37: New Year’s Mailbag: The Capacity for Change Teaser

Ordinary Unhappiness

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We reflect on an (overdetermined) nine-month anniversary for Ordinary Unhappiness, including conversations with guests and reading recommendations – and then we take your calls! The mailbag includes a question about the libidinal dimensions of leftist political organizing, why people feel driven to do it, and if they’d be happier if they were less engaged; a question about growing up in and then leaving a tight-knit religious community, and how much genuine psychic change any of us can experience when it comes to ingrained patterns of relating to the self and others.
Texts we discussed and recommended:
New Parapraxis (Issue 3, The Wish): https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/magazine
Hannah Zeavin, “What’s Behind the Freud Resurgence?” in The Chronicle of Higher Education: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-old-mans-back-again
Alex Colston, “This War Is Causing Mass Trauma. How We Respond Matters,” in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gaza-trauma-israel/, written in response to Mohammed R. Mhawish’s All We Want in Gaza Is to Live https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-dispatch-survival/
Lydia Polgreen, “Born This Way? Born Which Way?” in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/politics/life-without-regret.html
Moira Donegan, “Radical Attention” (on Judith Herman) in Bookforum: https://www.bookforum.com/print/3001/pioneering-therapist-judith-herman-s-studies-of-trauma-and-justice-25213
Interview with Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a Discipline,” available as audio or transcript here: https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/activism/hope-is-a-discipline/
George E. Vaillaint’s The Wisdom of the Ego, available at Bookshop.org
Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107
A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:
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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
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