions about repression, the division of labor, alienation, and more. What does working do to us as individuals, as co-workers, and as political subjects? How do our workplaces and their rituals channel our desires and our anxieties, shape our personas, and even divvy up our basic experiences of space and time? What are the psychic wages of maintaining âwork-life balanceâ and what interventions â technological, chemical, and ideological â do we rely on to âmake it workâ? Does living under capitalism mean that we have always already been severed, and what should we expect about the limits, and the possibilities, of prestige television when it comes to representing the paradoxes and foreclosures of capitalism itself?
Selected texts cited:
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300
Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (editors), Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development: https://www.pennpress.org/9780812224177/slaverys-capitalism/
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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In a perfect pairing with our ongoing series on Lacan, we come in from the cold and go underground by watching Theodore Flickerâs neglected classic, âThe Presidentâs Analystâ (1967). James Coburn stars as a psychoanalyst drafted to serve as the presidentâs 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 âhostilityâ to J. Edgar Hooverâs secret flirtations with self-analysis and more.
Beverly Gageâs biography of J. Edgar Hoover is G-MAN: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.
You can listen to Barry McGuireâs âInner-Manipulationsâ (featured in the film) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU7F_u9L5X8
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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 -
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Abby and Patrick begin the Standard Edition Volume II. Their first text is Freud and Breuerâs famous Studies on Hysteria (1895), specifically its opening sections. First, they unpack the layered and suggestive series of Prefaces to successive editions of the book, revealing how each iteration charts the differing personal, professional, and theoretical trajectories of the two authors over time, and how they reveal Freudâs distinctive approach to memorializing his own intellectual development. Then they turn to the opening essay, originally published in 1893, âOn the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication.â Topics include the so-called âcathartic method,â the question of origins, the tensions and productivities of collaborative dialogues (not just between Freud and Breuer, but between these men and their female patients), and our first glimpses of Freud as a distinctively âcoyâ stylist. Abby and Patrick also dip into deep waters about questions of contingency and of origins â of symptoms, of cures, and of human suffering more generally â and how injuries to the psyche follow logics of causality, temporality, meaning, and alleviation that are all markedly different from those governing other traumas.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby and Patrick welcome Ann Conrad Lammers, a Jungian psychotherapist and the primary editor and assistant translator of Dedicated to the Soul: The Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung, a brand-new volume from Princeton University Press. Going against the grain of traditional narratives that present Emma as a helpmeet to her more famous husband, this collection brings together for the first time many of Emma Jungâs works across a variety of media and genres, highlighting her outsize contributions, both material and intellectual, to the tradition known as Analytical Psychology. The wide-ranging conversation explores Emmaâs biography, her ambitions, and her intellectual preoccupations. The three also dig into the story of how Emma managed the complications, at once personal and professional, of simultaneously being the wife of Carl Jung, a foundational player in several analytic institutions, a deeply respected correspondent of Sigmund Freud, and a clinician in her own right. What emerges is a tale of betrayals and boundary violations, but also of growth, resilience, and the confrontation of lifelong tasks, with implications not just for how we understand the often-neglected stories of many women clinicians in the early decades of psychoanalysis, but the stakes of confronting patriarchy while embracing the work of therapy in the present.
Selected texts:
Ann Conrad Lammers, Thomas Fischer, and Medea Hoch, editors. Dedicated to the Soul: The Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung, Princeton University Press, 2025.
Ann Conrad Lammers. âEmma Jungâs Years of Self-Liberation.â Essay available at: https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/emma-jungs-years-of-self-liberation.
Ferne Jensen and Sidney Mullen, editors. C.G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances. The Analytical Psychology Club of San Francisco, 1982
Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz. The Grail Legend. Princeton University Press, 1998.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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For the first time since the inauguration, our series metabolizing the ongoing chaos of American politics returns. Thatâs right: Gerontophallocracy is back! The topic is a certain grandiose deadbeat manchild patriarch who has succeeded in making himself even more of a ubiquitous object of speculation than Donald Trump: Elon Musk. But instead of focusing on Elonâs erratic behavior and personal symptoms, Abby, Patrick, and Dan tackle the question of Muskâs existence and prominence as a symptom of underlying political economic and libidinal economic conditions. Itâs a tale of the Return of the (Barely) Repressed extending from religious myths to secular fictions and from the dawn of patriarchy and emergence of private property to the dream of a future where the scions of billionaires can plant their flags and dynasties on Mars. Itâs a lot.
