Know Your Enemy
patreon
Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield)
🕑 Added 2021-12-01 23:52:22 +0000 UTCPsychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for the long-awaited KYE "Freud Pod," in which we discuss how psychoanalytic tools can help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and attachments, as well as conservatism, liberalism, fascism, Donald Trump, and even Thanksgiving.
If we've done our job right, you'll derive many blistering insights from this discussion whether or not you've read a single page of Sigmund Freud — or remotely buy into his theories of mind, culture, or clinical practice. (And hopefully we didn't talk too fast.) Because Freud would disapprove of any injunction to enjoyment, we'll simply say: "have a listen, if you please."
Further Reading/Listening:
KYE Episode 7: "Gun Power" (w/ Pat Blanchfield)
Pat Blanchfield, "Kyle Rittenhouse is an American," Gawker, Nov 16, 2021
Adam Phillips, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, Yale Press, Mar 22, 2016.
Jacqueline Rose, "To Die One's Own Death," LRB, Nov 19, 2020
Comments
David in Brooklyn
I became a Patreon subscriber because of this episode. I'm still listening to it--slowly, and rewinding from time to time to make sure I catch everything. Also learned of the existence of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research from this episode; I will take some courses there for sure. I can hardly thank you enough. By the way, your Patreon subscriptions are titled in a very witty way; I joined as a "Young American for Freedom" for now, and may climb up to a higher level later. But I would like you to know that at least one of your subscribers at this level (me!) actually was a member of YAF back in the day. Worse yet, if I go up two levels, I will qualify again in a similar manner ...
Liska Ostojic
Fascinating discussion. One of your best. Funnily enough, when the topic of “chosen wound” is explained, my mind immediately went to The Battle of Kosovo, and in the next minute your guest brought it up as example. So it’s very relevant and an irrational pathology of the land of my birth (or perhaps not so strange, given human psychology). However, Serbs were not “walking around with rifles” because of some abstract psychological trauma, but because nationalist Albanian Kosovars wanted to break the region off of the larger state, which Serbs living in Kosovo certainly didn’t want, and given the region’s historical and religious significance (akin to Jerusalem in its holy status), neither did most Serbs living anywhere. The battle of Kosovo and the “chosen trauma” comes into play as a reaction to a real, material, political issue. It was used as a rallying cry, and a tribal unifier, and a dozen other things, justified and not. But Serbs did not, contrary to American media coverage, just decide to start killing their neighbors because we’re primitive, ruthless savages, or bloodthirsty, amoral Slavs, nor indeed because of a 600 year old grudge. It is as absurd as saying “If Mexican emigres in Texas decide to break off Texas from the greater US, and non-Mexican Texans pick up arms and start fighting them, it is because of their chosen wound of the battle of Alamo.” Of course, Alamo would undoubtedly be invoked, and add another yet complex, horrifically toxic layer to the sludge, but surely it is understandable that non-Mexican Texans would be upset at the idea of being forced to be their own nation against their will or desire. By the way, and this is the last thing I’ll say about it, that chosen wound of the Battle of Kosovo wasn’t just about a “loss of glory,” but the beginning of 500 years of brutal enslavement to the Ottoman Empire, so I would say, as an event, it really did “change everything.”
