Ordinary Unhappiness

Latest Episodes:

09: The Pleasure of the Text: The Standard Edition May 20, 2023

Show notes

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

08: Political Economy, Libidinal Economy May 13, 2023

Show notes

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

07: Kettle Logic and Family Secrets: The Uncanny, Part II May 06, 2023

Show notes

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! 484 775-0107
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

06: Unheimlich Maneuver: The Uncanny, Part I Apr 29, 2023

Show notes

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

03: Bonus Content: Short session I - Transference, continued Teaser Apr 23, 2023

Show notes

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/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

05: Wild Analysis: Mailbag Episode! Teaser Apr 23, 2023

Show notes

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/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

04: Guess Who’s Back, Back Again (It’s Freud) feat. Hannah Zeavin and Alex Colston Apr 15, 2023

Show notes

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 Women

John Forrester, Freud & Psychoanalysis: Six Introductory Lectures (new edition forthcoming)

Camille Robcis, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France

Daniel José Gaztambide, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”

Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

Sigmund 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, Lacan

Shoshana Felman, Lacan and the Adventure of Insight

Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Wilfred Bion, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers

Jordy 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

02: Transference Apr 08, 2023

Show notes

Abby, Patrick, and Dan talk about transference in Freud’s essays on analytic technique and at your local bar; what resistance is and how it manifests in different ways; analytic neutrality; what you should say to the friend who keeps getting stuck in the same relationship over and over; why people want to have a beer with the president; and whether any kind of love at all is real
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

01: What is Psychoanalysis? Apr 01, 2023

Show notes

Abby and Patrick talk about the position of “the subject-supposed-to-know” and how they anxiously inhabit it; Anna O., the “talking cure” and the founding of psychoanalysis; and different ways to explain what psychoanalysis is and why it’s impossible for them to think without it
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

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