Podcasts about lacan

Listen to the full episode here: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru404-zahid-chaudhary-on-paranoid Join Rendering Unconscious Podcast at Substack for all new and archival episodes: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious welcomes Dr. Zahid R. Chaudhary to the podcast! He's here to talk about his new book Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth (Fordham University Press, 2025). https://fordhampress.com/paranoid-publics-hb-9781531511869.html Rendering Unconscious episode 404. On this episode, Zahid presents his newest book Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth, which explores the relationship between truth, power, and the psyche. The book, influenced in part by the work of Michel Foucault and psychoanalytic theory, examines the rise of QAnon, the concept of freedom in political movements, and the impact of social realities on the body, as seen in cases like the Havana syndrome and resignation syndrome. The discussion also touches on the challenges of integrating psychoanalysis into political theory and the persistence of group think. Zahid plans to continue exploring such themes in future work, including techno-fascism and impunity. Zahid R. Chaudhary is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India (2012). https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816677498/afterimage-of-empire/ RU News & Events: On Wednesday, June 24th, join Freudian cinephile Mary Wild for The Man Who Fell Into Himself: David Bowie's 1970s Transformations. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-man-who-fell-into-himself-david-bowies-1970s-transformations-tickets-1986912621136 The next Introduction to Psychoanalysis class meets Saturday, July 11th. We will be discussing Lacan. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/introduction-to-psychoanalysis-with All paid subscribers to RU Center for Psychoanalysis will receive the zoom links to attend these events live and the recordings will be archived at Substack. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com Full archive of RU Center events and CLASSES HERE: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/t/classes See RU Center SCHEDULE OF EVENTS HERE: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/schedule Rendering Unconscious is also a book: Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024): https://amzn.to/4sOqSEu Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including new, future, and archival podcast episodes. It's so important to maintain independent spaces free from censorship and corporate influence. If you are interested in pursuing psychoanalytic treatment or supervision with me, please feel free to contact me directly: www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank You.

Wow, an embarrassment of riches here. Pervs R' Us reigns supreme over all the other stars. Pyramid schemes, viral brainwashing tech, the drive unleashed. We read Keith Raniere, the leader of the NXIVM cult, now behind bars, as a figure of the Lacanian pervert. We look at the essay "Kant avec Sade," we read from the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy of the Boudoir, and Andy connects the wild psychoanalysis of Raniere's brainwashing pyramid sex ring scheme to some of the unhinged practices found in Relational psychoanalysis. Now go lick that puddle! What?!?!? Are you afraid?

En esta nueva cápsula , Gibran y Christian abordan por primera vez a Herbert Marcuse, a partir de la compilación de textos sobre psicoanálisis y filosofía (editada en español por Materia Oscura, y disponible en inglés en los Collected Papers). Una conversación sobre por qué Marcuse —tan famoso como poco leído— sigue siendo urgentemente actual.Recorremos su biografía (Berlín, Heidegger, el exilio, la nueva izquierda, el "Marx-Mao-Marcuse" del 68) y su sorprendente vínculo con México: su llegada vía las traducciones de Juan García Ponce, su visita a la UNAM en 1966, el desencuentro que nunca ocurrió con Erich Fromm, y hasta la sombra que su pensamiento proyecta sobre el 68 mexicano y Tlatelolco.Lo que atraviesa el episodio:• La disputa con Erich Fromm y el "ala derecha del psicoanálisis": cómo el revisionismo neofreudiano convirtió el análisis en un dispositivo de adaptación• Por qué para Marcuse las categorías psicoanalíticas ya son, en sí mismas, categorías sociales y políticas• La tesis central de La obsolescencia del psicoanálisis (1963): lo obsoleto no es Freud, sino el individuo sobre el que se construyó la teoría• Del individuo al "átomo social": el encogimiento del yo, el debilitamiento de las facultades críticas y la acumulación de energía destructiva• El principio de rendimiento, el plus de represión y la posibilidad de una sublimación no represiva• Eros como pulsión de vida y la idea de una "nueva sensibilidad" que afecte la dimensión biológica de la existencia• La sociedad sin padre: cómo la autoridad social anónima sustituye la función paterna, leída junto a Lacan (1938), Horkheimer y Paul Federn• Resonancias contemporáneas: narcisismo, identidad a rajatabla, el fenómeno sionista y Recalcati ("el hombre sin inconsciente")• Para qué sirve hoy un análisis: ¿liberación o paliativo adaptativo?Dónde leer los textos:Herbert Marcuse, Psicoanálisis, política y filosofía — Editorial Materia Oscura (Chile). En inglés: Marcuse, Collected Papers (volumen sobre psicoanálisis), disponible en PDF.Referencias mencionadas:• J. Lacan, "Los complejos familiares en la formación del individuo" (1938)• M. Horkheimer, "Autoridad y familia" y "Las enseñanzas del fascismo" (1950)• T. W. Adorno, "El problema de la familia" (1955)• Documental: El hipopótamo de Marcuse y la revolución en el paraíso#Marcuse #TeoríaCrítica #Psicoanálisis #EscuelaDeFrankfurt #Freud #CríticaDeÉpoca

Estude Psicanálise de forma simples, leve e sem complicações desnecessárias. Seja meu aluno na Confraria Analítica, a minha escola de formação teórica em Psicanálise: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://confrariaanalitica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lucas Nápoli é psicólogo, psicanalista, professor, escritor e palestrante. Tem os títulos de Doutor em Psicologia Clínica pela PUC-RJ e Mestre em Saúde Coletiva pela UFRJ.➤ Adquira o pacote com os 3 e-books - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/packebookslucasnapoli⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠➤ Adquira o meu ebook "Entenda-se: 50 lições de um psicanalista sobre saúde mental" - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hotmart.com/pt-br/marketplace/produtos/e-book-entenda-se-50-licoes-de-um-psicanalista-sobre-saude-mental/I89387385X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠➤ Adquira a versão física do livro “Entenda-se: 50 lições de um psicanalista sobre saúde mental” - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lucasnapolipsicanalista.kpages.online/livro-fisico-entenda-se-2d20dc88-3c99-494b-bd41-3c376cae3108⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠➤ Adquira o meu ebook "Psicanálise em Humanês: 16 conceitos psicanalíticos cruciais explicados de maneira fácil, clara e didática" - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hotmart.com/pt-br/marketplace/produtos/ebook-psicanalise-em-humanes-lucas-napoli/P42041012E⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠➤ Adquira o meu ebook "O que um psicanalista faz?" - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hotmart.com/pt-br/marketplace/produtos/o-que-um-psicanalista-faz-dr-lucas-napoli/X28810791U⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Siga-me nas redes sociais:Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/lucasnapolipsicanalista/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/lucasnapolipsicanalista⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Telegram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://t.me/lucasnapoli⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Site: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lucasnapoli.com/

"The hypnotic sound of a fountain in Oslo becomes a moment of wonder, inviting the listener to enter another reality. Using recordings from UbuWeb, we were fascinated by what Lacan thought about Alice in Wonderland. "We combined the original sound of Oslo's fountain with music by Lazzaruolo/Villanova and Lacan's words creating a dialogue between voice, imagination, and atmosphere."Oslo fountains reimagined by Giovanna Iorio (concept, research) and Lucio Lazzaruolo (music).

O militante que exige do Estado um certificado de quem ele é talvez seja o súdito mais fiel que esse poder já teve. Neste episódio mostro como a demanda por reconhecimento coroa, no mesmo gesto, a autoridade que diz combater.A leitura passa pelos quatro discursos de Lacan - o do mestre, que nomeia e fixa; o da universidade, a burocracia que cataloga identidades a serviço de um senhor que nunca aparece; o da histérica, em que a própria revolta entroniza o mestre que interroga; e o do analista, a única saída em aberto. Žižek entra com a crítica à política de reconhecimento e ao "Outro descafeinado", e Hegel, Wendy Brown e Carl Schmitt ajudam a fechar o argumento. No centro, uma pergunta que atravessa todo o episódio: e se a revolta de verdade começasse no instante em que você para de pedir ao poder a verdade sobre quem você é?

Subscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessAbby, Patrick, and Dan close out their reading of Winnicott's paper, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” focusing specifically on Winnicott's two case studies. The first is the story of a distressed little boy who has developed an idiosyncratic relationship to string; the second is an adult woman struggling with feelings of loss, memories of her dislocated childhood, and a fantasy about a beautiful white horse. Along the way, Abby, Patrick, and Dan put Winnicott in conversation with other analytical concepts – from Freud's notion of mourning to Lacan's idea of the signifying chain – and work through some challenging implications for thinking about drug addiction, intergenerational traumas, 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. Find us online: http://www.ordinaryunhappiness.com X: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music

Lacan, Freud e Yungtexto de @meditantesmusica fly on | coldplay01h01 27.03.26

When Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism was published in 1974 Freudianism was seen by most feminists as ineradicably patriarchal and inimical to the women's movement. Mitchell's brilliant exegesis, drawing on Lacan and Laing as well as Freud himself, instead sees Freud's asymmetrical view of masculinity and femininity as reflecting the realities of patriarchal culture, and seeks to use his critique of femininity to critique patriarchy itself. To mark a new edition of her seminal work from Verso Mitchell revisits its arguments in conversation with curator, art historian and writer Frances Morris who was, from January 2016 to February 2023, director of the Tate Modern. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Walter Procaccio"Improvviso"La regalità di un momento qualsiasiCronopio Editorehttp://www.shopcronopio.it/prodotto-143156/Walter-Procaccio-Improvviso-La-regalit%C3%A0-di-un-momento-qualsiasi.aspxQuesto libro parla dello schiocco dell'adesso, sia esso leggendario, traumatico o qualsiasi, nella vita ordinaria, in neurologia o in una stanza d'analisi. Questo libro è una propedeutica all'inatteso. è l'occasione per parlare del momento presente. Non è necessario morire per vivere l'assoluto. Scrive Jean-Luc Nancy: “Essere nell'assoluto è essere, puramente e semplicemente, esserci, hic et nunc”.Insomma, l'assoluto ci scorre accanto anche in cucina, a spasso per la città e tuttavia l'umano si lascia convocare nel suo qui e nel suo ora solo da fatti solenni e improvvisi che diventano storici per piacere o per dolore. In questo caso, in deficit di fantasia, li chiama traumi. Il resto del tempo si rivela spesso attesa disattenta, disbrigo di una vita minore. Nella vita ci sono cose che piacciono e cose che occorre farsi piacere. Riconoscere queste ultime è sempre una prodezza rischiosa. La posta in gioco, a ben vedere, è pura immortalità.Walter Procaccio, psichiatra e psicoterapeuta, ha insegnato presso la facoltà di psicologia Gabriele D'Annunzio di Chieti. Attualmente è docente presso ILP, scuola di specializzazione in psicoterapia di Litorale. è consulente psichiatra presso Associazione Arca comunità Il Chicco. Per Cronopio ha curato Oblio (2016) e scritto Il neurone bugiardo (2019).Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor at Ghent University, Belgium. Our conversation was inspired by his most recent book, Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy.Stijn overviews the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He explains Lacan's three registers: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real; psychosis as a confrontation with the Real; the security and limitations of symbolic convention; how words and stories structure reality; logic versus artistic coherence; and the existential value of paranoia.We compare Lacanian and Jungian approaches on subjects such as the paradox of archetypal and individual, personal myth, and self-knowledge as a never-ending process. Underlying our conversation is the common ground of viewing psychosis not as an illness, but in Stijn's words: “the subjective manifestation of a struggle that touches upon the fundamental aspects of human existence."

WNBA 2026 : La saison est lancée, et elle démarre fort sur le podcast And One.La seconde semaine de saison régulière nous a déjà offert de belles surprises, des performances marquantes et quelques questions qui vont animer les prochains mois.Dans ce débrief posé mais affûté, on revient sur tout ce qu'il faut retenir.Au programme : On parle des performances de Caitlin Clark du côté du Fever, de Paige Bueckers pour les Wings de Dallas.Retour sur la première victoire du Sun cette saison, avant le retour de Leïla Lacan tant attendu pour tous les fans de Connecticut.Notre focus de la semaine concerne les championnes en titre, les Aces de Las Vegas, qui sont déjà tout en haut de la WNBA sur ce début de saison, autour d'une A'jA Wilson déjà auteure d'un match à plus de 40 points sur ce début de saison 2026.On clôture l'épisode avec les matchs à ne pas rater ce week-end — parce que la WNBA, ça se suit tous les jours et encore plus le Samedi et le Dimanche, avec des horaires (19h - 21h) qui offrent la possibilité à tous les fans français de WNBA de pouvoir suivre les matchs sur des horaires plus "accessibles".Nell Angloma, A'Ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark ou Dominique Malonga... les noms qui ont rythmé cette semaine sont aussi au menu.-------------------------And One, le podcast qui prend la WNBA au sérieux — sans se prendre trop au sérieux.Disponible sur Spotify, Apple Podcasts et Deezer.-------------------------#WNBA #WNBA2026 #AndOnePodcast #MarineJohannes #CaitlinClark #NewYorkLiberty #GoldenStateValkyries #Fever #Indiana #LasVegas #Aces #DominiqueMalonga #BasketFéminin #FrenchiesintheWCanal officiel du podcast :https://chat.whatsapp.com/IMY6WgV2UK9FFTWg6fjfDH?mode=gi_tMusiques et jingles : Pixabay (auteur prettyjohn1)Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Federico Leoni, Charles Melman"La guerra è una cosa da vecchi?"Castelvecchi Editorewww.castelvecchieditore.comIn un dialogo lucido e raffinato Charles Melman e Federico Leoni interrogano il ritorno della guerra nel cuore dell'Europa e ne mostrano il carattere non residuale ma costitutivo delle no­stre democrazie. La guerra appare allora come “una cosa da vecchi” solo per chi si illude di averne preso congedo: in realtà, essa abita da sempre il campo de­mocratico, esito precario e provvisorio di una serie di conflitti. Da qui la diagnosi si allarga all'emergere di élite non più orientate dal linguaggio ma dall'algo­ritmo; alla sostituzione dei leader politici con «capi-comici» reclutati tra le fila dei clown e degli uomini di spettacolo; ai popoli di oggi, catturati da «scritture vocali» e immersi in un nuovo ordine allucinatorio. Siamo ancora “figli del nome”, eredi della parola che fonda il nostro legame sociale, politico, economico? O siamo ormai “figli del numero”, educati da scher­mi fluidi e sciami diffusi? Tra critica del presente e apertura al possibile, Melman e Leoni esplorano la grande mutazione in corso: da un lato, il declino del logos e delle forme classiche della soggettività; dall'altro, l'emergere di nuovi regimi di segni. Un'in­dagine che costringe a riconsiderare il rapporto tra democrazia e potenza, tra linguaggio e numero, tra guerra e vita collettiva – e che lascia intravedere, più che una risposta, la trasformazione in atto del nostro stesso modo di essere soggetti.Charles Melman(Parigi, 1931-2022)Psichiatra e psicoanalista, allievo di Jacques Lacan, ha lavorato per decenni negli ospedali psichiatrici di Parigi ed è fondatore dell'Association Lacanienne Internationale. Castelvecchi ha pubblicato Le mie sere con Lacan (2021), Viaggio clandestino con Lacan (2022) e Disforia di genere (2024).Federico LeoniInsegna Antropologia filosofica all'Università di Verona, dove è condirettore del Centro di ricerca “Tiresia” per la filosofia e la psicoanalisi. Scrive su varie riviste, tra cui «aut aut» e «doppiozero». Ha pubblicato fra l'altro Habeas corpus. Sei genealogie del corpo occidentale (Bruno Mondadori, 2008), L'idiota e la lettera. Quattro saggi sul Flaubert di Sartre (Orthotes, 2013), Jacques Lacan, una scienza di fantasmi (Orthotes, 2019) e Henri Bergson. Segni di vita (Feltrinelli, 2021).Diventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

In this episode, I continue working through New Perspectives on Henry Corbin by focusing on Joan Copjec's chapter on Corbin, Lacan, Kiarostami, and the Cloud.What surprised me most was seeing someone from the world of Lacanian theory take Corbin seriously — not as an odd mystical detour, but as a thinker who might help us rethink psychoanalysis, politics, cinema, and reality itself. Copjec brings Corbin's Islamic neo-Gnosticism into conversation with Lacan's Real and Kiarostami's First Case, Second Case to explore what makes resistance possible when power wants everything visible, teachable, governable, and controlled.I reflect on Copjec's idea of the Cloud as a hidden dimension inside reality, her distinction between nihilism and apophatic theology, and the radical political force of a God who cannot be possessed by the state, religion, ideology, or authority. This is not a politics of easy re-enchantment, but a politics of keeping the world open.I also talk about Copjec's recently published book Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran, where she develops these themes further through Kiarostami, Corbin, and Lacan — a book I'm hoping to read soon.At the heart of this episode is a question that feels urgent right now: What happens to politics, therapy, religion, and the person when there is no longer any hidden remainder, no unborn dimension, no Cloud, no Real — nothing that escapes power? And what kind of listening might help us hear the unlocated sound that keeps the world from closing?

In this episode, I spend time with New Perspectives on Henry Corbin, edited by Hadi Fakhoury, and reflect on why Corbin still feels so strangely alive right now.Corbin is difficult to place. He moves through Islamic philosophy, Suhrawardi, Shi'ism, Heidegger, Neoplatonism, angelology, psychoanalysis, esotericism, and the imaginal world, but what keeps pulling me in is his refusal to reduce spiritual reality to dogma, psychology, politics, or fantasy. He gives us a way to think about imagination not as escape, but as a form of perception.I also reflect on some of the chapters I'm most excited by, including Charles Stang on Corbin and Neoplatonism, Joan Copjec on Corbin, Lacan, and Kiarostami, Matthew Dillon on James Hillman's democratization of Corbin's imaginal thinking, and Wouter Hanegraaff's haunting portrait of Corbin's Freemasonry, neo-Templar spirituality, and personal longing for a hidden community of the spirit.This is less a summary of the whole book and more an invitation into Corbin as a provocation: What kind of world do we think we are living in? What kind of knowing have we allowed ourselves to trust? And does the soul still have access to images strong enough to guide it?

Welcome to our new podcast series on SXXII! Our first episode is fittingly titled “The Number Three,” mostly in service to Lacan's style of counting — but also to the diagram below.

La question, c'est : est-ce qu'il marche ? Est-ce qu'il flâne ? Est-ce qu'il se promène ou est-ce qu'il vagabonde ? Oui, je viens de refermer le livre d'Edgardo Scott et je m'interroge à son sujet. Né à Buenos Aires en Argentine, il semblerait qu'il soit issu d'une lignée de grands marcheurs, que vous appelez migrants parfois. Il semblerait aussi que lui-même ait été pris de flânerie pour Paris. Avec Edgardo Scott, c'est aussi l'histoire d'un psychanalyste qui fait marcher sa « cabeza », Freud, Lacan, Foucault jamais très loin de sa plume. L'occasion faisant le larron, lorsque vous lirez Du flâneur au vagabond – un essai littéraire sur la marche qu'il publie aux éditions Riveneuve –, vous cheminerez aux côtés d'Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Cortázar, Borges.  Programmation musicale de l'invité : Edmundo Rivero – « Cuando Me Entres a Fallar »  Aparte – « Summerflight » The Divine Comedy – « To The Rescue »

La question, c'est : est-ce qu'il marche ? Est-ce qu'il flâne ? Est-ce qu'il se promène ou est-ce qu'il vagabonde ? Oui, je viens de refermer le livre d'Edgardo Scott et je m'interroge à son sujet. Né à Buenos Aires en Argentine, il semblerait qu'il soit issu d'une lignée de grands marcheurs, que vous appelez migrants parfois. Il semblerait aussi que lui-même ait été pris de flânerie pour Paris. Avec Edgardo Scott, c'est aussi l'histoire d'un psychanalyste qui fait marcher sa « cabeza », Freud, Lacan, Foucault jamais très loin de sa plume. L'occasion faisant le larron, lorsque vous lirez Du flâneur au vagabond – un essai littéraire sur la marche qu'il publie aux éditions Riveneuve –, vous cheminerez aux côtés d'Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Cortázar, Borges.  Programmation musicale de l'invité : Edmundo Rivero – « Cuando Me Entres a Fallar »  Aparte – « Summerflight » The Divine Comedy – « To The Rescue »

Lately I've been spending a lot of time with Massimo Recalcati, and that rabbit trail led me to Luca Di Gregorio's Lacan in Italy—and specifically to a line that completely grabbed me: that Lacan's legacy “demands invention up to the limit of heresy.”In this episode, I explore what it might mean to truly inherit a thinker without becoming their disciple in the worst sense of the word. What does it mean to be faithful to an intellectual tradition through creativity rather than imitation? Does Recalcati mean we should push right up to the edge of heresy without crossing it—or that real thinking inevitably looks heretical to somebody?Along the way, I reflect on Jung's famous anti-dogmatic spirit, the Zen phrase “kill the Buddha,” my own experience with a deeply Jungian therapist who embodied intellectual generosity rather than orthodoxy, and the strange tribalism that can emerge around thinkers like Lacan, Hegel, Freud, and beyond.This becomes an episode about psychoanalysis, philosophy, therapy, and maybe even psychological adulthood itself—the difficult task of learning from our intellectual fathers and mothers without remaining their children forever.

Nesta república de sonsos, em breve o ódio terá o melhor de nós, a parcela que, num acesso revoltoso, se esforça ainda por compreender o estado das coisas, e será a última expressão contendo um verdadeiro sinal de fervor, uma paixão indomesticada, e o melhor de um antigo anseio confessional, que, vendo-se livre das peias da civilização, se mostrará tomado por essa virulência de ordem mais ou menos espasmódica, impetuosa, capaz de introduzir algum nível de contraste neste mundo. De resto, à nossa volta tudo é cada vez mais cruel e frio, desapaixonado, incapaz de justificar-se senão com essa lógica desprezível daqueles que parecem dispostos a sacrificar tudo em seu nome, de forma que as existências mais degradantes estão defendidas pelo mais rasteiro dos propósitos, que é o da auto-preservação. De qualquer modo, naquele mundo que hoje temos diante de nós, todo o bem é demasiado relativo, e só no mal se acha ainda algum empenho em direcção ao absoluto. Ansiamos por um tempo que já não nos foi dado viver a não ser por vislumbres, visitações em que certos estados fricativos pareciam apossar-se de nós, e tomávamos o embalo de fúrias que foram sendo vistas sempre como o sinal de que um ser se desatrelou, perdeu o eixo, a noção, danou-se, deu a sua carne e espírito de alimento àquelas regiões mais sórdidas, baixas, infernosas… Por isso se pressente como só em horas perdidas os seres se entregam às explorações dessa dimensão de treva que temos sempre trancada nos fundos. Mas se o ódio às vezes tem em si o melhor de um tipo, e somos levados a livrar-nos desse manancial, a tê-lo como uma substância de que devemos envergonhar-nos, seria bom pensar porque é assim. Num mundo em que de qualquer modo, “cada um, de seu próprio passo, vai para o Diabo à sua maneira” (William Hazlitt), não deixa de ser curioso como ódio se tornou uma reserva íntima, sendo-lhe recusado qualquer papel na vida pública, e o seu efeito no campo político é sempre encarado como algo que os espíritos lúcidos devem contrariar, exorcisar. Como assinala David Graeber, hoje tendemos a assumir que a expressão “política do ódio” possui necessariamente conotações de direita (uma vez que normalmente é aplicada ao racismo, ao ódio étnico ou à homofobia) e, por consequência, que o tabu em torno da expressão do ódio político representa uma vitória de sensibilidades essencialmente de esquerda. Mais à frente, nesse ensaio em que este ensaísta comprometido com o anarquismo nos diz que o ódio foi transformado num tabu político, ele nota como a própria ideia de “crime de ódio” inverte o princípio jurídico tradicional segundo o qual um crime passional deve ser punido menos severamente do que um crime motivado por cálculo frio e interesse pessoal.” Talvez não seja coincidência que a vaga de legislação contra crimes de ódio nos anos 90 tenha sido rapidamente seguida por legislação ‘antiterrorista', a qual igualmente estipula penas mais pesadas para crimes motivados por paixões políticas (e, dada a forma como as leis costumam ser redigidas, essas paixões podem incluir o mais benevolente idealismo ou amor pela humanidade ou pela natureza) do que para os mesmos crimes cometidos por lucro económico ou interesse privado.” O capitalismo não é senão o triunfo daqueles que dominam uma violência tremenda mas carregada de subterfúgios, de ordem sempre excepcional, o que faz vigorar uma espécie de burocracia torcionária, que consegue sempre construir as excepções que acabam por tornar nulas todas as funções de justiça, e, desse modo, são precisamente os miseráveis que triunfam e impõem as suas funções de ordem escatológica. "Fizeram-se leis, morais, estéticas, para vos impor o respeito pelas coisas frágeis”, dizia Louis Aragon, antes de desferir o seu golpe: “O que é frágil é para partir." Vemos como por toda a parte estamos imersos nos rigores processionais dessa liturgia pública dos sentimentos bondosos, dos valores que são esgrimidos virtuosamente nos discursos, mas que exprimem sempre uma certa dose de consternação diante do mundo, como se alguma coisa tivesse ido contra os planos. Enquanto isso é o ódio que parece levantar suspeitas, como se fosse uma excrescência arcaica, um resto tóxico da animalidade histórica, algo a evacuar por via higiénica, farmacológica ou policial. O ódio tornou-se o afecto interdito. Já não apenas um vício, mas uma espécie de crime atmosférico, e, desse mesmo modo, tudo deve ser moderado, reciclado, transformado em “desconforto”, “mal-estar”, “polarização”. Contudo, por detrás desta moral desinfectada, o ressentimento alastra por toda a parte, tantas vezes acicatado pelas zonas onde a regulação dinamiza um quotidiano em que vamos à procura uns dos outros nessa Cybéria, a fossa da internet 2.0, contaminada pela estimulação nevrótica das burocracias quando aplicadas à gestão de humores para fins de rentabilidade, esse limbo onde cada vez mais os paraísos se artificializam e os infernos animam os mecanismos administrativos de humilhação num tempo que se esburacou e perdeu toda a fantasia e graça ociosa, instalando-se numa ferocidade passivo-agressiva em que tudo cede a outra coisa, em que se articulam os planos e níveis de um infindável enredo distractivo, uma miragem que dissolve tudo, e a própria inteligência definha e perde todo o sentido e alcance. “A única intimidade que nunca vi vacilar ou esmorecer foi a de carácter puramenrte intelectual”, escrevia faz mais de dois séculos Hazlitt. “Não havia nesta nada de hipócrita ou enfadonho, nada dos queixumes de uma sensibilidade lamurienta. Os nossos conhecidos mútuos eram considerados meramente como sujeitos de conversa e de saber, e não de afecto. Não eram vistos nas nossas experiências senão como ‘ratos de laboratório': ou, como malfeitores, eram regularmente abatidos e deitados na mesa de dissecação. Não poupávamos amigos nem inimigos. Sacrificávamos as deficiências humanas ao altar da verdade. Os esqueletos do carácter podiam ser vistos, depois de extraído o sumo, esvoaçando ao vento como moscas em teias de aranha: ou eram conservados para futura inspecção num frasco de ácido decantado. A demonstração era tão bela quanto nova. Não havia excedente de rancor: nada se conserva tão bem como uma decocção de amargura. Vamos ficando cansados de tudo menos de ridicularizar os outros e de nos congratularmos pelos seus defeitos.” Também Freud terá afirmado que a civilização começou quando um homem, em vez de uma pedra, atirou um insulto. Assim nos foi lembrado por Ricardo Norte, num excelente ensaio sobre as propriedades exaltantes do insulto, em que notava que, ao contrário do que se tornou habitual ouvir da boca dos nossos troca-tintas que gozam até ao limite da tal liberdade de expressão, sem nunca realmente levarem a algum extremo que justifique ou ilustre o vigor desse exercício, as palavras podem magoar muito mais do que um acto. Insultar, etimologicamente, lembrava o Norte, quer dizer saltar sobre, atacar. “Quantos insultos não foram o despertar de obras e gestos memoráveis ao longo da história? Diria mesmo, que a maioria das vezes, é a resposta demorada e reflectida a um insulto que está na génese de muitas obras-primas da literatura. (…) Além disso, o insulto está presente em todo o lado, mesmo entre amigos é recorrente a alcunha insultuosa como demonstração de afecto. A centralidade do insulto no fundamento dos laços humanos é incontestável, ao ponto de Lacan dizer: ‘Há um certo número de funções produzidas pelo facto de o homem habitar na linguagem [...] o ponto de partida da grande poesia, [...] essa relação fundamental estabelecida pela linguagem e que não devemos ignorar: é o insulto. O insulto não é agressão, o insulto é outra coisa completamente diferente, o insulto é grandioso, é a base das relações humanas, não é? Como dizia Homero... Podem ver como cada um obtém o seu estatuto a partir dos insultos que recebe. De que serve tentar camuflar isso com uma tinta qualquer, rosada, chamando-lhe emoção?' Como ninguém leu e nem soube digerir essa engenhosa licença para a bordoada que o Norte andou empenhadamente a montar, e sempre a nossa favor, não daqueles que têm o prestígio de uma proferição feita apartir de uma destacada tribuna, mas que, por isso, mesmos e tornam mais engenhosos no que toca a ensaiar golpes de rins, golpes baixos e assim por diante, até o Drummond ele apanhou por aí barafustar entredentes, praguejando lá com os seus botões: "Nada acontece/ na cidade. O último crime/ foi cometido no tempo dos bisavós. Ninguém foge de casa, ninguém trai./ Repetição de cores e casos, /ó bolor/ da vida longa, no chão pregada a oitenta/ pregos!/As pessoas se cumprimentam, se perguntam/ sempre as mesmas coisas, esperando /lentas confirmações/ milimetricamente conhecidas./ Ai, tão bem-educadas, as pessoas./ Que fazer para não morrer de paz?” Por tudo isto estamos tão necessitados dos efeitos curativos do ódio, esse que Bernhard manejou e elevou a uma razão infrene, provando que está longe de ser uma emoção descontrolada, um ânimo demencial, mas que é, na verdade, uma ferramenta de precisão, um meio para desconstruir e aniquilar o que é falso, medíocre e opressor. Num momento em que, sob o pretexto de "combater o ódio", tem havido lugar a toda essa proliferação de regulamentos, decretos, leis, que têm como efeito real a criminalização do discurso e são totalmente contrárias àquilo que se chamava democracia, como bem vincou o Norte, é preciso reconhecer que a própria inteligência tem um custo, comporta riscos, sobretudo porque nos compromete com as suas resoluções. E aqui vamos arrancar outra dessas traças imundas coleccionadas naquele ensaio pelo Norte, traças dessas que sujam tudo, servem mesmo para nos mostrar como os seres dedicados a construir ilações profundas parece que sobrecarregam as suas sombras de movimentos, concentram possibilidades de uma acção diferida, como se entender fosse criar sequelas, repetir infinitamente a mesma cena, concebendo essas frases com um poder que leva o leitor a desaprender as letras, como se fosse obrigado a voltar ao período em que tinha de gaguejar as sílabas antes de se achar na posse de uma palavra, e depois da frase. Temos de voltar a isso, a citações que se debatem nas nossas mãos e causam uma certa repulsa, enchendo-as da tinta dessas asas acumuladoras de sombras. Jean-Luc Nancy: "Pensar, ou querer pensar, é pesado. [....] Que peso é esse? Em geral, o peso consiste em estar fora de si, em ter o seu ponto de aterragem ou lugar de presença, a sua terra, chão ou vazio, a sua pertença ou abismo, fora de si. Peso significa cair fora de si mesmo." Neste episódio, quisemos dar expressão à figadeira, virar os frascos e dar alguns sinais dessa linhagem estarrecedora dos seres capazes de pegar em banais escaramuças e transformá-las em contendas lendárias, e nisto fomos incentivados pelas explorações do Ricardo Mangerona, que além de uma estreia com um romance que recoloca esta forma em cena de um modo que nos lembra o vigor das suas soluções, a propriedade muito particular desse enredo cumulativo, generoso, capaz de articular uma crónica ponderosa, e que deixava as suas marcas emocionais, tem feito ainda um percurso invulgar enquanto tradutor, e, depois do estupendo volume dedicado a Hazlitt, “Do Prazer de Odiar e Outros Ensaios”, anda agora a braços com uma reunião das intervenções de David Graeber, que em grande medida ilustram porque a tradição anarquista consegue dar respostas num tempo em que outras linhagens se enredam e se mostram incapazes de qualquer convicção.

I've been reading Massimo Recalcati's The Son's Secret: From Oedipus to the Prodigal Son, and a particular passage stopped me in my tracks. His reflection on the child as an irreducible mystery—foreign, distinct, impossible to fully comprehend—opened up something much bigger for me about personhood itself.In this episode, I explore an idea I've privately thought about as anthropological apophaticism—the notion that every person contains a radical mystery that exceeds our interpretations, our diagnoses, even our empathy. Drawing from psychoanalysis, Richard Boothby's reading of Lacan's das Ding, theology's apophatic tradition, and my own clinical work, I reflect on what happens when we forget that the people in front of us are not problems to solve but enigmas to encounter.I also explore how this dynamic shows up in couples therapy, where the problem is often not that partners don't know each other, but that they've become convinced they already know everything. When mystery dies, curiosity dies. And when curiosity dies, so often desire goes with it.This is an episode about the ethics of not reducing people to your explanations of them. About the limits of understanding. About why love may require reverence for what remains unknown.

Afinal, nós dominamos a palavra ou somos falados por ela? Neste episódio, exploramos o estatuto da palavra no ensino de filosofia através de três olhares: o encontro em Martin Buber, a disputa social em Bakhtin e o atravessamento do inconsciente em Lacan. Um mergulho sobre como a linguagem nos constitui, nos desafia e nos coloca em relação.

Otra grabación en exclusiva para Radio 3 de la 22ª edición del Festival Tensamba: el concierto en trío de la cantante Mônica Salmaso, el flautista y saxofonista Teco Cardoso y el compositor y guitarrista Guinga del pasado 19 de septiembre en el MUNA (Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología) de Tenerife. Con obras de Guinga como 'Choro por Zé', 'Sete estrelas', 'Odalisca', 'Di menor', 'Passarinhadeira', 'Bolero de Satã', 'Baião de Lacan', 'Você você', 'Esconjuros' y 'Chã de panela'.  Escuchar audio

RU392: CHRISTOS TOMBRAS ON FALSE NEGATIVES: TILTED TAKES ON A WORLD IN FLUX: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru392-christos-tombras-on-false-negatives Join Rendering Unconscious Podcast at Substack for all new and archival episodes: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious welcomes Dr. Christos Tombras back to the podcast! He's here to talk about his new book False Negatives: Tilted Takes on a World in Flux. https://www.l2upublishing.co.uk/falsenegatives Rendering Unconscious episode 392. On this episode, Christos discusses the origins and themes of his new book False Negatives: Tilted Takes on a World in Flux, a collection of philosophical essays examining truth, evidence, and meaning in the post-truth age. The book, a series of vignettes written as part of an experiment on Open Democracy, navigates the shifting boundaries of politics, science, history, art, and human understanding. Christos delves into the complexities of truth, narratives, and identity; the impact of COVID-19 on personal and professional life; and the role of choice and interpretation in art. He also touches upon the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis and challenges of navigating uncertainty in a rapidly changing world. In an era when “alternative facts” shape public discourse and technology reshapes what we believe to be true, Christos invites us to reconsider how we know what we know. Through vivid examples—from DeepFake videos and AI-generated art to Freud's dreams and Gödel's theorem—he explores the fragile relationship between truth and interpretation, reason and belief, evidence and experience. Christos Tombras is a London-based Lacanian psychoanalyst, lecturer, and writer. His work bridges psychoanalysis, philosophy, and contemporary culture. He is known for illuminating the intersections of science, art, and subjectivity in a language both precise and humane. https://www.listeningtoyou.co.uk His books include Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World from Heidegger through Lacan (2019). https://amzn.to/48W8r8H Check out this previous episode: RU60: CHRISTOS TOMBRAS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS, PHILOSOPHY & THE BODY – FREUD, LACAN, HEIDEGGER RU News & Events: Friday, May 1st: LIVE RU Podcast event with Lara Sheehi on May Day for her new book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026). With Carterr Carter as discussant. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/live-ru-podcast-event-with-lara-sheehi All paid subscribers to RU Center for Psychoanalysis and Rendering Unconscious podcast will receive the zoom link to attend this event live and the recording will be archived at both Substacks. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Full archive of RU Center events and CLASSES HERE: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/t/classes See RU Center SCHEDULE OF EVENTS HERE: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/schedule Rendering Unconscious is also a book: Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024): https://amzn.to/4sOqSEu Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including new, future, and archival podcast episodes. It's so important to maintain independent spaces free from censorship and corporate influence. If you are interested in pursuing psychoanalytic treatment with me, please feel free to contact me directly: www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank You.

RU391: DEREK HOOK & JASON CHILDS ON AN INTRODUCTION TO FREUDIAN-LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru391-derek-hook-and-jason-childs Join Rendering Unconscious Podcast at Substack for all new and archival episodes: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious welcomes Drs. Derek Hook and Jason Childs to the podcast! They're here to talk about their upcoming course An Introduction to Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysis, which begins Saturday, May 2nd! https://www.jasonchildsphd.com/intro-hook-childs Rendering Unconscious episode 391. On this episode, Jason and Derek discuss their upcoming 10-week course on Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, starting May 2, which will cover key concepts such as the Freudian unconscious, the Freudian clinic, drives, the death drive, Lacan's return to Freud, the symbolic, imaginary, and real, desire, jouissance, analytic ethics, diagnosis and technique. The course aims to provide a foundational understanding of Lacanian theory, emphasizing its clinical and theoretical implications. Derek and Jason also highlight the importance of understanding Lacanian social theory and its relevance to contemporary issues like racism.  RU Center News & Events: Saturday, April 18th, join me for the next installment of An Introduction to Psychoanalysis. In this class, we will be discussing the period following World War I, including Freud's free clinics, specifically the establishment of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Polyclinic by Max Eitingon, Karl Abraham and Ernst Simmel. We'll also look at the Secret Committee formed at the suggestion of Ernst Jones, and review the work of early woman psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé. Finally we will take a look at a Freud's texts, “The Uncanny” (1919), “A Child is Being Beaten” (1919), and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), and review the cases of the Wolf Man and The Young Homosexual Woman. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com Friday, May 1st: LIVE RU Podcast event with Lara Sheehi on May Day for her new book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026). https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/live-ru-podcast-event-with-lara-sheehi All paid subscribers to RU Center for Psychoanalysis are automatically registered for these RU Center/ RU Pod events, and the recordings will be archived at RU Center for Psychoanalysis Substack. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com See RU Center SCHEDULE OF EVENTS HERE: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/schedule Rendering Unconscious is also a book: Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024): https://amzn.to/4sOqSEu Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including new, future, and archival podcast episodes. It's so important to maintain independent spaces free from censorship and corporate influence. If you are interested in pursuing psychoanalytic treatment with me, please feel free to contact me directly: www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank You.

In Jay's latest talk we take a he takes a deep dive into the philosophical and psychological concept of the other inspired by the work of Lacan, Sartre, Freud and other thinkers. How does that connect to faith and the message of Christ. As always, we appreciate your comments, your support and this beautiful group of people at Revolution. If you have the opportunity to support what we do, you can do so by following, sharing or giving at the following links:revolutionchurch.cominstagram.com/revolutionchurch94x.com/Revolution_199www.youtube.com/@RevolutionBroadcastinghttps://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7FXFBB8PSWEEC&source=url Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We discuss why men who claim to be women by identifying as transgender are almost all exclusively perverts. Using Lacan's concept of perversion and what perversity of mind entails we link fetishism, sexual offending, and the need for others to collude in ‘disavowing' the rules of reality.‘Transwomen' are guided at all times by the knowledge they are men, so the idea they are a woman is not quite a delusion, but rather a perverse way of relating. This creates an integral need for others to affirm and validate that false claim as a source of collusion in their ‘disavowal' as if the laws of reality somehow do not apply to them.Why is Lacan's concept of the perverse useful? It offers a theoretical psychoanalytic perspective why ‘transwomen' continually raise the stakes, push boundaries, and why an erotic charge accompanies it, as well as their incandescent rage when the other won't pretend and agree they are women. It also explains why there's such a higher than average rate of sexual offending for ‘transwomen' and a confident belief that anyone at all would join in to pretend that men can be women.

We discuss the uproar and confusion that ensued when John Davidson, who suffers from Coprolalia (the form of Tourettes that induces vulgar language and gestures), said the N-word at the Baftas. Why did the BBC not bleep the N-word when they had already bleeped "Free Palestine" and other slurs?Who is the more righteous, those who find racism in John Davidson's heart, or those who attack the accusation of racism as ableist?We discuss Lacan and the signifier, we discuss the compulsion to apologize and virtue signal, and the spectacle of it all.

