Ordinary Unhappiness

By Patrick & Abby

What's Ordinary Unhappiness about?

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

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Ordinary Unhappiness episodes:

05.04.2024
51: Psychoanalysis and Gaza feat. Jess Ghannam
Abby and Patrick welcome Palestinian psychoanalyst and psychologist Dr. Jess Ghannam to talk about his twenty-five years of work doing empirical research and carrying out public health initiatives in Gaza. They discuss his studies of mental health in refugees from...
04.27.2024
50: Political Disappointment feat. Sara Marcus
Abby and Patrick are joined by academic, journalist, and critic Sara Marcus, author of the 2023 book Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis. After recalling their own experiences of political letdowns – infantile, adolescent, and...
04.20.2024
49: Wild Analysis: Civil War Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness While Abby’s voice is still gone, Dan and Patrick take in a film on opening day and subject it to some wild analysis. The...
04.13.2024
UNLOCKED: 21: Wild Analysis: The Trauma Plot and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe
Abby lost her voice, so we're unlocking a favorite from behind the paywall! We'll be back next week with more Wild Analysis followed by an interview with the brilliant Sara Marcus on her book Political Disappointment. Unlocked Patreon episode. Support...
04.06.2024
48: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 8: Oedipus Approaches: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser
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 – and our penultimate episode on the Freud-Fliess letters! – we are joined by novelist and...
03.30.2024
47: Extraction, Exhaustion, and the Problem with Resilience feat. Ajay Singh Chaudhary
Abby and Patrick welcome Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and author of The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. In our conversation, Ajay breaks down competing left- and right-wing versions...
03.23.2024
Episode 46: Wild Analysis: Dune Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby, Patrick, and Dan take on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Parts 1 and 2, Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, and a loud noise that goes [BRAAAAM]....
03.16.2024
45: The Fantasy of Family and the Meaning of Family Abolition feat. Sophie Lewis and M.E. O’Brien
Abby and Patrick welcome writer Sophie Lewis and writer and psychotherapist M.E. O’Brien to discuss their recent books on family abolition, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation and Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care. They...
03.09.2024
44: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 7: The Prehistoric Other and the Great Lord Penis: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser
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 discuss a number of the letters in the Fliess section of SE Volume 1 with...
03.02.2024
43: The Mirror Crack’d: The Mirror Stage, Part III
Abby, Patrick, and Dan conclude their adventure through Lacan’s mirror stage! They reprise Lacan’s parable of the mirror-besotted baby and tie together the many threads – theoretical, clinical, and philosophical – woven through it. They walk through how Lacan musters...
02.17.2024
42: Wild Analysis: The President’s Analyst Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness In a perfect pairing with our ongoing series on Lacan, we come in from the cold and go underground by watching Theodore Flicker’s neglected...
02.10.2024
41: Identification and Misrecognition: The Mirror Stage, Part II
Our journey through Lacan’s “mirror stage” continues as the scene before the mirror unfolds into a tragic drama. Abby, Patrick, and Dan unpack the many meanings of “identification” and how, for Lacan, the self-identification the baby “assumes” from the slick...
02.03.2024
40: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 6: The Symptom is a Compromise: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser
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 valiantly soldier through more of the Fliess Extracts section of SE Volume 1 with novelist...
01.27.2024
39: It’s Not You, It’s Lacan: The Mirror Stage, Part I
Abby, Patrick, and Dan kick off their 2024 Lacan era by tackling his single most famous essay and concept: the mirror stage. Because Lacan is notoriously difficult, this is going to take multiple episodes, of which the first is devoted...
01.20.2024
38: Wild Analysis: Taylor Swift Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness We set out to discuss the Eras tour film but got drawn into the broader cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. Along the way,...
01.13.2024
UNLOCKED: 25: Wild Analysis: Barbie
Abby and Patrick are traveling, so enjoy this unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness We talk about one of the biggest cinematic releases of the year: Barbie. We get into...
01.06.2024
37: New Year’s Mailbag: The Capacity for Change Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness We reflect on an (overdetermined) nine-month anniversary for Ordinary Unhappiness, including conversations with guests and reading recommendations – and then we take your calls!...
12.30.2023
36: Hate, Help, and Housing: Psychoanalysis and Social Work feat. Brian Ngo-Smith
Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst and clinical social worker Brian Ngo-Smith, President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW). Focusing on his paper “This Couch Has Bed Bugs: On the Homelessness of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis...
12.23.2023
35: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 5: Fragments, Paranoia, and Projection: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser
In the latest installment of the Standard Edition, Abby continues the conversation about the Fliess Extracts section of SE Volume 1 with novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood. We discuss fragments, continuity and discontinuity, and narrative and lack thereof; the...
12.16.2023
34: Fatphobia and Moral Feelings feat. Kate Manne
Abby and Patrick welcome philosopher Kate Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017), Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (2020), and the forthcoming Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia (2024). They discuss our moral emotions – shame, contempt,...
11.25.2023
33: The Problem with Empathy feat. Jade E. Davis
Abby and Patrick welcome Jade E. Davis, author of the new book The Other Side of Empathy. They discuss Jade’s critique of naïve notions of “empathy” and what she calls “empathy culture.” They examine the ways empathy can flatten suffering,...
11.20.2023
32: Thanksgiving Special, Part 2: Murder, Myth, and Memory Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness In the second – overstuffed – installment of our two-part Thanksgiving Special, we discuss the social demand to perform “thankfulness”; the parable of primal...
11.18.2023
31: Thanksgiving Special, Part 1: The Holiday Syndrome Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness In the first installment of our two-part Thanksgiving Special, we discuss the so-called “Holiday Syndrome” in general and with an eye towards the upcoming...
11.11.2023
UNLOCKED: 14: Standard Edition Volume I Part 1: Freud Goes to Paris
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,...
11.04.2023
30: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 4: Wilhelm Fliess: The Anxiety of Influence (and a Theory of Noses) feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser
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...
10.28.2023
29: Gender, Trauma, and Psychoanalytic Politics feat. Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini
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...
10.21.2023
28: Wild Analysis: Halloween (1978) Teaser
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...
10.14.2023
27: From HIV to COVID: Virality, Vulnerability, and Interdependence feat. Steven Thrasher
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...
10.07.2023
26: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 3: Freud’s Two Dads Teaser
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,...
09.30.2023
UNLOCKED: 05: Wild Analysis: Mailbag - Dream Interpretation
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...
09.23.2023
25: Wild Analysis: Barbie TEASER
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness We talk about one of the biggest cinematic releases of the year: Barbie. We get into the film’s gender politics and vision of sexual...
09.16.2023
24: Drugs and the Death Drive feat. Ben Fong
Abby and Patrick welcome academic and writer Ben Fong, author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge as well as Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late...
09.09.2023
23: Puns, Jokes, and Serious People feat. Ben Wurgaft
Abby and Patrick welcome intellectual historian, writer, editor, and noted wordsmith Ben Wurgaft. They talk about Ben’s experiences with long-term analysis and discuss ways of accessing low-cost options for psychoanalysis before collectively digging into Freud’s 1905 book on humor, Jokes...
09.02.2023
22: Realism and Other Romances feat. Grace Lavery
Abby and Patrick welcome writer and academic Grace Lavery to discuss her new book Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. They discuss Grace’s relationship to psychoanalysis; her uses of Freud and Freudianism for both...
08.26.2023
21: Wild Analysis: The Trauma Plot and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Behind the safety of the paywall, we get worked up about trauma as a trope in some of the most influential media franchises of...
08.12.2023
20: A Dangerous Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung, Otto Gross
Abby, Patrick, and Dan watch David Cronenberg’s 2011 film A Dangerous Method, which dramatizes the complex relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein in the first two decades of the twentieth century. They discuss Freud and Jung’s fraught...
08.05.2023
19: Advice and Anonymity feat. Danny Lavery, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Kali Handelman: OU + the Podcast for Social Research
Ordinary Unhappiness presents a live recording of the Podcast for Social Research! Abby recently joined Danny Lavery, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Kali Handelman to celebrate Danny’s new book, Dear Prudence, which spans his tenure as beloved advice columnist “Prudence” at...
07.29.2023
18: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 2: Hysteria, Hypnosis, and Imposter Syndrome Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness We’re back with a new installment of the Standard Edition! We discuss two short reviews from 1887 (of Averbeck’s Die akute Neurasthenie [Acute Neurasthenia]...
07.22.2023
17: Fanon the Clinician feat. Nica Siegel
Abby and Patrick welcome political theorist Nica Siegel, author of a forthcoming manuscript on the politics of exhaustion, including a recently published chapter, “Fanon's Clinic: Revolutionary Therapeutics and the Politics of Exhaustion,” and a brand-new essay in Parapraxis. Nica tells...
07.12.2023
16: Fantasy, Fascism, and Technology: From the Frankfurt School to Silicon Valley feat. Moira Weigel
Abby, Patrick, and Dan welcome writer, critic, and scholar Moira Weigel, co-founder of Logic magazine and co-editor with Ben Tarnoff of Voices of the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do And How They Do It. Moira introduces listeners...
07.08.2023
15: Diagnosis and Identity: Mailbag Episode!
Abby, Patrick, and Dan take your calls! They spend the bulk of the episode on a fascinating question about whether or not it is important to know your own psychic structure. They consider the relationship between identity and diagnosis; how...
07.01.2023
14: Standard Edition Volume I Part 1: Freud Goes to Paris Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.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...
06.24.2023
13: The Journalist and the Analyst: On Janet Malcolm feat. Sam Adler-Bell
Abby and Patrick welcome journalist and critic Sam Adler-Bell, co-host of Dissent magazine’s Know Your Enemy podcast. They talk about how Sam came to study conservative thought from a leftist perspective and what role psychoanalysis plays in that project; discuss...
06.17.2023
UNLOCKED: Short Session 1 - Transference, continued
Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. Continuing the conversation on transference started in Episode 2, Patrick and Dan discuss free guitars, transference as defense, magical thinking, and why experiencing transferential relationships...
06.10.2023
12: From Parties to Projective Identification: Why is Group Life so Hard? feat. Christine Smallwood
Abby and Patrick welcome novelist and literary critic Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind. They discuss the novel’s protagonist Dorothy (who hires a second therapist to talk about her relationship with her first therapist) and Christine’s approach...
06.03.2023
11: Succession: Oedipus and Failsons
Abby, Patrick, and Dan get into the great Oedipal drama of our times: Succession. They discuss a ludicrously capacious number of versions of the Oedipus story; the development of the Oedipus complex throughout Freud’s writing; Freud’s notion of the primal...
05.27.2023
10: Wild Analysis: Problematic Faves and the Anxiety of Influence Teaser
The three of us talk problematic faves, guilty pleasures, comfort food (literal and metaphorical), and the dangers of nostalgia. We focus on thinkers who have been crucial to our own intellectual formation – and who have likewise been meaningful to...
05.20.2023
09: The Pleasure of the Text: The Standard Edition
Abby and Patrick introduce a new series: the Standard Edition. That’s right; they’re going to read and discuss the entire Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. In this episode, Abby and Patrick discuss why they’re undertaking...
05.13.2023
08: Political Economy, Libidinal Economy
Abby puts Patrick on the hot seat to talk psychoanalysis and politics. They discuss how psychoanalytic concepts can help bypass partisan political explanations; the construction of a “we”; identifications and disidentifications with individuals, groups, and social orders; pleasure and the...
05.06.2023
07: Kettle Logic and Family Secrets: The Uncanny, Part II
Abby and Patrick return to Freud’s idea of the “uncanny” as an unconventional path to their real target: the unconscious. They talk about the limits of our rationality; “kettle logic” and how it operates; Freud as a “master of suspicion”;...

