Ordinary Unhappiness

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

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 - YouTubeBluesky: Mariana Colín (@themorbidzoo.bsky.social) — BlueskyWebsite: 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 TransferenceMaria Pierri, Sigmund Freud and the Forsyth Case, Coincidences and the Thought-Transmission in PsychoanalysisHannah Zeavin, The Distance CureRoger Luchurst, The Invention of TelepathyCS Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” Avgi Saketopoulou, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, TraumatophiliaHave 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 X: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: http://www.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/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby 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  A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:  http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com X: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: http://www.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 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.References include:Elizabeth Cotton, UberTherapyThe Business of Psychotherapy: Practice Management CompaniesHolding the Frame in an Era of Corporate CareCorporations in the Consulting Room When Talkspace Sued PsiAN and MeWhat People Need and Want from TherapyPsychotherapy Action NetworkHave 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 X: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, 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/9780393925340Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe Their MythsMalcolm Kenneth Brown, The Narratives of KononThe Oxyrhynchus Papyri: https://oxyrhynchus.web.ox.ac.uk/Pausanias, translated by WHS Jones et al, Descriptions of GreeceHave 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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

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:Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” Nilofer Kaul, “Breaching the Frame: Psychoanalysis and Sunset Boulevard”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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

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.References include:Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls GoverningAdrian Daub, What Tech Calls ThinkingPre-order Adrian’s forthcoming book, Project 1933: Fascism Then and NowAdrian’s podcast, In Bed With The RightFriedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of MoralsNovalis, The Novices of SaisAlbert Burneko, “I Don’t Think David Brooks Is Okay, You Guys”Anna Wiener, Uncanny ValleyKate 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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessThe 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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

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.Robin Dembroff, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes our RealityMore about Robin here: https://robindembroff.com/A recent piece by Robin: "The 'Real Man' Trap"Selected texts cited:Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a Feminist RevolutionDavid Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of MasculinityJL Austin, How to Do Things with WordsHanna Rosin, The End of MenSimone de Beauvoir, The Second SexHave 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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, 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) 450-0847A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.comX: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @OrdinaryUnhappinessPatreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song:Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxOProvided by Fruits Music