Speaking Body

In this short solo episode of The Speaking Body Podcast, I (Neil Gorman) try a new format and invite listeners to email feedback about whether they like it. I explain a key difference between how psychoanalysis is practiced versus many forms of psychotherapy, coaching, or other helping relationships: when someone seeks help, they often engage in transference by supposing the helper has knowledge, authority, and power. In many cases, the helper accepts this supposition and provides advice, tools, or a treatment plan, which can be helpful. By contrast, I argue that psychoanalysts do not take up this supposition of knowledge; instead, they adopt a position of not knowing and respond with curiosity, offering hypotheses and questions rather than prescriptions. I close by noting this stance is essential to psychoanalytic work and share where to learn more at speakingbody.substack.com.---Table of contents00:00 Welcome and Format00:37 Big Idea Setup02:02 Psychotherapy Side Explained03:34 Transference and Authority05:32 Helper Model Benefits06:46 Switch to Psychoanalysis07:58 Not Taking Transference09:19 Curiosity Over Knowing11:41 Interpretations as Hypotheses13:02 Continuum Not Binary13:54 Key Takeaway and Wrap15:17 Thanks and Where to Find

In this episode, I announce that I’m rebranding and relaunching my podcast, previously called the Informed Podcast, as Speaking Body. I explain that Speaking Body will be both a podcast and a website (speakingbody.com) that will archive my writing, offer a newsletter, and sometimes include video episodes on YouTube, while keeping the same RSS feed for subscribers.Going forward, I will focus less on applying psychoanalytic theory and focus more on psychoanalysis and on how psychoanalytic work leaves the consulting room and affects everyday life and subjectivity. While I will sometimes use specialized Lacanian terms (e.g., jouissance, discourse of the master, object a, imaginary/symbolic/real, drive), I aim to restate key ideas in more commonplace language whenever possible.

Intro: In this episode of InForm:Podcast Neil & Jared talk about the Subject of the Statement & the Subject of the Enunciation. References: If you have not listened to InForm-027 you might want to listen to that episode before you listen to this one. This wonderful video on the graph of desire from Lacan Online. The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Écrits (Amazon) Formations of the Unconscious: The Seminar of Jacques Laan Book V (Amazon) 

Intro: Neil and Jared talk about the principle of moving from demand and activating desire in psychoanalysis. References: The Lacanian Compass A tour of the Graph of Desire from Lacan Online. (Video) The lecture by Kai Hammermister was indeed not online any longer. Hary Guntrip's account of his analysis with Fairbarin & Winnicott. (PDF)  

Intro: This is an episode where Jared & Neil talk bout how the concept of "self care" is used and misused in contemporary clinical settings. Just so you know: Normally the InForm:Podcast is allergic to editing (i.e. we don't edit, we just record and mix, and then post). Rather than seeing this as a flaw, we see it as a feature of the podcast. However, this time we did need to cut out a little bit of dodgy audio. We almost did not release the podcast at all... but in the end (obviously) we decided to release the edited version. References: What's Left? Podcast (SoundCloud, Patreon, Apple Podcasts)

INTRO: In this episode of InForm Neil & Jared talk more about the role of the analyst as a sort of detective of the weird and the eerie.ROUGH OUTLINE: Review: Last time we mentioned the role of the analyst is the secretary of the unconscious. Today we will be talking about the role of the analyst as a detective. Freud has ideas about what makes things in life uncanny, odd, upsetting, etc. 1. The double: 2. The four registers — animism, castration-complex, repetition-compulsion, & omnipotence Fisher has different ways of describing the uncanny1. Weird — The presence of something that does not fit in. - The Other where we don’t want the Other to be. - Presence - Unexpected effect - The symptom2. Eerie — The absence of something that one expects. - A lack of the Other where we expect the Other to be. - Absence - Unexpected failure - The gapJared’s point — “What is the sense of the weird and eerie during analysis, and what does it mean to both analyst and analysand? It is my assertation that during analysis, the weird acts as a signpost of the unconscious, and the eerie acts as the direction written upon the signpost; that is to say the eerie is the form of the unconscious material indicated by the weird.” REFERENCES: 1. Freud’s The Uncanny (1919) 2. Mark Fisher, The weird & the Eerie (2017)

HiIn this episode (the first in a series) Neil & Jared talk about the role of the analyst as a secretary of the unconscious and how this relates to the drive.A general outline: This is take two (we tried to record earlier, but kids...) We talk about the role of the analyst and psychoanalysis as opposed to a psychotherapist/psychotherapyWe  talk about the unconscious as "a part of us that has a mind of its own" (again) The unconscious does not exist it insists The idea that if we shut down the unconscious we end up empowering the drive Freud's 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle and how it relates to the unconscious & the drive Jered uses the intervention of scansion to put an end to things 

Intro: First episodes of Seasons 2 of InForm:Podcast! In this season Neil will be joined by Jared, and we will continue to talk about things & stuff in an InFormal but (hopefully!) InFormative way. What you're hearing is our third attempt to record the show. (The first two did not go all sorts of bad because Neil did not check batteries...) What are we talking about? Intro? — InForm:Podcast Season 2. 1. Sex is a deconstructive of identity (not constructive). — Sexuality?— Sexual relationship?2. “There is no such thing as a sexual relationship” — There is no such thing as a HARMONIOUS sexual relationship. — If there is harmony the relationship is not sexual. 3. Imaginary VS real. — The relationship (attachment) is imaginary— Sexuality is Real— The sexual relationship is the addition of the real— this addition of the real leads to a lack of harmony. — It disrupts (deconstructs) the imaginary identification. References: 1. Alenka Zupančič, What is Sex?, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2. Jean Laplanche, Freud & the Sexual, The Unconscious in Translation. 3. Thomas Svolos, Twenty-Frist Century Psychoanalysis, New York, NY: Routledge. 4. The Unconscious in Translation (publishing company). 

In this episode of the InForm: Podcast, I speak with Peter Rollins, the man behind pyro-theology, the Wake festival, the Spark retreat, Atheism for Lent, and many more things that can provoke all sorts of interesting experiences and elaborations. I first became aware of Pete's work many years back as I was attempting to build up my own understanding of Lacan. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I found a video of him discussing Lacanian ideas, in which he explained them in ways I found intelligible and useful. This led me to watch more of his videos, listen to his podcast, and then read his books.  Today, what interests me about Pete's work is the way that he goes about building engaged communities that work and struggle together to acknowledge, experience, and communicate about the lacks and antagonisms that are at the center of human subjectivity (or the human condition if you prefer that language), which is the main thing I speak with him about in this informal but hopefully informative conversation.We do, of course, go in other directions as well; we even tell a few jokes, which I hope you all find amusing. One last thing: near the end of the interview. REFERENCED: 1. Pete's Patreon & his Website2. Todd McGowan's YouTube3. Analysis Laid Bear 3. The Aims of Analysis

On this episode of InForm:Podcast, I speak with practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst Isolda Alverez about the way the aims of the psychoanalytic clinic have changed from Freud's time through Lacans and into the present day.Recommendations: 1. Band: Yo La Tango (Spotify, Apple Music) Album: "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out" (Spotify, Apple Music)2. Lucifer (TV Show on Netflix, Comic) 3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Amazon) 

On this episode of InForm: Podcast, Neil talks with Nathan Gorelick about psychoanalysis, psychedelics, psychosis, delusions, science, & mysticism. The result is a long, hopefully informative conversation. Nathan is Term Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College in New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and he has completed the six-year cycle of the Training Seminar in Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Gifric in Quebec City, Canada. He has published widely on the theoretical and historical intersections of psychoanalysis with diverse topics including ecocide and catastrophe fetishism, psychedelic drugs, Continental philosophy, the Haitian Revolution, Islam and Islamophobia, and the theory of the novel. His first book, The Unwritten Enlightenment, sets out a new theory of the relation between literature, ideology, and the unconscious, and is forthcoming early in 2024 from Northwestern University Press.REFERENCED DURING THE EPISODE: 1. Žizek video on ideology 2. Freud's -- Future of an Illisuion, Civilization & its Discontents, Moses & Monotheism, Analysis Terminable & Interminable. 3. Otto Rank -- The Trauma of Birth 4. Éric Laurent -- Guiding Principles for Any Psychoanalytic Act 5. The Lacanian Review #7 "Get Real" 

In this episode of Inform: Podcast I interview Why Theory's Ryan Engley about psychoanalysis in the classroom. (Tod McGowan, the other half of Why theory was interviewed about this same topic on an earlier episode of InForm.)  Our conversation ranges all over the place, but one of the consistent themes is the idea of sustaining the analysand's/student's desire/curiosity. Some of our references include: Lacan's Seminar 17 T.R. Johnson's book The Other Side of Pedagogy The Pedagogy of the Oppressed The TV Show: Peep Show, and (of course) Mad Men

InForm Podcast: 052The episode you're about to listen to is a conversation with Peter Rollins, a thinker, writer, podcaster, and community organizer who works at the intersections of psychoanalysis, theology, and philosophy.Before getting started I'd like to say the following: Getting to do this was something that was very exciting for me because I've been reading Pete's books, listening to his podcast, and watching his YouTube videos for many years, and his work has had a significant influence on me. The conversation was long and we talked about lots of different things including, Pete's own analysisAttempts to hysteriasize liturgical structures  Productively mal-adaptive symptoms (or sinthomes) The importance of lack or absence The impact of Hegel on philosophy, religion, and psychoanalysis Community organizingPsychoanalytic schoolsThe pass And much more 

Intro: Psychoanalytic superstar Todd McGowan makes his second appearance on the InForm: Podcast. In this episode (after Neil makes an error), we talk about psychoanalysis in the classroom. Longer Show Notes: At the top of the show, you hear Neil realizing he has forgotten to hit record after we have all been talking for 25 min. But after that, you can hear Neil, Jared, and Todd discuss: How Todd started to get interested in psychoanalysis as a graduate student and the impact of reading Žizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology had on his formation as a psychoanalytic thinker and teacher. Does psychoanalysis need to be marginal in the classroom? Staying with the 99 & letting the one go. What it is like to motivate students, and one's own children... or not motivate them. Trying to teach from the discourse of the analyst. Teaching fro the discourse of the hysteric (or perhaps the obsessional). Grading practices. D&G's Anti-Oedipus as a text that might be more in line with Lacan than people think. Transference to institutions. And other stuff that I can't remember. 

Intro: On this episode of InForm:Podcast we talk with Dr. Leon Brenner about his forthcoming book The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language, which is part of the Palgrave Lacan Series edited by Calum Neil and Derek Hook. Dr. Leon Brenner is a research fellow at the University of Potsdam and lecturer at the International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin. He is a training analyst, studying member of the APPI and a founder of Lacanian Affinities Berlin (laLAB). His latest book on the subject of the psychoanalysis of autism is called The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language, where he presents a novel account of autistic subjectivity from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective.About Leon and his experience as an analyst About why he did the work to write the bookThe argument (i.e. the point) of the bookThe history of autism as a psychosis & as a way of being-in-the-worldNeurosis, psychosis, autism, & the Name-of-the-FatherWho the book is written forExtras: For those who are interested in hearing Leon talk more about psychoanalysis and autism, you can do so by watching this video, or this one. You can buy Leon's book here. ----These are the links that can be added to the info:Dr. Brenner's personal blog and website:leonbrenner.comInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/leonbrennercom/Twitter:https://twitter.com/leonbrennercomLacanian Affinities Berlin website:lacanberlin.comThe Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language:https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030507145Recommended works by autistic writers and artists:Baggs, A. [silentmiaow] (2007, January 15). In my language. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/JnylM1hI2jc Grandin, T. (2006). Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism. New-York: Vintage.Sinclair, J. (1993). Don’t Mourn for us. Our Voice. Autism Network International. Retrieved from http://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.htmlTammet, D. (2007). Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Williams, D. (2015). Somebody Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism. Portland: Broadway Books.

INTRO: On this episode of InForm:Podcast Neil & Jared sit down and talk with Ryan Engley from the Why Theory Podcast about ordinary psychosis and the classroom as a psychoanalytic space.  REFERENCES: T.R. Johnson's book "The Other Side of Pedagogy" (Amazon) Some info on Ordinary Psychosis (Text 1, Text 2, Text 3, Text 4, Text 5) Bruce Fink's book "A Clinical Introduction to Lacanain Psychoanalysis: Theory & Technique" (Amazon) Heathers (IMDB) 1408 (IMDB) Jacob's Ladder (IMDB)Intimate Strangers (IMDB, Prime Video)

Intro: Today on InForm:Podcast we are lucky enough to talk with super-theorist Todd McGowan. Content: We reached out to Todd McGowan and asked if he would be willing to talk about how his experience in analysis (as an analysand) influenced the ways that he thinks, works, and lives. Todd responded to our request and was very generous with his time. (He talked with us for over 90 min!)In addition to talking about the effects of analysis on Todd's life we also talk about politics, Dashiell Hammett & Raymond Chandler, and a few other fun things. Links: Why Theory Podcast (Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud) Todd's books on Amazon (US, UK, CA) Todd's writing on Academia.edu