What's Ordinary Unhappiness about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Ordinary Unhappiness episodes:

51: Psychoanalysis and Gaza feat. Jess Ghannam

50: Political Disappointment feat. Sara Marcus

49: Wild Analysis: Civil War Teaser

UNLOCKED: 21: Wild Analysis: The Trauma Plot and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe

48: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 8: Oedipus Approaches: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser

47: Extraction, Exhaustion, and the Problem with Resilience feat. Ajay Singh Chaudhary

Episode 46: Wild Analysis: Dune Teaser

45: The Fantasy of Family and the Meaning of Family Abolition feat. Sophie Lewis and M.E. O’Brien

44: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 7: The Prehistoric Other and the Great Lord Penis: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser

43: The Mirror Crack’d: The Mirror Stage, Part III

42: Wild Analysis: The President’s Analyst Teaser

41: Identification and Misrecognition: The Mirror Stage, Part II

40: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 6: The Symptom is a Compromise: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser

39: It’s Not You, It’s Lacan: The Mirror Stage, Part I

38: Wild Analysis: Taylor Swift Teaser

UNLOCKED: 25: Wild Analysis: Barbie

37: New Year’s Mailbag: The Capacity for Change Teaser

36: Hate, Help, and Housing: Psychoanalysis and Social Work feat. Brian Ngo-Smith

35: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 5: Fragments, Paranoia, and Projection: The Fliess Extracts, Continued feat. Christine Smallwood Teaser

34: Fatphobia and Moral Feelings feat. Kate Manne

33: The Problem with Empathy feat. Jade E. Davis

32: Thanksgiving Special, Part 2: Murder, Myth, and Memory Teaser

31: Thanksgiving Special, Part 1: The Holiday Syndrome Teaser

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

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

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

28: Wild Analysis: Halloween (1978) Teaser

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

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

UNLOCKED: 05: Wild Analysis: Mailbag - Dream Interpretation

25: Wild Analysis: Barbie TEASER

24: Drugs and the Death Drive feat. Ben Fong

23: Puns, Jokes, and Serious People feat. Ben Wurgaft

22: Realism and Other Romances feat. Grace Lavery

21: Wild Analysis: The Trauma Plot and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe Teaser

20: A Dangerous Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung, Otto Gross

19: Advice and Anonymity feat. Danny Lavery, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Kali Handelman: OU + the Podcast for Social Research

18: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 2: Hysteria, Hypnosis, and Imposter Syndrome Teaser

17: Fanon the Clinician feat. Nica Siegel

16: Fantasy, Fascism, and Technology: From the Frankfurt School to Silicon Valley feat. Moira Weigel

15: Diagnosis and Identity: Mailbag Episode!

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

13: The Journalist and the Analyst: On Janet Malcolm feat. Sam Adler-Bell

UNLOCKED: Short Session 1 - Transference, continued

12: From Parties to Projective Identification: Why is Group Life so Hard? feat. Christine Smallwood

11: Succession: Oedipus and Failsons

10: Wild Analysis: Problematic Faves and the Anxiety of Influence Teaser

09: The Pleasure of the Text: The Standard Edition

08: Political Economy, Libidinal Economy

07: Kettle Logic and Family Secrets: The Uncanny, Part II