The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

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Episode 205: Suicide with Dr. Drew (Durkheim et al) (Part One)

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We are rejoined by Drew Pinsky to discuss philosophical and psychological readings by Seneca, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Albert Camus, plus two 2017 survey papers on predictors of suicide.

Is suicide ever morally permissible? If it’s a symptom of mental illness rather than a chosen behavior, is it even appropriate to morally evaluate it?

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Ep 116 Aftershow: Freud and Dream Interpretation

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Featuring Danny Lobell, Wes Alwan, Bjorn Dahlby, Ken Presting, Chase Fiorenza, Michael deCamp, Terra Leigh Bell, and Sam Baguley. Recorded June 7, 2015. Our discussion focused less on dreams than on Freud and everything else we happened to want to talk about, from psychedelic drugs to the female lioness’ “ambivalence” about mating.

Episode 116: Freud on Dreams (Citizen Edition)

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On Sigmund Freud’s On Dreams (1902), a bit of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), and the lecture, “Revision of the Theory of Dreams” (1933).

Are dreams just a bunch of random crap? Freud says, no, they’re actually the first and best way to figure out the structure of the mind, which (surprise) involves the unconscious and how repressed, anti-social desires get (sort of) revealed to us, albeit smashed together through chains of association with what seems like random crap. How can Freud support such a view? Is it science? What are its implications for our capacity to philosophize?

End song: “Sleep” by Mark Lint.

PREVIEW-Episode 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology

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On Bruce Fink’s The Lacanian Subject (1996) and Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1949). What is the self? Is that the same as the experiencing subject? Lacan says no: while the self (the ego) is an imaginative creation, cemented by language, the subject is something else, something split (at least initially) between consciousness and the unconscious. Lacan mixes this Freudian picture with semiotics–an emphasis on systems of linguistic symbols–using this to both create his picture of the psyche and explain how psychological disorders arise.

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Episode 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology (Citizens Only)

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On Bruce Fink’s The Lacanian Subject (1996) and Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1949). What is the self? Is that the same as the experiencing subject? Lacan says no: while the self (the ego) is an imaginative creation, cemented by language, the subject is something else, something split (at least initially) between consciousness and the unconscious. Lacan mixes this Freudian picture with semiotics–an emphasis on systems of linguistic symbols–using this to both create his picture of the psyche and explain how psychological disorders arise. Learn more.

End song: “Something Else” by Madison Lint.

Structuralism Summarized in 30 Minutes

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Watch on YouTube. Here is a surprisingly edifying and entertaining synopsis of structuralism. I particularly like how Prof. Louis Markos connects Saussure’s work to the “proto-structuralism” of Freud and Marx. Also enjoyable is Markos’ mini-rant, in light of Wes’s recent post: Structures are found in all areas of thought and study, from history to linguistics, psychology to anthropology.

Carol Gilligan on Freud and “Voice”

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We mentioned on the episode Gilligan’s opposition to Freud. In this clip, Gilligan discusses a methodological difference in analyzing women’s self-reporting (much of the content of In a Different Voice): Watch on YouTube. She claims that rather than imposing your theory (in this case that the patient knows more than she is willing or able to say) on the patient, Continue Reading …

Schizophrenia, Philosophy & Freud

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While we’re following up on the Freud podcast, I caught this interesting show from ABC National Radio in Australia on schizophrenia and philosophical investigation.  The show is called All in the Mind, hosted by Natasha Mitchell.  In this episode, she interviews Dr Paul Fearne, who suffers from schizophrenia but managed to acknowledge it, get help and get it under control Continue Reading …

Mark Steel on Sexual Fixation

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Here’s an “Open University lecture” on Freud that does not at all resemble a lecture, but is instead a somewhat informative comedy monologue with TV-news-magazine-style visuals. Watch on youtube. Highlights here are more detail on Freud’s fascination with cocaine and some funny details about his love life. There’s not much explicitly on the philosophical aspects of his work here; it Continue Reading …

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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