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 communities experience sudden and acute spikes in suicide rates – raise urgent questions about the social, economic, and emotional contexts of suicidal distress. What broad conditions can make people feel like life is no longer worth living? What models of meaningful life do communities transmit intergenerationally, and how do those models – and those communities – crumble under pressure? Exploring examples from Micronesia to Nunavut and from 1990s Russia to the contemporary United States and taking up communities from 19th century industrial workers to contemporary American military veterans, Epstein walks Abby and Patrick through her findings, leading the three to reflect on how societies metabolize historical change and economic dislocation on the level of families and across generations.

Helen Epstein, Why Live: When Suicide Becomes an Epidemic.

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

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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; Laplanche’s “primal situation” and its roots in anthropology and phenomenology; and what these ideas reveal about our invariably messy experiences of parenting, therapy, and more.

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

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 influential in France and beyond, Laplanche’s thought has only made limited inroads among clinicians and theorists in the English-speaking world. In this episode, Danielle, Abby, and Patrick introduce the figure of Laplanche, narrating his biography and discussing everything from his place in French critical theory to his encyclopedic scholarship of Freud (together with Jean Pontalis) to his disagreements with Lacan. They then sketch out some of Laplanche’s key ideas, with particular attention to his critique of Freud’s “seduction theory.” As they explain, Laplanche’s revision of that concept into a “generalized” model of seduction allows him and his contemporary interpreters to suggest some radical ways for thinking about questions of trauma, subjectivity, language, sexuality, and more. In Part Two (out next Saturday), the three get granular by close-reading key sections in Laplanche’s New Foundations for Psychoanalysis.

Texts Cited:

Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis

Jean Laplanche, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis

Dominique Scarfone, A brief introduction to the work of Jean Laplanche

Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity

Avgi Saketopoulou, “Laplanche, an introduction by Dominique Scarfone.” Review essay in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(3), 778–786.

Sándor Ferenczi, Confusion of tongues between adults and the child: The language of tenderness and of passion

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847

A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/ordinaryunhappiness

Twitter: @UnhappinessPod

Instagram: @ordinaryunhappiness

Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness