There’s also Mandy Patinkin yelling

What a fascinating piece.

I think your point about the ethics also suggests why her experiment was doomed to end so predictably. What are the chances to develop a positive sexual/romantic attachment with someone you view as an object to observe/fear while sharing so little about your real self?

Oh yeah. I’m pretty sure this isn’t my first time reacting to one of their anti-psychoanalysis takes 😒

Yes absolutely! We need 100 Erich Fromms.

Too often, institutional psychoanalysis profits from fascism, even as it developed partially out of a reaction against the authoritarian and fascist politics of the 1930s.

I don’t know how we change this, but I hope we can dream our way to a psychoanalysis that is an undeniable good for the world.

As our world becomes increasingly dehumanized and depersonalized, psychoanalysis could offer a path back to our selves, but only if psychoanalytic institutions find ways out of elitism, ideological purity, and white/hetero/cis-hegemony.

He said that psychoanalysis has always been most useful in the context of two people inside the consulting room.

I think that’s right, and offers some hope to me that my analytic practice can be a small but meaningfully anti-fascist act.

But I’m not sure that’s good enough.

Phillips seemed sympathetic to my suggestion that psychoanalysis might offer something to society and the body politic, at least in theory. But not in practice. He owed this mostly to institutional psychoanalysis’ elitism and insistence on maintaining purity at the expense of broader understanding.

Knowing a bit about Phillips’ politics, I was curious what he might have to say about the establishment of fascism in the states and abroad, and more specifically, what psychoanalysis has to offer those of us living in fascist societies where the individual’s desire is actively oppressed.

Phillips’ lecture was about psychoanalysis and American pragmatism. As is often the case for him, he spoke eloquently about the difficulties of knowing (and getting) what we want and desire in our lives.

The screenshot post above reminded me of attending a lecture by Adam Phillips a few weeks ago during which I got to ask him a question about psychoanalysis and fascism.