Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Ordinary Unhappiness
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| 165: Gerontophallocracy 2026: The One Where We Talk About Our Feelings Teaser | 06 Nov 2026 | 00:03:53 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness It’s a Very Special Gerontophallocracy episode! Abby, Dan, and Patrick gather around the dining room table to process the US midterms and, more broadly, to work through where they’re all at. It’s a conversation about hope and depression, cycles of triumph and disappointment, generational memories, caring for an adorable old dog, religion, and a whole lot more. 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 | |||
| 164: Technology, Telepathy, and Scanners feat. Mariana Colín from The Morbid Zoo | 31 Oct 2026 | 01:57:32 | |
Just in time for Halloween, Abby and Patrick welcome video essayist and scholar Mariana Colín (aka The Morbid Zoo) for a wide-ranging conversation about media, communication, consent, the problem(s) of other minds, and more. What lies behind our fantasies about science, and in what ways can our narratives about new technologies merely reprise old problems – while also creating entirely new ones? What are the limits to what we can imagine, what we can consent to, and what media can represent back to us? If perfect communication and psychic transparency were possible, would that actually be a good thing – or would it be a living nightmare? The three follow these questions by taking up some of Freud’s strangest work – his writing on telepathy – alongside David Cronenberg’s 1981 classic movie Scanners. It’s a wild and rollicking journey that we promise won’t make your head explode (at least not in the literal, bad way). More Mariana is here: YouTube: (345) The Morbid Zoo - YouTube Bluesky: Mariana Colín (@themorbidzoo.bsky.social) — Bluesky Website: Mariana Colín (Page 1) References include: Sigmund Freud, “Psychoanalysis and Telepathy” (1921) Sigmund Freud, “Dreams and Occultism,” from New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) Claudie Massicotte, “Psychical Transmissions: Freud, Spiritualism, and the Occult” Maria Pierri, Occultism and the Origins of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Ferenczi, and the Challenge of Thought Transference Maria Pierri, Sigmund Freud and the Forsyth Case, Coincidences and the Thought-Transmission in Psychoanalysis Hannah Zeavin, The Distance Cure Roger Luchurst, The Invention of Telepathy CS Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” Avgi Saketopoulou, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia 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
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| 163: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 14: Studies on Hysteria, Part XIV: Adieu to Breuer Teaser | 24 Oct 2026 | 00:05:30 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick take up Josef Breuer’s final contribution to the Studies on Hysteria. The second-last-chapter of the Studies, this lengthy “Theoretical” essay is generally viewed by commentators as holding only historical interest. Yet it crystallizes the clinical preoccupations, philosophical questions, and favorite metaphors that Freud and Breuer shared – from recurrent analogies to state-of-the-art technologies (IE, electricity and telephones) to the relationship between ideas, the body, and states of consciousness. Moreover, as Abby and Patrick explain, this essay not only puts the character of Freud’s originality in context, but also showcases Breuer at his most sympathetic, including some striking reflections on Victorian sexual mores, trauma, and more. 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 | |||
| 162: UberTherapy and Its Discontents feat. Elizabeth Cotton and Linda Michaels | 17 Oct 2026 | 01:34:16 | |
Abby and Patrick are joined by Elizabeth Cotton, author of UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health, and Linda Michaels of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), for a conversation about platform capitalism and datafication are reshaping psychotherapy, and how clinicians and patients can organize for safer, deeper care. From Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to practice-management companies, and more, Elizabeth and Linda unpack how an unholy alliance of players have together worked to standardize, automate, and monetize the work of therapy. As they explain, these developments – which are mirrored by trends in other industries – not only exploit gaps in existing mental health infrastructure in the US and UK, but pose unique risks to privacy, safety, and basic well-being. Against these tendencies, Elizabeth and Linda reflect on research from the Psychotherapy Action Network, which has found that people increasingly demand depth therapies and long-term relationships with human clinicians over symptom reduction and on-demand chatbot interaction. The result is a far-reaching conversation about technology, solidarity, and more. Elizabeth Cotton, UberTherapy The Business of Psychotherapy: Practice Management Companies Holding the Frame in an Era of Corporate Care Corporations in the Consulting Room When Talkspace Sued PsiAN and Me What People Need and Want from Therapy 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 | |||
| UNLOCKED: 149: Myth, Fate, and Desire: Narcissism, Part 2 | 10 Oct 2026 | 01:25:53 | |
Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan dig into the realms of myth and fable to investigate the ancient origins of the Narcissus myth. As they discover, behind the skeletal form of the story (i.e., guy falls in love with his own reflection) are a multitude of versions, with some striking variations and suggestive throughlines. After cataloguing these, they turn to the primary source for the modern version of the myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, reading that poem’s account of the doomed encounter between Narcissus and the nymph Echo as a story of impossible desires and intertwined destinies. Texts cited include: Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Charles Martin: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393925340 Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths Malcolm Kenneth Brown, The Narratives of Konon The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: https://oxyrhynchus.web.ox.ac.uk/ 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 161: Wild Analysis: Sunset Boulevard | 03 Oct 2026 | 00:03:18 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness “No one leaves a star – that’s what makes one a star!” In the latest installment of Wild Analysis, Abby and Dan discuss Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film, Sunset Boulevard. From Gloria Swanson’s masterful portrayal of faded starlet Norma Desmond to the film’s ruthless depiction of Hollywood’s love affair with youth and the very idea of movie magic itself, it’s a perfect opportunity for Abby and Dan to explore themes of celebrity, narcissism, and the tyranny of the image. Along the way, they talk psychic retreats, mirrors and the mirror stage, glamorous outfits, dead chimpanzees, and more. References: 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 160: Very Special Boys feat. Adrian Daub | 26 Sep 2026 | 01:52:03 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome back returning guest Adrian Daub. The occasion is Adrian’s latest book, What Tech Calls Governing. A follow-up to his 2020 book What Tech Calls Thinking, an intellectual history of Silicon Valley and critique of tech culture, What Tech Calls Governing unpacks subsequent developments and continuities that go deeper than pundits’ loose talk of a “vibe shift.” Indeed, as Adrian explains, recent years have seen Big Tech abandon the rhetoric of not being “evil” and promises of progressive uplift in favor of a rhetoric of inevitability, brazen collaboration with right-wing actors, and vague appeals to half-baked “longterm” utilitarianism. Adrian, Abby, and Patrick reflect on the distinctively gendered aspects of these developments, from the public antics of high-profile tech titans like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to deeper logics of contempt for vulnerability and the celebration of dominance. Along the way, they explore questions of exhaustion, embarrassment, male homosociality, creepiness, narcissism, the indignities of middle age, generational anxieties, and more. Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Governing Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking Pre-order Adrian’s forthcoming book, Project 1933: Fascism Then and Now Adrian’s podcast, In Bed With The Right Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals Novalis, The Novices of Sais Albert Burneko, “I Don’t Think David Brooks Is Okay, You Guys” Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley Kate Manne, "A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants" 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 159: Karen Horney: Narcissism, Part 7 Teaser | 19 Sep 2026 | 00:07:51 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness The Ordinary Unhappiness journey through the landscape of modern narcissism continues – and arrives in the United States! In this episode, Abby, Patrick, and Dan turn to the work of Karen Horney, a figure who has variously been called a Neo-Freudian, a forerunner of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, a key player in a psychoanalytic “Cultural Turn,” and one of the first prominent psychoanalytic feminists. But as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explore, such labels fall short of capturing the power of Horney’s insights and the lucidity of her prose. Rejecting Freud’s misogyny and his biological account of drives, Horney developed a psychoanalytic approach that was thoroughly cultural and that emphasized notions of selfhood and identity. For Horney, “neurosis” (IE, non-psychotic mental illness and problems in living) reflected the ways in which an individual’s strategies for emotional survival, first developed during their childhood in response to distress in the family environment, could crystalize into maladaptive patterns for relating to both the self and to others. Horney thus saw “narcissism” as useful only insofar as the term pinpointed “self-inflation” as a defensive strategy that, as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explain, comes at a painful and alienating price. 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 158: On the Impossibility of Being a Real Man feat. Robin Dembroff | 12 Sep 2026 | 01:29:16 | |
What does it mean to talk about “patriarchy” in the present? What are the origins of the term, its uses, and its limits? How has it impacted popular discourse, and why does it seem to have gone out of fashion in the academy? And in what ways might the term – and the concept – still hold untapped power? To tackle all these questions and more, Abby and Patrick welcome philosopher Robin Dembroff, author of the brilliant new book, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes our Reality. Weaving together intellectual history and social commentary, Robin clarifies the origins of patriarchy as a keystone concept in twentieth century feminism, and traces its trajectories, for better and for worse, across the academy and beyond. Offering a new model for thinking about patriarchy in dynamic and structural terms, Robin suggests that we can think of patriarchy as a kind of grammar, a system for ordering social life, for processing individual experiences, and for reproducing logics of exploitation, dominance, and lack. The conversation that ensues not only subverts tired debates (about the crisis of masculinity, male loneliness, and the like) but clarifies their stakes, and suggests new ways of thinking about institutions, solidarity, and struggles going forward. 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 157: Wild Analysis: Backrooms Teaser | 05 Sep 2026 | 00:07:31 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan venture deep into the labyrinthine warrens of Kane Parson’s smash-hit movie, Backrooms (2026). Eschewing the impulse to pin the film down to background “lore” or a single interpretative meaning, they instead take up both the film and its success as symptomatic expressions of an overdetermined multitude of anxieties, cultural experiences, and generational touchstones. From the uncanny to creepypastas to strip-malls to COVID to therapy to internet surveillance and beyond, Abby, Patrick, and Dan excavate the materials that fill the backrooms of our culture’s networked unconscious, asking questions that implicate the conditions of the work of art under conditions of AI reproduction and our fears about interiority itself. 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 156: 9/11: Chosen Traumas and Time Collapse | 29 Aug 2026 | 02:38:36 | |
Abby and Patrick bring a psychoanalytic lens to bear on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. As they explain, psychoanalysis offers tools for thinking both about specific political conditions and historical events and for reflecting more generally on the ways dramatic events can function politically and become “history” in the first place. Moreover, psychoanalytic concepts can bring together the perspectives of political economy, libidinal economy, and our own personal experiences to help us navigate overwhelming events and better track what’s new, what isn’t, what we need to remember, and what we’re encouraged to forget. To that end, Abby and Patrick take up psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan’s notion of the “chosen trauma,” a model for how episodes of mass trauma can become touchstones for defining group identity, and apply it to the events of 9/11, the “Global War on Terror” that ensued, and their ongoing legacy in our present. Toggling between artifacts of popular culture, military history, journalistic accounts, and more, Abby and Patrick reflect on how American society reacted to the trauma of 9/11; how political elites capitalized on the situation; how ideas of exceptionalism, innocence, vengeance, and even time and causality themselves were reconfigured; and how we’re still contending with the cultural and institutional consequences of those processes in the present. Texts cited include: 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song:
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| 155: Freud’s “On Narcissism”: Narcissism, Part 6 Teaser | 22 Aug 2026 | 00:03:15 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness The Summer of Narcissism brings Abby, Patrick, and Dan to Freud’s landmark 1914 essay, “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” While the sexologists considered narcissism a niche sexual perversion occurring only among a small number of adults, Freud structuralized the concept into a broader model of universal processes of development and subject formation. Moreover, Freud argued that some kind of narcissism was necessary for any basic human capacity for self-esteem, and saw it implicated not only in comparatively rare pathological formations, but also in socially celebrated activities like parenting and falling in love. And as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explore, while much of Freud’s essay hasn’t stood the test of time (especially in its homophobia and misogyny), his distinction between “primary narcissism” and “secondary narcissism” remains vital and has proven foundational for subsequent theoretical and clinical thinking about personality disorders, treatability, and more. 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com Theme song: | |||
| 154: Let’s Talk About Sex(ology): Narcissism, Part 5 | 15 Aug 2026 | 02:08:05 | |
The Summer of Narcissism journey brings Abby, Patrick, and Dan to late nineteenth century Europe, and to the revolutionary and controversial new discourse of sexology. Emerging at the intersections of medicine, anthropology, public health, education, and the legal system, sexology took up human sexual behavior not as a question of sin or theological denunciation, but as an object of scientific study. Introducing the field, Abby, Patrick, and Dan survey how various sexologists understood sexuality, sample the rich behavioral taxonomies they produced by way of reading from classic works by Richard Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, and reflect on how sexologists’ work combined an emphasis on self-consciously secular scientific objectivity with explicit moral attitudes and implicit normative assumptions. The three also how explore how the sexological enterprise struggled with the implications of two core problems – the question of auto-eroticism (the ways people use their own bodies for sexual pleasure) and the question of orientation (the ways people’s sexual behavior does or doesn’t involve the bodies of others). And as Abby, Patrick, and Dan discover, it was precisely while trying to reconcile those problems that two sexologists summoned Narcissus into modernity, and named “narcissism” for the very first time. To support the Muriel Gardiners campaign at the Psychosocial Foundation for the Known and Elsewhere Collective, Parapraxis Books, and more: https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/donate Learn more about the Psychosocial Foundation, including seminars, events, short courses, and therapy: https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org Learn more about Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/ Selected works cited: Havelock Ellis, “Auto-Erotism: A Psychological Study” (1898) Paul Näcke, “Die sexuellen Perversitäten in der Irrenanstalt” (1899) Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972) Mark Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1998) 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 | |||
| 153: Everyone’s Looking at You and You’re Probably Going to Hell: Narcissism, Part 4 Teaser | 01 Aug 2026 | 00:09:50 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness The Ordinary Unhappiness journey through the origins of narcissism arrives at the early modern period and a Europe in full-blown crisis. It’s a world where the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church no longer holds sway, where political and market forces have created new communities and dislocated old ones, and where traditional familiar theological answers fail to satisfy ever-more urgent existential questions. Working their way through the history of the Reformation and the theologies of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Abby and Patrick trace the contours of this world’s emerging conception of selfhood and its many anxieties over interiority, predestination, success, luxury, conformity, modesty, pleasure, and more. They then unpack the particular implications of how this new order views sexual difference, turning to the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and her remarkable account of why “the thoughts of women ever hover around their persons.” 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 | |||
| 152: The Pope, the Church, and the Politics of Progress feat. Jack Hanson | 25 Jul 2026 | 01:50:42 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome writer, critic, and religion scholar Jack Hanson for an in-depth and wide-ranging conversation about the politics and social significance of the contemporary Catholic Church. With Jack’s new piece in Harper’s, “Radical Reformation: The Catholic Church’s Progressive Revival,” as a guide, the three put the accession of the Chicago-born Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV into the context of the Church’s complicated relationship with modern geopolitics, economic pressures, and technological change. From papal critiques of nineteenth century industrialization to the emergence of liberation theology in the Global South to the impact of Vatican II and beyond, Jack walks Abby and Patrick through the intellectual traditions and internal tensions that have shaped the Church’s attitudes towards the state, the market, and secular political ideologies. Going beyond headlines and reductive soundbites, Jack helps Abby and Patrick situate the contradictions of American Catholicism – embodied most visibly in the reactionary politics of figures like J.D. Vance – within a broader narrative of US imperial decline and crises of institutional legitimacy and moral authority. As a case in point, the three turn to the Pope’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, its provocative assessment of AI specifically, and its account of conditions of contemporary anomie more generally. What ensues is a conversation about desire, fantasy, technology, solidarity, and what it means to be human. Jack Hanson, “Radical Reformation: The Catholic Church’s Progressive Revival”: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/08/radical-reformation-jack-hanson-catholic-church-progressive/ Jack’s Substack, Phantom Heresy: https://phantomheresy.substack.com/ Jack on Magnifica Humanitas on the Know Your Enemy podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4OZialymsdMglvaEdujzx2 More by Jack on the Catholic Church: “The Text That May Be Key to How the New Pope Thinks,” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/pope-leo-xiv-rerum-novarum-socialism/ “Last Rites,” https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/10/20/last-rites-death-penalty-catholic-church/ “Mamdani’s Newest Ally: The Catholic Church?”: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mamdanis-newest-ally-the-catholic-church.html “The Heresy of Americanism,” https://newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/the-heresy-of-americanism “The Post-Francis Church,” https://yalereview.org/article/pope-francis-death-future-catholocism 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 | |||
| 151: All is Vanity: Narcissism, Part 3 | 18 Jul 2026 | 00:03:13 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan continue tracking the reflections – and refractions – of the myth of Narcissus across Western history. From the songs of French troubadours to the tale of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath to the poetry of Dante and the dialogues of Petrarch, they examine how Ovid’s narrative of Narcissus and Echo grew into a powerful cultural template for dramatizing changing attitudes towards love, sexuality, gender, and more. By the same token, as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explore, the figure of Narcissus became a touchstone for other literary traditions, moral discourses, and theological traditions. Turning to key moments from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Church Fathers, the three then sketch out how the question of narcissism also came to reflect longstanding cultural anxieties about vanity, “vainglory,” pleasure, embodiment, humility, pride, and the nature of selfhood. 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 | |||
| 150: Cops in Our Heads feat. Stuart Schrader | 04 Jul 2026 | 01:33:48 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome historian Stuart Schrader for a conversation about the history, ideology, and politics of contemporary American policing. Schrader’s new book, Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, gives the three a chance to unpack the specific institutions behind the catchall of “the police” and to pinpoint the specific, historically contingent ways American police have acquired outsize political and cultural power. Stuart walks Abby and Patrick through his research on the history of police unions and the ecosystem of institutions that have made arming, funding, empowering, and immunizing police bipartisan priorities. Toggling between perspectives of political economy and libidinal economy, Stuart, Abby, and Patrick address questions like: How are police unions different from other unions, and how is police work fundamentally different from other kinds of work? How is power distributed within police agencies, how do different institutions compete with one another for resources and patronage, what antagonisms divide police, and how do they nonetheless manage to protect their shared claim to wield violent, discretionary power? The conversation drills deep into urgent, fundamentally psychoanalytic questions, questions that hit all the harder on the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States itself. Why are America’s police such objects of overdetermined discourse and fantasy? How are Americans variously taught to summon police, to identify with police, to fear police, and to otherwise think about the policing, oftentimes in ways entirely divorced from material realities? Why do so many Americans resist recognizing police as properly self-interested political actors, despite manifest evidence to the contrary, and even while police leaders have openly embraced partisan political engagement? How do police think about themselves, and what ideological narratives and cultural forces have made police such a naturalized and ubiquitous presence in American life? And if we can bring ourselves to see what’s repressed yet right front of our faces – the reality of “Blue Power” – then what new possibilities for insight, organizing, and political change might that open up? Stuart Schrader, Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves. Stuard Schrader, Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. More about Stuart: https://stuartschrader.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! (646) 450-0847 | |||
| 149: Myth, Fate, and Desire: Narcissism, Part 2 | 27 Jun 2026 | 00:09:40 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan dig into the realms of myth and fable to investigate the ancient origins of the Narcissus myth. As they discover, behind the skeletal form of the story (i.e., guy falls in love with his own reflection) are a multitude of versions, with some striking variations and suggestive throughlines. After cataloguing these, they turn to the primary source for the modern version of the myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, reading that poem’s account of the doomed encounter between Narcissus and the nymph Echo as a story of impossible desires and intertwined destinies. 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 | |||
| 148: You’re So Vain: Narcissism, Part 1 | 20 Jun 2026 | 01:28:44 | |
Abby, Patrick, and Dan kick off Ordinary Unhappiness’s Summer of Narcissism series! In this first episode of many, the three reckon with how talk of “narcissism” and “narcissists” is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, from therapy sessions to self-help-books to popular media to op-eds to the dating scene and beyond. Yet as Abby, Patrick, and Dan explore, “narcissism” in practice seems to mean radically different things to different people, gets invoked for wildly different purposes, and is hotly debated, with plentiful disagreements, even among specialists in any given field, let alone across disciplines. At the same time, the idea of narcissism speaks powerfully to people as they navigate personal relationships and struggle to make sense of group behaviors. Narcissism, in other words, is a quintessentially overdetermined concept, with simultaneously clinical, theoretical, and all-too-personal implications, and one that raises philosophical, political, and painfully practical questions about the relationship between normality and pathology, the individual and the collective, the clinical and the polemical, and more besides. It’s both the beginning of a deep dive into the meanings, history, and stakes of a much used – and much-abused – buzzword and also a great (re)introduction to the Ordinary Unhappiness project and what it means to think psychoanalytically in general. Next week in Part 2: Narcissus in myth and imagination! 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 | |||
| 147: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 13: Studies on Hysteria, Part XIII: The Home Economics of Grief: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Concluded Teaser | 13 Jun 2026 | 00:03:13 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick wrap up their reading of the Elisabeth von R case study. First, they tackle the Discussion section of Freud’s paper. As they discover, this section goes beyond Elisabeth’s story: it contains yet more case vignettes of still other patients, as well as a meditation on the strangeness of an approach to scientific inquiry and practical treatment where stories are the primary source of data. Second, they observe Freud’s beginning to explore a set of questions that will recur throughout his subsequent work – involving, above all, the relationships between embodied experiences, bodily metaphors, and the unconscious. Finally, Abby and Patrick go beyond the text to reflect on the biography of the woman who was Elisabeth von R – Ilona Weiss – and what it means for an analytic treatment to be successful. 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 | |||
| 146: Winnicott: Creativity and Subjectivity, Part III Teaser | 30 May 2026 | 00:07:49 | |
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 their reading of Winnicott’s paper, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” focusing specifically on Winnicott’s two case studies. The first is the story of a distressed little boy who has developed an idiosyncratic relationship to string; the second is an adult woman struggling with feelings of loss, memories of her dislocated childhood, and a fantasy about a beautiful white horse. Along the way, Abby, Patrick, and Dan put Winnicott in conversation with other analytical concepts – from Freud’s notion of mourning to Lacan’s idea of the signifying chain – and work through some challenging implications for thinking about drug addiction, intergenerational traumas, and more. 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 | |||
| 145: Psychic Militancy feat. Lara Sheehi | 23 May 2026 | 01:32:27 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome clinician, activist, and writer Lara Sheehi, author of the brand-new book, From the Clinic to The Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures. Situating this book and her other work within the context of her background and experiences with psychoanalytic institutions, Sheehi leads Abby and Patrick on a frank and searching conversation with far-reaching implications. What does it mean to identify with psychoanalysis in the abstract, what are the tools psychoanalysis gives us for thinking about the political stakes of our identifications, and what does it mean when psychoanalytic institutions demand disidentification from lived experiences and urgent political concerns? What stories does mainstream psychoanalysis tell about itself, what histories does it repress, and what contemporary material realities does it disavow? What are the promises of a “despecialized” psychoanalysis, and how might a despecialized psychoanalysis put psychoanalytic concepts and approaches to liberatory use? Addressing these questions and more, the three discuss topics including: the history of psychoanalysis as a Eurocentric enterprise; its extensive weaponization as a tool of imperial domination and counterinsurgent repression; emancipatory and decolonial approaches to psychoanalysis via figures like Frantz Fanon; the complicities, contradictions, and enactments of contemporary psychoanalysis against a backdrop of transphobic legislation, genocide in Gaza, and more; psyops, psychological warfare, and military psychology; psychodynamic counterinsurgency theory; logics of blame, ingratitude, exclusion, and confusion; the work of “psychic intrusions” on the level of individual psyches and group dynamics; the necessity of “psychic militancy” as a concept and as a disciplined practice; and much, much more. Lara Sheehi, From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine Sara Ahmed, Willful Subjects Ernesto Che Guevara, “On Revolutionary Medicine” Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth David Petraeus, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency “A conversation between sword and neck” Ghassan Kanafani’s 1970 interview with ABC’s Richard Carleton in Beirut 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 | |||
| 144: Winnicott: Creativity and Subjectivity, Part II Teaser | 16 May 2026 | 00:04:00 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan continue their reading of Winnicott’s famous essay, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” Focusing on the middle third of the paper, the three unpack Winnicott’s description of the transitional object as the “first not-me possession,” the stakes of his idea of the “good enough mother,” and how “good enough” care involves an interplay of illusion and disillusion that Winnicott sees as essential to the development of an infant’s capacity for reality testing, self-awareness, and more. They close-read Winnicott’s narrative and diagrammatic illustration of an intergenerational story of symptoms and transitional objects within a single family; address the technical distinctions between his models and those of Melanie Klein; and consider implications for adult activities of artistic creation and aesthetic 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! (646) 450-0847 | |||
| 143: Winnicott: Creativity and Subjectivity, Part I | 09 May 2026 | 01:39:47 | |
Taking a breather from our moment’s unrelentingly grim headlines, Abby, Patrick, and Dan return to a favorite analytic thinker – Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) – and begin the first of a two-part episode on one of his most famous papers, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena” (1951/1953). Winnicott’s ostensible subject here is infantile development, and specifically the attachment very young children frequently develop towards a particularly favored object, whether that be a blanket, a stuffed animal, or the like. But Winnicott also imbues an infant’s “lovie” with profound significance that goes beyond its material incarnation. Rather than being just another plaything, it holds an essential role in the development of a child’s incipient subjectivity, and demands that we think beyond binary distinctions between subject and object, inside and outside, and self and other. As a “transitional object,” it even suggests a kind of template for sophisticated adultg activities ranging from artistic creation to religious rituals to sexual fetishism to addiction and more. Close reading the first six pages of the essay, Abby, Patrick, and Dan unpack Winnicott’s deceptively simple prose and delightful lists, exploring how play is in fact neither frivolous nor merely the province of children, but in fact something much more serious, and thinking through the implications of Winnicott’s idea of “transitional phenomena” for psychotherapy, education, aesthetics, and more. Works Cited: Donald Woods Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomenon,” in Playing and Reality (essay originally published in 1951; Playing and Reality, 1971) Also as mentioned in the episode, the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research’s Annual Social is June 4th! Abby is on the host committee and we’ll both be there – come join us to support BISR? For more details and tickets: https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/events/2026-annual-institute-social/ And a link to Abby’s summer Brooklyn Institute class, Theories of Consent: Subjectivity and Sexual Ethics: https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/new-york/theories-of-consent-subjectivity-and-sexual-ethics-2/ 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 | |||
| 142: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 12: Studies on Hysteria, Part XII: Dancing On My Own: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Continued Teaser | 02 May 2026 | 00:08:34 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick arrive at the third and final phase of Freud’s treatment of Elizabeth von R. This is where everything comes together, where Elizabeth’s stories, re-told one last time, reveal a heartbreaking throughline, and where Freud’s approach yields a dramatic and decisive interpretation. Abby and Patrick walk through it all, reprising themes of genre, psychoanalytic technique, psychotherapeutic ethics, the cumulative psychic impact of life’s contingencies, and more. 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 | |||
| UNLOCKED: 133: Laplanche Part Two: The Primal Situation feat. Danielle Drori | 25 Apr 2026 | 01:59:25 | |
Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick welcome Danielle Drori of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for the second installment of a two-part series on the thought of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. Together, the three discuss a pivotal chapter in New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, unpacking Laplanche’s “universalized” transformation of Freud’s seduction hypothesis; Laplanche’s “primal situation” and its roots in anthropology and phenomenology; and what these ideas reveal about our invariably messy experiences of parenting, therapy, and more. 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 | |||
| 141: Jonathan Lear and the “Good-Enough World” feat. Chris Landry | 18 Apr 2026 | 00:08:03 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Clinician Chris Landry joins Abby and Patrick for a reflection on the life and legacy of prominent psychoanalyst and philosopher Jonathan Lear (1948-2025). From Yale to the University of Chicago to the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and beyond, Lear creatively combined his clinical experiences, a rigorous reading of Freud, and a perspective steeped in classical Western philosophical traditions. As Chris, Abby, and Patrick explore, the result is a singular body of work that clarifies otherwise challenging questions of epistemology and hermeneutics while also speaking directly to urgent political questions and the lived texture of contemporary human life. Chris, Abby, and Patrick proceed by close reading a chapter from one of Lear’s most celebrated works, Love and Its Place in Nature, unpacking Lear’s account of how love underwrites human development by making possible the experience of a “good-enough world.” The three then walk through the ethical implications of Lear’s thought for the institutions and practices of contemporary psychotherapy, which often neglect interpretative dialogue and attentive care in favor of alienating and crudely pathologizing both patients and practitioners. The conversation builds to a discussion by Chris of how Lear, together with Fanon, has inspired his own work in community psychoanalysis, in facilitating a working group for practitioners, and in critiquing the power dynamics of the contemporary clinical landscape. 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 | |||
| 140: Psychoanalysis for the People feat. Loren Dent | 11 Apr 2026 | 01:19:10 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome returning guest Loren Dent. As co-director of Brooklyn’s Greene Clinic, Loren is the ideal person to unpack the history, meaning, and contemporary landscape of community psychoanalysis. Drawing on Brazilian analyst Gabriel Tupenambá’s idea of the “institutional circuit,” Loren walks Abby and Patrick through a history extending from Freud’s hopes for a “psychoanalysis for the people” to the refugee analyst diasporas of WW2 to the interventions of Jacques Lacan to contemporary efforts to bring a community psychoanalytic orientation to analytic institutions around the United States. As Loren, Abby, and Patrick explore, the idea of community also psychoanalysis raises questions about the communities psychoanalysis can serve, communities it has previously excluded, and psychoanalytic institutions as communities in their own right. Topics include the relationship between theory, practice, and doctrine; differing national histories of psychoanalysis; ego psychology and the question of adaptation; the embededness of signifiers; hierarchies and antagonisms within analytic institutions, as well as efforts to reconstellate them; the complicated stakes of “expanding access”; burnout as both an individual condition and institutional symptom; what drives people to practice psychoanalysis in the first place, and more. More about Loren at the Greene Clinic and about his courses at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Works cited: Gabriel Tupinambá, The Desire of Psychoanalysis, Exercises in Psychoanalytic Thinking. Sigmund Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis. Elizabeth Ann Danto, Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice 1918-1938. Emily Kuriloff, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich. Resources: Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) Community Psychoanalysis Track & Consortium Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, Community Psychoanalysis Certificate Program Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute Concentration in Community Psychoanalysis DIVISION/Review, Special Issue on Community Psychoanalysis, 2022
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| 139: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 11: Studies on Hysteria, Part XI: Technique and Resistance: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Continued Teaser | 04 Apr 2026 | 00:04:16 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick cover the “second phase” of Freud’s treatment of Elisabeth von R. Their focus this time is on Freud’s technique, and especially on Freud’s insistence that his patient pursue her associations no matter where they might lead. What are we to make of Freud’s apparent confidence here – is it self-confidence, confidence in the process, confidence in Elisabeth, or some combination of all three? What is the character of “resistance” in this text – who or what is doing the resistance, and what is being resisted? How does Freud’s theory of psychic injuries that become manifested in bodily symptoms relate to the practice of interpretation, and the mechanism of therapeutic action in general? Close-reading Freud’s own words in some passages of remarkable candor, Abby and Patrick address these questions and more. 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 | |||
| 138: Genocide and the Politics of Hospitality feat. Avgi Saketopoulou | 21 Mar 2026 | 01:32:46 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou for a frank conversation about politics, psychoanalysis, and the politics of psychoanalysts and of psychoanalytic institutions. Recent years have seen multiple psychoanalytic schools, museums, and other entities invite lecturers and panelists to discuss ongoing events in Israel and Palestine, only to then variously cancel, alter, or otherwise walk back those invitations. Avgi, who has both witnessed and been on the receiving end of such “disinvitations,” joins Abby and Patrick to reflect on their significance on multiple levels. In what ways do these events reflect how institutional psychoanalysis has responded to the genocide in Gaza more generally? How do such events play out as communications, both in terms of the language and rationales invoked by people involved, and in terms of what they implicitly convey as unspoken norms? If we see such “disinvitations” as enactments, then what are the underlying fantasies and anxieties they express? What is their immediate social and political context, what are their precedents, and what deeper histories and traumas might underwrite them? Avgi leads Abby and Patrick in a conversation that expands into topics including: the question of what is or isn’t “outside” the consulting room and what does or doesn’t get considered “political”; our fantasies about our capacities for tolerance, both in terms of distress and in terms of dissent; the uses of anger, the pathologization of affect, and the stakes of “making a scene”; tokenism, inclusivity, exclusion, and professional ethics; the weaponization of analytic concepts and intellectualization as a defense; transphobia, anti-Arab prejudice, anti-Semitism, and the impacts of oppression and historical traumas; the many meanings of resistance; the clinical encounter and Laplanche’s idea of “translation”; the creation of new spaces for psychoanalytic education and community; and much, much more. Selected Texts Cited: Avgi Saketopoulou, “Just Say Genocide: The Problem of Truth Sadism” in Battleground Avgi Saketopoulou, “Against Transantagonism: A Metapsychology for the Flourishing of Trans Children (Or, Did you all think pronouns were enough?)” Avgi Saketopoulou, “Genocide and the Screen of Irreverence,” in Petrucelli, J. and Schoen, S. (eds.), Proceedings of William Allanson White’s Conference on Irreverence Edward Said (with Christopher Bollas and Jacqueline Rose), Freud and the Non-European Franz Kafka, “On Parables” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty P-HOLE (Psychoanalytic Hub for Online Liberatory Education) https://p-hole.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! (646) 450-0847 | |||
| 137: Repression, Resistance, and Reenactment feat. Séamus Malekafzali Teaser | 14 Mar 2026 | 00:18:00 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick are joined by Séamus Malekafzali, a journalist whose reportage and commentary has proven indispensable to processing the United States’ war with Iran, and whose historical research and critical essays are vital for thinking about the modern Middle East in general. Séamus begins by talking about his work, setting ongoing events in context, and reflects on the differences between public discourse in English versus Arabic-language spaces. Toggling between contemporary headlines and historical texts, Séamus, Abby, and Patrick reflect on how material realities and geopolitical antagonisms have interacted with competing fantasies, traumatic memories, and logics of identification to produce our current juncture. What ensues is an earnest and searching conversation about dynamics of family, ethnicity, religion, race, and nationality; intergenerational experiences of historical traumas; identification with the aggressor; repression, resistance, and enactment as material and libidinal concepts; nationalism, chauvinism, and settler colonialism; Israeli-US relations as a “feedback loop”; the politics of language; the advocacy of diaspora communities; the difficulties of talking about what’s obvious; and much more. 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 | |||
| 136: Ideology and Family History feat. Jordy Rosenberg | 07 Mar 2026 | 01:45:04 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome novelist and academic Jordy Rosenberg to discuss his brand-new novel, Night Night Fawn. Alternately hilarious and devasting, Night Night Fawn is written in the voice of Barbara Rosenberg, an embittered New York Jewish woman penning a deathbed memoir that documents her many disappointments and frustrations – with life, love, friendship, money, and, above all her trans son, whom she hallucinates as a large and ominous bird. Night Night Fawn is also incredibly overdetermined with respect to genre, representing an effort on Rosenberg’s part to write from the perspective of a fictionalized version of his own mother. On yet another level, it’s a sustained interrogation of the complex and painful interactions between material conditions and ideological systems, the forces that shape our experiences of family, class, religion, and ethnicity, and the specific histories of twentieth century American Jewishness as it relates to Zionism and the horrors of our twenty-first century present. In this wide-ranging conversation, Abby, Patrick, and Jordy discuss the social reproduction of bigotry; the relationship between ethnonationalism and the heteropatriarchal family form; the ethics and aesthetics of representation; the contemporary landscape of the political novel, and much, much more. Selected Works Cited: Jordy Rosenberg, Night Night Fawn: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/689017/night-night-fawn-by-jordy-rosenberg/ Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/556691/confessions-of-the-fox-by-jordy-rosenberg/ Rosenberg, “Gender Trouble on Mother’s Day”: https://avidly.org/2014/05/09/gender-trouble-on-mothers-day/ Rosenberg, “The Daddy Dialectic”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-daddy-dialectic/ Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” Karl Marx, Capital, Vol I Leon Trotsky, “Literature and Revolution” 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 X: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @ordinaryunhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness | |||
| 135: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 10: Studies on Hysteria, Part X: Daddy’s Daughter or Some Man’s Husband: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Continued Teaser | 28 Feb 2026 | 00:04:59 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick resume the case history of Elisabeth von R. in the wake of her revelation of a previously unmentioned character – a would-be suitor. Unpacking the tale of Elisabeth’s courtship, and the sad circumstances of its end, Abby and Patrick itemize the conflicts, anxieties, and fantasies that seem to structure Elisabeth’s underlying psychic distress. As they explain, this grammar of suffering is at once singular to Elisabeth as an individual but also resonant for readers in the present, and sets the stage for a dramatic Freudian intervention as well as a resolution to the mystery of why Elisabeth’s symptoms are embodied in her legs. 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 | |||
| 134: On Suicide and the Indifference of Others feat. Helen Epstein | 21 Feb 2026 | 01:21:04 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome Helen Epstein, Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Global Public Health at Bard College and author of the new book Why Live: How Suicide Becomes an Epidemic. After sketching out the history of contemporary western sociological and philosophical accounts of suicide in general from Durkheim to the existentialists and beyond, the three turn to the specific focus of Epstein’s research: suicide epidemics. As Epstein elaborates, suicide epidemics – wherein entire communities experience sudden and acute spikes in suicide rates – raise urgent questions about the social, economic, and emotional contexts of suicidal distress. What broad conditions can make people feel like life is no longer worth living? What models of meaningful life do communities transmit intergenerationally, and how do those models – and those communities – crumble under pressure? Exploring examples from Micronesia to Nunavut and from 1990s Russia to the contemporary United States and taking up communities from 19th century industrial workers to contemporary American military veterans, Epstein walks Abby and Patrick through her findings, leading the three to reflect on how societies metabolize historical change and economic dislocation on the level of families and across generations. Helen Epstein, Why Live: When Suicide Becomes an Epidemic. 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 | |||
| 133: Laplanche Part Two: The Primal Situation feat. Danielle Drori Teaser | 14 Feb 2026 | 00:08:08 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick welcome Danielle Drori of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for the second installment of a two-part series on the thought of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. Together, the three discuss a pivotal chapter in New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, unpacking Laplanche’s “universalized” transformation of Freud’s seduction hypothesis; Laplanche’s “primal situation” and its roots in anthropology and phenomenology; and what these ideas reveal about our invariably messy experiences of parenting, therapy, and more. 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 | |||
| 132: Laplanche Part One: Sexuality and Subjectivity feat. Danielle Drori | 07 Feb 2026 | 01:44:38 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome Danielle Drori of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for the first in a two-part miniseries introducing the work of psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924-2012). A brilliant clinician and theorist in his own right, Laplanche combined a critical reading of Freud with insights drawn from anthropology, the history of science, and Western philosophy to revolutionize how many analysts saw questions of sexuality, development, language, and more. Yet while incredibly influential in France and beyond, Laplanche’s thought has only made limited inroads among clinicians and theorists in the English-speaking world. In this episode, Danielle, Abby, and Patrick introduce the figure of Laplanche, narrating his biography and discussing everything from his place in French critical theory to his encyclopedic scholarship of Freud (together with Jean Pontalis) to his disagreements with Lacan. They then sketch out some of Laplanche’s key ideas, with particular attention to his critique of Freud’s “seduction theory.” As they explain, Laplanche’s revision of that concept into a “generalized” model of seduction allows him and his contemporary interpreters to suggest some radical ways for thinking about questions of trauma, subjectivity, language, sexuality, and more. In Part Two (out next Saturday), the three get granular by close-reading key sections in Laplanche’s New Foundations for Psychoanalysis. Texts Cited: Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis Jean Laplanche, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis Dominique Scarfone, A brief introduction to the work of Jean Laplanche Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity Avgi Saketopoulou, “Laplanche, an introduction by Dominique Scarfone.” Review essay in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(3), 778–786. Sándor Ferenczi, Confusion of tongues between adults and the child: The language of tenderness and of passion 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 | |||
| 131: Wild Analysis: Heated Rivalry Teaser | 31 Jan 2026 | 00:07:21 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick discuss the runaway streaming sensation, Heated Rivalry. Adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels by Canadian director Jacob Tierney, Heated Rivalry depicts a burgeoning romance between two young hockey players who are also bitter rivals. Taking up themes of athleticism, masculinity, language, desire, and more, Heated Rivalry also offers Abby and Patrick a perfect opportunity to sketch out a psychoanalytic perspective on the cultural meanings of professional sports, touching on topics like fantasy, regression, play, creativity, recognition, and beyond. 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 | |||
| BONUS EPISODE: Romantasy, Fantasy, and Trauma | 28 Jan 2026 | 01:16:00 | |
Abby joins Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub on one of our favorite podcasts, In Bed With the Right! The topic is romantasy - as a genre of fiction, as a publishing phenomenon, and, above all, as a cultural symptom. What do readers - and women specifically - find in romantasy narratives? How does reading relate to play, and fantasy to trauma and healing? The three explore all these questions and more! Texts include: Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses series Rebecca Yarros, Empyrean series Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery Andrea Dworkin, Women Hating Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and Daydreaming" (1907) 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 | |||
