What do Freudian slips, Josie and the Pussycats, and solving math problems have in common? Psychoanalysis claims to have some answers! Sigmund Freud suggests that unconscious desires, fears, and trauma influence us without us being conscious of them. In pop culture, the unconscious is often depicted as the realm of dirty thoughts and subliminal messages, but does the unconscious actually even exist? In episode 50 (!), Ellie and David explore the unconscious and the existentialist challenge to it from Jean-Paul Sartre.

Works Discussed

Sigmund Freud, “The Unconscious”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
The Exorcist (1973)
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Stanislas Dehaene, The Code of Consciousness
Jacques Hadamard, An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field
Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”

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