Pulsion Podcast

Why do political groups fall apart? And what happens to the unconscious life of a group when it does?

In this episode, we speak with Robert Cavooris about his article Fear of Group Breakdown, exploring the unconscious dynamics of collective life through the work of Wilfred Bion and D.W. Winnicott. Focusing particularly on the political left and its forms of group organizing, we discuss how groups manage conflict, how unprocessed tensions can contribute to their breakdown, and how the psychic residues of failed collectives continue to shape political movements.

Robert Cavooris is a psychoanalytic candidate at Pulsion Institute and holds a PhD in the Humanities from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work explores the intersections of psychoanalysis, political theory, and collective life, with a particular interest in the unconscious dynamics shaping political organization and group experience.

What happens when we look at a painting, and what happens when the painting looks back? In this episode, psychoanalyst Jeanne Wolff Bernstein joins us to discuss her book The Lure of the Gaze and the Past, exploring Manet’s paintings through Freud and Lacan. We delve into the relationship between the gaze, desire, identification, and the unconscious, and consider how art implicates the viewer in the very scene they are looking at.

Jeanne Wolff Bernstein is a psychoanalyst based in Vienna, former president of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and Vice President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association. Her work explores the intersections of psychoanalysis, visual art, and film.

Joining us today is Dr. Panagiotis Aloupis, Chief Physician at the Paris Psychosomatic Institute aka IPSO. He is a world-renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and a leading expert on psychosomatics. He is a member of the editorial board of the French Journal of Psychosomatics, and a trustee and board member of Pulsion Institute.

Today’s episode features a conversation with three members of the Società Amici del Pensiero – Sigmund Freud in Milan: Luca Flabbi, Glauco M. Genga, and M. Gabriella Pediconi.

We speak ahead of their seminar 'The Good of the Analyst'; Together, we explore core concepts of Freudian psychoanalytic technique through the work of Italian psychoanalyst Giacomo Contri — including transference, abstinence, negative talent, partnership, the law and technique in analytic practice.

Today’s guest is Judith Gurewich, the powerhouse publisher behind Other Press. Born in Canada and raised in Belgium, Judith holds a PhD in sociology and is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst.

Since 2002, she has transformed Other Press from a niche academic imprint into a premier home for world-class literary fiction and non-fiction, bringing international bestsellers like The Meursault Investigation and The Glass Room to English-speaking audiences.

She joins us to discuss ahead of her event 'Lacan in America Thirty Years Later'

In this episode, I speak with Charlie Stephenson, a fellow analyst-in-formation at Pulsion, about his paper and research on “gooning.”

Gooning—a subculture organized around compulsive online pornography use—is often cast as a symptom of cultural decline. Through Freud and Laplanche, we revisit it instead as a window into trauma, infantile sexuality, and moral panic.

In our first episode, I am speaking to Gabriela Goldstein about her new book - Art and Psychoanalysis: Between the Dialectics of the Other and Poetic Estrangement

Gabriela Goldstein, Ph.D. Past President of APA (2020-2023). Training analyst of Argentina Psychoanalytical Association (APA), and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and FEPAL, member of the IPA Board 2025-2027. Doctor Ph.D in Psychology (Universidad del Salvador). Books include The Aesthetic Experience, Writings on Art and Psychoanalysis, and Art in Psychoanalysis. Co-author, among others, of the APA book Dreams and Perception APA Editorial and the book Dear Candidate Fred Busch edit. She has won the Mom-Baranger prize for best monograph in Psychoanalysis with The Aesthetics of Memory, Freud at the Acropolis and won the A. Storni prize for conceptual contributions in Psychoanalysis with Transience, or the Time of Beauty. She has served on many IPA and APA committees including the IPA and Culture Committee since 2007. In addition, Gabriela is both an architect and a painter. Since 1985 she has taken part in solo painting exhibitions in Argentina as well as collective exhibitions in museums, art galleries, and cultural centers in Italy, France and Germany. She lives and works in Buenos Aires.