Ordinary Unhappiness

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
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery 
Andrea Dworkin, Women Hating
Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and Daydreaming" (1907)
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

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

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 significance of going to sit in a dark room alongside strangers, simultaneously alone yet connected to one another. Unpacking the status of cinema as a quintessentially modern medium, they consider how developments like the smartphone, social media, Netflix, and the COVID-19 epidemic have reshaped both the film industry and our practices of media consumption. They also go deep into the relationship between cinema and television, addressing genre distinctions between soaps and prestige TV; the origins of reality TV in COPS, writers strikes and neoliberal austerity; and the direct line between reality TV and the Trumpian present. Along the way, Abby, Patrick, and Scott take up topics including: the social role of film criticism as a genre to popular discourses about fandom and “letting people enjoy things”; the loneliness of critics and the anomie of watching “second screen content”; and shifting norms of audience behavior (read: being rude). And it all builds to a debate over whether or not going to a movie versus binge-watching Netflix may express different fantasies, desires and anxieties about intimacy, control, and death. Silence your phones, get some popcorn, and enjoy! 
Texts cited:
A.S. Hamrah, Last Week in End Times Cinema: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635902686/last-week-in-end-times-cinema/
A.S. Hamrah, Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing 2019-2025: https://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/algorithm-of-the-night-by-a-s-hamrah
A.S. Hamrah, The Earth Dies Stremaing: Film Writing 2002-2018: https://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/the-earth-dies-streaming-by-a-s-hamrah
Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
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

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

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 bedside grief - they glimpse what appears to be her family's darkest secret, and then share in Freud's surprise when Elisabeth delivers yet another offhand revelation.
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

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

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 in Wilfred Bion’s theories to her own personal experiences and reportage. Like our recent episodes with Brian, the conversation expands to thinking about groups more broadly, and into the arena of contemporary politics in general and the challenges of leftist solidarity specifically. 
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Abby and Dan sit down with writer and performance artist Lily Scherlis to talk about her new essay for n+1, “Experiences in Groups” (a title that does homage to Wilfred Bion’s influential 1961 book of the same name). They discuss Lily’s experience at the 2024 Tavistock conference, the meaning of “group relations,” and the fantasies it can generate for those committed to leftist politics, before turning to their own experiences in groups and Bion’s influence on each of their lives.  
Lily Scherlis, “Experiences in Groups”: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/essays/experiences-in-groups/
Wilfred Bion, Experiences in Groups: https://bookshop.org/p/books/experiences-in-groups-and-other-papers-w-r-bion/0d24f44dde25497d?ean=9780415040204&next=t&
Nov 14th event of interest to NYC listeners: “Group as Form; Deep Study Session with Groups Group” (registration and fee required): https://www.poetryproject.org/events/group-as-form-deep-study-session-with-groups-group?page=1
Our previous episode with Lily, “From Boundaries to Attachment: The Uses and Abuses of Pop Psychology”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/17036523-98-from-boundaries-to-attachment-the-uses-and-abuses-of-pop-psychology-feat-lily-scherlis
Our previous episode on Bion’s Experiences in Groups with Christine Smallwood: “From Parties to Projective Identification: Why Is Group Life So Hard?”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/13002667-12-from-parties-to-projective-identification-why-is-group-life-so-hard-feat-christine-smallwood

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 group behavior. Indeed, as the three explore, thinking about projective identification in the interpersonal rather than intrapsychic domain is incredibly clarifying for understanding how groups come together, encourage various roles for their members, experience friction, manifest antagonisms, and otherwise function (or break down) in the real world. Building from two-person dyads to small groups to large collectivities, Brian, Abby, and Patrick apply the concept of projective identification at scale, thinking about everything from psychotherapy and marriage to classrooms and family businesses to giant corporations and politics at the national level and beyond. From “role suction” to scapegoating to Bion’s threefold model of group types and more, the three unpack some essential – and highly portable – terms, and work through how the idea of projective identification can help re-frame broader, longstanding questions about interpellation, leadership, solidarity, and more. They conclude with an extended consideration of the contemporary landscape of American mass incarceration, homelessness, and precarity, unpacking how the all-too-personal aspects of projective identification manifest in tandem with the operation of ostensibly impersonal histories, institutions, and policies to generate suffering, perpetuate inequality, and normalize logics of enactment, blame, trauma, indifference, and more.
More about Brian Ngo-Smith at https://ngosmiththerapy.com/ and https://ngosmithconsulting.com
Part I: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/18416396-127-projective-identification-part-i-feat-brian-ngo-smith
Our previous episode with Brian, “Hate, Help, and Housing: Psychoanalysis and Social Work”: https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/2131830/episodes/14213981-36-hate-help-and-housing-psychoanalysis-and-social-work-feat-brian-ngo-smith