“Variations on the Standard Treatment” is about life and death — but not as we usually conceive of these basic human experiences.

Between early lives tinged with death and encounters to come with this absolute master, there are egos fixated on images of life and, thank goodness, analysts who know the benefits of playing dead (and, wherever possible, dumb as well).

What egos guard against, analysts help them confront, suggesting that psychoanalysis is not just about learning how to die, but also, more fundamentally, about learning how to live as though dead.

From Zeno to Foucault, with important stops at Heidegger and Lacan, the lesson is the same: Only by subjectifying death do we finally learn how to live.

And to think: “Variations on the Standard Treatment” is an often overlooked essay in Écrits!

Stay tuned for our part three of this podcast early next week — and soon thereafter our second get together on THE DRIVE!

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