Stijn Vanheule is a Belgian clinical psychologist and professor at Ghent University.Book link: https://otherpress.com/product/why-psychosis-is-not-so-crazy-9781635424423/---Become part of the Hermitix community:Hermitix Twitter - https://twitter.com/HermitixpodcastSupport Hermitix:Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/hermitixDonations: - https://www.paypal.me/hermitixpodHermitix Merchandise - http://teespring.com/stores/hermitix-2Bitcoin Donation Address: 3LAGEKBXEuE2pgc4oubExGTWtrKPuXDDLKEthereum Donation Address: 0x31e2a4a31B8563B8d238eC086daE9B75a00D9E74

No Imposturas desta semana, trazemos a primeira aula do módulo "Esquizoanálise - Conceitos Fundamentais", que inaugura o novo projeto: Seminários Deformação. Fizemos uma contextualização histórica e biográfica da obra de Deleuze e Guattari, e uma breve exposição do conceito de desejo para os autores. ParticipantesRafael TrindadeLinksSeminários DeformaçãoOutros linksFicha TécnicaCapa: Felipe FrancoEdição: Pedro JanczurAss. Produção: Bru AlmeidaGosta do nosso programa?Contribua para que ele continue existindo, seja um assinante!Support the show

If you want to know how to think on your feet, you need to understand something most advice on this topic gets wrong: Thinking on your feet is not a talent. It's a trained response. And the training required goes far deeper than memorizing a few “power phrases” or practicing small talk at networking events. Real mental agility, by which I mean the kind that serves you in a boardroom, on a stage, in a heated conversation, and even in physical danger, is something you earn. And to earn it requires systematic preparation across multiple domains. I know this because I've spent decades training for exactly these moments. As a university professor, I've lectured in multiple languages to rooms of students who didn't always want to be there. And to get my PhD, I had to sit for a dissertation defense in a room where some of the examiners delighted in throwing hardball questions. As a performing musician, I've improvised solos on stages where the set list changed mid-show. While performing card magic, I've recovered from botched tricks in front of audiences who were actively trying to catch me out. And as a martial arts practitioner, I've used my training to escape three real-world physical confrontations without throwing a single punch. Then there was my TEDx Talk where I had to make real time adjustments when the audience failed to even smile at my scripted laugh lines, but chuckled substantially during parts I had not planned to be funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtDy68-gkY How to Think on Your Feet: The Complete Training System for Mental Agility Under Pressure What I've learned across all of these experiences is that every domain of “thinking on your feet” shares one foundational requirement. It's not intelligence. It's not quick wit. It's often not even confidence. Rather, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that thinking quickly and responding in the best possible way comes down to the systematic reduction of ego. That might sound philosophical, but it's intensely practical. And it will become the thread that connects everything in this guide. From how to recall information instantly in a conversation to how to physically escape a threatening situation without freezing. Here's what we'll cover today: Part 1: Why “Thinking on Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Part 8: Loading Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence Let’s dive in with why most people struggle with the skill of spontaneously responding in optimal ways in the first place. Why “Thinking On Your Feet” Is a Trained Skill, Not a Personality Trait As Freud pointed out, civilization is not our natural state. In Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which is usually translated as Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues that much of our inner tension comes from how our social training represses our instincts. “Discontents” is not really a great translation for the title of this book. “Unbehagen” means something more like “unease” or “discomfort.” And since languages and skills are something we learn, we literally have to undergo a process of discomfort to learn most things. That's not a political statement. It's a neurological one. Your brain's implicit memory system, the part that handles automatic behaviors, gut reactions, and how you repeat social patterns on autopilot, was shaped by millennia of environments that looked nothing like a conference room or a dinner party. It was shaped by physical survival, tribal dynamics, and the need to read danger before it arrives. This means that when you're put on the spot in a modern context, your brain defaults to patterns it learned through observation, not through deliberate training. And those patterns were modelled on the people around you growing up. Especially in contexts like: Being asked a question you weren't expecting Getting challenged during a meeting Having someone force you to improvise a presentation at school or work In such situations, you might find yourself freezing under pressure and not realizing that you’re actually repeating how you saw a parent go cold when you were young. Or you might find yourself getting defensive in arguments the way a sibling did, or going blank during presentations based on someone else’s blip you observed. When you repeat this behavior yourself, it’s not a character flaw. That's implicit memory doing exactly what it was designed to do: replicate observed behavior. And if you’re reading this and don’t have problems thinking on your feet, chances are that you were a lucky observer of someone who could when you were young. Combatting Implicit Memory’s Hold with Reconsolidation The problem is that your default patterns are not optimized for the situations modern life throws at you. They're survival patterns, not performance patterns. Since you’ve learned to react like those you’ve observed instead of how you’d prefer to act as a fully realized being in this world, what can you do? Fortunately, quite a bit. Neuroscientists call the mechanism behind how you can shift the hold of implicit memory on your behavior memory reconsolidation. Here’s how memory reconsolidation works in brief: Every time you recall a memory, it temporarily destabilizes. Researchers call this destabilization a “labile state.” And while the memory is transitioning, the memory can be modified before your brain stores it again. This includes modifying behavioral patterns, not just facts. So when you clam up after being put on the spot and then reflect on what happened, that freezing response is briefly open to revision. This process was first demonstrated in landmark research by Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux at NYU, which you can read about in Memory Reconsolidation. As part of their investigation, Nader and LeDoux demonstrated that even deeply encoded fear memories could be altered during reconsolidation. Unlocking Transformation Bruce Ecker and colleagues later applied this principle therapeutically. I recommend their discussion in Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change. As you’ll read, they discovered how long-held emotional patterns can be rewritten. Not through willpower, but through a specific process of activating the old pattern, introducing a contradictory experience, and allowing the brain to re-encode. Monica Khosla explores a parallel idea in The First and Last Belief. This fascinating book is written by someone who experiences non-dual states similar to those I shared in The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. Khosla discusses how our earliest family-formed beliefs become the templates for how we respond under pressure as adults. Her work in family therapy suggests that these templates aren’t permanent fixtures. Rather, they’re “reconsolidatable,” provided you understand how they were formed and deliberately create new experiences that contradict them. This is precisely what the training in the guide you’re reading now is designed to do. Every exercise, every practice, every discipline I’ll share works by activating your default pattern (the freeze, the defensive reaction, the blank stare) and replacing it with a trained alternative in the moment it’s most labile. The Catch But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? The pattern that most resists reconsolidation is your self-image. It’s also your self-image that most aggressively defends itself against change. People literally argue for hours with therapists that they cannot change. I know because I made this argument myself for years in front of my own therapists. This is precisely why thinking on your feet requires training. You cannot simply decide to be quicker, calmer, or more articulate under pressure. You have to deliberately replace your default patterns with trained responses. And use deliberate practice to ensure those responses become the new default. The training looks different depending on the context: In conversation and debate, it means learning frameworks for organizing thoughts rapidly and practicing with real people. In professional settings, it means memorizing key information so thoroughly that recall becomes effortless, freeing your mind to think rather than search. On stage or in front of an audience, it means thousands of hours of performance practice that builds a reservoir of recoveries and pivots you can draw on automatically. In physical danger, it means martial arts or self-defense training that bypasses conscious thought entirely and produces trained physical reactions. Each of these contexts has its own training methods. But they all share the same underlying principle: the trained response must be so deeply encoded that it fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. The single biggest source of that interference? Your ego. But never fear. As big of a problem as the ego can be, you’re going to learn how to solve and resolve it. Part 2: The Ego Problem (Why Your Self-Image Is Your Biggest Obstacle) Here's the uncomfortable truth that almost no “how to think on your feet” article will tell you: The reason most people freeze, fumble, or fail under pressure is not that they lack information or intelligence. It's that they're managing their self-image at the same time as they're trying to perform. They experience serious cognitive drain as a result. Why? Well, when you're in a meeting and someone asks you a question you don't know the answer to, your mind doesn't just process the question. If your ego is not well-managed, your mind simultaneously processes: “What will they think of me if I don't know? Will I look incompetent? How do I maintain my status?” That parallel processing consumes the very cognitive resources you need for actual thinking. The Additional Cognitive Drain of Fantasizing Your Own Wit The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made an observation that I've found profoundly useful in this context. He once pointed out that our fantasies are almost always better than the reality. For example, when we fantasize about being the quick-witted person everyone admires, we're constructing an idealized self-image that the real moment can never live up to. At least not all the time. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the gods have clay feet.” Well, spend enough time with accomplished performers, and you’ll start to see why. No one always has: the perfect response the devastating comeback the elegant pivot But we fantasize that some people do. And then when we don't perform like our fantasy, we experience not just the failure of the moment, but also a painful collapse of our self-image. That's why a stumble in a presentation can feel catastrophic even when the audience barely notices. The ego is experiencing a much larger injury than the situation warrants. How to Reduce Ego Before It Costs You There’s no quick fix for the ego. And ego reduction exercises so you can respond with greater self-satisfaction in the moment require: Practice in advance Consistent application in a variety of situations And in a variety of ways until responding off the top of your head from a clear mind becomes your default orientation. Then you maintain the practices that get you the spontaneous mastery you want over time. Here is a powerful place to start. Practice Stoic Premeditation The Stoics called it premeditatio malorum or negative visualization. Basically, you deliberately imagine everything that could go wrong related to the situations that regularly require your response. If you regularly visualize yourself going blank in a meeting, stumbling through a presentation, or being publicly corrected, the actual event loses its power to destabilize you. You've already experienced the worst in your imagination. The real version is almost always milder. It’s the flipside of the point from Lacan we discussed above. You’ve now made the reality much better than the fantasy. Modify the Classic Stoic Exercise You can modify premeditatio malorum in two key ways. I suggest you experiment with both techniques I’m about to describe. One: Transform Old Memories of a Disastrous Performance First, you can excavate through your memory to find situations you recall where things have already been bad for you. Then, you can “cleanse” those memories by placing them in a “Happy Memory Palace.” The scientific basis for this process comes from research showing promise in therapy for trauma, such as this study of memory reconsolidation specific to declarative memory. And there is the now classic Tim Dalgleish-headed research on using Memory Palaces or the method of loci for successfully reducing depression. For more on this kind of research, the following livestream replay gives you an exact exercise and more about the memory science behind the positive outcomes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs9UHz4pVuM In terms of how I’ve used this approach personally, I sometimes wince at one particular memory from when I sang a song during show-and-tell one morning when I was in grade two. I don’t know why I used to feel embarrassed when the memory would arise as an adult, but I could feel the sting in my cheeks. And later when I first started sharing the Sanskrit phrases I’ve memorized, that little flush of shame would arise again. So to forgive that kid whatever my memory was holding against him for his squeaky little voice, I turned the classroom into a Memory Palace and used it to memorize a delightful poem. From the point that I finished learning the poem (you can learn the process from this poetry memorization guide), I can think of that episode without that old embarrassment reviving any of its sting. And I’ve used this approach to transform other lingering memories I don’t like as well, something I’ll share more in-depth in a forthcoming book. Releasing old negative memories that involve shame makes me feel more spontaneous. And I’m confident you’ll enjoy a similar benefit too. Two: Memorize Stoic Quotes Memorizing poetry is one thing, but it takes time. You can commit quotes to memory a lot faster. I share one of my favorite quotes from Seneca in this YouTube short, one that took only a few minutes to memorize, even though it’s in Latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISvX0-CfRkk I found this quote in Kevin Vost’s Memorize the Stoics! Although it’s not on my list of best Memory Palace Books, it provides a great look at memory training through a Stoic lens. And Vost is right: The value of having ancient wisdom on tap cannot be exaggerated. Not just for correcting your ego. You’ll also find that you have more things to say when pressed to speak on the spot. Things that have stood the test of time. Meditate Specifically for Ego Reduction Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, often says in his talks that if you are empty of thought, you don’t have to worry about what to say next during a conversation. You’ll spontaneously produce the best possible reply. I often wondered how it was possible to empty my mind of thoughts until I encountered Gary Weber’s Happiness Beyond Thought and Evolving Beyond Thought amongst other works. Although Weber’s full program requires a fair amount of time, it’s worth it for the mental space and spontaneity you’ll enjoy. Two Other Tactics for Detaching From Your Ego for Greater Spontaneity While you’re experimenting with Stoicism, here are two other tactics to explore. They’re both counterintuitive, but powerful. Embrace ignorance as a position of strength Saying “I don't know, but I'll find out” is not a failure. It's a demonstration of intellectual honesty that most people find more impressive than an imaginary answer. If your ego tells you that not knowing something is a form of weakness, push back. Admitting when you don’t know something and then doing some research and following up, builds trust at the same time as it builds your knowledge base. Detach from Needing Any Particular Outcome Your job in any high-pressure moment is not to be brilliant. It's to be present and responsive. Almost as if there is no “you” longing to be perceived in any particular way. Or desiring things to play out for or against you. When you stop trying to produce the perfect response and instead focus on actually hearing the question, understanding the situation, and responding honestly, the quality of your thinking improves dramatically. And it happens largely because you've freed up the cognitive resources consumed by your egotistical needs. You’ll also enjoy your perception of the present moment much more. Part 3: Mental Recall Under Pressure (How to Access What You Know When It Matters) One of the most common experiences of “not thinking on your feet” is this: You know the information, but you can't access it in the moment. You know your mind possesses the answer. But the pressure of the situation has locked the door. There's a neurological explanation for this. Researcher Amy Arnsten has documented how stress signalling pathways in the prefrontal cortex effectively shut down under acute stress. As we know from studies in anxiety-induced memory loss, during stress, the amygdala takes prominence over the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for working memory, reasoning, and flexible thinking. As a result, your brain redirects resources toward fight-or-flight responses that are useful for physical survival but terrible for articulate speech. This is a major reason why you can know something perfectly in a calm environment and go completely blank when asked about it in front of an audience or in a heated discussion. The information hasn't disappeared. Your brain has simply redirected resources away from the systems that retrieve it. The Alphabet Retrieval Technique When I suddenly can't recall something (a name, a fact, a point I wanted to make), I have a technique that works more often than I'd expect: I mentally run through the alphabet from A to Z. It doesn’t always bring back the information. But the technique works often enough to make it a reliable first move, hitting the correct first letter while scanning through the alphabet triggers the retrieval. When it works, it’s because the first letter acts as a cue that unlocks the rest of the word or thought. It’s also the basis of how associative memory operates. As Dr. Gary Small has explained, your brain stores information in networks that somewhat resemble neighborhoods. And the first letter of a word is often enough of a “key” to unlock the door on a full node of information. It's the same principle behind why a song's opening notes can bring back the entire melody. Or how just a word or two of a lyric can bring back an entire verse. The “Let It Go” Retrieval Technique If scanning the alphabet doesn't work, the next best strategy is counterintuitive: Stop trying. In other words, deliberately release any attempt to search your mind for the content. Instead, move on to the next point, the next topic, the next question. Often, within 5–10 minutes, the information you were grasping for will come racing back to mind. This form of recall happens because your subconscious continues processing the retrieval request even after your conscious mind has moved on. Releasing the conscious effort actually accelerates the process, because you've removed the stress that was blocking retrieval in the first place. The Anti-Digital Amnesia Discipline You Need In order to ensure your memory gets stronger over time, you need to break the habit of immediately reaching for your phone or a search engine when you fail to recall something. Every time you outsource mental retrieval to a computer, you weaken the neural pathways that perform recall. You're training your brain that it doesn't need to do the work — and over time, it stops trying. This is the phenomenon I've written about as digital amnesia, and it's one of the most insidious threats to mental agility in the modern world. Preloading: The Real Solution to In-the-Moment Recall Both alphabetical retrieval and simply letting go are recovery strategies. They're useful when recall fails. But the real solution to thinking on your feet is to ensure that recall rarely fails in the first place. This is where a variety of memory training techniques enter the picture. Not as gimmicks, but as the foundational infrastructure for mental agility. The Memory Palace Technique Using Memory Palaces provides a core means of preloading information into your mind. Because this technique allows you to encode very large amounts of information, retrieval under pressure becomes qualitatively different from trying to recall something you passively read or heard. You literally own that information, forwards and backwards. It works because the spatial structure of the Memory Palace gives your brain a retrieval path that works even when the prefrontal cortex is under stress, because spatial memory is processed partly by the hippocampus. This is a different system than the one stress shuts down. In practical terms: If you've memorized the key points of a presentation using a Memory Palace, you don't need to “remember” them under pressure. You just mentally walk to the next room. The information is there, waiting. But it’s not merely attached to a place you know as well as your own home. It has also entered long-term memory. To learn this approach, check out The Memory Palace Technique: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide. Memory Wheels and the Art of Combination Retrieving facts, quotes, even entire passages under pressure is one thing. But what about those moments when you need to synthesize information on the spot? Such as when someone poses a complex question and the right answer isn’t a single piece of information but a combination of ideas you need to assemble in real time? This is where most people’s recall fails them entirely. They might remember one relevant point, but they can’t pull together the three or four ideas needed to construct a substantive response on the spot. I use a technique for this that dates back to the 13th-century philosopher Ramon Llull, later refined by the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno. It’s called ars combinatoria or the art of combination. It works by pre-organizing your knowledge onto mental structures called memory wheels so that you can rotate through ideas rapidly and recombine them in novel ways during live situations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opmb-mU-KPI Here’s the simplest version of how it works in practice: Imagine a circle in your mind with the letters A through Z arranged around it. For each letter, you’ve pre-assigned a thinker, a framework, or a principle you know well. A might be Aristotle. B might be a breathing technique. C might be a core value you hold. M might be Marcus Aurelius. S might be the Stoic concept of premeditatio malorum. When a difficult question hits you in conversation, instead of grasping for one perfect answer, you mentally spin the wheel. Instead of searching randomly for something to say, you approach the task of coming up with something to say by scanning an organized inventory of your best thinking. Because you’ve pre-loaded and spatially arranged all of it, your mind can traverse what you’ve already learned quickly. Memory Wheel Example One of my favorite Memory Wheels is populated with philosophers (one for each letter of the alphabet). When I’m confronted with a complex topic, I rotate through and consider what Aristotle would say and then move on through as many philosophers as I like, all the way to Zizek for Z. I know this technique sounds elaborate and it requires having read the best philosophy books, but once you have a Memory Wheel built and practiced, the rotation takes seconds. Here’s a rapid fire discussion with a few more examples from one of my YouTube shorts from the road in Brisbane: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/29nOib2ZS_4 Please don’t overlook this technique. It produces responses that are genuinely multi-perspectival, not just whatever my default opinion happens to be. The deeper history of this technique and detailed instructions for building your own memory wheels are covered in my full guide to Ramon Llull’s memory wheel method. But the principle you can apply immediately upon developing your own memory wheels is this: If you pre-organize your knowledge into a spatial structure rather than leaving it scattered across your memory, you gain the ability to not just recall individual facts under pressure but to combine and recombine ideas on the fly. That is the difference between someone who can answer a question and someone who can think through a problem in real time. It’s not speed without purpose. It’s architecture with a sense of direction based on the shoulders of giants. Part 4: Verbal Agility (How to Sound Smart, Pivot, and Recover in Conversation) Verbal agility isn't about having a quick tongue. It's about having a calm mind with a deep well of material to draw from. The people who seem effortlessly articulate in conversation are rarely making it up on the spot. They're drawing on vast reserves of pre-loaded knowledge, practiced frameworks, and rehearsed transitions. What looks like spontaneous brilliance is actually the visible tip of an enormous iceberg of preparation. Frameworks for Organizing Your Thoughts Rapidly When someone throws a topic at you and you need to respond coherently, having a mental framework prevents the rambling that makes people sound unprepared. Here are several that work, provided you practice using them before they’re required in real-life situations: The PREP Framework PREP stands for: Point Reason Example Point It’s a very powerful formula to practice during debates as well as in conversation. When using PREP, you state your position, give one reason, illustrate with one example, then restate your position. This takes 30–60 seconds and helps keep your replies structured without sounding rehearsed. The WRAP Technique I learned this one from Chip and Dan Heath's Decisive. WRAP stands for: Widen your options Reality-test your assumptions Attain distance before deciding Prepare to fail I placed WRAP on a memory wheel and demonstrate how to run through it mentally in this ars combinatoria video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg What to Do When You're Stumped Even with the frameworks we just discussed or tactics like running through the alphabet, you will experience situations where you simply don't have a response. Here are more strategies you can try. Pause Peacefully Although falling silent can feel painful when you first start practicing it, rest assured that it barely registers to the person listening. And in many cases, a two or three-second pause before responding signals thoughtfulness, not ignorance. Most people rush to fill silence because their ego can't tolerate appearing slow. But a measured pause followed by a substantive response is always more impressive than a rushed response followed by backtracking. Seek Clarification There’s nothing wrong with asking people: “Can you say more about what you mean by that?” or “Are you asking about X or Y specifically?” Such questions will not stall the conversation. It's genuine intellectual engagement, and it often reveals avenues for further conversation that would not be revealed any other way. Use the Truth You might not know this, but many people find it refreshing when someone admits that something is outside of their area. Nir Eyal did that on my podcast a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten his willingness to “stay in his lane,” as he put it. The best part? Nobody penalizes honest uncertainty and a request to move on if you really don’t have a settled opinion on some matter or any expertise. Practice Physical Awareness Sometimes when we’re stumped, our body tenses up. Shoulders rise, the jaw clenches and breathing shallows. This physical tension feeds back into your mental state and makes mental freezing worse. But deliberately dropping your shoulders and taking one slow breath can help break the cycle. More on this kind of physical solution is coming up in Part 6. Practice Steelmanning One of the most powerful exercises for verbal agility is practicing steelmanning. Related to the principle of charity in rhetoric, steelmanning is the practice of arguing for positions with which you disagree. But not half-heartedly. No, you make the argument in the strongest possible terms. One simple way to practice steelmanning involves getting a friend to throw topics at you randomly. Your job is not to argue your own position, but to construct the best possible argument for the opposite side. This practice accomplishes three things simultaneously: It forces you to think through ideas from perspectives you wouldn't naturally adopt, which builds cognitive flexibility. It trains you to separate your ego from your position, because you're explicitly not defending your own views. It prepares you for actual debates, because you've already rehearsed the strongest version of your opponent's argument. For more tips that will help you in this department, check out my guide to preparing for debates. The Improv Principle If you take one thing from this section and act on it, let it be this: Take an improvisation class. Why? Improv comedy training provides you with the single most transferable skill for verbal agility in any context. The core principle of improv is quite easy. You simply answer everything with either “yes, and…” or “no, but…” This simple structure teaches you to accept whatever is thrown at you and build on it rather than blocking or deflecting. This is the exact skill you need in meetings, conversations, presentations, and debates. Improv also provides the one thing you can't get from reading articles: Real-time practice under social pressure while receiving immediate feedback. No amount of theory replaces the experience of standing in front of a group with nothing planned and having to produce something. It’s been a long time since I took an improv class, or any class. But you really only need one round to create a permanent transformation. Part 5: Performance Under Pressure (Lessons from Music, Magic, and the Stage) If you've never performed music, theatre, magic, public speaking, or any other form of real-time presentation, you may not realize how much of “thinking on your feet” is simply having enough trained material that you can recover from anything. The principle applies far beyond the stage. But the stage is where the principle is most visible, so let me share what I've learned from three performance disciplines. Music: Improvisation Is Built on Structure & Self-Awareness When I studied music, I learned something that most non-musicians find surprising: improvisational soloing requires more preparation than playing a written piece. A written piece has every note specified. You practice it, you perform it, you're done. An improvised solo, on the other hand, requires you to internalize the underlying structure so thoroughly that you can navigate it in real time without conscious planning. You need to know the modes, the chord changes, the rhythmic patterns, the phrasing conventions. And you need to know them so well that they're available to your fingers before your conscious mind has time to think about which note comes next. I know this from decades of musical experience. But my life in music almost never happened at all. In grade five, I failed a recorder test. It was given as a prerequisite for joining band class in grade six. The reason, though I didn’t have the language for it at the time, was a condition then called image-deficit disorder, now known as aphantasia. I couldn’t visualize what my teachers were asking me to see on the recorder or the sheet music. And the boring mnemonic sentences they gave us for remembering the notes made no sense to me. The school’s verdict in the face of my supposed failure? No band class. My dad changed that. He rolled up to the school on his Harley Davidson and had a conversation with the administration that I wasn’t privy to. Whatever he said, it worked. I was in. So long as I played the trombone instead of my dream bass guitar. They thought trombone would be easiest for me with its one simple slide. The Art of Coping By Copying But getting into band class didn’t mean I could play. In fact, for the entire first year, I sat beside another trombonist who picked up every note like it was nothing. I survived by watching his slide positions and copying them. I wasn’t reading music. I was reading him. The next year, in grade seven, the teacher gave us separate parts, and my copying lifeline was over. I remember sitting alone in a room with that trombone, sweat rolling down my face, sheet music on the stand turning my brain into wet sawdust. It felt like staring at an explosive I didn’t know how to defuse. But something shifted as my juvenile brain worked to solve the problem. Once I was forced to actually engage with the notation instead of mimicking someone else, I started seeing patterns. The theory behind the notes began to click. My teacher noticed the transformation quickly, both in performance and on my written tests. Later that year, she encouraged me to enter a sight-reading competition. Even though I didn’t win, I remember the thrill of performing music I’d never seen before. And because my teacher saw how deeply I’d started engaging with music, she helped me secure a spot at the local summer school of music before high school. That summer changed my trajectory. I studied with a celebrated trombonist from Canadian Brass. My skills went up substantially, and after a solo I played during the final concert, I was asked to audition for the Kamloops Rube Band. I turned that invitation down and finally retired the trombone for a bass and joined a heavy metal band instead. Over the years that followed, I played in multiple bands, learned increasingly complex music, and eventually realized a lifelong dream: going on tour with an established band. Memory expert Anthony Metivier performing at a concert in Germany. The Lesson That Changed How I Perform And it was during that tour, playing with a sophisticated band called The Outside, that I received perhaps the most important lesson about thinking on your feet that music ever gave me. After a show, our drummer Tito told me I’d missed a few notes. I braced for a critical lecture, but he said something I’ve never forgotten. It was an important tip that has everything to do with the practice of thinking on your feet: “The real problem isn’t missing the notes. It’s looking like you made a mistake. If you look like you made a mistake, it is a mistake.” From that moment on, I trained myself to improvise how I looked just as much as how I sounded. A missed note played with confidence reads as a creative choice. A perfect note played with visible anxiety reads as a near-miss. The audience often doesn’t hear your mistakes, but they do see your reaction to them. This principle extends far beyond music. It shows up in meetings, presentations and conversations. Your stumbles themselves are almost never what people remember. They remember whether or not you flinched. And to tie this all back to the beginning, flinching is an ego response. It’s the visible evidence of caring more about how you appear than about what you’re communicating. Tito didn’t know he was teaching me about ego reduction back during that tour in 2013. But that’s exactly what his lesson was. Card Magic: Multiple Outs and Recovery In card magic, which is especially useful in memorized deck magic, there's a concept called “multiple outs.” I think about it constantly in non-magic contexts. A multiple out is a tactic you might never use, but always have something prepared so that no matter what the spectator does, you conclude the trick successfully. In other words, no matter which card they choose, which pile they point to, which decision they make, you have a prepared path to a successful conclusion. The spectator thinks they're making free choices. In reality, every choice leads to the same place, or to one of several equally impressive endings. This is exactly how preparation works for thinking on your feet. If you've prepared thoroughly for a meeting, you don't just have one argument. You have multiple arguments, multiple examples, multiple pivot points. If someone challenges your position, you have an “out.” If someone asks an unexpected question, you have another “out.” The more preparation you've done, the more outs you have. Magician in Trouble There's also a sub-genre in magic called “magician in trouble” where the performer intentionally appears to make a mistake, building tension before a surprising recovery. What the audience doesn't realize is that the “mistake” was planned and the recovery was rehearsed. But it only works because the performer has done thousands of hours of practice behind the scenes. If you’re having trouble acting spontaneously, learning a few magic tricks is one of the best things you can do. The more tricks you know, the more you can make mistakes and recover. If one trick goes wrong, you transition to another. If a spectator does something unexpected, you have a different trick that accommodates their choice. The depth of your repertoire is directly proportional to your ability to handle anything. Translate this to your professional life: The more tools, frameworks, examples, and stories you have memorized, the more “tricks” you can draw from when a conversation or presentation goes sideways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM Two Levels of TEDx Improvisation Where Preparation Met Reality Minutes before I was due on stage for my TEDx Talk, a long-time fan showed up without a ticket. From what I gathered, he’d traveled to attend the event in Melbourne. And I could tell he was genuinely excited. But he didn’t have a ticket. And when the venue staff told him he couldn’t come in, due to fire capacity rules, we were both frustrated. Anyone with two eyes could see that the room wasn’t actually full. But there was no time to argue the bureaucracy. I was about to deliver the most important presentation of my career, after all. This is exactly the kind of moment that derails people. Not the talk itself, but the things that happen right before you hit the stage. I’m talking about the unexpected disruptions that flood your system with cortisol at the worst possible time. My ego wanted to fight for this person’s entry. It wanted to make a scene about the absurdity of empty seats and fire codes. It wanted to be the hero who fixes things. Instead, thinking on my feet, I suggested we meet for dinner after the talk. He understood. We shook hands. And then I had approximately four minutes to completely reset my mental state before walking on stage. Here’s what I did, standing backstage where nobody could see: I placed my hands behind my back and began Kirtan Kriya. This is a four-syllable meditation (Sa, Ta, Na, Ma) combined with a sequential mudra where your fingers tap. Gary Weber teaches it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvokeZnXMM By using the technique with both hands behind my back so no one would see, I simultaneously slowed my breathing and brought myself back to center. Between breath cycles, I also ran a quick body scan from my feet to my scalp, deliberately releasing tension wherever I found it. Jaw, shoulders, hands, the major muscle groups. By the time they called my name, I was calm. Not confident in the way people usually mean. I wasn’t puffed up or “psyched” to give my speech. Just calm in the way that comes from having emptied the bowl. The fan situation was gone from my mind. The ego’s need to intervene was gone. What remained was a mind with nothing in it except a memorized talk and the willingness to deliver it to whoever was in that room. What To Do When the Room Doesn’t Follow Your Script Shortly after my talk began, the room did something I hadn’t planned for. A scripted joke that had worked perfectly to create laughter during the dress rehearsal the day before landed in silence. Not awkward silence. Just… nothing. The audience looked at me with interest but no laughter. A few minutes later, during a section I hadn’t intended to be funny at all, they laughed. Genuinely. A speaker working from notes would have been buried in their script at that moment, unable to read the room because their eyes were on the page. But my entire talk was encoded in Memory Palaces using the technique I teach in my guide, How to Memorize a Speech. I didn’t need to look at any notes. I could look at everyone and connect with them directly. So I did and leaned into their laughter. I let it breathe. I adjusted my pacing to ride the energy they were giving me rather than forcing the energy I’d planned. Going with the flow, I made an unscripted joke and it landed. And when the moment passed, I stepped to the next station in my Memory Palace and continued on with the talk. What the Audience Saw vs. What Actually Happened The audience experienced this as spontaneity. They saw a speaker who was loose, present, reading the room. What actually happened was decades of training expressing itself through a four-second decision. The musical performance training that taught me to keep playing through mistakes without flinching. The card magic training that taught me to have multiple outs when a planned effect doesn’t land. The teaching experience that taught me to read a room full of people who may not be responding the way I expected. And underneath all of it, my ego-reduction efforts shone through, including the willingness to let go of the talk I’d planned and deliver the talk the audience needed. After the event, several people told me how natural and relaxed I seemed. One person said it felt like I was just talking to them, not giving a speech. That’s the highest compliment a speaker can receive. And it was entirely the product of preparation. But nothing about that talk was spontaneous other than the joke I made up on the fly. Otherwise, every word of that talk was memorized verbatim. The audience saw someone thinking on their feet. What they were actually seeing was someone falling back on their training. That, and they witnessed someone with enough training to fall back on. That is the difference. And it’s available to anyone willing to put in the work before the moment arrives. Part 6: Physical Composure (How to React When Your Safety Is at Stake) There are situations where “thinking on your feet” has nothing to do with being articulate or quick-witted. Quite the opposite. There are many moments in life when thinking itself is the problem, especially during situations where what you need is a trained physical response that fires before your conscious mind has time to interfere. I've been in three of these situations. Each time, it was my years-long Systema training that kept me safe. In case you don’t know it, Systema is a martial art focused on breathing, relaxation, and fluid movement under stress. To be clear, it didn’t help me fight. It helped me because it stopped fights from erupting in the first place. Let me explain. Incident One: The Attempted Mugging While writing my dissertation, I was living in Washington Heights, a district north of Harlem in New York City. I was walking south, down to the 170s from the corner of 187th and Cabrini, where I’d stopped to use a bank machine. On my way out, a man stood in front of me with something resembling a gun in his pocket. Exactly as it happens in the movies, he gestured in quick spurts of energy so that my eyes dropped and looked at his pocket. “Give me your wallet and all your money,” he demanded. My Systema training kicked in. Instead of having my shoulders shoot up with anxious tension — the default I’d seen in almost every new student Emmanuel Manolakakis worked with, including me during my first lessons — my mind automatically followed the training I’d received. Without willing it, my shoulders dropped and my mind and body synced with my breath. In a way that still completely bewilders me, a smile came across my face. I don’t know what I looked like, but my expression unnerved the mugger. It created the stress in him that should have been in my body. After what seemed like an eternity, the mugger said, “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll shoot you.” At this point, my smile grew wider and I started to laugh. An instant later, it felt right to move. I took one step forward into his space and angled to the left with the second and third steps. I didn’t break his gaze and watched as his eyes and entire head tracked me as I moved past him. Then, still operating completely on autopilot, I started to run and found myself in a cleaning supplies store filled with mops and buckets. No confrontation. No escalation. No ego. Just a trained body responding faster than a thinking mind would have. My Systema training, from breath coordination to deep muscle relaxation and long hours of practice with dropping into calm during situations of simulated threat, delivered exactly what it was designed for: bypassing the conscious mind that would have frozen me and let the body handle the situation. Incident Two: The Dark Path in Toronto Some time later, walking in Toronto, I approached a path at the end of a high school field. It was too late to be taking this popular shortcut, but there I was during a night that was far darker than I would have liked. There was just one street lamp hanging over that path, and its bulb was barely working. Before I stepped onto the path, I put a dime on my thumb. I didn’t think about why. There was no conscious strategy at work. My body simply did what training had taught it to do: prepare for the possibility of contact without committing to a plan. Sure enough, someone stepped into my path. I flicked the dime. The coin caught his gaze and seized his attention, producing a few seconds of involuntary visual tracking. This is the same reflex that makes every human eye follow sudden movement. Thanks to the distraction created by the spinning dime, I moved past him easily and paced off into the distance before his focus returned. The entire encounter lasted maybe three seconds. There was no conversation, no confrontation, no mental calculation. Just a trained response that created a tiny window of distraction and an immediate exit through it. I still think about the fact that I put the dime on my thumb before anything happened. It wasn’t a decision so much as it was a product of procedural memory — the same memory system that helps a musician’s fingers find the right fret before their conscious mind has named the note. Systema trains you to read environments the way musicians read chord changes. Not by analyzing, but by responding to patterns your body has trained to respond to inside the dojo. Incident Three: Outside the Post Office The third incident was the strangest. Outside a post office, someone with a grievance I didn’t fully understand began yelling at me aggressively. His body language was escalating and the situation felt like it could turn physical. My response was immediate: I raised my hands into a prayer gesture. With my palms together and fingers standing straight up, I found myself saying “thank you” over and over. I wasn’t being clever. I wasn’t trying to defuse the situation with wit. The gesture came from training, and it served two purposes simultaneously that I was only partially aware of in the moment. First, it put my hands in a position to quickly block any incoming strike. The prayer position is a natural guard because your hands are high, elbows close and forearms ready to redirect. I mean, it’s not going to make you bulletproof, but it’s just as disarming as the smile I delivered back during the mugging I survived in New York. Second, my response psychologically short-circuited the man’s aggression. Being thanked while you’re on the offensive is so dissonant that the brain doesn’t know how to process it. This person’s rhythm broke. His volume dropped. The escalation stalled because the script he was running had been interrupted by a response that didn’t fit. He didn’t thank me back. But at least he stopped. And I walked away unscathed. The Common Thread: No Ego, No Thinking, Just the Fruits of Training In all three incidents, the pattern is identical: Because the ego was out of the way, I wasn't trying to prove anything or “win” the encounters. There was also no conscious thinking. The responses were physical, automatic, and executed faster than mental deliberation would have allowed. Plus, there was relaxation under threat. The counterintuitive act of relaxing when threatened, which Systema specifically trains, prevented the freeze response that ego and fear typically produce. Finally, the strategy in each case was oriented toward getting away, not engaging. For anyone who wants to develop this dimension of thinking on their feet, I strongly recommend studying a martial art that emphasizes relaxation, awareness, and movement rather than aggression and force. Finding Your Own Physical Practice If personal experiences make you want to sign up for Systema, I’d encourage it. But I’d also encourage any martial art that emphasizes awareness, breathing, and relaxation over aggression and force. The point is not to become a fighter. The point is to develop a body that responds to threat with trained composure rather than untrained panic. Beyond martial arts, I practice Qigong daily and have for years. It’s not a combat discipline, but it trains the same foundational skills experienced in a gentler format: Breath coordination Bodily awareness Relaxation under tension For someone who has no interest in martial training, Qigong offers many of the same benefits for composure and physical presence without ever throwing or receiving a strike. Whatever physical practice you choose, I’d offer one caution: Don’t romanticize these practices or turn them into a glamorous fantasy. Remember the lesson from Lacan and the Stoic lessons that make sure reality is better than fantasy if and when real situations of trouble land. The three incidents I described above weren’t action sequences. They were awkward, brief, and slightly absurd. I didn’t defeat anyone. I smiled, flicked a coin, and said thank you. The training didn’t make me dangerous. It made me calm enough to exit each situation without a scratch. And that brings me to what I consider the most important physical skill of all, one that doesn’t require any formal training: situational awareness. Train for Situational Awareness In each of the three incidents, there was a moment before contact where my body registered something my conscious mind hadn’t articulated yet. In Washington Heights, I noticed the man’s posture before he spoke. In Toronto, something made me put a dime on my thumb before I entered the dark path. Outside the post office, I registered the escalation in body language before any words were exchanged. To train for greater situational awareness, walk with your phone in your pocket instead of your hand. Move around the world with your ears empty instead of listening to music or podcasts. When you enter a room, notice the exits. When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, pay attention to who is around you and how they’re moving. These aren’t paranoid habits. They’re the same environmental reading skills your ancestors used every day. Modern life has simply given us the luxury of ignoring them. There is almost no better way to think on your feet than the thinking that steers you clear of sticky situations in the first place. When it comes to physical confrontation, the best-trained response is the one you never have to use. Part 7: Daily Training Exercises for Mental Agility Everything discussed so far requires ongoing practice. Here are the specific daily exercises I use and recommend, organized from quick (2 minutes) to involved (30+ minutes). Breathing Techniques (2–5 minutes) Before any high-pressure situation, be it a presentation, a meeting or a difficult conversation, controlled breathing is the fastest way to shift your nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (calm and focused). The simplest technique: Breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 6 counts. The extended exhale activates the vagus nerve and physically slows your heart rate. Do this for 2 minutes and you'll enter any situation calmer and more mentally available. For more advanced breathing techniques, check out this video tutorial I made for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeO06_uZZcg   Progressive Muscle Relaxation (5–10 minutes) Systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups, from your feet to your face, trains your body to release the physical tension that accumulates under stress. Over time, you develop the ability to detect and release tension in real time — during a conversation, during a presentation, during a confrontation. This is the body scan component that I used before my TEDx Talk, and it's a core element of Systema training as well. The ability to scan your body for tension and deliberately release it is a physical skill that directly supports mental agility. Steelmanning Practice (15–20 minutes) Get a partner. Have them throw random topics at you. Your job: argue the strongest possible case for the position you naturally oppose. Switch roles. Do this twice a week and within a month you'll notice a dramatic improvement in your ability to think through problems from multiple angles under time pressure. Now, you might think about going to Chat-GPT or some other LLM. You can certainly give this a try. However, beware of context-dependent memory and state-dependence issues. If you only train in digital environments with a bot, you will likely find that you perform fine when sparring with a computer, but flounder with a human. As this study found, training in certain environments creates less cognitive fatigue than others. So if you come to develop certain beliefs about the difficulty of discussing things based on experiences with chatbots, you will probably not like the energy-drain you encounter when dealing with humans. Remember: we tend to fight the way we train, so practice all rhetorical argumentation in a variety of environments, never just one. Random Topic Riffing (10–15 minutes) Have someone give you a topic and speak about it for 2 minutes without stopping. What you say doesn't need to be brilliant, but work at speaking continuously. The exercise trains your brain to keep producing output even when it doesn't feel ready, which is exactly the skill you need when put on the spot. Increase difficulty by having the topic-giver interrupt you with new topics mid-stream. This trains your ability to pivot and shift directions without losing composure. Memory Palace Practice (15–30 minutes) Every time you encode information using a Memory Palace, you're doing more than memorizing. You're building the retrieval infrastructure that makes recall under pressure possible. Regular Memory Palace practice is the single most important investment you can make in your ability to access information when you need it. The more you memorize, the more you should seek to incorporate memorized material into your steelmanning and random riffing practice routines. Alphabet Drills and Multiple Mentality (5–15 minutes) One of the most unusual training systems I’ve encountered comes from Harry Kahne, a performer from the 1920s who could write with both hands simultaneously while reciting poetry from memory. He called his approach “Multiple Mentality” because it’s the deliberate practice of running several mental operations at once. His exercises sound deceptively simple. The foundational one: write out the alphabet backwards from memory. Not from Z-A printed on a card. From memory, cold. Most people find reciting the alphabet backwards surprisingly difficult the first time. But once you can do it? That’s when the real training begins. Kahne then asks you to pair the alphabet’s extreme ends mentally: A-Z, B-Y, C-X, working inward. Then start from the center and pair outward in reverse. These are pure concentration drills because they force your brain to hold a structure in working memory while performing various forms of recall. I go deeper into the full Multiple Mentality system and all of Kahne’s exercises in my detailed review of his course, including the parts I think are brilliant and the parts where I respectfully disagree with him. Part 8: Prepping Your Mind (Why What You Memorize Determines How Well You Think) Most of us know that the quality of your thinking is directly proportional to the quality of what you've committed to memory. A mind loaded with poetry, philosophy, scientific principles, historical examples, memorable quotes, and well-understood frameworks will produce richer, more nuanced, more creative responses under pressure than a mind that relies on whatever it happens to recall from last week's reading. This is not about showing off. It's about having raw material that makes you mentally dexterous. And gives you information you can use in an instant. What to Memorize for Maximum Mental Agility As you’ve seen, I strongly recommend memorizing quotes and poems. Because memorized poetry gives you access to compressed wisdom, beautiful language, and emotional resonance that you can draw on in conversation, writing, and thinking. Likewise, you can learn how to remember a story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM4TxD6ez1Y When you've memorized a poem or story, you own the content in a way that reading on its own never provides. The lines and structures become part of your mental vocabulary. I've memorized dozens of poems and passages of verse, and they surface constantly in conversation, in my writing, in my thinking about problems that have nothing to do with literature. Memorize Speeches for Mental Dexterity Likewise, you can seek out speeches from people like Churchill, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Marcus Aurelius. The words of leaders who were themselves masters of thinking on their feet make for excellent training material. When you've memorized their words, you internalize their patterns of thought. You don't just quote them. You begin to think in the structures they used. Learn to Tell Jokes Like improv, humor provides you with one of the ultimate forms of thinking on your feet. And telling jokes is far more learnable than people assume. To get started, commit a few jokes to memory and study their structure. You’ll soon notice that a good joke is a tiny argument: The setup establishes expectations The twist violates the expectations The punchline resolves the violation in a surprising or ironic way This simple structure is not so different from the PREP framework we discussed above. Practice Parroting and Accent Imitation Imitating a famous actor might sound like a party trick, but it's actually a profound exercise in sharing another person’s perspective and behavioral patterns. To imitate someone convincingly, you have to at least try and understand how they think, how they move and how they use language. As a result, the understanding you develop translates directly to the ability to read and respond to different people in different contexts. I’m not particularly good with foreign accents or imitating people. But merely by putting time into practicing a few people, I’ve learned a lot and become more spontaneous on my feet. Reflective Thinking Practice Memorization alone isn't enough. The material you memorize needs to be processed through reflective thinking. This is the practice of deliberately considering what you've learned, connecting it to other things you know, and forming your own positions. I do a lot of my reflective thinking through journaling, through conversation with carefully chosen friends, and through a practice I've maintained for years: regularly re-reading books I've already read, looking for things I missed the first time. All of these practices transform static knowledge into dynamic intellectual resources you’ll draw upon with great ease when you find yourself put on the spot. Part 9: The Paradox of Mental Silence We've covered a great deal of ground today: ego reduction, memory techniques, verbal frameworks, performance training, martial arts, daily exercises, and the art of loading your mind with quality material. And now I want to end with something that sounds like a contradiction but is, in fact, the deepest truth about thinking on your feet: The goal is not to think faster. Rather, it’s to create the conditions where you don't need to think at all. I know this sounds paradoxical. How can “thinking on your feet” require not thinking? It’s because the highest level of performance in any domain doesn’t just look like effortlessness. It actually is, if only in the present moment. I’m talking about the musician who plays a transcendent solo. That performer isn't thinking about which notes to play. Nor does the martial artist who evades a strike sit there thinking about which direction to move. And the speaker who delivers a perfect response to an unexpected question isn't thinking about what to say. They’re drawing upon deep preparation. In each case, the performer has trained so deeply that the right response emerges from a place beneath conscious thought. The preparation started long ago. Practice has quieted your fantasies, both positive and negative. And what remains is a mind so well-prepared that it can be still during the demands and in that stillness, the right response simply appears. This outcome is common in the world of mindfulness and meditation, where practitioners describe the experience of being “full by being empty.” In order to receive the moment as it actually is (not as your ego wants it to be, nor as your anxiety fears things might go wrong), you just have to empty your mind of the noise that normally fills it. Your Next Step If this article has shown you anything, I hope it's this: thinking on your feet is not a gift. It's the product of deliberate, ongoing training across multiple domains — mental, verbal, physical, and philosophical. The foundation of all of it is memory. Not “good memory” as a vague trait, but trained memory — the ability to encode, store, and retrieve information on demand, under pressure, in any context. If you want to start building that foundation, I've created a free course that teaches you the core Memory Palace technique in four video lessons. It's the same starting point my Masterclass students use, and it will give you your first experience of what trained recall feels like. For even deeper training that includes the Memory Wheel technique, ars combinatoria, advanced Memory Palace strategies, and the Recall Rehearsal patterns that make long-term retention predictable, my Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass takes you through the complete learning system. And if you want to explore the meditation, breathing, and muscle relaxation routines I've combined with memory training for maximum mental composure, I go into all of that in The Victorious Mind. So what do you say? Are you ready to stop worrying about what you’ll say next and start training so deeply that the right response arrives on its own? Remember: the secret every performer, martial artist, and memory expert discovers is ultimately the same. You don’t rise to the level of the mome

