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PODCAST

Ordinary Unhappiness

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

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

81:04

134: On Suicide and the Indifference of Others feat....

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/02/21

Abby and Patrick welcome Helen Epstein, Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Global Public Health at Bard College and author of the new book Why Live: How Suicide Becomes an Epidemic. After sketching out the history of contemporary western sociological and philosophical accounts of suicide in general from Durkheim to the existentialists and beyond, the three turn to the specific focus of Epstein’s research: suicide epidemics. As Epstein elaborates, suicide epidemics – wherein entire communi...

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8:08

133: Laplanche Part Two: The Primal Situation feat....

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/02/14

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick welcome Danielle Drori of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for the second installment of a two-part series on the thought of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. Together, the three discuss a pivotal chapter in New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, unpacking Laplanche’s “universalized” transformation of Freud’s seduction hypothesis; Lapl...

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104:38

132: Laplanche Part One: Sexuality and Subjectivity...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/02/07

Abby and Patrick welcome Danielle Drori of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for the first in a two-part miniseries introducing the work of psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924-2012). A brilliant clinician and theorist in his own right, Laplanche combined a critical reading of Freud with insights drawn from anthropology, the history of science, and Western philosophy to revolutionize how many analysts saw questions of sexuality, development, language, and more. Yet while incredibly inf...

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7:21

131: Wild Analysis: Heated Rivalry Teaser

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/31

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick discuss the runaway streaming sensation, Heated Rivalry. Adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels by Canadian director Jacob Tierney, Heated Rivalry depicts a burgeoning romance between two young hockey players who are also bitter rivals. Taking up themes of athleticism, masculinity, language, desire, and more, Heated Rivalry also offers ...

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76:00

BONUS EPISODE: Romantasy, Fantasy, and Trauma

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/28

Abby joins Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub on one of our favorite podcasts, In Bed With the Right! The topic is romantasy - as a genre of fiction, as a publishing phenomenon, and, above all, as a cultural symptom. What do readers - and women specifically - find in romantasy narratives? How does reading relate to play, and fantasy to trauma and healing? The three explore all these questions and more! Texts include: Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses series Rebecca Yarros, Empyrean series...

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113:29

130: Movies, Screens, and Fantasies feat. A.S. Hamrah

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/24

Abby and Patrick welcome film critic A.S. Hamrah. Hamrah is a prolific writer of reviews, essays, and dispatches, and the two brand-new collections of his most recent work, Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema, furnish Abby, Patrick, and Scott with the perfect opportunity to talk cinema, nostalgia, the political economy of movies, and much more. From moviegoing as an embodied experience to the nature of theaters as built environment, the three explore the overdetermined si...

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6:54

129: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 9: Studies on...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/17

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick continue their reading of Freud's case study of Elisabeth von R. With each new loss and fragmentation suffered by Elisabeth's nuclear family, they track the shifting burdens put upon Elisabeth and the successive challenges to her own hopes, desires, and self-understanding. Arriving at a pivotal moment in Elisabeth's story - another scene of beds...

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93:30

UNLOCKED: 117: Experiences in Groups feat. Lily Scherlis

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/10

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Happy New Year! We’re off this week taking a belated holiday rest. But as a complement to our miniseries on projective identification with Brian Ngo-Smith, we’re unlocking this episode featuring another returning audience favorite: Lily Scherlis. Lily leads Abby and Dan on a deep dive into the psychoanalytic study of groups, from its history and roots ...

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5:46

128: Projective Identification Part II feat. Brian...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2026/01/03

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Brian Ngo-Smith returns for the second half of our miniseries on projective identification! In this episode, Abby, Patrick, and Brian pivot from the difficult terrain of theorizing projective identification in terms of individual development and abstract mental mechanisms to the much more tangible – and dramatic – manifestations of projective identification in g...

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108:36

127: Projective Identification Part I feat. Brian...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/12/27

Abby and Patrick welcome psychoanalyst and clinical social worker Brian Ngo-Smith for a conversation about one of the most difficult but powerful concepts in psychoanalytic theory: projective identification. A notion that demands simultaneously thinking about infantile development and adult behaviors, normal defenses and pathological patterns, the idea of projective identification captures an essential dimension of all kinds of interpersonal relationships – but it also throws some of our most...

