Ordinary Unhappiness

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIt’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  A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:  Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness Twitter: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music

Abby and Patrick are 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-worshipGrace Byron, “Repossessed,” in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/repossessed-byronMcKenzie Wark, “Dear Cis Analysts: A Call for Reparations,” in Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/dear-cis-analystsAvgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity: https://www.uitbooks.com/shop/gender-without-identityImogen 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  A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:  Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness Twitter: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessIt’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  A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:  Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness Twitter: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music

Abby and Patrick are 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/9781032737218Lucie’s recommended reading includes:Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without IdentityJosé Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer FuturityTourmaline, Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. JohnsonOliver Davis and Tim Dean, Hatred of SexAudre 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  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

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/OrdinaryUnhappinessIn 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  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