I picked up Junji Ito's Black Paradox again the other day, and what stayed with me wasn't just the horror—it was the structure underneath it. The sense that even our attempts to escape ourselves don't actually take us out of the loop… they just reorganize it.In this episode, I use the story as a way into something I see all the time in the therapy room: the difference between wanting to die and wanting relief from being who you are. Drawing on Richard Boothby's rethinking of the death drive, Lacan's notion of objet a, and Todd McGowan's work on capitalism and desire, I explore how what feels like an exit often becomes a new object that keeps us moving.Even death, in this story, becomes something that can be extracted, priced, and sold.And Pitan—the most unsettling figure in the narrative—ends up embodying a kind of subject without lack. Not trapped in the loop, but perfectly adapted to it.This isn't an episode that offers resolution. It's an attempt to stay with a harder question: what do you do with a desire for an outside… when there is no outside?Maybe the work isn't to escape the loop.Maybe it's to start seeing it more clearly.

What if the thought you just had wasn't quite yours?Not in the sense of influence or conditioning—but structurally. At the level of what thinking is, and where it happens.In this episode, I sit with a reading from Alenka Zupančič's Disavowal that I haven't been able to shake. Moving through Descartes and Lacan, I explore the idea that the cogito—I think, therefore I am—doesn't ground the subject in certainty, but actually marks a split. Something gets discarded in Descartes' method, and that remainder doesn't disappear. It continues.Lacan locates the unconscious right there—not as hidden content, but as a thinking process that exceeds us. Impersonal. Active. Ongoing.It thinks.Not: I have unconscious thoughts. But: thinking is happening—and I'm not necessarily where that thinking is.I work through what this means philosophically, clinically, and personally—especially how it challenges the idea that therapy is about gaining full ownership over your mind. Because as useful as that goal can be, it might also miss something essential.

Taye Taiwo se livre comme jamais : l'OM le Nigeria, Okocha et KanuDécouvrez l'interview exclusive de Taye Taiwo dans Colinterview, où l'ex-international nigérian se livre sans filtre sur ses souvenirs de CAN avec le Nigéria, mais aussi sa carrière à l'Olympique de Marseille. De son arrivée emblématique grâce à Pape Diouf à son départ brutal vers le Milan AC, Taye revient sur les moments clés de son parcours. Il évoque également sa descente aux enfers après l'OM et partage des anecdotes inédites sur ses coéquipiers à travers les années. L'interview se plonge aussi dans la douloureuse demi-finale de la CAN 2006 perdue face à la Côte d'Ivoire, ainsi que sa rencontre marquante avec Lionel Messi et l'Argentine lors de la Coupe du Monde 2010. Un entretien sans tabou, rempli de révélations qui vont vous surprendre !

What if transcendence isn't a ladder we climb but a descent we resist?In this solo episode, I explore an intuition that first confronted me in my own therapy — especially when I began taking my dreams seriously. The symbols that unsettled me most were the ones that betrayed my conscious morality and stirred disgust or erotic charge. And yet, those very images carried psychic energy that felt unmistakably sacred.Bringing together Bataille's claim that the sacred can be entered through the latrine, Philip K. Dick's idea of the “trash stratum,” alchemical transformation, Lacan's notion of jouissance, and Kristeva's theory of abjection, I challenge the spiritual-material dualism that elevates prayer above orgasm and transcendence above embodiment.If the sacred erupts precisely where identity destabilizes — in what we expel, repress, or deem impure — then the places we most want to reject may not be obstacles to depth. They may be its doorway.

Philosopher and religion scholar Tad DeLay (author of Future of Denial) drops a guest essay on us this week, and it's a barn-burner. Tad brings together Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin, Lacan, Althusser, and Adorno — yeah, the whole squad — to lay out a series of theses on how reactionary consciousness actually works, from repressed sexuality to theological cover stories for raw materialism. He makes the case that white evangelicalism is basically a half-century-old improvisation around whiteness and anticommunism, and that Trumpism is its perfected form — an ecumenical fascism where confessing the dear leader functions like a sinner's prayer. Along the way he unpacks Frank Wilhoit's devastating one-line definition of conservatism, explains why charging evangelicals with hypocrisy is a category error (they simply don't care what they believe), and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to show how shame, guilt, and anxiety keep the whole machine running. Fair warning: Tad doesn't let liberals off the hook either — the essay's conclusion forces all of us to sit with the moral compromises we've made and what it means to keep breathing in hell. Tad DeLay, PhD is a philosopher, religion scholar, and interdisciplinary critical theorist. He has written four books, including his latest, Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change. He is a philosophy professor and lives in Grand Rapids. ONLINE LENT CLASS: Jesus in Galilee w/ John Dominic Crossan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth? And, what difference does it make? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This Lenten class ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠begins where all of Dr. John Dominic Crossan's has work begins: with history. What was actually happening in Galilee in the 20s CE? What did Herod Antipas' transformation of the "Sea of Galilee" into the commercial "Sea of Tiberias" mean for peasant fishing communities? Why did Jesus emerge from John's baptism movement proclaiming God's Rule through parables—and what made that medium so perfectly suited to that message? Only by understanding what Jesus' parables meant then can we wrestle with what they might demand of us now. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The class is donation-based, including 0, so join, get info, and join up here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 50 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

RU384: EVE WATSON & HELENA TEXIER ON FREUD'S PRINCIPLE CASE STUDIES REVISITED https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru384-eve-watson-and-helena-texier Join Rendering Unconscious Podcast at Substack to watch full episodes and access the complete archive: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious episode 384. Rendering Unconscious welcomes Helena Texier and Eve Watson back to the podcast! They presented their work with the Freud-Lacan institute and Freud's Principle Case Studies Revisited. https://amzn.to/4bUzfZw This was the second live Rendering Unconscious podcast event! Check out the first one: RU372: ALENKA ZUPANČIČ & TODD MCGOWAN ON COMEDY https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru372-alenka-zupancic-and-todd-mcgowan This episode features a discussion between Eve Watson and Helena Texier on their book “Freud's Principles Case Studies Revisited.” They explore Freud's and Lacan's perspectives on key case studies, including Little Hans, Dora, the Rat Man, Schreber, the Young Homosexual Girl, and the Wolf Man. The book, part of the Freud Lacan Institute series, contextualizes these cases within contemporary psychoanalytic practice. The speakers emphasize the importance of critical engagement with these cases, noting their evolving relevance and the challenges of distinguishing between neurosis and psychosis. They also highlight the role of psychoanalytic discourse in fostering new knowledge and the value of group discussions in clinical practice. The conversation concludes with expressions of gratitude and appreciation for the work being done in the field. https://freudlacaninstitute.com Check out previous episodes with these guests: RU301: EVE WATSON & HELENA TEXIER ON THE FREUD LACAN INSTITUTE RU87: EVE WATSON ON PSYCHOANALYTIC TRANSMISSION, GROUP PSYCHOLOGY, CORONAVIRUS & CULTURE News & events: Wednesday, February 18th, we have Mikita Brottman presenting Images from the Id: The Strange World of Psychic Photographer Ted Serios. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/images-from-the-id-the-strange-world Introduction to Occulture with author Carl Abrahamsson, Begins February 21, Morbid Anatomy Museum, online. https://www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/p/introduction-to-occulture-with-author-carl-abrahamsson-begins-february-7 If you're in London, I'll be at the Freud Museum in-person Wednesday, February 25th with my husband Carl Abrahamsson for Surreal Secrets of the Psyche: The Creative Zeitgeist of Psychoanalysis, Film and the Avant-Garde. https://www.freud.org.uk/event/surreal-secrets-of-the-psyche-the-creative-zeitgeist-of-psychoanalysis-film-and-the-avant-garde/ Monday, February 23rd Carl Abrahamsson will be in-person at the Viktor Wynd Museum in London presenting Fabulous Freaks of Yesteryear: https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/exhibition/fabulous-freaks-of-yesteryear-by-carl-abrahamsson-live/ Rendering Unconscious is also a book series: Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024): https://amzn.to/3N6XKIl The song at the end of this episode is "Celebrity" from the album "Infiltrate" by Vanessa Sinclair and Pete Murphy: https://petemurphy.bandcamp.com/album/infiltrate-21 Infiltrate has been featured on the latest episode of Radio Panik! https://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/l-etranger/show-518-drud-freeform-hemline/ Enjoy! Thank you for being a paid subscriber to Rendering Unconscious Podcast. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including new, future, and archival podcast episodes. It's so important to maintain independent spaces free from censorship and corporate influence. If you are interested in pursing psychoanalytic treatment with me, please feel free to contact me directly: https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank You.

In this solo episode, I return to James Hillman's chapter on the puer aeternus and pothos from Loose Ends — and explore how longing may not be a problem to solve, but the very engine of being alive.Building on Jung's reflections on the wanderer while moving beyond a mother-centered interpretation of desire, Hillman reframes longing as structural to consciousness itself. I weave his insights together with Lacan's notion of lack, Jaak Panksepp's SEEKING system in affective neuroscience, Emmanuel Coccia's reflections on fear as the death of desire, and even a Rumi quote I strongly disagree with.This episode is also deeply personal. I reflect on my own journey in therapy, the suspicion of desire within Christian spaces, the demonization of the puer archetype, and why I'm learning to trust longing again — including how erotic pursuit can become a conscious participation in that blue flame rather than a distraction from it.What if wandering isn't immaturity?What if desire isn't deception?What if depression is, at least sometimes, the extinguishing of the flame that keeps us reaching?Not all who wander are lost.

Au programme du Café des Sports ce vendredi à 16h10 TU & 21h10 TU et 22h10 TU France 24: - CAF : réunion au sommet ; - Barça : humiliation et doutes ! ; - Premier League : la pression change de camp ? ; - Les Cartons ! CAF : réunion au sommet Crises, tensions, gouvernance sous pression, l'après CAN laisse des traces ! La CAN 2027 maintenue. Le malaise est-il profond ou passager, éléments de réponse dans le café des sports ! Barça : humiliation et doutes ! Défaite 4-0 face à l'Atlético en Coupe du Roi (aller). Fragile derrière, irrégulier cette saison… Flick doit-il revoir en partie sa copie pour viser Liga et Ligue des champions à la fin de la saison ? Premier League : la pression change de camp ? Arsenal accroché à Brentford (1-1). City revient à 4 points ! Tournant psychologique dans la course au titre ? Les Cartons ! Qui applaudit-on ? Qui sanctionne-t-on cette semaine ?   Autour d'Annie Gasnier : Consultants : Xavier Barret • Rémy Ngono • Eric Rabesandratana Chef d'édition : David Fintzel TCR : Laurent Salerno Moyens vidéo : Souheil Khedir & David Brockway.

Au programme du Café des Sports ce vendredi à 16h10 TU & 21h10 TU et 22h10 TU France 24: - CAF : réunion au sommet ; - Barça : humiliation et doutes ! ; - Premier League : la pression change de camp ? ; - Les Cartons ! CAF : réunion au sommet Crises, tensions, gouvernance sous pression, l'après CAN laisse des traces ! La CAN 2027 maintenue. Le malaise est-il profond ou passager, éléments de réponse dans le café des sports ! Barça : humiliation et doutes ! Défaite 4-0 face à l'Atlético en Coupe du Roi (aller). Fragile derrière, irrégulier cette saison… Flick doit-il revoir en partie sa copie pour viser Liga et Ligue des champions à la fin de la saison ? Premier League : la pression change de camp ? Arsenal accroché à Brentford (1-1). City revient à 4 points ! Tournant psychologique dans la course au titre ? Les Cartons ! Qui applaudit-on ? Qui sanctionne-t-on cette semaine ?   Autour d'Annie Gasnier : Consultants : Xavier Barret • Rémy Ngono • Eric Rabesandratana Chef d'édition : David Fintzel TCR : Laurent Salerno Moyens vidéo : Souheil Khedir & David Brockway.

More and more men are showing up in therapy convinced that desire is a technical problem—something that can be solved through optimization, symmetry, and self-correction. Jawlines, ratios, bodies, images. Looksmaxxing promises certainty, control, and relief from rejection, but what it actually delivers is anxiety, perfectionism, and a dead end.In this episode, I bring together several threads that have been colliding for me lately: re-watching Mad Men, clinical conversations with men struggling under the pressure to optimize themselves, and Jacques Lacan's unsettling idea of objet petit a—the object-cause of desire that can never be perfected, possessed, or secured.Along the way, I draw on Slavoj Žižek's famous example of Cindy Crawford's mole, and on Jessica Paré's portrayal of Megan Draper, whose gap-toothed beauty in Mad Men illustrates a simple but uncomfortable truth: desire doesn't emerge from flawlessness, but from the excess, the gap, and the imperfection that refuses to be optimized away.This episode is a critique of looksmaxxing culture, perfectionism, and the fantasy that being desirable means becoming complete—and an invitation to think about desire as something far less controllable, far less marketable, and far more human.

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 PsychoanalysisJean Laplanche, New Foundations for PsychoanalysisDominique Scarfone, A brief introduction to the work of Jean LaplancheAvgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without IdentityAvgi 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 passionHave 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/ordinaryunhappiness Twitter: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @ordinaryunhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Show NotesIn this episode Simon and Dr. Jack Black, Associate Professor at Sheffield Hallam University, think dangerously about AI through the unsettling lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This is a conversation about desire, discourse, power and the fantasies we project onto machines.Drawing on Lacan, Jack reframes AI not as a neutral tool or intelligent object, but as a relational phenomenon - one that speaks into us, structures us, and increasingly stands in for authority itself. Together, Simon and Jack interrogate how AI comes to occupy the place of the Big Other: the supposed holder of knowledge, truth, and certainty in a fragmented world.They explore Lacan's four discourses, particularly the discourse of the hysteric, as a way of resisting AI's creeping authority and the ideological narratives that present it as omniscient, objective, or inevitable. AI, they argue, does not know in any human sense - it recombines, repeats, and reflects back our own symbolic order, including its exclusions, biases and violences.The conversation moves into education, where AI is rapidly being positioned as a new master signifier. What happens when learning is outsourced to algorithmic systems? What kinds of subjects are being produced? And whose knowledge is being legitimised - or erased - in the process?Throughout the episode, AI is revealed as a site where cultural anxiety, political power, and unconscious desire collide. Rather than rejecting technology, Simon and Jack argue for a more critical, psycho-social engagement - one that keeps the human, the relational, and the ethical firmly in view.This is a conversation about AI, but it is also about us: our longing for certainty, our fear of lack, and our temptation to hand over authority to machines. Lacan, unexpectedly, offers not despair but hope - a way to stay with complexity and resist the fantasy that technology can save us from being human.Key Takeaways Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a radical way to rethink AI beyond hype and fear. AI is relational - it emerges within human discourse, not outside it. The discourse of the hysteric provides a critical stance toward AI as authority. AI does not “know”; it mirrors and amplifies existing symbolic systems. Education must resist uncritical adoption of AI as a master solution. Algorithmic systems reproduce social bias, including racism and exclusion. Technology increasingly objectifies the Big Other. AI exposes deep tensions around desire, knowledge, and power. Ideology sits quietly behind the push to normalise AI everywhere. Lacan helps us stay critical, hopeful, and human in a technological age. KeywordsAI, Lacan, psychoanalysis, discourse, education, culture, technology, relationality, society, human experienceBrief BioDr. Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. An interdisciplinary researcher, working across the disciplines of psychoanalysis, media and communications, cultural studies, and sport, his research focuses on topics related to race/racism, digital media, and political ecology. He is the author of The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization (Routledge, 2023) and co-editor of Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Lexington Books, 2024). He is also Senior Editor for the Journal, Sport and Psychoanalysis (Cogent Social Sciences).

La CAN 2025 a-t-elle tenu ses promesses ? Qu'avez-vous pensé du parcours de votre sélection, des polémiques autour de l'arbitrage, de l'organisation ? Quelles ont été vos joies et vos déceptions ? Au lendemain de la finale Sénégal-Maroc, nous dresserons le bilan de cette édition. Avec : Cédric de Oliveira, journaliste au service des sports de RFI Joseph-Antoine Bell, consultant de RFI.

La CAN 2025 a-t-elle tenu ses promesses ? Qu'avez-vous pensé du parcours de votre sélection, des polémiques autour de l'arbitrage, de l'organisation ? Quelles ont été vos joies et vos déceptions ? Au lendemain de la finale Sénégal-Maroc, nous dresserons le bilan de cette édition. Avec : Cédric de Oliveira, journaliste au service des sports de RFI Joseph-Antoine Bell, consultant de RFI.

Au programme du Café des Sports en direct ce soir à 21h10 TU sur RFI : la CAN avec les quarts de finale et les autres matches prévus ce samedi et FC Barcelone - Real Madrid, en finale de la Supercoupe.   ► La CAN évidemment au programme, mais pas seulement ! ► Nous reviendrons sur les deux premiers QUARTS DE FINALE de cette Coupe d'Afrique des Nations. MALI - SENEGAL à Tanger CAMEROUN - MAROC à Rabat ► Nous évoquerons les deux autres affiches prévues ce samedi : ALGERIE - NIGERIA, 16h TU à Marrakech EGYPTE - CÔTE D'IVOIRE, 19h TU à Agadir ► FC BARCELONE - REAL MADRID, ¡ Més que un supercoupe ! J-2 avant un nouveau CLASICO en finale de la Supercoupe d'Espagne, dimanche à Djeddah (Arabie saoudite). Un premier trophée de la saison est en jeu, pour lancer l'année 2026. Autour d'Hugo Moissonnier : Rémy Ngono, Yoro Mangara, Youssouf Mulumbu, Victor Missistrano — Réalisation : Claude Baptista

Radio Foot est en direct de Rabat cette semaine ! Au programme de ce mercredi, dès 21h10 TU : Marouane Chamakh est l'invité de Radio Foot ; CAN 2025 – Place aux quarts de finale.    Marouane Chamakh est l'invité de Radio Foot aujourd'hui : retour sur son parcours à Bordeaux et à Arsenal, son expérience en sélection marocaine, dont la finale de la CAN 2004. On abordera aussi son engagement pour le football africain ! ► Focus sur l'Académie Mohammed VI : transmettre, structurer, bâtir l'avenir du football marocain. ► CAN 2025 – Place aux quarts de finale : Cameroun – Maroc : le pays hôte face à un géant du continent. Mali – Sénégal : intensité, ambitions et match piège pour les Lions ? La CAN entre dans son moment de vérité. ► Plateau en direct de Rabat Autour d'Annie Gasnier : Alassane N'Dour ancien international • Jo Bell • Marouane Chamakh Chef d'édition : David Fintzel. TCR : Laurent Salerno. Vidéo : Boris Vichith & Anne Dufort Cornilliet. À suivre en direct à 21h10 TU et sur Facebook Live Calendrier CAN 2025 : programme complet, dates et horaires des matchs

Radio Foot est en direct de Rabat cette semaine ! Au programme de ce mercredi, dès 21h10 TU : quarts de finale, les favoris au rendez-vous ; La CAN vue des tribunes ; Débat : une CAN tous les 4 ans, décision irréversible ?    Pas de séisme dans cette CAN : les cadors ont tenu leur rang. RDC sortie sans démériter et Burkina Faso éliminés sans avoir vraiment existé, un Bénin plus séduisant mais encore trop court. Pourquoi aucune surprise au bout de ces huitièmes ? Décryptage. ► La CAN vue des tribunes La compétition autrement : -Les larmes de Michel Kuka, le « Lumumba des tribunes » après la défaite des siens ! -Un Fennec de Toulon devenu mascotte, tambour en main ! -Ange Gabriel, photographe béninois, 30 ans au bord des terrains africains. Histoires, ferveur et regards passionnés. ► Débat : une CAN tous les 4 ans, décision irréversible ? Choix fort de la Confédération africaine de football : calendrier, clubs, joueurs, lisibilité… fallait-il changer le rythme de la compétition reine ? Claude Leroy n'y va pas par quatre chemins. Avis tranché, débat ouvert. Autour d'Annie Gasnier, nos invités : Claude Leroy, sélectionneur emblématique du continent - Alassane Ndour, ancien international sénégalais, regard de vestiaire et d'ancien joueur. Franck Simon, journaliste spécialiste du football africain. Chef d'édition : David Fintzel. TCR : Laurent Salerno. Vidéo : Boris Vichith & Anne Dufort Cornilliet. À suivre en direct à 21h10 TU et sur Facebook Live Calendrier CAN 2025 : programme complet, dates et horaires des matchs

durée : 00:58:36 - Avec philosophie - par : Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, Nassim El Kabli - S'écartant de la mère castratrice de Lacan, Donald Winnicott développe la notion de "mère suffisamment bonne" pour désigner la mère qui répond aux besoins de son enfant. Mais qui est cette mère que Winnicott appelle aussi “ordinairement dévouée” ? - réalisation : Nicolas Berger, Colin Gruel - invités : Silvia Lippi Psychanalyste

Hey everybody, this is a special Christmas episode where I'm joined by Michael Morelli (Personalist Manifesto podcast) and Paul Hoard (professor at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology) for a live conversation about what the Incarnation has to say to our algorithmically-mediated moment. We get into Advent as a season of waiting in a world obsessed with immediacy and prediction—drawing on Lacan's understanding of desire, Hartmut Rosa on resonance, and Byung-Chul Han's "hell of the same" to explore how our devices have trained us to be unable to tolerate longing. We talk about incarnation versus ex-carnation (yes, we went there), why smoothness is a trap, how the manger subverts our fantasies of a powerful God, and what Bonhoeffer's Christ-reality hermeneutic might offer disciples trying to encounter genuine otherness in a world of narcissistic loops and NPC-ification. Paul brings the psychoanalytic heat on disgust, love, and why intimacy requires being changed by the other, and Michael reminds us that the cosmos hasn't actually been hijacked by Silicon Valley—despite appearances. We also talk about Black Mirror, The Good Place, board games, and whether Star Trek is secretly fascist. It's nerdy, it's hopeful, and it's exactly the kind of thing you need while driving to Christmas gatherings with sleeping family members in the car. You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube Join us at Theology Beer Camp, October 8-10, in Kansas City!⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠UPCOMING ONLINE CLASS: The Rise of the Nones⁠⁠⁠ One-third of Americans now claim no religious affiliation. That's 100 million people.  But here's what most church leaders get wrong: they're not all the same. Some still believe in God. Some are actively searching. Some are quietly indifferent. Some think religion is harmful.  Ryan Burge & Tony Jones have conducted the first large-scale survey of American "Nones", which reveals 4 distinct categories—each requiring a different approach. Understanding the difference could transform everything from your ministry to your own spiritual quest. ⁠⁠⁠Get info & join the donation-based class (including 0) here.⁠⁠⁠ This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 50 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices