Ordinary Unhappiness

Avgi Saketopoulou, psychoanalyst and writer working on gender, race, and institutional politics. She discusses invitations turned into disinvitations and what those moves reveal about tolerance, exclusion, and institutional self-preservation. Conversations range across pathologizing affect, the weaponization of theory, naming genocide, and creating new spaces for psychoanalytic education.

Séamus Malekafzali, journalist and historian of the modern Middle East, appears to map current events onto deeper historical patterns. He discusses how narratives of repression, resistance, and reenactment shape identities. Conversations touch on nationalist mythmaking, identification with power, contested memories, language politics, and the feedback loops of Israeli-US relations.

Jordy Rosenberg, novelist and UMass Amherst English professor, discusses his new novel Night Night Fawn and its satiric deathbed narrator. Conversations touch on writing from a fictionalized mother’s voice, portraying ordinary bigotry without stereotype, links between Marxism and family life, the bird as a haunting symbol, and the political aims of contemporary fiction.

A resumed case history dissects a woman’s courtship and the sudden revelation of a would-be suitor. They trace patterns of dashed hopes, fantasies of mobility without marriage, and the emotional stakes of being asked to give beyond limits. The teaser sets up a coming Freudian intervention and probes why distress expresses itself in the legs.

Helen Epstein, visiting professor and author of Why Live?, brings a public-health lens to suicide as social phenomenon. She traces how sudden shifts from communal mutual-aid to isolated market life can spark suicide epidemics. The conversation examines historical cases from Russia to Micronesia, cultural breakdowns in emotional life, and how modernization reshapes meaning and belonging.

A lively dive into Laplanche’s rethink of Freud, focusing on the “primal situation” and how enigmatic signifiers shape language entry. Personal stories about first words, bilingual childhoods, and language loss punctuate the discussion. Comparisons between Laplanche and Lacan highlight different views on how language and identity form.

Danielle Drory, Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and psychoanalyst in training, introduces Jean Laplanche and his revision of Freud. They trace Laplanche’s biography and intellectual disputes. Short takes cover his lexicon work, the generalized seduction idea, enigmatic transmissions, and how these reshape thinking about development, language, and clinical practice.

A lively take on a hit streaming romance between rival hockey players. They explore prohibition and desire, and how rules in sport create tension and release. The conversation touches on recognition, purity of love, athletic skill and intensity. Psychoanalytic themes like fantasy, regression, and creativity weave through the discussion.

Abby Kluchin, public scholar and co-founder of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, joins to map romantasy as a pandemic-era craze. They unpack hit titles, TikTok fandom, and genre tropes. Conversations trace trauma, healing, age-gap dynamics, ritualized initiation, and how fantasy functions as adult play and reparative imagination.

A.S. Hamrah, film critic and former projectionist, author of Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema. He talks about cinema as a bodily, communal ritual and how theaters differ from streaming. They explore nostalgia, reality TV's politics, the rise of short-form media, AI and automation in film, and why endings in movies carry existential weight.