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

It the second half of our their hundred-episode Mailbag spectacular, Abby, Patrick, and Dan field some overdetermined questions best kept snug behind the Patreon paywall. Among other things, the three take on what thinking psychoanalytically suggests about our relationships to technology, from the pleasing familiarity of effective User Interface design and frictionless movement in video games to the ways anxieties about the existence other human minds appears to be driving ever more people to prefer the projections and grandiose claims of interactions with so-called “artificial intelligence.” They then turn to another space where the questions of friction, the possibility of pain, the promise of growth, and the role of transference loom large: the classroom. In particular, they explore the ethical and interpersonal stakes of teaching psychoanalysis, and teaching in general, with an eye toward questions of repetition, narcissism, Trauma Studies as a discipline, traumatic experiences of learning, what is or isn’t “outside the classroom,” the balance between taking things personally and meeting students where they are, and whether and how pedagogy and learning alike resemble therapy in all its possibilities and pains. Plus: turtles tortoises, a round of Fuck Marry Kill (yes), Wolfenstein, 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, Patrick, and Dan mark one hundred episodes of Ordinary Unhappiness! They start by looking back on the show’s run so far, and what they’ve gotten from engaging with psychoanalysis as a living body of knowledge, as a corpus of classic texts, as a way of seeing the world, and more. They then turn to the episode’s primary focus: a mailbag chock full of questions, fantasies, and desires from Ordinary Unhappiness listeners who have made the show possible. These include questions about therapeutic modalities fast and slow, the history of psychoanalytic theories about autism, the place of queerness in contemporary psychoanalysis, and more. But the three biggest topics Ordinary Unhappiness listeners want to learn more about are about drugs (especially psychedelics), the relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism, and the work of Jacques Lacan. In classic Ordinary Unhappiness style, all this leads the hosts to recommend a ton of reading suggestions, admit to the things about which they do not know (but want to learn), and to promise a follow-up episode for Patreon supporters, where Abby, Patrick, and Dan will tackle those questions and topics that were a little too spicy – or let’s say “overdetermined” – for a public episode. Enjoy – and thanks for listening!

For the reading list, please visit our Patreon page. It's too long to include here!

patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

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/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Abby and Patrick are joined by returning guest Sam Adler-Bell, co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast and columnist at New York magazine, to talk about the HBO series The White Lotus. From plotlines involving taboos like patriarchy, incest, and family violence to themes of alienation, class antagonism, and desire, the show’s last season offers plentiful grist for the psychoanalytic mill, and Abby, Patrick, and Sam tackle all these with gusto (and plenty of spoilers). In addition to discussing the text on its own terms, they reflect on its popularity as a social symptom that implicates collective fantasies and anxieties about friendship, sexuality, money, religion, and more. As the three explore, contextualizing the show in political and ideological terms reveals not just the idiosyncratic preoccupations of The White Lotus’s creator, Mike White, but the paradoxes of how American audiences and the prestige TV shows we love navigate questions of desire, identity, cultural and sexual difference, and the repressions that underwrite them.

Know Your Enemy: A Podcast About the American Right: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Sam Adler-Bell, “The Movie Industry’s Confused ‘Eat the Rich’ Fantasy”: https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/the-movie-industrys-confused-eat-the-rich-fantasy.html

Neil Websdale, Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/familicidal-hearts-9780199325849

Imogen Binnie, Nevada: https://bookshop.org/p/books/nevada-imogen-binnie/17839995

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