French psychoanalyst and writer
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Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives Through Beckett and Artaud: The Trauma of the Body (Routledge, 2026) provides an epistemology of the body as it relates to subjectivity through an analysis of selected works of Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Presented in three parts, the book explores a fundamental premise: that there is a traumatic and alienating dimension to embodiment that resists expression within representational systems and is core to the being of any subject. In Part One, The Epistemology of the Body, Meehan O'Callaghan approaches a theory of the body as traumatic by framing it as a question, a gap in knowledge through the lens of psychoanalysis and theatre studies. Part Two, The Body of Drama, is devoted to a study of the body in the works of Beckett and Artaud from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Part Three, The Body Between Being and Non-Being, provides a deeper exploration of how the interrogation of the body opens onto a question of being and uses the insights gained from the dialectical encounter of psychoanalysis with the specific works of Beckett and Artaud to apply them to contemporary and scholarly issues of the body. Psychoanalysing Mind-Body Narratives through Beckett and Artaud will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, psychoanalytic studies, the body, disability studies, and literary and theatre studies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Andrew Hartz is a psychologist and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute — a national directory of vetted, non-activist therapists, plus a peer-reviewed journal, conference, and podcast. He wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed about political activism in mental health, got a grant to do something about it, and hasn't stopped since. We talked about: what an activist therapist actually looks like (APA's division on psychoanalysis lists 90 talks with zero mention of therapy, evidence, diagnosis, or treatment — but plenty on colonial domination, carcerality, and proximity to whiteness); how APA accredited a drag show called "Feel the F***ing Fantasy Redux" for continuing ed credits; a keynote speaker who co-translated Communism for Kids and wrote Abolish the Family; clinics diagnosing patients differently based on their race; patients being referred out for having the wrong politics; how mental health activism is backfiring on the people it claims to help (secondary gains and the evidence against rewarding symptoms); when this all started (earlier than you think — 2014, accelerating through 2019); why Lacanian nonsense writing infected academic psychology and what that sentence actually is; what CBT can and can't do; humor as a mature defense mechanism and why patients who laugh have better outcomes; why AI therapists worry Andrew more than most people realize; and Lou volunteering to coach soccer for a team of first graders despite having never played the sport. Find a vetted therapist → opentherapyinstitute.org Read the journal → Open Inquiry in Mental Health on Substack https://openinquirymentalhealth.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 — Intro — Andrew Hartz and the Open Therapy Institute 3:23 — What is an activist therapist? The APA call for papers read aloud 6:24 — APA's division on psychoanalysis: 90 talks, 800 attendees, zero mention of therapy 8:29 — APA accredited a drag show for continuing ed credits 10:08 — Keynote speaker co-translated Communism for Kids, wrote Abolish the Family 11:53 — Lou's SJW Therapist sketch — and how close to reality it actually is 12:21 — Diagnosing people by their race — a white girl's anxiety vs. a black girl's anxiety 13:17 — The intake form that starts with pronouns — and what that signals 14:01 — Patient referred out for thinking she didn't get a fellowship due to affirmative action 14:41 — Who's paying for this? Insurance, premiums, and activist therapy 16:16 — "Evidence is Western" — activist therapists and why they reject research 17:25 — When did therapy start going this route? 2014, accelerating through 2019 19:47 — Lou's SJW Therapist video: January 2019 — right on time 20:12 — Mental illness as identity — secondary gains and how compassion backfires 21:33 — Test anxiety, extra time, and why rewarding symptoms makes them worse 23:52 — Lou used to wet himself before tests. He is not ashamed. 26:06 — The incoherence of activist academia — can anyone read this sentence? 27:23 — "Counter the extractive relations of cis heteropatriarchal racial capitalism" — a real sentence 29:54 — Lacan, oracular interpretations, and how academic nonsense writing spread 33:45 — If you have to build a birdhouse, the sentences have to make sense 36:36 — Greg Lukianoff, CBT, and what good therapy actually looks like 38:10 — Anger, dysregulation, and slowing down the loop 41:53 — What therapy cannot do: eliminate human emotion entirely 42:44 — Lou and the spiral — and why self-control matters 45:32 — Lou volunteered to coach soccer. He doesn't know how to play soccer. 49:30 — Humor as a mature defense — why patients who laugh have better outcomes 52:56 — Was it Good Will Hunting? What Robin Williams got right about therapy 54:55 — AI therapists — what they can replace and what they can't 57:17 — The danger of chatbot therapy for people who struggle with real relationships 58:03 — Open Inquiry in Mental Health journal and how to find a vetted therapist Watch full episodes on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081 Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU Co-host of Happy Hour Econ → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/happy-hour-econ/id1863476697 Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r TheLouPerez.com | info@thelouperez.com Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez #MentalHealth #Therapy #ActivistTherapy #OpenTherapyInstitute #AndrewHartz #CBT #Psychology #LouPerezPodcast #LionsOfLiberty #AITherapy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Watch the full episode here: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru420-luca-di-gregorio-on-lacan-in Rendering Unconscious is now at Substack: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com RU420: DR LUCA DI GREGORIO ON LACAN IN ITALY: CLINIC, POLITICS, AESTHETICS Rendering Unconscious welcomes Dr. Luca Di Gregorio to the podcast! He's here to talk about his new book Lacan in Italy: Clinic, Politics, Aesthetics (2025). https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-91528-4 Rendering Unconscious episode 420. On this episode, Luca discusses his book, Lacan in Italy: Clinic, Politics, Aesthetics (2025), which explores the reception and impact of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Italy. Luca elaborates on the ways in which his doctoral project expanded from the aesthetic domain to include clinical, political, and social aspects. He highlights the mainstreaming of psychoanalysis in Italy, its public discourse, and the contributions of Italian Lacanians like Massimo Recalcati. Luca emphasizes the transformative power of psychoanalysis, its integration into medical education, and shares his own personal journey. We also touch upon the potential for psychoanalysis to address contemporary issues and the importance of cross-cultural exchange in psychoanalytic thought. Luca Di Gregorio is Senior Teaching Fellow in Medical Education in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton, UK, and Deputy Director of the Southampton Centre for Medical and Health Humanities. News & events: Next up at RU Center, The Poetry of Psychoanalysis series with author and astrologer Emmalea Russo continues September 6th on DH Lawrence and his Fantasia of the Unconscious for the Autumn Equinox: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/renderingunconsciouscenterforpsychoanalysis/2315469 September 12th is the final class in my Intro to Psychoanalysis year long course! We'll focus on Frantz Fanon and liberation psychology, and take a look at Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement, as well as Patricia Gherovici's The Puerto Rican Syndrome. That will set us up nicely for what we're diving into next: a close reading of From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (2026) by Dr. Lara Sheehi. Paid subscribers at RU Center for Psychoanalysis Substack gain access to these and all RU Center events! https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com 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/ As always, huge thanks to Carl Abrahamsson for providing the intro and outro music for Rendering Unconscious Podcast. https://linktr.ee/CarlAbrahamsson The song at the end of this episode is "Transmit" from the album "Dream exploded". https://petemurphy.bandcamp.com/album/dream-exploded-7 Support indie artists and musicians! Visit Pete's Bandcamp: https://petemurphy.bandcamp.com Our music is also available at Spotify and other streaming services. https://open.spotify.com/artist/3xKEE2NPGatImt46OgaemY Links to everything can be found at: https://linktr.ee/renderingunconscious Enjoy! Thank You.
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear. Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become radically—serially—connected. Ryan Engley is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear. Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become radically—serially—connected. Ryan Engley is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear. Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become radically—serially—connected. Ryan Engley is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. The serial is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is often difficult to see and difficult to bear. Through formal readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become radically—serially—connected. Ryan Engley is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In the first installment of this multi-part series, Alex and Calvin trace the intellectual genealogy behind one of the most consequential academic hoaxes of the past decade. In Part 1, we outline the precursor hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, and then introduce the three figures who would come to orchestrate what's been called "Sokal Squared": Peter Boghossian, whose "street epistemology" recast New Atheist evangelism as a kind of quasi-Socratic pickup artistry; James Lindsay, a mathematician-turned-massage-therapist whose martial arts backstory and self-assured reinventions of Lacanian theory raise questions about intellectual overconfidence; and Helen Pluckrose, a self-described ex-feminist whose blog posts linked postmodernism to the supposed excesses of intersectional feminism. Along the way, we situate all three within the broader ecology of New Atheism and its entanglements with American imperialism, as well as the Humanities/Science disciplinary division and the shifting terrain of expertise in a post-2020 political landscape.Works and concepts cited in this episode:Crenshaw, K. (1989). "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A Selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). W.W. Norton. [Outlining the concept of the "big Other."]McGee, M.C. (1980). "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology." Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66(1), 1–16.Pluckrose, H. (2017). "How French ‘Intellectuals' Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained." Areo Magazine. Retrieved from: https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/ Robbins, B., & Ross, A. (1996). Mystery science theater. Lingua Franca, July 1996. Retrieved from: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html Schulson, M. (2013, 2 Nov.). Atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian's guide to converting believers. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20170324025604/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/02/atheist-philosopher-peter-boghossian-s-guide-to-converting-believers.html Snow, C.P. (1959). The two cultures. The Rede Lecture. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from: https://apps.weber.edu/wsuimages/michaelwutz/6510.Trio/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf Sokal, A. (1996). A physicist experiments with cultural studies. Lingua Franca, May/June 1996. Retrieved from: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9605/sokal.html Sokal, A. (1996). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Social Text, 46/47, pp. 217–252.An accessible transcript of this episode is available here (via Descript)
In Buenos Aires, psychoanalysis has “left the clinic”. Far from being for the elite alone, its core concepts and ideas abound in TV shows, the analyses offered by taxi drivers schooled in Lacan, and in intimate conversations among peers. Here Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas tells us about her brilliant study of what she calls “psychoanalytic listening” in the Argentine capital, where friends confidently say things to each other that often imply “when you say X, I hear Y”. Reflecting how such words act as an affront to elsewhere-dominant notions of selfhood and self-knowledge, Xochitl shows the importance of attending to listening - and describes how, rather like that of the analyst, the social scientist's role is to “go beyond what's evident”.Plus: what IS linguistic anthropology? What does it mean to be “Lacanian”? And what's the relationship between psychoanalysis and social science?Guest: Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas Hosts: Rosie Hancock, Alexis Hieu Truong; Executive Producer: Alice Bloch; Sound Engineer: David Crackles; Music: Joe Gardiner; Artwork: Erin AnikerFind out more about Uncommon SenseEpisode ResourcesBy Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas Genres of Listening: An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos AiresFrom the Sociological Review FoundationListen to Nicky Falkof on Anxiety, Les Back on Listening, Hannah Proctor on Burnout and Billy Holzberg on EmotionFurther resources:Argentina: the therapy capital of the worldRoman Jacobson, who wrote on Functions of LanguageMikhail BakhtinFerdinand de SaussureFranz BoasThe Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic CounterpublicsJacques LacanEthical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being HeardThe Frankfurt School and Critical TheoryGrand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School** Complete our listener survey here! It helps us, a charity, learn who's listening to Uncommon Sense, and why. Thank you **Support our work. Make a one-off or regular donation to help fund future episodes of Uncommon Sense: donorbox.org/uncommon-senseInterested in podcasting with us? Read more here, and contact us at podcasts@thesociologicalreview.org Sign up to the Sociological Review Foundation newsletter
******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, professor at Ghent University, and psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the author of the books "The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanianperspective" and "Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review", and of multiple papers on Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic research into psychopathology, and clinical diagnosis. His latest book is Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers. In this episode, we focus on Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy. We start by discussing how psychosis is approached by mainstream clinical psychology and by psychoanalysis. We talk about what mental disease is, stigmatization, what triggers psychotic episodes, and what psychotic episodes express. Finally, we discuss how psychotic experiences should be dealt with, how people can communicate with a psychotic person, and whether anyone is really insane.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, RACHEL ZAK, DENNIS XAVIER, CHINMAYA BHAT, RHYS, ALEX MACLEOD, HAIDAR, JULIEN PORCHER, ROBERT SUNDSTRÖM, JON STEWART, AND JENNIFER MARTIN!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, PER KRAULIS, ADAM HUNT, ANTHONY DI LORENZO, AND JOÃO BARBOSA!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER,SERGIU CODREANU, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!
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?
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."
In this episode, I explore the fantasy of the inner circle — that persistent feeling that somewhere, just beyond where we are, there is a more exclusive room, a deeper friendship, a more serious group, a hidden circle of people who really know, really belong, and really matter.Building from C.S. Lewis's essay “The Inner Ring,” I think through why the desire to belong can so easily become a desire to be inside because others are outside. I also bring in the image of the temple and the Holy of Holies as a way of asking whether even the innermost room would ever be enough, or whether we would simply begin searching for another room beyond it.From there, I move into psychoanalysis and Lacanian theory, especially the idea that there is a lack or gap at the center of human life that no group, friendship, artistic recognition, or achievement can finally fill. I also reflect personally on my own friendships and the subtle ways this fantasy can still show up even when we are already loved and already belong.Throughout the episode, I share a clinical reflection about an anonymous client, a college student on the autism spectrum, whose growing life as an artist has brought with it the fantasy that fulfillment will come only when he is accepted into the “real” inner circle of artists. His story becomes a way of thinking about the difference between genuine belonging and fantasy completion.This is an episode about exclusion, desire, art, friendship, therapy, and the difficult but freeing possibility that the life we are looking for may not be waiting behind some hidden door.
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?
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.
Does the past even exist anymore?Quantum mechanics has long unsettled our understanding of matter and measurement. But what if its implications reach further — into history, politics, and the very structure of reality itself? If the present can retroactively reshape the past it emerged from, what does that mean for how we act, how we remember, and how we govern?These are not merely theoretical puzzles. In a world where liberal democracy appears to be fracturing, where AI and climate change defy traditional political categories, and where new authoritarian currents are emerging from thinkers like Curtis Yarvin in the West and Wang Huning in the East, the question of whether reality offers any coherent ground for political action has never felt more urgent.Few thinkers are willing to hold all of this together at once — to move from Niels Bohr to Stalinism, from Lacanian psychoanalysis to the collapse of the political centre, without flinching. Slavoj Žižek does precisely that. In his new book Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2025), Žižek argues that incompleteness is not a failure of knowledge but a feature of existence itself — and that this demands an entirely new way of thinking about history and politics.Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Hosted by Omari Edwards.Read the full transcript of this conversation at IAI News: https://iai.tv/articles/slavoj-zizek-on-quantum-history-and-the-end-of-the-past-auid-3437Don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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.
RU386: ANNA FISHZON ON THE IMPOSSIBLE RETURN: PSYCHOANALYTIC REFLECTIONS ON BREAST CANCER, LOSS & MOURNING https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru386-anna-fishzon-on-the-impossible Rendering Unconscious welcomes Dr. Anna Fishzon back to the podcast! She's here to talk about her new book, The Impossible Return: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning (Routledge, 2025) https://amzn.to/4b4RGKh Rendering Unconscious episode 386. In this episode, we discuss Anna's new book, The Impossible Return: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning (Routledge, 2025), which explores personal and broader themes of loss, including the impact of cancer and bodily changes. Anna shares her experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017, and the subsequent treatments, surgeries, and reconstruction she underwent. The book integrates personal narrative with theoretical rigor, addressing topics ranging from bodily assault and aging to anxiety and hypochondria to radiation and Chernobyl to the Lacanian concept of the sinthome. We discuss the broader applicability of psychoanalytic thinking both personally and professionally, as well as more globally. Anna describes the challenges of writing and marketing such a book, and shares her thought about writing on melancholia next. Anna Fishzon, PhD is a psychoanalyst in private practice and an interdisciplinary scholar in New York City. She has taught courses on Russian history, psychoanalysis, literature, and gender and sexuality at Williams College, Columbia University, and Duke University, USA. She is the author of The Impossible Return ~ Psychoanalytic Reflectons on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning (2025) and Fandom, Authenticity, and Opera: Mad Acts and Letter Scenes in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (2013). She is co-editor (with Emma Lieber) of The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass (2022), as well as many scholarly articles and book chapters. She is member, supervisor and faculty at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) in New York and Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Check out previous episode(s) with this guest: RU292: ANNA FISHZON & EMMA LIEBER ON THE QUEERNESS OF CHILDHOOD & REMEMBERING UNICORNS News & events: This Saturday, March 14th, join me for the next installment of An Introduction to Psychoanalysis: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/next-up-we-must-not-talk-astrology Then Thursday, April 2nd join me in welcoming Dr. Owen Hewitson for Unconscious Generational Transmission: A Psychoanalytic Perspective" https://www.tickettailor.com/events/renderingunconsciouscenterforpsychoanalysis/2099148 Rendering Unconscious is also a book series: Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024): amzn.to/3N6XKIl The song at the end of this episode is "This Night was Special (featuring Little Annie)" from the album "Infiltrate" by Vanessa Sinclair and Pete Murphy: petemurphy.bandcamp.com/album/infiltrate-21 Infiltrate has been featured on the latest episode of Radio Panik! www.radiopanik.org/emissions/l-etr…eeform-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: www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank You.
This week- two films featuring explosions of wildly different natures. When Jean, a middle age writer living in Paris, reconnects with Claire, an old friend, at a party. Claire introduces him to her beautiful new toy and draws him into a sadomasochistic triangle. Based on Catherine Robbe-Grillet's Lacanian exploration of abjection and desire, directed by porno chic auteur Radley Metzger, and part of MOMA's permanent collection- The Image. A drifter with perfect aim and a lactating sex worker find themselves in custody of the most sought after newborn in the country. The pair try to untangle a conspiracy behind the birth and endless attempts on the baby's life. Meanwhile a henpecked savant assassin is hot on their heels. Michael Davis's cartoon inspired cult action comedy- Shoot 'Em Up. All that and Tyler breaks tradition, Dave learns to live with disappointment, Craig deep dives, and Kevin clarifies. Join us, won't you? Episode 455- Loadsa Shooting
This episode is a close reading of Saving Genitality: Toward a Freudian Virtue Ethics, a new essay by Sohrab Ahmari published by Everyday Analysis.The argument Ahmari makes is stranger and more interesting than it might first appear. Freud, for all his reputation as the great debunker of bourgeois morality, never managed to evacuate his clinical concept of "normality" of ethical content. His account of psychological health — centred on what he called genitality, the mature organisation of sexuality toward heterosexual, reproductive union — turns out to carry an implicit moral claim: that health and virtue are, in the end, the same thing.That claim puts Freud in unexpected company. It places him closer to Aristotle than to the statistical normality of nineteenth-century medicine — closer to a tradition that insists human beings have a nature, and that living well means living in accordance with it.In this episode I try to unpack that argument carefully and honestly — moving through the collapse of classical teleology, Hume's is-ought problem, MacIntyre's diagnosis of modern moral discourse, the Wolfman case, and the tension between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. I also spend time with where the argument strains: the Lacanian objection, the empirical critiques of Freud, and the political implications of framing one form of sexuality as the mature norm.I don't endorse everything here. But I think it raises questions worth sitting with.Essay: Saving Genitality by Sohrab AhmariPublished by Everyday Analysis (2026) — everydayanalysis.co.uk
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
