• Neil argues this stance is unusual in the U.S. psychotherapeutic marketplace, where many therapies emphasize teaching skills, tools, and expert knowledge, but that the underlying ethic is not unique to psychoanalysis. 
• He compares psychoanalysis to science, where experiments are driven by unanswered questions and results generate further questions, and to ethnography, where researchers enter unfamiliar settings with nonjudgmental curiosity to learn how people live. 
• He references Chris Arnade’s “thick culture/thin culture” distinction and restates it psychoanalytically as unconscious plot versus conscious stage settings, and invites listeners to respond via speakingbody.substack.com.

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:27 Recap Key Claims

01:50 Lacan and Curiosity

03:00 Beyond Psychoanalysis

05:08 Science as Not Knowing

05:57 Experiments and Replication

08:44 Ethnography Explained

11:45 Shared Ethic Across Fields

12:53 Chris Arnade Example

14:41 Thick vs Thin Culture

15:19 Closing and Support

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.

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Table of contents

00:00 Welcome and Format

00:37 Big Idea Setup

02:02 Psychotherapy Side Explained

03:34 Transference and Authority

05:32 Helper Model Benefits

06:46 Switch to Psychoanalysis

07:58 Not Taking Transference

09:19 Curiosity Over Knowing

11:41 Interpretations as Hypotheses

13:02 Continuum Not Binary

13:54 Key Takeaway and Wrap

15:17 Thanks and Where to Find

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.

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 Website
2. Todd McGowan's YouTube
3. Analysis Laid Bear
3. The Aims of Analysis

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) 

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" 

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

The 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 analysis
• Attempts 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 organizing
• Psychoanalytic schools
• The pass 
• And much more 

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. 

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 book
• The argument (i.e. the point) of the book
• The history of autism as a psychosis & as a way of being-in-the-world
• Neurosis, psychosis, autism, & the Name-of-the-Father
• Who the book is written for

Extras:

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. 

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These are the links that can be added to the info:

Dr. Brenner's personal blog and website:
leonbrenner.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/leonbrennercom/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/leonbrennercom

Lacanian Affinities Berlin website:
lacanberlin.com

The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language:
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030507145

Recommended 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.html

Tammet, 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.

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)

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