As a child of Palestinian parents displaced to Beirut, Karim Dajani became interested in psychoanalysis at a young age. These days, he’s justifiably interested in the field’s own exiles, particularly Trigant Burrow, who theorized as early as the 1920’s that the unconscious is structured in concordance with the social world, only to be expelled from the APA shortly thereafter. Dajani explains how the field has time and time again, invested in the erasure of the social unconscious, in a misguided effort to keep psychoanalysis pure. His disillusionment with the institution lies in the contradiction- that as a business of scholarship and truth-making, its leaders strive to suppress the understanding that culture is an antecedent force that was working hard on us back when we were simply fantasies.

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll

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