logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2024
6m 18s

81: Mailbag Part II: Readings and Misrea...

Patrick & Abby
About this episode

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

Abby, Patrick, and Dan shake off the Holiday Syndrome torpor to continue our previous mailbag episode – including even more feedback from you! The over-arching theme is movement: what sparks different journeys for different people; the differing things we may find moving intellectually or emotionally; how public engagements with thinkers and traditions can variously move conversations forward or sabotage them from the outset; and more. They start by talking more about specific analytic thinkers, taking stock of listener responses to our (brief) thoughts on Jung and Jungians, and then turning to the exciting growth of research on Sabina Spielrein. Abby, Patrick, and Dan then turn to psychoanalysis in the arts. First up is the relationship between analysis and fiction, with topics including analysts who write fiction, the idiosyncratic genre of the case study as a kind of quasi-fiction, analysts in fiction, and what psychoanalysis suggests about our expectations of narrative movement or the lack thereof. Novel, short story, and nonfiction recommendations abound! Then the three turn to film, psychoanalytic film theory, and the stakes of using psychoanalytic thinkers and theory in other discourses more generally. Their conversation gets into everything from the pitfalls of jargon to anxieties of influence, constructive misreadings, bad faith appropriations, to what fidelity to texts and tradition means in the first place. How portable is psychoanalytic theory, and what gets lost – or gained – when analytic concepts move from use in one domain to another? Finally, they turn to yet a different sense of “movement” altogether to consider the relationships between psychoanalysis and anarchism. This involves a quick crash-course on the biography and theory of the brilliant and troubled analyst-anarchist Otto Gross, who practiced psychoanalysis as a kind of mutual aid and linked metaphorical inner revolutions with political outward ones, and our reflections on how thinking anarchism and psychoanalysis alongside one another raises provocative questions about our attachments to notions of hierarchy, individuality, institutions from the state to the clinic, and, above all, the meaning of “work.”

We tried to publish the whole reading list for this episode (22 recommendations!) and went way above the word limit. Visit us at Patreon to get the whole list!

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! (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

Up next
Aug 16
111: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 5: Studies on Hysteria, Part V: Miss Lucy R. Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick turn to the next of Freud’s cases in Studies on Hysteria: the story of Miss Lucy R. It’s a short treatment – nine weeks – and an ev ... Show More
4m 52s
Aug 9
110: Wild Analysis: Sex and the City Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick mark the announcement of the end of And Just Like That... by giving it, and Sex and the City, a psychoanalytic send-off. From the d ... Show More
11m 46s
Jul 29
Bonus Episode: Jeffrey Epstein: Open Secrets (Crossover with In Bed With the Right)
We’re happy to share In Bed With the Right's latest episode. Patrick sits down with friends of OU Adrian Daub and Moira Donegan to reckon with the Epstein case - what we know, what we don’t know, what we’ll never know, what we always already knew, and what all these contortions o ... Show More
1h 15m
Recommended Episodes
Jun 17
Palestinian Photojournalist Who Exposed Gaza’s Genocide to the World | Motaz Azaiza 153
Motaz is a Palestinian photojournalist and humanitarian storyteller who became one of the most recognized voices documenting life under siege in Gaza. With his camera as his witness, Motaz risked everything to shed light on the brutal realities faced by his people sharing unfilte ... Show More
1h 29m
Sep 2024
Psychiatrist EXPOSES PERVERTED Israeli War Tactics | Dr Samah Jabr
We sit down with the Chair of the Palestinian Mental Health Unit, Dr Samah Jabr to discuss the recent developments in Palestine. She is a qualified Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist who holds decades of experience working with and treating the Palestinian people in the mental heal ... Show More
47m 22s
Feb 2025
On The Ground in Gaza: Serving the People in Palestine
Willy Massay returns to the show to discuss his recent (second) trip to Gaza as a medical volunteer. He got back two weeks ago and stayed for over a month. He discusses his heart-wrenching experiences, the wintry conditions and terrible air quality in Gaza and how both are impact ... Show More
1h 17m
Oct 2024
A Triptych of Gaza: 365 days of tragedy and an uncertain future
It has been one year since the start of the war in Gaza. What started with an appalling crime was repaid with further crimes and relentless tragedy. This week on The New Arab Voice podcast, on the anniversary of the start of the war in Gaza, we look at three aspects: health, just ... Show More
48m 33s
Oct 2024
Chloe Kattar | @leb.historian Explains Zionist Propaganda on Lebanon
Better known to many through her Instagram account @leb.historian which has gained a large audience especially since Lebanon's 17 October Revolution, Chloe Kattar joins us on This Is Not a Watermelon for a special podcast episode to contextualize the current Israeli war on Lebano ... Show More
57m 17s
Sep 2024
Ghada Karmi | I Returned to My Stolen Home in Palestine
Palestinian doctor, scholar and research fellow Ghada Karmi offers powerful, truthful and hard-hitting words on Palestine's past, present and future. She sheds light on a common experience amongst Palestinian diaspora: that of blocked memories, suppressed as a result of trauma. S ... Show More
52m 7s
Oct 2024
Ep 5 | A year from October 7, Israel uses similar tactics to wage war on Lebanon
In this episode of Sage Takes Thyme, our hosts Elissa and Amira interview Chloe Kattar, a historian of modern Lebanon and researcher at the University of Oxford, to talk about the reality we are living almost a year after Oct 7 and the start of the genocide in G.aza. They discuss ... Show More
36m 56s
Mar 2024
Gaza the Phoenix with Hala Hanina
This week Lara and Michael sit down with Hala Hanina a  Palestinian activist, a 4th-generation Palestinian refugee from Gaza Palestine. She is a dentist and PhD researcher in sociology. She has experience volunteering in hospitals during previous Israeli bombardments. We hear fro ... Show More
59m 23s
Mar 2025
This is the Story of Dr. Husam Abu Safiya
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a renowned and beloved Palestinian pediatrician and director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, has been illegally held captive and tortured by the Israeli army for more than 59 days. On December 27, 2024, the Israeli army kidnapped Dr. Abu Safyia while b ... Show More
21m 6s