Texts include:
Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/)
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo
Karl Marx, âThe Secret of Primitive Accumulation,â in Capital Vol I (available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm)
Robert Paul, "Yes, the Primal Crime Did Take Place," in Our Two-Track Minds: Rehabilitating Freud on Culture
Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby and Patrick welcome author Sophie Lewis to discuss her latest book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation. Together, they explore the history of a variety of feminisms, self-identified and otherwise, that can justifiably provoke anxiety and even rejection in those invested in feminism as an emancipatory concept and project. Their conversation ranges from nineteenth-century activists who saw the rights of women as entailing the right to own slaves to those whose visions of abolition were inextricable from logics of racist imperialism; from twentieth-century eugenicists to prohibitionists; and from todayâs transphobic demagogues to the pinkwashing boosters of the carceral state. What are the lessons of these movements and figures, how do they reflect material and ideological struggles over social reproduction, and what challenges do they pose for the formulation of feminist projects? How, from a psychoanalytic perspective, can we interrogate our own libidinal investments in logics of exclusion, and balance our competing desires to identify and disidentify with others? Are there ways we can receive inspiration from, and claim to be in continuity with, problematic figures in the past, while also critically acknowledging their shortcomings? And above all, can we draw on those lessons to both meaningfully practice solidarity and face opposition in the present?
Enemy Feminisms is here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2440-enemy-feminisms
Abolish The Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation is here: https://lasophielle.org/writing/abolish-the-family-a-manifesto-for-care-and-liberation/
Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family is here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/711-full-surrogacy-now
Sophieâs book tour dates are available here: https://lasophielle.org/
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Abby, Patrick, and Dan close out The Project for a Scientific Psychology - and the first volume of the Standard Edition - in its entirety! First, they unpack the key steps of Freud's quantitative argument" from the nature of "Q" to Freud's proposal of different kinds of "neurones" to how (in his view) the whole apparatus works to discharge built-up energy. Then, they turn to the qualitative half of Freud's account, which includes: how Freud relates the perception of pain to the emergence of memory; his schematic formula of a minimal "ego"; and the remarkable capacity of the brain to temporarily satisfy itself through a hallucinatory "primary process." Along the way, they also encounter Freud trying out some new terms for the first time, get a preview of some key material that will appear in Studies on Hysteria and The Interpretation of Dreams, and more!
The promised âchunky bibliographyâ is available on Patreon.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst and author Jamieson Webster to discuss her brand-new book, On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe, out in March 2025 from Catapult. Itâs a wide-ranging conversation that traverses clinical, social, and political domains while remaining firmly grounded in one of the most basic prerequisites for human life: the activity of breathing. In what ways does the history of psychoanalysis represent a repression of the fact of breathing? How do analytic accounts from Freud to Winnicott to Bion to Lacan variously take up or downplay the necessity of respiration? How does thinking about breath implicate our ideas about development, embodiment, the production of speech, and more? And how does thinking in a sustained way about breath challenge our assumptions about individuality, independence, and wellbeing? The three explore the stakes and meanings of breathing, from COVID wards to police violence to the wellness industry and beyond.
A pre-order link for On Breathing is available here: https://books.catapult.co/books/on-breathing/
Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis is here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/conversion-disorder/9780231184083
Disorganization and Sex is here: https://divided.online/all-books/disorganisation-and-sex
March and April book tour dates for On Breathing:
3/11/25 7pm Eastern at Brooklyn Public Library - Central Library, Dweck Center (Brooklyn, NY) in conversation with Jia Tolentino
3/15/25 6pm Eastern at Riffraff (Providence, RI) in conversation with Kate Schapira
3/30/25 1pm Eastern virtual event with The Psychosocial Foundation
4/13/25 2pm Eastern at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY) in conversation with Leslie Jamison and a performance by Andros Zins-Browne as part of the Second Sunday series
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby, Patrick, and Dan put Winnicottâs ideas about hate and aggression to work. What everyday situations, personal experiences, and institutional practices get clarified when we consider them as reflecting displaced feelings of hate? What do popular beliefs about hate look like when seen in Winnicottian terms, and how might familiar ideologies actually rely on channeling aggression while disavowing hate and even championing values like justice, family, and love? The conversation leads Abby, Patrick, and Dan to consider everything from theologies of âhating the sin but loving the sinnerâ and the injunction to âlove your neighbor as yourselfâ to the differing approaches of Democrats and Republicans when it comes to assigning blame, enjoying cruelty, and claiming collective righteousness. They also explore how the invocation of hate can be flexibly used to disqualify, condemn, or explain away the behavior and motivations of entire groups, mystify material political antagonisms, and even assert dominance in hateful ways while maintaining fantasies about legitimacy, the impersonality of state violence, and much more.
Key texts in addition to Winnicottâs âHate in the Counter-Transferenceâ and Freudâs Civilization and its Discontents include On Loving, Hating, and Living Well: The Public Psychoanalytic Lectures of Ralph R. Greenson, M.D.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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Abby, Patrick, and Dan conclude their close reading of Winnicottâs âHate in the Counter-Transference,â unpacking and tying together its three biggest arguments. First, thereâs the connection Winnicott draws between the therapeutic encounter and childhood development: more than just an analogy, these two environments are directly connected, and in fraught ways. Second, thereâs the link he draws between early experiences of âdeprivation,â counter-transferential enactments in treatment, and the struggles of certain patients to establish a stable, safe sense of selfhood. Third, and most provocatively, is Winnicottâs articulation of how feelings of aggression and even hatred naturally arise not just from a child seeking to assert its independence, but from a caregiver. As Abby, Patrick, and Dan discuss, Winnicottâs idea of the âgood enough mother,â far from being an exercise in mother-blaming, is in fact a humbling and compassionate recognition of motherhood as a kind of âimpossible professionâ (and more). And it reveals an approach to pathology, social conventions, and ideologies of the family that are critically different from Freudâs. Plus: the cruelty of the âcult of mother,â sublimated aggression in grim nursery rhymes, and the joy of stealing noses. Up next, in Part IV: we get granular about the implications of Winnicottâs thinking for confronting real-world expressions of hate and aggression in everyday social interactions, institutional dynamics, and, above all, politics.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Abby, Patrick, and Dan start close-reading Winnicottâs famous paper, âHate in the Counter-Transferenceâ (1949, originally delivered as a paper two years earlier). They start with its place and time, situating Winnicottâs work within the context of post-war Britain. This was a clinical landscape where a tiny number of analysts stood apart from a psychiatric establishment that favored methods that Winnicott despised â above all, lobotomies. They then consider the kinds of cases Winnicottâs paper takes up and consider how the behavior of patients can, in Winnicottâs words, prove singularly âirksomeâ to even the most tolerant and well-intentioned clinicians. But whereas many of his contemporaries would swiftly send such patients off for psychosurgery, Winnicott instead explores the dynamics of the transferential encounter at play. This leads Abby, Patrick, and Dan to consider the ways that the âproblem of aggressionâ and the recognition of hate are central for Winnicottâs visions of development, the therapeutic relationship, and even institutional dynamics.Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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, Patrick, and Dan take up a topic that couldnât be more relevant to the contemporary zeitgeist â aggression â as theorized by an unlikely source: the British analyst and pediatrician D.W. Winnicott. What did this beloved and famously gentle figure have to say about aggression, and our taboos and fantasies surrounding it? Where does aggression come from, and what is its function developmentally? And what role can acknowledging feelings of âhateâ play in the family, in psychotherapy, and in everyday life? To answer all these questions, this episode â the first in a three-part series â sees Abby, Patrick, and Dan sketch out Winnicottâs biography, discuss his theoretical preoccupations, and unpack his approach to therapy, especially with severely distressed children and adults. Close-reading his essay, âThe Roots of Aggressionâ (collected in the The Child, the Family, and the Outside World) they explore how, for Winnicott, the capacity to work with aggression implicates everything from our ability to move in physical space to our feeling deserving of love.
Robert Adès et al., editors. âIndex of Available Audio Recordings.â The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 12, Appendices and Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, 2016:https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190271442.003.0011
âWinnicott: The âGood-Enough Motherâ Radio Broadcasts.â OUPblog, Dec. 2016:
https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/winnicott-radio-broadcasts/
Brett Kahr, âWinnicottâs âAnni Horribilesâ: The Biographical Roots of âHate in the Counter-Transference.ââ American Imago, vol. 68, no. 2, 2011, pp. 173â211.
D. W. Winnicott, âHate in the Counter-Transference.â The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, vol. 3, no. 4, 1994, pp. 348â56.
Winnicott, âRoots of Aggression.â The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 7, 1964 - 1966, edited by Lesley Caldwell and Helen Taylor Robinson, Oxford University Press, 2016:
https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190271398.003.0018
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Abby, Patrick, and Dan get together for a looking-forward, looking-backward session surveying the year that was and assessing the year ahead. Itâs a suitably ambivalent, Janus-faced assessment of political developments, cultural milestones, new hobbies, simmering dreads, and bold resolutions. Plus: the dream of Lacanian Finance Grifting.
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe youâve 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
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