09: Get Freudpilled: The Standard Edition

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In 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:

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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

Abby, Patrick, and Dan conclude their adventure through Lacan’s mirror stage! They reprise Lacan’s parable of the mirror-besotted baby and tie together the many threads – theoretical, clinical, and philosophical – woven through it. They walk through how Lacan musters evidence for his argument using both cases of pathology (i.e. psychosis) and “normal” dreams and fantasies, and how his situating of alienation within the ego puts him at odds with other schools of psychoanalysis, specifically those associated with Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. They outline how Lacan’s polemic against “ego psychology” expands from a critique of contemporary Anglophone psychoanalysis into a broader objection to schemes of social control and ideologies of “a freedom that is never so authentically affirmed as when it is within the walls of a prison.” Does Lacan’s parable suggest any radical potential, and does it open up new ways for thinking about the inevitability, limits, and flexibility of identity claims in our own lives and our historical moment? They confront this question by unpacking the different senses of an “exit” to the mirror stage, and how Lacan’s essay on the origins of subjectivity relates to the open question of where work of therapy ends and new possibilities of remaking ourselves and the world begin.

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/OrdinaryUnhappiness

In 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_u9L5X8

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

Our journey through Lacan’s “mirror stage” continues as the scene before the mirror unfolds into a tragic drama. Abby, Patrick, and Dan unpack the many meanings of “identification” and how, for Lacan, the self-identification the baby “assumes” from the slick image in the mirror offers a template for all subsequent identifications. They also talk about mirrors both literal and metaphorical; biological models, developmental teleologies, and roles we assume; the desire for knowledge; and knowledge as a destination versus knowledge as a process.

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/OrdinaryUnhappiness

In 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/18705733

Christine’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

Abby, Patrick, and Dan kick off their 2024 Lacan era by tackling his single most famous essay and concept: the mirror stage. Because Lacan is notoriously difficult, this is going to take multiple episodes, of which the first is devoted to stage-setting, demystifying, and unpacking exactly why Lacan is both so notoriously difficult, and also notorious in general. What shakes out of their ensuing conversation includes Lacan’s biography (in brief); Lacan as a reader of Freud and the description of his project as a “return to Freud”; the experience of reading Lacan; frustration, anxiety, the pressure of time, and the logic of the “short session”; and more. Then they turn to the essay itself, getting granular about Lacan’s relationship to phenomenology (and what that is), his opposition to Descartes’ cogito (and what that entails), and more, building to the famous scene of the baby jubilant before the image of itself in the mirror. What a charming scene of self-recognition and unproblematic joy! Or is it? Stay tuned for the next installment.

Texts cited:

Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. W.W. Norton 2007. Translated by Bruce Fink.

Malcolm Bowie, Lacan.

Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.

Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations

Bruck Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

Kareem Malone and Stephen Friedlander, eds. The Subject of Lacan: A Lacanian Reader for Psychologists

Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan: Death of an Intellectual Hero

Jonathan Lear, Freud

Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan

Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” in The Garden of Forking Paths

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/OrdinaryUnhappiness

We set out to discuss the Eras tour film but got drawn into the broader cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. Along the way, we talk about the concepts of cathexis and the Big Other; our own embarrassing childhood attachments to music; how the Eras tour is like Nietzsche’s eternal return; Swift’s self-narration about her relationship to praise, food, and body image in Miss Americana; and Abby’s unexpectedly strong negative investment in the Travis-Taylor relationship.

Texts we discussed:

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “My Delirious Trip to the Heart of Swiftiedom,"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/magazine/taylor-swift-eras-tour.html

Sam Lansky, “2023 Person of the Year: Taylor Swift,”
https://time.com/6342806/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift/

Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory

Christopher Bollas, Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience

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 are traveling, so enjoy this unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

We 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

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

We reflect on an (overdetermined) nine-month anniversary for Ordinary Unhappiness, including conversations with guests and reading recommendations – and then we take your calls! The mailbag includes a question about the libidinal dimensions of leftist political organizing, why people feel driven to do it, and if they’d be happier if they were less engaged; a question about growing up in and then leaving a tight-knit religious community, and how much genuine psychic change any of us can experience when it comes to ingrained patterns of relating to the self and others.

Texts we discussed and recommended:

New Parapraxis (Issue 3, The Wish): https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/magazine

Hannah Zeavin, “What’s Behind the Freud Resurgence?” in The Chronicle of Higher Education: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-old-mans-back-again

Alex Colston, “This War Is Causing Mass Trauma. How We Respond Matters,” in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gaza-trauma-israel/, written in response to Mohammed R. Mhawish’s All We Want in Gaza Is to Live https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-dispatch-survival/

Lydia Polgreen, “Born This Way? Born Which Way?” in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/politics/life-without-regret.html

Moira Donegan, “Radical Attention” (on Judith Herman) in Bookforum: https://www.bookforum.com/print/3001/pioneering-therapist-judith-herman-s-studies-of-trauma-and-justice-25213

Interview with Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a Discipline,” available as audio or transcript here: https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/activism/hope-is-a-discipline/

George E. Vaillaint’s The Wisdom of the Ego, available at Bookshop.org

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 psychoanalyst and clinical social worker Brian Ngo-Smith, President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW). Focusing on his paper “This Couch Has Bed Bugs: On the Homelessness of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Homelessness,” they talk about psychotherapy with unhoused clients and tensions between the priorities of psychoanalysis versus social work, the desire to help, and our society’s hatred of dependence. Turning to D.W. Winnicott’s ideas about hate in countertransference, they explore how unacknowledged hatred by caregivers for their patients manifests not only interpersonally but also in institutional behaviors and broader social policy. They also discuss Brian’s recent work on the eros of care, including a paper entitled “Porosity and Preoccupation: Queer Thoughts on Psychoanalytic Care,” which he will deliver as the Gertrude and Ernst Ticho Memorial Lecture at the National Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York this February.

Articles discussed include:

D.W. Winnicott’s classic essay, “Hate in the Counter-Transference,” available here: Thttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3330380/pdf/348.pdf

Brian Ngo-Smith, “This Couch Has Bed Bugs: On the Homelessness of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Homelessness,” Clinical Social Work Journal 46:1, March 2018.

Brian Ngo-Smith, “Porosity and Preoccupation: Queer Thoughts on Psychoanalytic Care,” to be delivered at the 2024 National Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York on February 10th from 2-4pm.

Brian’s website is here: www.ngosmiththerapy.com

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