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Episode 87: On Hate and Aggression, Part III
Abby, Patrick, and Dan conclude their close reading of Winnicott’s “Hate in the Counter-Transference,” unpacking and tying together its three biggest arguments. First, there’s the connection Winnicott draws between the therapeutic encounter and childhood development: more than just an analogy, these two environments are directly connected, and in fraught ways. Second, there’s the link he draws between early experiences of “deprivation,” counter-transferential enactments in treatment, and the struggles of certain patients to establish a stable, safe sense of selfhood. Third, and most provocatively, is Winnicott’s articulation of how feelings of aggression and even hatred naturally arise not just from a child seeking to assert its independence, but from a caregiver. As Abby, Patrick, and Dan discuss, Winnicott’s idea of the “good enough mother,” far from being an exercise in mother-blaming, is in fact a humbling and compassionate recognition of motherhood as a kind of “impossible profession” (and more). And it reveals an approach to pathology, social conventions, and ideologies of the family that are critically different from Freud’s. Plus: the cruelty of the “cult of mother,” sublimated aggression in grim nursery rhymes, and the joy of stealing noses. Up next, in Part IV: we get granular about the implications of Winnicott’s thinking for confronting real-world expressions of hate and aggression in everyday social interactions, institutional dynamics, and, above all, politics.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
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86: On Hate and Aggression, Part II Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan start close-reading Winnicott’s famous paper, “Hate in the Counter-Transference” (1949, originally delivered as a paper two years earlier). They start with its place and time, situating Winnicott’s work within the context of post-war Britain. This was a clinical landscape where a tiny number of analysts stood apart from a psychiatric establishment that favored methods that Winnicott despised – above all, lobotomies. They then consider the kinds of cases Winnicott’s paper takes up and consider how the behavior of patients can, in Winnicott’s words, prove singularly “irksome” to even the most tolerant and well-intentioned clinicians. But whereas many of his contemporaries would swiftly send such patients off for psychosurgery, Winnicott instead explores the dynamics of the transferential encounter at play. This leads Abby, Patrick, and Dan to consider the ways that the “problem of aggression” and the recognition of hate are central for Winnicott’s visions of development, the therapeutic relationship, and even institutional dynamics. 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
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85: On Hate and Aggression, Part I
Abby, Patrick, and Dan take up a topic that couldn’t be more relevant to the contemporary zeitgeist – aggression – as theorized by an unlikely source: the British analyst and pediatrician D.W. Winnicott. What did this beloved and famously gentle figure have to say about aggression, and our taboos and fantasies surrounding it? Where does aggression come from, and what is its function developmentally? And what role can acknowledging feelings of “hate” play in the family, in psychotherapy, and in everyday life? To answer all these questions, this episode – the first in a three-part series – sees Abby, Patrick, and Dan sketch out Winnicott’s biography, discuss his theoretical preoccupations, and unpack his approach to therapy, especially with severely distressed children and adults. Close-reading his essay, “The Roots of Aggression” (collected in the The Child, the Family, and the Outside World) they explore how, for Winnicott, the capacity to work with aggression implicates everything from our ability to move in physical space to our feeling deserving of love.Robert Adès et al., editors. “Index of Available Audio Recordings.” The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 12, Appendices and Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, 2016: https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190271442.003.0011“Winnicott: The ‘Good-Enough Mother’ Radio Broadcasts.” OUPblog, Dec. 2016:https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/winnicott-radio-broadcasts/Brett Kahr, “Winnicott’s ‘Anni Horribiles’: The Biographical Roots of ‘Hate in the Counter-Transference.’” American Imago, vol. 68, no. 2, 2011, pp. 173–211.D. W. Winnicott, “Hate in the Counter-Transference.” The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, vol. 3, no. 4, 1994, pp. 348–56.Winnicott, “Roots of Aggression.” The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott: Volume 7, 1964 - 1966, edited by Lesley Caldwell and Helen Taylor Robinson, Oxford University Press, 2016:https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780190271398.003.0018Have 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
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84: New Year Vibe Check: I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan get together for a looking-forward, looking-backward session surveying the year that was and assessing the year ahead. It’s a suitably ambivalent, Janus-faced assessment of political developments, cultural milestones, new hobbies, simmering dreads, and bold resolutions. Plus: the dream of Lacanian Finance Grifting.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
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83: Religion and Neurosis feat. Nathan Rein Teaser
Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby and Patrick sit down with religious studies scholar and Reformation historian Nathan Rein to discuss Freud’s “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices” (1907). This is Freud’s first extended treatment of religion as such, with a particular emphasis on ritual, and, in classic Freudian style, sees him provocatively linking individual symptoms with broader cultural formations. But what does Freud mean by “religion” anyway, in relation to his Jewish heritage on the one hand and his overwhelmingly Catholic Austrian milieu on the other? What can looking at the nuances of Freud’s German reveal about his understanding of what we would today call obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)? What are we to make of his account of individual “obsessional neuroses” as a kind of “private suffering” versus the collective work done by shared public rituals, and how does that bear on Freud’s ideas about the origins of our beliefs and, per Freud, our “ignorance” about them? And what is the character of Freud’s feelings about religion – is his just a stance of disillusionment, or is it tinged by a more personal ambivalence, perhaps even one that’s particularly recognizable this holiday season? Plus: Martin Luther’s bowel troubles, the importance of respecting Melusine’s boundaries, and objections to Christmas standards at church dances from an unexpected source.Texts discussed include:Sigmund Freud, “Religious Actions and Obsessive Practices.”Donald Capps, Freud and Freudians on Religion: A Reader. Yale University Press, 2001.Christopher Alan Lewis and Kate M. Loewenthal, editors. “Religion and Obsessionality: Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices,” a special volume of Mental Health, Religion & Culture, February 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13674676.2018.1481192.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) 450-0847A 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/ordinaryunhappinessTwitter: @UnhappinessPodInstagram: @ordinaryunhappinessPatreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessTheme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits MusicClosing song:Track: Baby It's Cold Outside (With TNTVictory)Artist: C.J. Ezell - / cjezellBaby It's Cold Outside (With TNTVictory) - by C.J. Ezell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (http://bit.ly/CreativeCommons3-0)
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