| 130: Movies, Screens, and Fantasies feat. A.S. Hamrah | 24 Jan 2026 | 01:53:29 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome film critic A.S. Hamrah. Hamrah is a prolific writer of reviews, essays, and dispatches, and the two brand-new collections of his most recent work, Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema, furnish Abby, Patrick, and Scott with the perfect opportunity to talk cinema, nostalgia, the political economy of movies, and much more. From moviegoing as an embodied experience to the nature of theaters as built environment, the three explore the overdetermined significance of going to sit in a dark room alongside strangers, simultaneously alone yet connected to one another. Unpacking the status of cinema as a quintessentially modern medium, they consider how developments like the smartphone, social media, Netflix, and the COVID-19 epidemic have reshaped both the film industry and our practices of media consumption. They also go deep into the relationship between cinema and television, addressing genre distinctions between soaps and prestige TV; the origins of reality TV in COPS, writers strikes and neoliberal austerity; and the direct line between reality TV and the Trumpian present. Along the way, Abby, Patrick, and Scott take up topics including: the social role of film criticism as a genre to popular discourses about fandom and “letting people enjoy things”; the loneliness of critics and the anomie of watching “second screen content”; and shifting norms of audience behavior (read: being rude). And it all builds to a debate over whether or not going to a movie versus binge-watching Netflix may express different fantasies, desires and anxieties about intimacy, control, and death. Silence your phones, get some popcorn, and enjoy! Texts cited: A.S. Hamrah, Last Week in End Times Cinema: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902686/last-week-in-end-times-cinema/ A.S. Hamrah, Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing 2019-2025: https://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/algorithm-of-the-night-by-a-s-hamrah A.S. Hamrah, The Earth Dies Stremaing: Film Writing 2002-2018: https://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/the-earth-dies-streaming-by-a-s-hamrah Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” 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 | |||
| 129: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 9: Studies on Hysteria, Part IX: Family Secrets and the Sacrifices of Marriage: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Continued Teaser | 17 Jan 2026 | 00:06:54 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick continue their reading of Freud's case study of Elisabeth von R. With each new loss and fragmentation suffered by Elisabeth's nuclear family, they track the shifting burdens put upon Elisabeth and the successive challenges to her own hopes, desires, and self-understanding. Arriving at a pivotal moment in Elisabeth's story - another scene of bedside grief - they glimpse what appears to be her family's darkest secret, and then share in Freud's surprise when Elisabeth delivers yet another offhand revelation. 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 | |||
| UNLOCKED: 117: Experiences in Groups feat. Lily Scherlis | 10 Jan 2026 | 01:33:30 | |
Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Happy New Year! We’re off this week taking a belated holiday rest. But as a complement to our miniseries on projective identification with Brian Ngo-Smith, we’re unlocking this episode featuring another returning audience favorite: Lily Scherlis. Lily leads Abby and Dan on a deep dive into the psychoanalytic study of groups, from its history and roots in Wilfred Bion’s theories to her own personal experiences and reportage. Like our recent episodes with Brian, the conversation expands to thinking about groups more broadly, and into the arena of contemporary politics in general and the challenges of leftist solidarity specifically. - Abby and Dan sit down with writer and performance artist Lily Scherlis to talk about her new essay for n+1, “Experiences in Groups” (a title that does homage to Wilfred Bion’s influential 1961 book of the same name). They discuss Lily’s experience at the 2024 Tavistock conference, the meaning of “group relations,” and the fantasies it can generate for those committed to leftist politics, before turning to their own experiences in groups and Bion’s influence on each of their lives. Lily Scherlis, “Experiences in Groups”: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/essays/experiences-in-groups/ Wilfred Bion, Experiences in Groups: https://bookshop.org/p/books/experiences-in-groups-and-other-papers-w-r-bion/0d24f44dde25497d?ean=9780415040204&next=t& Nov 14th event of interest to NYC listeners: “Group as Form; Deep Study Session with Groups Group” (registration and fee required): https://www.poetryproject.org/events/group-as-form-deep-study-session-with-groups-group?page=1 Our previous episode with Lily, “From Boundaries to Attachment: The Uses and Abuses of Pop Psychology”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/17036523-98-from-boundaries-to-attachment-the-uses-and-abuses-of-pop-psychology-feat-lily-scherlis Our previous episode on Bion’s Experiences in Groups with Christine Smallwood: “From Parties to Projective Identification: Why Is Group Life So Hard?”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/13002667-12-from-parties-to-projective-identification-why-is-group-life-so-hard-feat-christine-smallwood | |||
| 128: Projective Identification Part II feat. Brian Ngo-Smith Teaser | 03 Jan 2026 | 00:05:46 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Brian Ngo-Smith returns for the second half of our miniseries on projective identification! In this episode, Abby, Patrick, and Brian pivot from the difficult terrain of theorizing projective identification in terms of individual development and abstract mental mechanisms to the much more tangible – and dramatic – manifestations of projective identification in group behavior. Indeed, as the three explore, thinking about projective identification in the interpersonal rather than intrapsychic domain is incredibly clarifying for understanding how groups come together, encourage various roles for their members, experience friction, manifest antagonisms, and otherwise function (or break down) in the real world. Building from two-person dyads to small groups to large collectivities, Brian, Abby, and Patrick apply the concept of projective identification at scale, thinking about everything from psychotherapy and marriage to classrooms and family businesses to giant corporations and politics at the national level and beyond. From “role suction” to scapegoating to Bion’s threefold model of group types and more, the three unpack some essential – and highly portable – terms, and work through how the idea of projective identification can help re-frame broader, longstanding questions about interpellation, leadership, solidarity, and more. They conclude with an extended consideration of the contemporary landscape of American mass incarceration, homelessness, and precarity, unpacking how the all-too-personal aspects of projective identification manifest in tandem with the operation of ostensibly impersonal histories, institutions, and policies to generate suffering, perpetuate inequality, and normalize logics of enactment, blame, trauma, indifference, and more. More about Brian Ngo-Smith at https://ngosmiththerapy.com/ and https://ngosmithconsulting.com Our previous episode with Brian, “Hate, Help, and Housing: Psychoanalysis and Social Work”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/14213981-36-hate-help-and-housing-psychoanalysis-and-social-work-feat-brian-ngo-smith | |||
| 127: Projective Identification Part I feat. Brian Ngo-Smith | 27 Dec 2025 | 01:48:36 | |
Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst and clinical social worker Brian Ngo-Smith for a conversation about one of the most difficult but powerful concepts in psychoanalytic theory: projective identification. A notion that demands simultaneously thinking about infantile development and adult behaviors, normal defenses and pathological patterns, the idea of projective identification captures an essential dimension of all kinds of interpersonal relationships – but it also throws some of our most basic assumptions about the distinction between self and other into question. In the first of a two-part series, Brian, Abby, and Patrick unpack the concept of projective identification, setting it in historical context, and considering it from a variety of perspectives. They explore topics including classical Freudian versus object relations approaches to development; the works of Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion; the defense mechanisms in general and ideas of projection and introjection specifically; projective identification in therapy, romantic partnerships, and professional life; and more. In part II, which comes out next Saturday, Brian, Abby, and Patrick put the idea of projective identification to work in considering group behavior, institutional cultures, and politics. Texts cited: Melanie Klein, “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” Wilfred Bion, Experiences in Groups Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process JL Mitrani, “'Taking the transference': Some technical implications in three papers by Bion” Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense Jerome Blackman, 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself More about Brian at https://ngosmiththerapy.com/ and https://ngosmithconsulting.com Our previous episode with Brian, “Hate, Help, and Housing: Psychoanalysis and Social Work”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/14213981-36-hate-help-and-housing-psychoanalysis-and-social-work-feat-brian-ngo-smith 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 | |||
| 126: Mailbag Part 2: Searching for the Self Teaser | 20 Dec 2025 | 00:04:03 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness It’s part two of our mailbag episode – which means Abby, Patrick, and Dan get to field yet more amazing listener questions! Topics include the many relationships, and problems of translation, between psychoanalysis and Buddhism; the figure of Melanie Klein and American resistances to her thought; how the right uses language and the question of whether the American left needs a new "master signifier"; the virality of buzzwords like "limerence" and "person addiction" and what they reveal about contemporary conditions of intimacy; and more! The three also reflect on themes of precarity, vulnerability, education, and more. 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 | |||
| 125: Demons, Community, and Conversion Therapy feat. Grace Byron | 13 Dec 2025 | 01:27:30 | |
Abby and Patrick are joined by writer Grace Byron, author of the fantastic new novel Herculine. Alternately hilarious and terrifying, Herculine is the story of a young trans woman who leaves a frustrating life in New York City to join an erstwhile high school lover in a trans separatist commune in rural Indiana. But the community proves far from perfect, and the narrator soon finds herself enmeshed in a pressure-cooker milieu of personal jealousies and erotic rivalries, all with occult overtones – and there are literal demons, too. Abby, Patrick, and Grace reflect on the themes of the book, and probe the broader questions it addresses. How might trauma shape our ideas about healing and our pursuit of transformative experiences – in psychotherapy and beyond? How does identity relate to desire, how does theory relate to practice, and how might hegemonic structures reassert themselves in power dynamics within marginalized communities? What are the uses of utopian fantasies, and how do we square them with the real-world challenges of building solidarity? The three explore all these questions, as well as the power of religious symbolism, the practice of “conversion therapy,” media representations of the demonic, and more! Texts cited: Grace Byron, Herculine: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Herculine/Grace-Byron/9781668087862 Grace Byron, “Idle Worship: Fairy Tales of Conversion,” in Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/idle-worship Grace Byron, “Repossessed,” in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/repossessed-byron McKenzie Wark, “Dear Cis Analysts: A Call for Reparations,” in Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/dear-cis-analysts Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity: https://www.uitbooks.com/shop/gender-without-identity Imogen Binnie, Nevada: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374606619/nevada/ 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 | |||
| 124: Mailbag: Uses of Theory and AI Grinchiness Teaser | 06 Dec 2025 | 00:03:30 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness It’s another mailbag episode (part one of two)! Abby, Patrick, and Dan respond to listener questions about everything from the utility of psychoanalytic concepts in everyday life to the complexities of Melanie Klein to the allure of AI “wisdom” and beyond. Plus, they tackle Abraham Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy of Needs” and get into the weeds of why, exactly, Hallmark movies exist, who they’re for, and what libidinal work they do. 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 | |||
| 123: Polymorphous Perversity and Gender Pleasure feat. Lucie Fielding | 29 Nov 2025 | 01:44:33 | |
Abby and Patrick are joined by therapist and sexuality educator Lucie Fielding. First, the three talk about Lucie’s path to clinical work and the significance of her book, Trans Sex, just out in a revised Second Edition. They then turn to Freud’s classic, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), putting that text, and the broader legacy of Freud’s views on sexuality, in dialogue with contemporary questions of trans embodiment and sexual identity. This means reckoning with the ways that Freud’s account of sexual development is alternately retrograde and radical, both of his time and far ahead of it. The three focus in particular on Freud’s idea of “polymorphous perversity,” and the ambiguities of his distinction between “sexual object” and “sexual aim,” exploring how Freud’s vision of human sexuality as radically contingent and plastic may offer possibilities for thinking constructively and more inclusively about pleasure and the diverse range of human sexual expression. Lucie’s website is here: https://luciefielding.com/ The new edition of Trans Sex is here: https://www.routledge.com/Trans-Sex-Nurturing-Trans-Erotic-Embodiment-and-Gender-Pleasure/Fielding/p/book/9781032737218 Lucie’s recommended reading includes: Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity Tourmaline, Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, Hatred of Sex Audre Lorde, “Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power” 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 | |||
| UNLOCKED: 32: Thanksgiving Special, Part 2: Murder, Myth, and Memory | 25 Nov 2025 | 02:46:23 | |
Last year we unlocked part 1 of our Thanksgiving Special so that everyone could hear the good/bad news about the "Holiday Syndrome." This year we're unlocking part 2, on settler colonialism, history, fantasy, ritual, and more. Whether you're celebrating, traveling, or staying home, we promise there's a lot to chew on here! Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness In the second – overstuffed – installment of our two-part Thanksgiving Special, we discuss the social demand to perform “thankfulness”; the parable of primal murder and subsequent myth-making at the heart of Freud’s first foray into armchair anthropology, Totem and Taboo (1913); Christianity, civic religion and the “totems” and sacrifices of ritual meals as obligatory touchstones for enforcing social cohesion; the history of the Thanksgiving holiday as a project of ideological integration and national-mythmaking; the history behind the supposed “first Thanskgiving”; the psychic tolls of repression at the level of the individual, the family, and the nation; settler colonialism as a term of political and libidinal economy; primal scenes and screen memories; indigenous activism, counter-memories, and the National Day of Mourning; compulsory identification, difficult recognitions, disidentifications, and the creation of new possibilities. Citations available on Patreon here. 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 | |||
| 122: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 8: Studies on Hysteria, Part VIII: The Blow That Falls: Fräulein Elisabeth von R Continued Teaser | 22 Nov 2025 | 00:02:41 | |
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick resume Freud’s case history of Elisabeth von R. They walk through Freud’s developing technique before unpacking what will prove to be one of his lifelong favorite and most evocative metaphors for psychic life: a city. Abby and Patrick then begin close-reading Elisabeth von R’s life story as she first relates it to Freud. What emerges is both a picture of Elisabeth’s family system, its patterns, and the distinctly gendered roles assigned to its members as well as the story of her personal fantasies and frustrations as the family goes through turmoil and loss. The episode builds to the articulation of a fundamental Freudian preoccupation: how do psychic injuries arise in relation to real-world misfortunes, and how do life experiences and contingent events determine the form of an individual’s bodily symptoms? 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 | |||
| UNLOCKED: 103: Ayahuasca and Climate Grief feat. Sarah Miller | 15 Nov 2025 | 01:19:35 | |
Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick are joined by one of their favorite writers, Sarah Miller, to talk about her new essay in n+1. Entitled “Pirates of the Ayahuasca,” it’s a first-person narrative, at once understated and devastating, hilarious and cutting, that sees Sarah, struggling with depression and grief, travel from wildfire-ravaged Northern California to the Peruvian Amazon for two weeks of psychedelic treatment under a prominent indigenous shaman. Sarah relates and reflects on her experience, her relationship with the shaman and his other clients, the business model of the “ayahuasca center,” and much more. Along the way, Sarah, Abby, and Patrick unpack broader narratives about therapy, ritual, and healing; the ways we metabolize feelings of guilt, sadness, and desires for change; the unavoidable context of capitalism, global inequality, and climate catastrophe; our expectations for psychedelics, our fantasies of transformative experiences, and what we can learn from plants. Sarah Miller's writing classes are ongoing, here is a description and contact information. Sarah Miller, “Pirates of the Ayahuasca”: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/essays/pirates-of-the-ayahuasca/ Sarah Miller, “Heaven or High Water”: https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/ Sarah’s Substack, The Real Sarah Miller: https://therealsarahmiller.substack.com/ Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/357842/the-doors-of-perception-by-aldous-huxley/9780099458203 Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin and Anna Shulgin, PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved): A Chemical Love Story: https://psychedelics.berkeley.edu/resources/pihkal/ Brian Pace and Neşe Devenot, “Right-Wing Psychedelia: Case Studies in Cultural Plasticity and Political Pluripotency”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34975622/ Neil Whitehead and Robin Wright, editors, In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia: https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-darkness-and-secrecy 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 | |||