15: Diagnosis and Identity: Mailbag Episode!

Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby, Patrick, and Dan take your calls! They spend the bulk of the episode on a fascinating question about whether or not it is important to know your own psychic structure. They consider the relationship between identity and diagnosis; how theoretical language can help an individual feel named or misnamed; whether truth or meaning matters more in the language of diagnosis;; bibliotherapy and why they’re constantly giving book recommendations; self-diagnosis versus external diagnosis; the relationship of diagnostic and other categories to suffering, healing, and psychic change; and diagnosis and its relation to material conditions. The next three calls involve speculation about the evolutionary basis of the unconscious; ways to think about analytically informed interventions, both radical or incremental, in the crises of mental health under neoliberalism generally and the crisis faced by unhoused people specifically; and a recurring dream involving nicotine patches, a “complete void,” and a “wake up man.”
***Since we have received some requests from callers to read their questions aloud rather than play calls directly to protect privacy, we’ve defaulted to reading all calls aloud during this non-paywalled episode, and used effects to make it abundantly clear when Abby is reading a call vs. speaking as herself. If you call our hotline, please let us know whether it’s okay to play your call on the podcast or whether you’d prefer us to read it!***
Books mentioned in this episode:
Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. Dany Nobus
Juan-David Nasio, Hysteria: The Splendid Child of Psychoanalysis
Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Alan Krohn, Hysteria: The Elusive Neurosis
Robert Paul, Our Two-Track Minds: Rehabilitating Freud on Culture
T. M. Luhrmann, Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry
Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia Across Cultures, eds. T. M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow
A helpful interview with Luhrmann is also here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/11/culture-influences-voice-hearing-interview-stanford-anthropologist-tanya-luhrmann/
And the 100th anniversary of the Frankfurt School event we mentioned, both in person in NYC and also streaming live: https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/events/the-frankfurt-school-and-the-now-a-symposium/
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
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music