The self and the world We tend to think of ourselves as observers of the world and experience as something different from the material stuff that makes up reality. Yet at the same time as human beings, we are at once part of the universe and part of that reality. And this profoundly puzzling relationship, that we are both part of something and yet separate from it, has been at the centre of Western thought. Materialists claim there is only physical material. But if so, thought, experience, and consciousness become illusory. Idealists argue there is only consciousness, but then it is reality that becomes an illusion. While dualists hold that both the self and the world exist, but that the connection between the two is mysterious. Is the self part of the world or necessarily outside of it? Was Kant right that the distinction between subject and object is necessary for experience to be possible? Or are these deep metaphysical questions beyond us, and our theories and language incapable of uncovering the ultimate state of things?Slavoj Žižek is one of the most famous philosophers in the world and is the author of more than 50 books, including most recently at the time of the debate Zero Point. Alenka Zupančič is a leading Lacanian philosopher and social theorist. She is a professor at The European Graduate School and at the University of Nova Gorica. Joining from America, Carlo Rovelli is a leading theoretical physicist, the author of several best-selling books, and a founding figure in the field of quantum gravity. His recent book, Reality Is Not What It Seems, has ethical implications for the nature of the self and personal identity. Jack Symes hosts. Email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts on the episode! To witness such topics discussed live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this episode of The Biggest Table, host Andrew Camp delves into the intersections of food, theology, and the psychological theory of disgust with Paul and Billie Hoard, who co-authored the book Eucontamination. Paul, a licensed counselor and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and Billie, a trans woman and writer, discuss how concepts of disgust operate at both individual and sociological levels, impacting relationships within the church and society. They explore the theological implications of disgust, the transformative power of love, and how practices like the Eucharist and foot washing can help Christians move past disgust reactions to foster intimacy and community. They also share personal anecdotes, discuss their fondest and least favorite foods, and emphasize the critical importance of sharing meals to experience God's love and grow in fellowship.Paul Hoard, PhD, LMHC, is a licensed counselor, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and associate professor of counseling psychology at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. His scholarship focuses on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, sexuality, white-body supremacy, perpetration-induced traumatic stress, and the theological logic of disgust. He has spoken and published internationally on topics including purity culture, trauma, eucontamination, and the intersections of theology and psychoanalysis. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Hoard maintains a private counseling practice and provides clinical supervision and consultation. He is the co-author, with his sister Billie Hoard, of the book Eucontamination: Disgust Theology and the Christian Life.Paul's Substack Billie Hoard is a trans woman, teacher, writer, and something of an Anabaptist radical. Together with her brother Paul, she is the author of "Eucontamination". Billie holds an MA in liberal arts from St. John's College & she writes about queerness, fairy tales, C. S. Lewis, theology & philosophy.Billie's SubstackThis episode of the Biggest Table is brought to you in part by Wild Goose Coffee. Since 2008, Wild Goose has sought to build better communities through coffee. For our listeners, Wild Goose is offering a special promotion of 20% off a one time order using the code TABLE at checkout. To learn more and to order coffee, please visit wildgoosecoffee.com.
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).
In this episode, I sit down with my friend and returning guest, Luke Grote, to explore one of the most intense, provocative, and fascinating chapters I've ever read. Luke recently sent me a chapter from his upcoming book — a piece he describes as the best work he's ever written — and after reading it, I have to agree. It's part theology, part philosophy, part psychoanalysis, and part prophetic critique, woven together with a raw emotional charge that grabbed me immediately.We talk about where inspiration really comes from, why the ego is fundamentally a distortion, and how most of us spend our lives sleepwalking inside an identity shaped by cultural conditioning, spiritual misunderstandings, and mimetic pressures. Luke explains why Kierkegaard is his model for doing theology, how despair is a universal condition, and why he believes the “self” we identify with is largely an illusion we need to transcend.We also explore the intensity — even the fury — in his writing. I ask him directly if this chapter was a kind of “manic rant,” and we dig into how his bipolar diagnosis shapes the way he sees the world, breaks from academic conformity, and refuses to internalize the “Name-of-the-Father” in the Lacanian sense. Luke talks openly about how this partial break from the symbolic order allows him to see through cultural structures most of us unconsciously obey.From there, we dive into the inseparable relationship between the personal and the political, the tension between detachment and engagement, and why Luke believes genuine social transformation requires a radical remaking of the self. We challenge evangelical moralism, progressive identity politics, and the idolatry of belief within Christianity — and ask what it means to wake up in a world where most people prefer to remain asleep.This conversation is dense, challenging, and deeply alive. If you're interested in ego-transcendence, the New Being, Kierkegaard, consciousness, spirituality, political critique, or what it means to become who you truly are, this episode will have a lot for you.
What happens when the revolutionary fervor of Marxism meets the probing depths of the psychoanalytic couch? In this intellectually stimulating conversation, Andrew Flores (host of The Parallax Viewer) explores the fascinating and often contentious relationship between psychoanalytic theory and left politics.The discussion begins with a fundamental question: why should Marxists care about psychoanalysis at all? Flores argues that psychoanalysis doesn't just treat individual symptoms but addresses the "bourgeois subject"—the psychological effects of living within capitalist social relations. As he eloquently explains, "What psychoanalysis does is deal with a bourgeois subject, the effects of bourgeois consciousness... Marx invented the symptom, not Freud." This provocative claim opens a pathway to understanding how our internal psychological conflicts might reflect broader social contradictions.Delving into Lacanian theory, Flores unpacks the three registers—Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real—that structure our experience, showing how they relate to political formation and revolutionary potential. The conversation weaves through structuralism, Althusserian Marxism, and contemporary thinkers like Alain Badiou and Domenico Losurdo, revealing the complex theoretical lineages that continue to shape leftist thought.Perhaps most relevant to our current moment is the discussion of social fragmentation, paranoia, and what might be called our collective psychosis. As conspiracy theories proliferate and ideological certainties dissolve, psychoanalytic concepts offer valuable tools for understanding how individual and collective delusions form in response to social trauma.Whether you're a seasoned theoretical traveler or new to these intellectual territories, this conversation offers fresh insights into how we might understand the relationship between our inner lives and the social structures that shape them—and perhaps how we might transform both.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic
RU367: NICK STOCK & NICK PEIM ON THE LACANIAN TEACHER: EDUCATION, PEDAGOGY & ENJOYMENT https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru367-nick-stock-and-nick-peim-on Rendering Unconscious episode 367. Rendering Unconscious welcomes Drs. Nick Stock and Nick Peim to the podcast! They're here to talk about their new book The Lacanian Teacher: Education, Pedagogy and Enjoyment (The Palgrave Lacan Series). https://amzn.to/47LBV8c In this episode, Nick Stock and Nick Peim delve into their Lacanian perspective on education. They discuss the fantasy of the English teacher's unique role, the pervasive myth of educational redemption, and the enjoyment derived from teaching despite its challenges. The discussion highlights the symbolic order of education, the impact of neoliberalism, and the ontological significance of the signifier. They explore the pleasure in teaching, the tragic ethic, and the hysterical mode of teaching, emphasizing the importance of the signifier and the teacher's subjective experience within the educational symbolic order. Listen to this previous episode with Nick Stock: RU253: NICHOLAS STOCK – “DOES THE TEACHER ENJOY? THINKING THROUGH EDUCATIONAL ENJOYMENT WITH LACAN” http://www.renderingunconscious.org/psychoanalysis/ru253-nicholas-stock-does-the-teacher-enjoy-thinking-through-educational-enjoyment-with-lacan/ The song at the end of this episode is "We will be (outside the box)" by Vanessa Sinclair and Pete Murphy from the album "The cutting up of love and language" available for free download/name your price at https://petemurphy.bandcamp.com 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. Thank You.
In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I sit down with philosopher and Lacanian theorist Todd McGowan for a deep exploration of Frantz Fanon's engagement with G.W.F. Hegel. Together, we unpack how Black Skin, White Masksreimagines Hegel's master–slave dialectic through the lens of colonialism, race, and psychic struggle.Todd explains how thinkers like Alexandre Kojève shaped the 20th-century obsession with recognition and how Fanon both inherits and critiques that legacy. We explore Fanon's bold claim that freedom must be won through struggle, not simply mutual understanding—and how his universalism sets him apart from later postcolonial and identity-based readings.Our conversation also moves into psychoanalysis, examining Fanon's dialogue with Freud and Lacan, his implicit engagement with the death drive, and his view of colonialism as a system driven by disavowed self-destruction. We also touch on Fanon's reflections on violence, alienation, and the tension between theory and political action.This is a wide-ranging discussion about freedom, universality, and the cost of liberation, and why Fanon's work still speaks urgently to our moment.
Abby and Patrick are joined by Nick Stock and Nick Peim, authors of the new book The Lacanian Teacher: Education, Pedagogy, and Enjoyment. From the origin stories teachers tell about themselves to the ways the classroom looms large in our memories, popular media, and political rhetoric, it's a conversation about education at the intersection of fantasies, reality, vocations, anxieties, addictions, and more. What are the narratives that drive people to study and to teach, and what are the satisfactions and frustrations that come with learning? How do credentials and rules work in tandem with transgression and license? How do our expectations of acquiring knowledge survive, or get dashed, by disillusionment when we finally “get” it? Can we ever truly learn anything – or is knowledge always unstable and transient? As Nick and Nick explain, a Lacanian perspective is singularly helpful for confronting these questions and more. Walking through Lacan's theories of lack, identification, and institutional discourses, they also explore why so many people find the figure of Jacques Lacan himself so alluring.The Lacanian Teacher: Education, Pedagogy, and Enjoyment: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93018-8Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you've traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847 A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness Twitter: @UnhappinessPod Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness Theme song: Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1 https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO Provided by Fruits Music
In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Sinan Richards to explore his brilliant article “The Logician of Madness: Fanon's Lacan.” Our conversation dives into the deep intellectual currents connecting Frantz Fanon and Jacques Lacan—two thinkers often treated as distant but who, as Sinan argues, share a surprisingly intimate lineage.We trace Fanon's early psychiatric influences at Saint-Alban under François Tosquelles, the Catalan psychiatrist whose fusion of psychoanalysis, surrealism, and social activism helped form the basis for institutional psychotherapy. From there, we follow how Tosquelles' reading of Lacan's fertile moments of delirium and psychogenesis evolved into Fanon's own radical idea of sociogenesis—the notion that the colonial order itself produces mental illness.Sinan also illuminates the feedback loop between these two towering figures: how Lacan's early emphasis on the social helped shape Fanon's thought, and how Fanon, in turn, may have anticipated the late Lacanian critique of the symbolic order as a kind of psychic prison. Together, we discuss language, desire, and disalienation—how the colonized subject's struggle to speak and dream in a colonizer's tongue exposes both the political and psychic dimensions of liberation.Along the way, Sinan shares vivid stories—like Tosquelles and his patients hand-binding copies of Lacan's thesis and selling them in the village market—and we reflect on Fanon's enduring insight that things cannot go on as they are.This conversation is for anyone drawn to psychoanalysis, decolonial thought, and the places where philosophy meets political action.
The queens talk with David Duchovny about poetry, Lacanian psychotherapy, love, the future perfect, and the lost past. Please Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:David Duchovny's new book, About Time, is just out from Akashic Books. David was interviewed about the book on PBS--watch it here. You can catch some of David's music here. For more about the Aymara of the Andean highlands, check out this NPR story.Randall Jarrell's poem "The Woman at the Washington Zoo" ends, "You see what I am: change me, change me!" Read it here.Check out the Fail Better Podcast interviews with Aimee Mann, Melissa Febos, and Jack HalberstamFor more about Lacan's short therapy sessions, click here. For more about the future perfect tense, read here. Christopher Walken talks here about his resentment of punctuation.David talked with writer Chris Carter about ellipsis and his writing of the character Fox Mulder here. If you'd like to check out Matthew McConaughey reading his poems, here's a link for you.
In this episode of The Psyche Podcast, I sit down with psychoanalyst, scholar, and author Derek Hook to explore the intersections between Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, and the work of decolonial psychoanalysis. Drawing from Derek's new book, Fanon, Psychoanalysis, and Critical Decolonial Psychology: The Mind of Apartheid, we discuss how Fanon both used and transformed psychoanalysis to address the psychic realities of racism, colonization, and liberation.Derek shares how growing up under apartheid shaped his lifelong interest in the psychological mechanisms of racism and domination. We talk about Fanon's early encounter with Lacanian ideas through François Tosquelles, his critical response to Octave Mannoni, and how Black Skin, White Masks continues to challenge the limits of both psychoanalysis and politics.Together, we unpack Fanon's reworking of Jung's “collective unconscious” into what Derek calls a European collective unconscious—a psychic structure shaped by racial fantasy, colonial desire, and historical trauma. We also reflect on the place of the “third” or the big Other in the analytic encounter, and how Fanon's vision of a decolonial psychology continues to unsettle, inspire, and demand reflection.This was a deeply engaging conversation that bridges theory and experience—an exploration of how Fanon's work helps us think about freedom not only as a social project but as a psychic and existential one.
This week, we once again turn to one of Tillich Today's favorite contemporary philosophers, Slavoj Žižek, to talk about the complicated relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and gender identity. We also debate Žižek's recent work and discuss the complexities surrounding his attitudes towards trans rights, examining the strengths and limitations of using psychoanalysis to understand the politics of gender identity in modern contexts. If you're interested in hearing more about the experience of being trans from an actual trans person or you simply fancy a good conversation on Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, this episode is for you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Rendering Unconscious – the Gradiva award-winning podcast about psychoanalysis & culture, with me, Dr Vanessa Sinclair. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com RU360: CORPO FREUDIANO VANCOUVER: LACANIAN SCHOOL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru360-corpo-freudiano-vancouver-lacanian Rendering Unconscious episode 360. Rendering Unconscious welcomes the folks from Corpo Freudiano Vancouver to the podcast! Be sure to check out their website for LaConference 2025 Registration, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver Fundraiser, calendar of events, and more! https://corpofreudianovancouver.com Hilda Fernandez-Alvarez, Alois Sieben, and Wayne Wapeemukwa also contributed to the Rendering Unconscious book series! Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectivesvols. vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024) edited by Vanessa Sinclair. https://amzn.to/400QKR7 For links to everything visit: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru360-corpo-freudiano-vancouver-lacanian News and upcoming events: Beginning September 13th, join Dr. Vanessa Sinclair for An Introduction to Psychoanalysis, a 12 part class that meets once a month over the course of a year! To enroll, simply become a paid subscriber to https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com Then on October 4th Philosopher Simone Atenea Medina Polo will present her work on “Tiresias as the Patron Saint of Psychoanalysis: On the Integral Mutations of Psychoanalysis” https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/save-the-date-october-4th Rendering Unconscious Podcast received the Gradiva Award for Digital Media from the National Association for the Advancement for Psychoanalysis (NAAP). Thank you for listening to the Rendering Unconscious Podcast and for reading the Rendering Unconscious anthologies. And thank you so much for supporting this work by being a paid subscriber at Substack. 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 all future and archival podcast episodes. If you would like information about entering into psychoanalytic treatment with me or have other questions, please feel free to contact me via: vs [at] drvanessasinclair.net https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank you.
In this edition of Study Break, we discuss the suspiciously overblown controversy of Sydney Sweeney's AE ad spot, our box office takes on Ari Aster's Black Lives Matter COVID Western and the new Superman, fascinating late night musical debuts from Pinkpantheress and Jessie Murph, the summer of female sexual aggression, our love of senior dating and romance, and more. Links: Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans – American EagleBrooke Shields Calvin Klein Jeans Commercial (1980) Biz on the genes/jeans of it all Sydney Sweeney as Lacanian super predator tweet@default_friend on AE's busted copy“The Disembodied Body of Marilyn Monroe” by Wendy LesserThere You Are: Brad Pitt for Chanel No. 5 CommercialPamela Anderson and Liam Neeson editorial for You magazine Liam Neeson racism backlash“Sex After 60 in Sag Harbor” by Candace Bushnell for New York magazineA24's Eddington dir. Ari Aster – Official Trailer “Everyone Wants a Piece of Pedro Pascal” – Vanity Fair cover story“Can David Corenswet Save Superman?” – GQ cover storyRyan Murphy Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy styling backlash“Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters hits No. 1 on BillboardPinkPantheress: Illegal/Girl Like Me/Tonight Medley on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonRhythm Heaven music edits by @therealstoinkle Jessie Murph: 1965 on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonChappell Roan - The Subway (Official Music Video)Sabrina Carpenter brings out Earth, Wind & Fire at LollapaloozaManon and Lara of KATSEYE lez out on stage at LollapaloozaRachel Zegler's gratitude surge at Evita curtain callRFK Jr. launches federal crackdown on 7-OHLola Young - One Thing (Official Music Video) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nymphetalumni.com/subscribe
Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002) is Slavoj Žižek talking about 9/11 from a Lacanian, Hegelian, Ljubljana-slobber-in-a-stained-Lenin-T-shirt perspective. For this episode, the wonderful Stephen G Adubato of Cracks in Postmodernity helped me navigate Žižek's discursive 'It feels like I'm reading five books at once' style.Cracks in Postmodernity: https://cracksinpomo.substack.com/VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATIONJack has published a novel called Tower!Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Jack-BC-ebook/dp/B0CM5P9N9M/ref=monarch_sidesheetThe first nine chapters of Tower are available for free here: jackbc.substack.comOur Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheBookClubfromHellJack's Substack: jackbc.substack.comLevi's website: www.levioutloud.comwww.thebookclubfromhell.comJoin our Discord (the best place to interact with us): https://discord.gg/nbRkVeztEQWatch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0n7r1ZTpsUw5exoYxb4aKA/featuredX: @bookclubhell666Jack on X: @supersquat1Levi on X: @optimismlevi
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three traditions--Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian--through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon's psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient's presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action "on the couch," which envisions political action "off the couch" and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
Welcome to Rendering Unconscious – the Gradiva award-winning podcast about psychoanalysis & culture, with me, Dr Vanessa Sinclair. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com RU356: EVA BIRCH ON LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS, HER NEW BOOK OF POETRY, PEARL, & CO-FOUNDING THE MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF LITERATURE: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru356-eva-birch-on-lacanian-psychoanalysis Rendering Unconscious episode 356. Rendering Unconscious welcomes Eva Birch to the podcast! She's here to talk about her new book of poetry Pearl (2025). On this episode, Eva discusses her new book of poetry, "Pearl," which spans an eight-year period and reflects her psychoanalytic journey. Eva shares her process becoming both psychoanalyst and poet, and how they are intertwined. She began writing poetry after starting analysis, her Lacanian analyst at times influencing her work through subtle jokes and analytic insights. Eva highlights her collaborations with other poets, transition from the world of publishing to psychoanalysis, and experience starting a school of literature. She also mentions the active poetry scene in Melbourne and the importance of diverse representation in psychoanalysis. Eva Birch is a poet, psychoanalyst and registered counsellor living in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri country. She offers the treatment of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and counselling services. She is the author of Pearl (Rabbit, 2025), Megalodon (SOd Press, 2019) and The Secret Object of Sacrifice after Luce Irigaray, PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2019. She co-founded of The Melbourne School of Literature. https://evabirch.com Follow her at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eva_me_birch/ News and updates: On Friday, August 8th, join me for The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: Trans Childhoods and the Family Romance with M.E. O'Brien. Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-queerness-of-psychoanalysis-trans-childhoods-and-the-family-romance-tickets-1503646018719?aff=oddtdtcreator This event will be recorded and the recording will be shared with those who registered. https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com Everyone who becomes a paid subscriber for RU Center for Psychoanalysis will be atomically registered for the event on The Queerness of Psychoanalysis on August 8th (and all upcoming events in The Queerness of Psychoanalysis series) and will be enrolled for my 12 month course An Introduction to Psychoanalysis, which will meet once a month beginning September 13th! More info here: https://rucenterforpsychoanalysis.substack.com/p/introduction-to-psychoanalysis-with Thank you for listening to the Rendering Unconscious Podcast and for reading the Rendering Unconscious anthologies. And thank you so much for supporting this work by being a paid subscriber at Substack. 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 all future and archival podcast episodes. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious is also a book series! Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry volumes 1:1 and 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024) available now! https://amzn.to/400QKR7 If you would like information about entering into psychoanalytic treatment with me or have other questions, please feel free to contact me via: vs [at] drvanessasinclair.net https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank you.
What can JD Vance's arguments with Pope Francis teach us about selfishness, altruism, and the morality of the modern world?Join the team at the IAI for four articles about egoism, self-sacrifice, and everything in between, analysing a range of subjects, including: Friedrich Nietzsche and his rivalry with former maestro Arthur Schopenhauer; the 10 Commandments and their relationship to jealousy; why God might be "stupid, indifferent, and evil"; and of course the aforementioned showdown between JD and the Pope.These articles were written by Slavoj Žižek, Steven D. Hales, Kristján Kristjánsson, and Guy Elgat.Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is the author of 'Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist'. Steven D. Hales is Professor of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, and author of 'The Myth of Luck: Philosophy, Fate and Fortune'. Kristján Kristjánsson is Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics at the University of Birmingham. His work spans topics in moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral education. He is also the editor of the Journal of Moral Education. Guy Elgat is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of 'Nietzsche's Psychology of Ressentiment' and 'Being Guilty: Freedom, Responsibility, and Conscience in German Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger'.And don't hesitate to email us at podcast@iai.tv with your thoughts or questions on the episode!To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychology at Ghent University. Trained in the Lacanian tradition, he has written widely on the structure of psychosis, the limits of psychiatric diagnosis, and the importance of attending to the subjective logic of mental distress. His books include The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective, Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review, and most recently, Why Psychosis is Not So Crazy, which offers a reorientation of how clinicians, families, and broader society might understand and engage with psychotic experience. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, case studies, and contemporary cultural examples, Vanheule treats hallucinations and delusions not as meaningless symptoms but as creative responses to existential disruptions. He emphasizes the importance of listening—clinically and socially—not for coherence imposed from the outside, but for the structure and logic within a person's seemingly incoherent world. His approach challenges dominant psychiatric models that prioritize symptom suppression, calling instead for a therapeutic attitude grounded in humility and collaboration. In this interview, Vanheule discusses the role of hallucinations in restoring a shattered sense of meaning, the necessity of admitting one's limitations as a clinician, and the importance of everyday practices—gardening, conversation, shared meals—in building connections that can anchor recovery. Using a depathologizing lens, he discusses that to overwhelming existential challenges that make us all vulnerable, psychosis might not be a crazy reaction after all. *** Find a full transcript of the interview here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/06/why-psychosis-is-not-so-crazy-a-conversation-with-stijn-vanheule/ Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2025. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org
Alright this week we're continuing our series on Slavoj Žižek's Against Progress with another long-awaited conversation with theorist and friend of the show Michael Downs, author of the Dangerous Maybe Blog on Medium and his new book Capital Vs Timenergy: A Žižekian Critique of Nick Land to discuss Žižek's essay Accelerationism.Is Žižek an Accelerationist?In PART ONE of our conversation we're talking accelerationism and degrowth, all things Nick Land, cyber-positivity, forced choices, the zero point of modernity, and get into the CCRU, cute accelerationism, AI as metaphysical horror, the barred and unbarred Big Other, Providence, techno-Telos, face tentacles, vinyl records, and the Lacanian subject.Support us on PATREON and get access to our Discord, interviews, extra episodes each month, and our SHORT SESSIONS series for $5/month.See you in Paris,Ž&...
Welcome to Rendering Unconscious – the Gradiva award-winning podcast about psychoanalysis & culture, with me, Dr Vanessa Sinclair. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com RU351: JULIE RESHE, TODD MCGOWAN & SIMONE A. MEDINA POLO ON DEATH & LOVE: PSYCHOANALYTIC & PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru351-julie-reshe-todd-mcgowan-and Rendering Unconscious episode 351. I sat down with Julie Reshe, Todd McGowan, and Simone A. Medina Polo to talk about their new book Death and Love: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives (2025): https://www.routledge.com/Death-and-Love-Psychoanalytic-and-Philosophical-Perspectives/Reshe-McGowan/p/book/9781032663425 This episode centers on a new edited volume exploring the intersections of death and love, edited by Julie Reshe and Todd McGowan, to which Simone A. Medina Polo contributed. The book is dedicated to Mari Ruti, who passed away before completing her contribution. Key chapters include Lacanian perspectives, existentialist and theological analyses, and a tribute to Sabina Spielrein. Contributors explore the death drive and its implications, delving into the philosophical and psychoanalytic nuances of love and death. The conversation also touches on the challenges and significance of Spielrein's work and its impact on contemporary psychoanalysis. Julie Reshe is a leading researcher in psychoanalysis and professor of philosophy at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS) where she directs the Institute of Psychoanalysis. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Alenka Zupančič at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She works at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and her research topics include sexuality, emotions and cognition, childhood, and trauma studies. Be sure to check out her book Negative Psychoanalysis for the Living Dead: Philosophical Pessimism and the Death Drive (2023). https://www.juliereshe.com You can support her work and gain access to the book chapters at her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/juliereshe/posts Follow Julie at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julie.reshe/ Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. His books include The Impossible David Lynch (2007), Emancipation after Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019), Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves (2024), and Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity (2025). https://vermont.academia.edu/ToddMcGowan Simone A. Medina Polo (she/her) is a philosopher and PhD candidate at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS) for Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Follow her at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pseudo_antigone/ Thank you for listening to the Rendering Unconscious Podcast and for reading the Rendering Unconscious anthologies. And thank you so much for supporting this work by being a paid subscriber at the Substack. 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 all future and archival podcast episodes. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com If you would like information about entering into psychoanalytic treatment with me, joining the group I run for those who have relocated to another country, or have other questions, please feel free to contact me via vs [at] drvanessasinclair.net https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank you.
In this installment of The Anti-Oedipus Files, we welcome translator and theorist Taylor Adkins for a wide-ranging conversation on Lacan's “Position of the Unconscious.” Beginning with a historical primer, we trace Lacan's fraught institutional legacy and his confrontation with psychoanalytic orthodoxy. From the topology of the lamella to the philosophical rift between Guattari and Lacan, we explore the transformations of subjectivity, desire, and analytic practice. Taylor also shares insights into his collaborations on Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour and the broader landscape of Deleuze and Guattari studies.Finish the discussion here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lamella-and-on-130562986?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_linkSupport Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour: https://www.patreon.com/muhhBack Vintagia Today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creativesSupport the showVintagia Pre-Launch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acidhorizon/vintagia-i-ching-oracle-for-psychogeographers-and-creatives Support the podcast:https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast Boycott Watkins Media: https://xenogothic.com/2025/03/17/boycott-watkins-statement/ Join The Schizoanalysis Project: https://discord.gg/4WtaXG3QxnSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438Merch: http://www.crit-drip.comSubscribe to us on your favorite podcast: https://pod.link/1512615438 LEPHT HAND: https://www.patreon.com/LEPHTHANDHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam's blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.comRevolting Bodies (Will's Blog): https://revoltingbodies.comSplit Infinities (Craig's Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/
Welcome to Rendering Unconscious – the award-winning podcast about psychoanalysis & culture, with me, Dr Vanessa Sinclair. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com This week Rendering Unconscious welcomes Jack Black and Joseph Reynoso to the podcast! They're here to talk about their book Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Lexington Books, 2024) https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666938425/Sport-and-Psychoanalysis-What-Sport-Reveals-about-Our-Unconscious-Desires-Fantasies-and-Fears ... and new journal, Sport and Psychoanalysis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2025.2488200 RU343: JACK BLACK & JOSEPH REYNOSO ON SPORT & PSYCHOANALYSIS: WHAT SPORT REVEALS ABOUT OUR UNCONSCIOUS DESIRES, FANTASIES & FEARS https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru343-jack-black-and-joseph-reynoso Jack and Joseph discuss their book Sport and Psychoanalysis, detailing its origins and structure. They recount their early sports-related publications, exploration of psychoanalytic theory and sports, and mutual interest in Lacanian theory. Jack shares his background in sports science and sociology. They highlight the book's five sections: athletic body, coaching, fandom, identity, and play, featuring diverse sports and theoretical perspectives. They also mention the launch of a new journal, "Sport and Psychoanalysis," inviting submissions to further explore the intersection of psychoanalysis and sports. Joseph S. Reynoso is a psychoanalytic clinical psychologist in New York City, where he treats children and adults in private practice. He is also a provider for the National Basketball Players Association's mental health and wellness program. Follow him at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-reynoso-a078771a/ Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. An interdisciplinary researcher, Jack works across the disciplines of psychoanalysis, media and communications, cultural studies, and sport. Follow him at Twitter: https://x.com/jackstblack Academia: https://shu.academia.edu/JackBlack Check out our previous discussion RU324: JACK BLACK ON THE PSYCHOSIS OF RACE: A LACANIAN APPROACH TO RACISM & RACIALIZATION Thank you for listening to the Rendering Unconscious Podcast and for reading the Rendering Unconscious anthologies. And thank you so much for supporting this work by being a paid subscriber at the Substack. 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 all future and archival podcast episodes. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com News and updates: I have a couple events coming up! Join me Saturday, May 10th, for an online workshop as I explore “Dreams as Art” with writer Emmalea Russo. We'll be delving into dreamwork, artwork, psychoanalysis as a creative practice, and the varying relationships Freud, Jung, Lacan had with art. More info & register here: DREAMS AS ART: Freud, Jung, Lacan: https://emmalearusso.com/new-products/p/psychoanalysis-as-art-freud-jung-lacan Then beginning Sunday, May 25th, I'll be giving a 4-week online course via Morbid Anatomy Museum: The Cut in Creation: Exploring the Avant-Garde, Dada, Surrealism, Modern Art, Noise Music, and Performance Art through a Psychoanalytic Lens: https://www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/p/the-cut-in-creation-exploring-the-avant-garde-dada-surrealism-modern-art-noise-music-and-performance-art-through-a-psychoanalytic-lens-led-by-vanessa-sinclair-psyd If you would like information about being in psychoanalytic treatment with me, or have other questions, please feel free to contact me via vs [at] drvanessasinclair.net https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/ Thank you.
What do Friedrich Nietzsche, the Korean War, and Homer's Odyssey have in common?Join the team at the IAI for four articles about the history and philosophy of geopolitics, ranging from Nietzsche's impact on Russia's imperialist strategies to the importance of Ancient Greek tragedies during the decline of the West. Written by Slavoj Žižek, John Milbank, Stathis Kalyvas, and Andy Owen, these four articles offer a deep and wide-ranging analysis of the philosophies that are shaping the modern world of politics.Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is the author of 'Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist'. John Milbank is a theologian and founder of Radical Orthodoxy. His books include 'The Monstrosity of Christ', co-authored with Slavoj Žižek. Stathis Kalyvas is Gladstone Professor of government and fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. Andy Owen is an author and former intelligence officer in the British Army.To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Today I spoke to Dr. Carl Waitz about his new book Youth Mental Health Crises and the Broken Social Link: A Freudian-Lacanian Perspective (Routledge, 2024). “The kids are not ok” blurbs Patricia Gherovici in her endorsement of Dr. Waitz' necessary new book. We know this. On the weekend we recorded this interview (February 9, 2025) the New York Times published research[1] showing national trendlines from 1990-2024. Rates of depression and suicide; up. Life expectancy and satisfaction; down. Dr. Waitz cites data from 2015-2020 showing suicide as the second leading cause of death for youth ages 10-14. In discussion with colleagues at other hospitals they recognize that these numbers are “striking”. The topic of youth mental health has been on Dr. Waitz' mind for a long time starting “as far back as when I first started working with adolescents. Even before I and went to graduate school for psychology.” Dr. Waitz' clinical experience with this material over the years is evident in this thoughtfully researched book. When he and his wife were expecting their “first kid” he realized that “this was starting to be a personal topic in addition to a professional one.” This is a deeply felt book. So was this interview. No matter where we were in our talk I associated to my current cases. Cases of youth in crisis. They cannot be discussed here. So we weaved in and out of the text. Sometimes exploring theory broadly. Sometimes specifically. All our discussion leading to the clinical question, what does psychoanalysis have to offer? We addressed this by discussing two passages near the end of the book. “Without the fantasy of a sexual rapport any longer, there is no easily available limit on jouissance and this is precisely why the panoply of solutions called the youth mental health crisis (suicide, self-injury, depression, identification with the stigma of diagnosis, and political polarization are substitutionary, if not contrary to the formation of a social link.” (p.180) “The challenges of psychoanalysis are greater than merely navigating its own exigencies. If it is to have anything to say about the youth mental health crisis, it must find a way of engaging with a non-psychoanalytic society. With this in mind, how can psychoanalysis a practice focused on a singular subject approach a problem of desire - itself a consequence of a loss of initiation rites at a social level while maintaing it's "non desire to cure" (p.175) As readers of clinical and theoretical literature recognize, analysts tend to shy away from declarative statements preferring to swim in the open waters of the unknown. I was pleased to end the interview by asking Dr. Waitz about his bold declaration, “There is no question more revealing of one's worldview then why one conceived a child one's religion or economics hold no candle to this question.” (p.100) [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis