Ordinary Unhappiness – Details, episodes & analysis

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Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby Kluchin, Patrick Blanchfield, and Dan Yowell

Society & Culture

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Frequency: 1 episode/7d. Total Eps: 171

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now, featuring Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield

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121: LSD: Subjectivity, Ineffability, and Mental Health feat. Dan Karlin

Episode 121

Saturday, November 8, 2025 • Duration 01:56:52

Abby and Patrick continue their series on psychedelics via an in-depth interview with Dr. Dan Karlin. Karlin is a psychiatrist and Chief Medical Officer at MindMed, where he oversees clinical trials using LSD to treat major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Karlin first fills Abby and Patrick in about those disorders, MindMed’s ongoing clinical trials, and both the history of LSD research and potential near-future therapeutic applications. In the wide-ranging conversation that follows, they explore provocative questions about the relationship between quantitative research and qualitative description, the challenges of thinking simultaneously about neurobiology and phenomenology, and how various models fall short in different ways when it comes to describing ineffable experiences. They also probe what Karlin’s work suggests about the ways bodily perceptions, metaphors, and narrative shape our subjective sense of self, how the symptoms of MDD and GAD can be seen in that light, and how certain psychedelics may work to rapidly reorganize those underlying patterns and configurations in ways that mirror the work of long-term therapy.

Note: All opinions are Karlin's own and not attributable to MindMed

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

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120: Wild Analysis: The Substance Teaser

Episode 120

Saturday, November 1, 2025 • Duration 05:22

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

Abby and Dan process Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024), starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. From uncanny doubles to unsparing mirrors to the punishing reality principle of getting older, it’s a film that offers plenty of grist for the psychoanalytic mill. It’s also an occasion for Abby and Dan to reflect on sexual difference, gendered expectations, the male gaze, femininity as self-surveillance, the pleasures (and disgusts) of body horror, and more!

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113: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Part III Teaser

Episode 113

Saturday, September 6, 2025 • Duration 05:38

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

Abby, Dan, and Patrick conclude their viewing of Sophie Fiennes’ and Slavoj Žižek’s A Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006). It’s the last stretch of the film, the part where Žižek tries to bring everything together, and it thus gives Abby, Dan, and Patrick a chance to assess the Guide in its entirety. How compelling is the film’s grand unifying theory of subjectivity, lack, and the work of film as a medium that teaches us “how to desire”? What does it mean that all films are ultimately, per Žižek, about the “impossibility of making a film” as such? What’s at stake in for Žižek in the film of Hitchcock and Lynch specifically, and why do the films so neatly showcase the perils of both getting exactly what you want and not knowing what you want after all? What are Žižek’s blind spots vis-à-vis gender, violence, and comedy? And what’s really going on with that favorite adverb of his – “precisely”?

UNLOCKED: 14: Standard Edition Volume I Part 1: Freud Goes to Paris

Saturday, November 11, 2023 • Duration 01:40:07

Friends! This week we are on deadline and/or under a terrifying pile of ungraded papers, so we're giving folks a chance to enter the wild world of The Standard Edition with this freshly unlocked episode that tackles Freud’s earliest work, his personal and professional anxieties, and the complicated disorder(s) he and his contemporaries called hysteria. (Please join us on Patreon if you like it!) And for our Patreon supporters, a lot more Fliess is coming soon in the next installments of the SE, plus Wild Analysis on settler colonialism and Thanksgiving…

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

In this second episode of The Standard Edition, we finally start doing the reading, tackling the first three texts in Volume I of the Standard Edition: “Report on My Studies in Paris and Berlin,” (1886), “Preface to the Translation of Charcot’s Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System” (1886) and “Observation of a Severe Case of Hemi-Anesthesia in A Hysterical Male” (1886). We do some ground-clearing about the history of medicine and the various disciplines in which the young Freud sought recognition and met with frustration; sketch out Freud’s biography and the world into which he was born and came of age; and discuss the figure of Jean-Martin Charcot and Freud’s time studying hysteria with him at the Salpêtrière in Paris. We pay close attention to an early case study of a male hysteric and how it prefigures some of Freud’s later case studies. Along the way, we also talk about Freud’s history with eels, anti-Semitism, cocaine, hypnosis, and his lifelong habit of making best friends and breaking up with them. We offer a handful of sources we’re consulting, whether for general edification or for reference for anyone who might be embarking on this project alongside us.

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness Twitter: Instagram: Patreon: Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 Provided by Fruits Music

30: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 4: Wilhelm Fliess: The Anxiety of Influence (and a Theory of Noses) feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser

Episode 30

Saturday, November 4, 2023 • Duration 03:08

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

In the latest installment of the Standard Edition, we begin the Fliess Extracts section of SE Volume 1 in conversation with novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We discuss the figure of Wilhelm Fliess and what he meant to Freud; the history of the Freud-Fliess correspondence, only half of which survives; Fliess’s theories of noses, periodicity, and bisexuality; Freud’s anxiety about Fliess’s professional reputation and influence on his own ideas; Freud’s issues with condoms and coitus interruptus; and how Freud was thinking about categories like anxiety, depression, melancholia, and obsessional neurosis during this period.

Articles discussed in this episode include:

Young, Annie Riddington. "Freud’s friend Fliess." The Journal of Laryngology & Otology 116.12 (2002): 992-995: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-laryngology-and-otology/article/abs/freuds-friend-fliess/7F87416E73813F4EFEB9B46CB38B3D8B

Zucker, Arthur, and David Wiegand. "Freud, Fliess, and the nasogenital reflex: did a look into the nose let us see the mind?" Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery 98.4 (1988): 319-322: https://aao-hnsfjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019459988809800409

Blum, Harold P. "Freud, Fliess, and the parenthood of psychoanalysis." The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 59.1 (1990): 21-40:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1990.11927262

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:Linktree: Twitter: Instagram: Patreon: Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 Provided by Fruits Music

29: Gender, Trauma, and Psychoanalytic Politics feat. Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini

Episode 29

Saturday, October 28, 2023 • Duration 01:24:47

Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou and psychoanalyst and academic Ann Pellegrini to discuss their new co-authored book, Gender Without Identity. They talk about the genesis of the manuscript, from its beginnings in a painful case of child analysis to its distressing reception by psychoanalytic gatekeepers and “repressive forces within psychoanalysis itself.” They explore the difficulties queer and trans patients have faced in seeking psychoanalytic treatment; the resistances of institutional psychoanalysis when it comes to theorizing queer subjectivities; the struggles of queer and trans analysts themselves; and the implication of psychoanalysis in broader moral panics and political mobilizations against trans people. They discuss how theory is never just abstract, but bears upon urgent questions of care; the power and fantasies of rhetorical appeals to “protect” children; and how to conceive of gender as an experiment rather than an essential given or a predetermined teleology. Finally, Avgi and Ann offer a provocative approach to thinking about what trauma is and does, including questions of “traumatophobia” and the challenging ways trauma can be theorized and experienced in relation to gendered formations of all sorts.

Gender Without Identity is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/gender-without-identity-ann-pellegrini/20606066

Avgi’s recent book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/sexuality-beyond-consent-risk-race-traumatophilia-avgi-saketopoulou/18390655?ean=9781479820252

Ann’s book Performance Anxiety: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/performance-anxieties-staging-psychoanalysis-staging-race-ann-pellegrini/9006711?ean=9780415916868

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:Linktree: Twitter: Instagram: Patreon: Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 Provided by Fruits Music

28: Wild Analysis: Halloween (1978) Teaser

Episode 28

Saturday, October 21, 2023 • Duration 04:06

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

After a long chat about why people like and dislike horror – and an excursion into our childhood fears – we tackle John Carpenter’s 1978 classic film Halloween. We discuss sibling rivalry, bullying, uncanny objects, stranger danger, the boogeyman, the many meanings of Michael Myers, why everyone is always on the phone in slasher movies, and cultural fantasies and fears about infantile aggression and cruelty.

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

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

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27: From HIV to COVID: Virality, Vulnerability, and Interdependence feat. Steven Thrasher

Episode 27

Saturday, October 14, 2023 • Duration 01:41:27

Abby and Patrick welcome Steven Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. We discuss Steven’s singular career trajectory (from Saturday Night Live to The Village Voice to academia); the difference between “having” or “owning” a body versus being a body; why pandemics are never just about biology, but implicate social realities, shared fantasies, and libidinal economy; the notion of the “viral underclass”; the changing landscape of HIV/AIDS criminalization laws and the case of Michael Johnson, a young Black man prosecuted for the “reckless transmission” of HIV; the origins, myths, and baggage of the term “Patient Zero”; logics of scapegoating and moral panics; hierarchies of social vulnerability and human disposability, especially as they implicate questions of race, class, sexuality, disability, incarceration, and housing status; our relationship to animals and our calculi about who gets to count as human; ideologies about health and disease, purity and pollution, infection and risk; and how viruses can help us reimagine our conceptions of borders, boundaries, permeability, autonomy, and interdependence.

The Viral Underclass is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-viral-underclass-the-human-toll-when-inequality-and-disease-collide-steven-w-thrasher/17086534

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 Provided by Fruits Music

26: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 3: Freud’s Two Dads Teaser

Episode 26

Saturday, October 7, 2023 • Duration 04:41

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

The Standard Edition will be a regular monthly series going forward – and here’s the latest installment! Working our way steadily through Volume I, we discuss: A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism (1892-93); the Preface and Footnotes to Charcot's Tuesday Lectures (1892-94); Sketches for the "Preliminary Communication of 1893" (1940-41 [1892]); and Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Motor Paralyses (1893 [1888-1893]). Along the way, we tackle a fascinating case study about hypnotism, feeding, and breastfeeding; will versus “counter-will"; tics, cursing nuns, imps of perversity, and The Little Engine That Could; why certain concepts catch on and others don’t; the brilliant Josef Breuer and his complicated relationship to Freud; early models and definitions of trauma; and a good Freudian reason for why you should always read the footnotes.

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

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

UNLOCKED: 05: Wild Analysis: Mailbag - Dream Interpretation

Saturday, September 30, 2023 • Duration 01:24:09

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Abby and Patrick take your calls and talk about dream interpretation, professional ethics, and visions of therapy for the world we live in versus the world we want to inhabit. (They are also unexpectedly haunted by the example of the fantasy of wanting to kill your boss.)

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

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

Read moreCollapse

Ordinary Unhappiness – Details, episodes & analysis

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Ordinary Unhappiness – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

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