Ordinary Unhappiness
A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now, featuring Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 53 minutes
- Episodes
- 123
- Years Active
- 2023 - 2025
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…
21: Wild Analysis: The Trauma Plot and the Joss Whedon Extended Cinematic Universe Teaser
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Behind the safety of the paywall, we get worked up about trauma as …
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 decade…
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 Prude…
18: Standard Edition Volume 1 Part 2: Hysteria, Hypnosis, and Imposter Syndrome Teaser
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We’re back with a new installment of the Standard Edition! We discu…
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 Thera…
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 …
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 relatio…
14: Standard Edition Volume I Part 1: Freud Goes to Paris Teaser
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In this second episode of The Standard Edition, we finally start do…
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 perspec…
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…
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…
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 …
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 for…
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 thi…
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”; identifica…
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 oper…
06: Unheimlich Maneuver: The Uncanny, Part I
Abby, Patrick, and Dan sneak up on the idea of the unconscious by tackling Freud’s concept of the “uncanny,” and its relationship to anxiety, fear, and the “omnipotence of thoughts.” They talk horror…
05: Wild Analysis: Mailbag Episode! Teaser
We take your calls and talk about dream interpretation, professional ethics, and visions of therapy for the world we live in versus the world we want to inhabit. (We are also unexpectedly haunted by …
03: Bonus Content: Short session I - Transference, continued Teaser
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 is…