The Pill Pod looks at the chatbot psychosis phenomenon and compares it to Lacan's clinical structure of psychosis.


This is Episode 4 of our series on Lacan. Find the other episodes Ad-Free at
https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills


Sources:
Jacques Lacan - Seminar III

Bruce Fink - Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis

"People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies" Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

"They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent them Spiraling" New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

1Dime joins Erik and Victor to discuss Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. We cover the popularity of the book, the term, and then wonder whether left-populist electoral campaigns perform the same cathartic function as anti-capitalist TV shows.

See more from 1Dime: https://www.youtube.com/@1Dimee
All our public episodes are ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We wanted to review some Lacan because everybody's still desiring, and Bruce Fink's Lacanian Subject (1995) is quite often touted as the best unofficial intro, and we can see why.

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This is the book: https://amzn.to/4oubPxQ

In a recent interview with the New York Times Peter Thiel, one of the world's most powerful men, gave ample evidence that he should be institutionalized before he hurts anyone else.

Link to the full interview https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?si=qSLrUmKeEblb4jYS

Find all our episodes ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Pill pod discuss the public media representations of Epstein and Gaza before a seamless transition into a discussion of Giorgio Agamben's concepts of 1) Sovereignty 2) Bare Life and 3) States of Exception.

The FULL OMNIBUS edition of homo sacer is here, but the sections are also available separately.

Pills is away, so 1Dime Tony came present a thesis he's working at. Tony rejoins the pill pod to excavate the terms "woke right" and the semiotics of "woke" more broadly. We don't always agree, but we attempt to deduce which conservative faction is accusing which other of wokeness, although it is sometimes tough going figuring what they mean by the term. Articles:

• https://americanreformer.org/2024/05/is-there-a-woke-right/
• https://reason.com/2025/06/11/the-rise-of-the-woke-right/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right/681716/
• https://www.theamericanconservative.com/is-woke-right-a-useful-term/

If you enjoyed this education, 1Dime has a YouTube channel, a podcast called 1Dime Radio, and a patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/OneDime) that are easily accessible if you're looking for more insights.

According to Derrida, metaphysicians have spent 2000 years conceptually boxing-in metaphor because they don't want to admit their dependence on figurative language. This has allowed them to trick themselves into believing that fiction and non-fiction are fundamentally different; that one can be true and the other cannot. In White Mythology, Derrida discovers the metaphors buried in philosophy from Plato to Hegel, even as they try to hide them.

We spent three weeks reading this text, you can find the episodes at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We go deeper into Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights in The Visible and The Invisible, e.g. The Flesh of the World, the Chiasm, and the Intertwining and what these mean for a meditative experience on the daily. 

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This week we looked into OG critic of fascism Wilhelm Reich, who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism right after the Nazis were elected in 1933. Reich was among the first "neomarxists", and believed that Marxists need to understand psychoanalysis to understand Fascism.

Link to text

Find our full episodes on philosophy and theory at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

We compare Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights in an unfinished work he wrote before his death to the meditations of Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna 18 centuries prior.

This episode and all the rest can be found at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills