New Books in Psychoanalysis

I find the discussions interesting and I would love to enjoy the podcast more, but the audio makes listening really difficult.

Trump and his followers exists in the paranoid schizoid position and primarily use splitting (idealization of Trump, devaluing of everyone else) and projective identification (they behave in antisocial ways that “bait” “the libs” and when liberals react normally Trumpers act as if they’re victims.) The projective identification also serves to dump disavowed vulnerable feelings (which are terrifying) into liberals which warps the behaviors of liberals even more. On the other side, Liberals are in radical denial about their own policy history which has created the Trump syndrome primarily the “neoliberal” turn of NAFTA, the poor response to the 08 crisis, etc. And the hyper liberal woke set (in academia and media) silence and try to control others in the name of “tolerance” and then call the other side “fascist.” Finally narcissistic selfobject needs are fulfilled by Trump for his core movement primarily twinship needs for community and belonging in a radically alienated age of abjection and loneliness. His followers might also have mirroring needs met in having a stage to wave flags, “trigger libs” and get attention by acting outrageously.

In the book about fatherhood and the story involving the mother who’s a surgeon. It was just as puzzling to the listener when I told this in the early 2000s- and I told it to a female physician.

I’ve enjoyed a number of these interviews over the years, though I find the perspective too narrowly post-modern. I would love to see more diversity and less ideological predictability. Also: Marxism?! Are we seriously still thinking that there is anything redeeming about it? Freud was (naively) critical of religion - and the fact that we still have psychoanalysts who think anything remotely positive about Marxism would be incredibly fascinating (if it weren’t terrifying).