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4:03

126: Mailbag Part 2: Searching for the Self Teaser

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/12/20

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness It’s part two of our mailbag episode – which means Abby, Patrick, and Dan get to field yet more amazing listener questions! Topics include the many relationships, and problems of translation, between psychoanalysis and Buddhism; the figure of Melanie Klein and American resistances to her thought; how the right uses language and the question of whether the Americ...

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87:30

125: Demons, Community, and Conversion Therapy feat....

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/12/13

Abby and Patrick are joined by writer Grace Byron, author of the fantastic new novel Herculine. Alternately hilarious and terrifying, Herculine is the story of a young trans woman who leaves a frustrating life in New York City to join an erstwhile high school lover in a trans separatist commune in rural Indiana. But the community proves far from perfect, and the narrator soon finds herself enmeshed in a pressure-cooker milieu of personal jealousies and erotic rivalries, all with occult overto...

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3:30

124: Mailbag: Uses of Theory and AI Grinchiness Teaser

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/12/06

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness It’s another mailbag episode (part one of two)! Abby, Patrick, and Dan respond to listener questions about everything from the utility of psychoanalytic concepts in everyday life to the complexities of Melanie Klein to the allure of AI “wisdom” and beyond. Plus, they tackle Abraham Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy of Needs” and get into the weeds of why, exactly, Hall...

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104:33

123: Polymorphous Perversity and Gender Pleasure...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/29

Abby and Patrick are joined by therapist and sexuality educator Lucie Fielding. First, the three talk about Lucie’s path to clinical work and the significance of her book, Trans Sex, just out in a revised Second Edition. They then turn to Freud’s classic, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), putting that text, and the broader legacy of Freud’s views on sexuality, in dialogue with contemporary questions of trans embodiment and sexual identity. This means reckoning with the ways that...

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166:23

UNLOCKED: 32: Thanksgiving Special, Part 2: Murder,...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/25

Last year we unlocked part 1 of our Thanksgiving Special so that everyone could hear the good/bad news about the "Holiday Syndrome." This year we're unlocking part 2, on settler colonialism, history, fantasy, ritual, and more. Whether you're celebrating, traveling, or staying home, we promise there's a lot to chew on here! Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness In the second – overstuffed –...

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2:41

122: Standard Edition Volume 2 Part 8: Studies on...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/22

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick resume Freud’s case history of Elisabeth von R. They walk through Freud’s developing technique before unpacking what will prove to be one of his lifelong favorite and most evocative metaphors for psychic life: a city. Abby and Patrick then begin close-reading Elisabeth von R’s life story as she first relates it to Freud. What emerges is both a p...

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79:35

UNLOCKED: 103: Ayahuasca and Climate Grief feat....

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/15

Unlocked Patreon episode. Support Ordinary Unhappiness on Patreon to get access to all the exclusive episodes. patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Patrick are joined by one of their favorite writers, Sarah Miller, to talk about her new essay in n+1. Entitled “Pirates of the Ayahuasca,” it’s a first-person narrative, at once understated and devastating, hilarious and cutting, that sees Sarah, struggling with depression and grief, travel from wildfire-ravaged Northern California to the Per...

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116:52

121: LSD: Subjectivity, Ineffability, and Mental...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/08

Abby and Patrick continue their series on psychedelics via an in-depth interview with Dr. Dan Karlin. Karlin is a psychiatrist and Chief Medical Officer at MindMed, where he oversees clinical trials using LSD to treat major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Karlin first fills Abby and Patrick in about those disorders, MindMed’s ongoing clinical trials, and both the history of LSD research and potential near-future therapeutic applications. In the wide-ranging c...

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5:22

120: Wild Analysis: The Substance Teaser

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/11/01

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Abby and Dan process Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024), starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. From uncanny doubles to unsparing mirrors to the punishing reality principle of getting older, it’s a film that offers plenty of grist for the psychoanalytic mill. It’s also an occasion for Abby and Dan to reflect on sexual difference, gendered expectations, th...

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105:40

119: Lacan, Knowledge, Fantasy feat. Nick Stock and...

Ordinary Unhappiness ·

2025/10/25

Abby and Patrick are joined by Nick Stock and Nick Peim, authors of the new book The Lacanian Teacher: Education, Pedagogy, and Enjoyment. From the origin stories teachers tell about themselves to the ways the classroom looms large in our memories, popular media, and political rhetoric, it’s a conversation about education at the intersection of fantasies, reality, vocations, anxieties, addictions, and more. What are the narratives that drive people to study and to teach, and what are the sati...

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150 results

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