Impossible Professions: Freud and Janet Malcolm (ft. Patrick Blanchfield & Abby Kluchin)
Added 2023-07-07 22:34:41 +0000 UTCSam joins Patrick Blanchfield and Abby Kluchin for a lengthy discussion of psychoanalysis, conservative minds, and Janet Malcolm — on their excellent new podcast, "Ordinary Unhappiness."
Episode Notes
Know Your Enemy presents: an episode of Ordinary Unhappiness — a new podcast about psychoanalysis with hosts Abby Kluchin and Patrick Blanchfield.
Their guest? Sam Adler-Bell! In the episode that follows, we talk about how Sam came to study conservative thought from a leftist perspective and what role psychoanalysis plays in that project; discuss the libidinal satisfactions of conservative politics; and speculate about the contemporary absence of sophisticated right-wing psychoanalytic thinkers. Then they turn to a favorite writer, journalist Janet Malcolm, author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession and The Journalist and the Murderer. They talk about parallels between the role of the analyst and that of the journalist; interiors and interiority; secrets, thefts, and betrayals; the so-called “Freud wars”; and the internal politics of psychoanalytic institutions. Finally, they examine Malcolm’s famous claim that the task of the journalist is “morally indefensible” and its implications for the work of the analyst.
Further reading:
Sam Adler-Bell, "Janet Malcolm’s Dangerous Method," The New Republic, Mar 20, 2023
Sam Adler-Bell, "Succession's Repetition Compulsion," The Nation, Nov 10, 2021
Hannah Gold, “Analysis Interminable: On Janet Malcolm,” The Nation, June 25, 2021.
Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1982)
— In The Freud Archives (1984)
— The Journalist and the Murderer (1990)
Comments
If we stay within the confines of Freudian analysis, or limit ourselves to a definition of psychoanalysis that ends in the early 20th century, it would strike us as surprising that the analyst might have selfish motives. As an interpersonal analyst, Erwin Singer put it, “two for us and one for them”. Meaning while the analysand might get insight or growth, the analyst gets that, plus financial and other rewards. Of course acknowledging the contributions of later theorists is an issue in the field itself, as you mentioned. The internecine, political feuding in the profession tends to go in cycles, and truly never goes away, always lurking just below the surface. Thanks for a great podcast!
Chris Bandini
2023-08-13 16:58:26 +0000 UTCI just ran into this comment, I have been doing the same! Check on it every few months, rooting for you and deeply interested in reading. All love
WER
2023-07-27 03:03:09 +0000 UTCJust picked up a copy of In the Freud Archives after listening to the pod. Loved the episode. Sam and Abby shared a favorite passage from one of her books and I'm wondering if you could share the passage you allude to in the episode and what book it's from? Thanks for the great conversation.
Alex Macmillan
2023-07-17 17:04:43 +0000 UTCAs I've mentioned in the comments for previous episodes, a lot of your content is over my head. But I listen to everything because I love you guys. My parents are both PhDs in psychology, and when you were discussing how so many therapists are actually kinda fucked up themselves, it really resonated with me. This is the first time I've ever heard it put that way. Big feelings about that! Thank you so much for another amazing episode!!
Dan Anderson
2023-07-12 03:33:23 +0000 UTCIsn’t it true if most genuine relationships as well? At some level there is a betrayal every time you choose to divert from indulging in someone else’s fantasy with them, and when you do it seems like a betrayal. But to some degree people are looking to be relieved of their fantasies, even paying to do so. I believe Richard Rory said something like people are always searching for a more useful and more enriching form of life. I think that’s a respectful and accurate way to understand people, and gives insight into why people might cling to their current fantasies l.
Dan
2023-07-11 15:48:11 +0000 UTCThank you for this enlightening conversation. But isn't there something a tad self-dramatizing in all this talk of betrayal? What lies at the heart of relationships, whether to interviewees or analysands, is the fact that each party loses a bit of control by trading some measure of their autonomy in favor of some form of attachment. It is the logical outcome, but a somewhat hysterical one, of a Western preoccupation with individualism to become so bent out of shape at the thought of this loss of control. Malcolm is haunted by the greater power of the journalist or analyst vis-à-vis their subject. But didn't Foucault make it clear that power pervades all relationships--so get over it? Incidentally, the notion that someone else might understand things better than the actor(s) themselves was a fundamental assumption among anthropologists (among whom I number) for most of the 20th century. The anxiety about representation, due to the power differential between ethnographer and subject, which is proximate to much of your discussion, has greatly diminished anthropologists' interpretive daring--making the field a good deal duller. It is as though our ethical commitments should force us to become not cultural analysts but rather cultural stenographers. Schade!
Ward Keeler
2023-07-10 21:43:51 +0000 UTCAs much as I love The Journalist and the Murderer for all the reasons described here, I also can't help but wonder if there isn't something too professionally self absorbed about the unique moral indefensibility of journalism and psychoanalysis. I get that they both profit from betraying intimacy, but isn't that true in some sense of all professions? The betrayal is built into the profiting. Everyone who makes money is using others in some way.
Daniel O'Keefe
2023-07-09 16:58:15 +0000 UTCthis makes my day and more, thank you
Patrick Blanchfield
2023-07-09 15:20:44 +0000 UTCWill do. Don't know the nature of the limbo but you can tell the powers that be that there's at least one KYE listener who will for sure buy it. I'm not kidding when I say I check every few months to see if it's been released.
Tim Combes
2023-07-09 14:16:33 +0000 UTCit's in a kind of deeply painful limbo ATM. cross your fingers for me.
Patrick Blanchfield
2023-07-08 18:57:08 +0000 UTCIs Patrick's book Gunpower ever going to come out? You guys plugged it on here years ago but I don't believe it ever actually got released. Sounded so good.
Tim Combes
2023-07-08 15:13:55 +0000 UTCThe piece of analysis (permissive parent as interviewer / journalist writing profile as strict parent) that finally explains why people who have everything to lose and nothing to gain continue to consent to interviews with Isaac Chotiner.
MD
2023-07-08 10:28:00 +0000 UTCSomeone please find a disgruntled employee at Dreher’s publisher to get “not a super sophisticated thinker, definitely a great case study” as a blurb on his next book
Jacob
2023-07-07 23:31:43 +0000 UTC
