Rev Left Radio - Capitalism and Desire: In Dialogue with Psychoanalysis

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Prof. Todd McGowan, author of "Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets" and co-host of "Why Theory", returns to the show to talk with Breht about Marxism and Psychoanalysis, Freud, Lacan, Death Drive, Desire, the fundamental sense of Lack at the core of our psyches, and much more!  Check out Todd's book here: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/capitalism-and-desire/9780231178723 Check out Todd's podcast Why Theory here: https://player.fm/series/why-theory Outro music: 'Bowl of Oranges' by Bright Eyes Find more of this music here: https://saddle-creek.com/collections/bright-eyes ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, FORGE, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. So for today's episode, we have a really, really good one. I'm really excited about this. It was incredibly engaging. I think we could have talked for several more hours. I think a lot of my listeners will find a lot of value in this conversation. It is with Todd McGowan, who was previously on our episode, entitled, I believe, Emancipation After Hegel, which was a book that he wrote about Hegel and dialectics and contradiction. And at the end of that episode, I said I wanted to have him back on to talk about Freud and psychoanalysis. And this is what this episode is.

So this is really centered around his book, Capitalism and Desire, the Psychic Cost of Free Markets, which is a psychoanalytic critique of capitalism, which is incredibly interesting, draws on a lot of the Marxist tradition, as well as a bunch of other traditions, clearly the psychoanalytic one. And we just use that as a jumping off point to have a really wonderful discussion about Marxism and psychoanalysis, what the two can offer one another, where the contradictions and conflicts may be, et cetera. So I really hope people enjoy this conversation. And if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, you can go to RevolutionaryleftRadio.com. You can join our Patreon. You can go to our YouTube channel, find our sister podcast, and much more.

So we really appreciate anybody who supports the show in any way. even if you don't have money by sharing our show with your friends, sharing it on social media, giving us a good review on iTunes, all those things really, really help, and we really appreciate any of it. So without further ado, let's get into this conversation with Professor Todd McGowan on his book, Capitalism and Desire, The Psychic Cost of Free Market. Enjoy it. All right, I'm Todd McGowan. I teach theory, film studies at the University of Vermont,

and I wrote Emancipation After Hegel and Capitalism After Desire. And I think it's the latter that we're going to talk a little bit about today. But mainly I work in psychoanalytic theory and Hegel and some Marx and try to bring those all together. And so maybe we can have a little. see how they all fit together today or don't fit together maybe yeah absolutely and i'm very happy to have you back you were on a few episodes ago with our uh episode on your book emancipation after hagel and then i think towards the end of that i immediately asked you to come back on to talk about this book

and freud and psychoanalysis it's something i've been interested in on our sister podcast we've been we had a three episode series on fanon that we just finished up and you know obviously you and i both know that last full chapter of Fanon's book where he really does a sort of psychoanalytic approach to colonialism, etc. And I really was fascinated by it. And then I reached out to you and asked, could you give me some recommendations on ways in to Freud directly? And you gave me a recommendation, which I followed up on and read. And so I'm just really happy to have you here. I find your work to be challenging in a really productive way for me as a Marxist. And I walk away from your work every single time with new challenges and new thoughts to work with and new sort of tools in

my critical toolbox, which I really appreciate about your work. So thank you so much for coming back on. We have a bit to cover today, so I'm going to jump into it. The question I want to ask first off, it's maybe somewhat uncomfortable, but I'd like doing this. I'm actually personally sort of being self-indulgent because I'm really sort of fascinated about how you'll answer this question. But the basic question is, how do you identify politically? I think of myself as a leftist, a Democratic Socialists. It's a hard, you know, I think about the moniker a lot, like, what's the term? And so if someone just asks me, I'll say either I'm a leftist or I'm a socialist, or the other thing I like to say is that I'm an egalitarian, but I think that term has been

co-opted by some people on the right, maybe. So maybe that risks being misunderstood. But one of those three, like leftist, socialist egalitarian, one of those three. Cool. Yeah, awesome. I kind of, yeah, I think, like, I don't know, you have really interesting critique. So I don't think you fit super perfectly into any sort of ideological box. But yeah, that's interesting to hear that that's how you sort of view yourself politically on this sort of spectrum. And we'll get into a lot of like Marxism and critiques of Marxism, et cetera, and a bit. But I ask a few introductory questions because I don't expect all my listeners to obviously have read the entire text. So what was the motivation for writing this book, capitalism and desire? And what did

you basically want to accomplish with it? Well, the motivation was I just hadn't. read a really good psychoanalytic take on capitalism. So that was basically it. I mean, it's a kind of a strange thing that you would think that given, you know, how many years of how how many, I mean, Freud died in 1939 and there's all these psychoanalytic Marxists like Eric Fromm, Herbert Marcusa, Teodor Adorno, but I felt like no one had really tried to understand just how capitalism worked psychically. And it's psychic. staying power. So that's one thing. And the other thing was what I just said, the staying power of capitalism. Like I, like everyone else in the left, is somewhat, or I have been always confounded

by the fact that people are invested in capitalism still, even though they have lots of reasons not to be. And so that's really what I wanted to get at. Like, is there something, is there some kernel of capitalism that is responsible for its staying power when it should be maybe gone? You know, so that, I guess that was the, those two things. So I didn't think there was a good psychoanalytic take on capitalism. And I wanted to understand why capitalism had the, had the durability that it seems to have. In some sense, that that latter option is sort of what the Frankfurt School was trying to do to some extent. So how do you view your own work in relation to the Frankfurt School? Are you in that tradition or adjacent to it? I'd say adjacent maybe,

But I guess, I mean, the Frankfurt School, I think, never really took, well, a couple things. I don't think they took Freud all that seriously. So I think that they're always, you know, they never really were committed to understanding the psyche and how the psyche works in relation to the social order, I think, totally. And I think, you know, Marcuse is pretty good, but there's this kind of way in which his Marxist hope for the future. I think it sometimes overtakes his psychoanalytic take on capitalism. And I think, ironically, even though Adorno's thought of as totally a pessimistic thinker, I think the same thing is true of him. So I feel like all the Frankfurt tradition is actually, and I know this doesn't sound right,

but I think it's much too hopeful about its critique of capitalism. And I think it doesn't fully integrate the, I guess I would call it negative power of the psychoanalytic critique. Would you say, though, that it's fair to say that the Frankfurt School did represent an attempt at trying to combine the traditions of Marxism with that of psychoanalysis? Sure. Sure. Yeah. I think they did. And I think, but I think, again, it's one where Marxism, just like I said, kind of wins out. And psychoanalysis, it's almost like psychoanalysis is put in the service of Marxism. And it's funny because I think this happens in another field that I'm sort of familiar with his film theory. and feminist film theory put psychoanalysis in the service of feminism. And then the result was not a really good psychoanalytic take on film. And I think the same thing happened with Frankfurt School, because psychoanalysis was just functioning in the service of Marxism,

like, how can we get a better reading understanding of capital for the sake of a Marxist critique rather than how can we really integrate the understanding of psychoanalysis into, and maybe. make psychoanalysis itself the basis of a sort of a political program. Yeah, I do think that whenever I'm talking to Marxists who have any sympathies at all for psychoanalysis, they do make a point to say that it can be useful only if it is subordinated to Marxism and sort of operates underneath that overall overarching structure. So that's still very much a position that is alive and well on the Marxist side of things to

this very day. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I think it's the dominant one. And maybe it makes sense because obviously if I identify as a Marxist, you think you're a Marxist, you're not going to say, like, I'm going to make psychoanalysis the driving force of my critical apparatus. So I think it makes sense that people do that. But I guess my thinking was, well, what if we just put psychoanalysis first? What would that, what would the result of that be? I mean, I run the other risk that I'm not really, I'm not an analyst. So I get all the time people saying, well, you have no right to say anything because you're not a psychoanalysis.

So I kind of get it from both sides. But I guess, I mean, I'm just doing what I'm doing. So if people think it's helpful, then it is or it's not. Interesting. So I do find that it helps listeners to follow a discussion about a book that they might not have read if the author gives a sort of bird's eye summary of their main argument or thesis in the beginning of the conversation. So broadly speaking, very broadly, what are you basically arguing for in this book so our listeners can orient themselves to the main thesis? Sure. My main idea is this, that the structure of desire is desire always finds its satisfaction through missing its object. So the basic structure of desire is, it never realizes itself in an object, and that's

the source of its satisfaction. And capitalism, my point, is, maps itself on that structure of desire, but it gives us the illusion that we can always, we sometimes might be able to get the object that our desire never actually can get. Because in truth, our desire is not by getting its object. Capitalism allows us to think we can have this even greater enjoyment from the object if we get it. And it's promised to be gotten. It's promised to us in the form of the commodity. And so I identify what I call the promise of capitalism with the commodity, and that's the way that it seduces us into thinking that our desire can actually be realized when in fact the point of desire is it's satisfied by not being realized. Interesting. And before we

move on to the next question. Can you talk a little bit about this concept of lack of like starting from, as you talk about in your podcast, a negative one and just sort of disorient us to that concept before we move on? Right. So that, so the point is that you're never just zero. You're never just stationary. You're always, you start out in the world as a lacking subject. And that's because you're speaking being. And so it's not like you're trying to get some object that's your, that's was taken from you, it's that the lack is actually the starting point. Just as you said, the negative one is really the starting point. And the point

of desire is actually to keep that situation going, not to get something that would because there's no object that could fill the lack, because there's no what you're desiring when you desire is an object insofar as it's lacking.

I think that's the key idea and I think it's a really hard idea even for me sometimes because I think a lot of times people in psychoanalysis say well, you're looking for that missing object. not exactly. You're looking for the object insofar as it's missing. So once you get it, it's never going to be it. So I think that, if you understand that, I think you then you get this structure of desire as based on a constant lack and never on the, there's no point at which the lack's fulfilled because it's psychically impossible, because the very existence of the psyche

is dependent upon something being lacking. And maybe an easy example, and correct me if I'm wrong here, But an easy example to help people understand that is like our society promising that, you know, if you get fame and wealth, if you reach the top of the status hierarchy, that that is sort of the goal of life and that you will finally be satisfied. But we see time and time again these celebrities who reach the pinnacle of fame and more money than they could ever hope to spend. And then they find themselves still unhappy and they have these spectacular sort of, you know, public displays of spiraling out of control, et cetera. I think Brittany Spears smashing a window with an umbrella or whatever, it happens over and over again. And so is that a fair way to sort of think about this lack and then, you know, the getting the thing and then realizing that it actually doesn't make you happy?

Absolutely. Right. If you, and in fact, the closer you get to get to feeling full, the more you'll generate lack yourself. And that's what you're talking about. Like, if you find that you're actually at nearing some state of impossible plenitude, you will generate the lack yourself because the lack. is the source of your enjoyment. Like you cannot desire, you cannot enjoy without the lack,

so you'll generate it. And so I think that's where capitalism clearly plays in. And that's why the people, I find this to me the most fascinating thing, that the people on top in capitalism are the ones that feel like they need the most. Like they're the ones that feel most driven to accumulate. And I think it can only be understood insofar as like the more you get to feeling complete, the more you actually feel the burden of the lack. And that's what they're, and they're trying to accumulate more and more and more and more, but it's never going to be enough. And I think, yeah, so I think your example of Britney Spears is a good one. But to me, the example of the stock trader is the perfect example. Like they accumulate so much and they never, there's no satisfaction

no matter how much they have. Yeah, that's a really interesting and really clarifying as well. I think a lot of people will sort of intuitively understand that point. I do want to talk a little bit here about desire and drive. You've mentioned desire. And I know you have an entire episode on your podcast, Y theory, dedicated to just these two concepts and all the nuances and disagreements surrounding them, but just sort of a 101 introduction of the mainstream view or your view of the core concepts of desire and drive to sort of help set the table for the rest of this discussion. Sure. So desire, just what I said. So desire is, like, I'm my sense of lacking, and I'm trying to pursue, I'm trying to sustain my sense of lacking. But the only, the only

The only difference I see is that desire believes that it can find an object that will fulfill its lack, whereas drive is generated based on the lack without any idea of fulfilling it. So it's just drive is much more just the pure repetition of lack and finding enjoyment in that repetition, whereas desire gets hung up on the idea of some possible way of fulfilling itself and then and thus achieving some state of plenitude. which is impossible. So that's basically the difference is very subtle between drive and desire. That drive is just the recognition of lack as inevitable,

and desire is belief in the possibility that it could be fulfilled. Okay, that's really helpful. And so maybe an example of, like a well-known example of desire would be this idea that, you know, it's pretty popular in our culture that if you find a romantic partner, right, like if you search enough, you'll find the perfect partner that will complete you, But once you, you know, get there, you get married, whatever, you start to find out that, you know, the grass isn't always greener on the other side or that the thing that you thought that this partner would fulfill in yourself is no longer present. And so that's just maybe a helpful example for people to understand desire. Is that fair? Yeah, right. The notion of the soulmate is you're desiring this figure of the soulmate and looking for that in any kind of person.

And when you think you find it, of course, you don't, you're all the ways in which the person comes up short and you continue to desire. So that's a, and I think you're right. The example of a romantic partner is one in which you see the deception involved with the desire. And also the desire getting reborn after the deception occurs. Okay. All right. So let's move on then. And you mentioned earlier this notion of the capitalist promise, which you use throughout your book.

You talk about, you know, this capitalist promise. And you link it to desire and satisfaction. So I know you mentioned it a little bit, but can you just maybe explain a little deeper what the capitalist promise is and how it functions psychoanalytically? Yeah, so the capitalist promise. You might think of it as a fantasy. It's the idea that at some point I will be able to realize my desire

so that I will be able to cease to be a lacking subject. And the idea is, I think that you, and it's tied to accumulation, so it's tied to, I think if I accumulate enough objects or accumulate enough capital, then I'll reach this point where I'll realize my desire, or if I just accumulate the correct object. So it works in both ways.

Like the promise is tied to a particular commodity and the promises tied to a number of commodities that I can amass. So in each case, I'm trying to find, or I'm seduced by the idea that there'll be something in the commodity that will allow me to realize my desire and achieve a kind of satisfaction, not hindered by lack.

So that's the crucial thing, I think. That capitalism, the promise that it holds out is a promise of a satisfaction or enjoyment not hindered by lack. Yeah, and you say in the book, you say, quote, as long as we remain capitalist subjects, we see ourselves as dissatisfied beings pursuing a future satisfaction. You end the quote there, but is it fair to say that that future, if you were to add onto that sentence,

that that future satisfaction is something that never actually arrives, right? Absolutely, right. The whole basis of capitalism is that future satisfaction can arise. So, like, if it really, if capitalism ever redeemed its promise, then that person would would no longer invest in capitalism. So it's, it seduces people on the basis of not keeping its promises. It's a very strange, I mean, it makes it a very strange socioeconomic system, right? That it seduces, like, the more that they, it doesn't redeem the promises that it makes,

the more people get invested in it. So that's, that the strangeness of that, I guess, was one of the most of the most of the motivating things behind my writing the book. I know you talk a lot about Freud and you mentioned on your podcast that sometimes people will understand psychoanalysis purely through Lacan and not Freud and that could lead to certain errors, etc. So what do you think Lacan adds to Freud and psychoanalysis that you find to be essential or important with regards to the subject matter in this book specifically? Well, I think that, I mean, just the thing that we're talking about, I mean, I think that Freud

was really loath to extend psychoanalysis to social problems and the sociocultural questions. And so that's, I think, the main thing that LaConn adds. And I think it's tied to his sense that the way that he brought structural linguistics into psychoanalysis, and that almost automatically raises the question of the social order and societal problems. And so I think that's, I guess to me, that's the thing. thing that that's the thing that Lecon adds that Freud, I mean, there are times when Freud speculates about, you know, religion, about, you know, the question of like, how, what's going to happen on, why is there's this discontent in society as most famous book, civilization is discontents,

but there's not really a grounding in how the subject relates to the social order. I mean, his interest is basically with the individual, and I think Lecon's is always with how that individual psyche relates to the larger social structure. So that, for me, that's what made Lacan, you know, vitally important. So because of, because Lecon sort of ground psychoanalysis in structural linguistics and because language is inherently social, Lecon sort of takes psychoanalysis to that social level, where Freud really focused on the individual level. Is that fair? Yeah, I think it's pretty fair to say. And I think, I mean, I think there's, like if you read back into Freud, you'll see that, well, he actually really was talking about the subject as a social.

being. The problem is if you you could only do that after taking Lacan as your point of departure. And I think a lot of people who were just Freudian got lost in this individual psyche and how the individual relates to other individuals. Like to me, that's absolutely

never, should never be a question for psychoanalysis because it always has to take the collective as the starting point. And that's I think a point that Lacan really brings to the table that is not as clear with Freud. Okay. Well, I did read civilization and his discontents like pretty long ago, like probably half a decade or so ago, I read that. And it felt like, and maybe I didn't fully understand the entirety of the text, it felt like Freud was trying to search for something like applying psychoanalysis on the social level. Does he ultimately succeed in that text or not? Because I can't, it's sort of hazy in my memory.

Well, I mean, it's pretty good, but his basic insight is that there's an antagonism between the individual and society, and so that can never be overcome. So any kind of social relations, we just have to kind of throw up our, you know, like any kind of solution to social problems is going to have to throw up our hands because it's not going to work. So that I think, you know, I think it's successful as far as it goes. I think there's a lot of insights in the book, but I think it doesn't really try to understand. and what's at, or try to get at, or it doesn't get at, it tries to get it, maybe it doesn't get at, what's at stake in the relationship between the individual subject and the larger social forces? Okay, awesome.

So, okay, let's move on and talk about Marxism a little bit. So basically, after having laid down some basic stuff for people to help understand the sort of table we're playing on, we're going to move into this part of the discussion where we really sort of go back and forth between Marxism and whatnot. So sort of a long question, but a big critique of psychoanalysis from the Marxism, from the Marxist perspective is that it encourages people to look inward for the causes of their problems instead of outward at social and material conditions. It has been used, at least in the U.S. at certain times, to almost buffer capitalism

from critique. Freud himself was pretty anti-communist and sieve and discontents. He critiques communism, and it runs the risk of falling into idealism by seeming to locate the primary causes of human suffering in the mind. And I think a good way to transform this set of critiques into a concrete, question would be as follows. Does psychoanalysis interpret the subjectivity of human beings under capitalism, or does it interpret the subjectivity of human beings more broadly beyond the confines of any specific set of material conditions? Okay. It's a great question, and it's sort of the question, and I would say the latter. So for me, psychoanalysis is about the subject,

regardless of the socioeconomic situation in, which is not to say that the social, socioeconomic situation in which the capital is, sorry, in which the subject exists in, is, is unimportant? But I think psychoanalysis is trying to say, is there a structure, or asking the question, like, is there a structure of desire that exist in subjectivity that exists regardless of what the socioeconomic situation is? And I think the answer for psychoanalysis is yes. But to come back to some of these larger problems that you bring up, I think that this idea that psychoanalysis just turns the individual inward. I mean, I attempted to say that's just the wrong, and I understand that that's how people have applied psychoanalysis and maybe even Freud was guilty of

that, but I think that's the wrong way of thinking because the whole point that I would think of with desire is that desire is about the way in which there's an object outside of the subject that's attached to it, and that you can't, that you can never, like looking in is always missing the way in which your subjectivity is actually working itself out in the society and in relationship to the society. And so I guess my idea of psychoanalysis would be, and I think this is shared by a lot of people that I, that I've been friends with, I guess, is that there's no way to think of the subject outside of its social situation. Like it's just, it's, it's, like it's not like there's this ideal subject that exists and then that gets placed in some kind of social order. Instead,

it's subjectivity forms in response to the social order. So I don't know. So I'll just leave it at that and see what you... Okay. So a way to think about that might be that, you know, capitalism sort of taps into the already existing structure of subjectivity and desire as opposed to the idea that capitalism sort of conditions subjectivity and desire, and then psychoanalysis goes in and says,

oh, this is what humans are outside of even capitalism. And so you're arguing for the former that capitalism comes and there's already a structure that it taps into and then exploits for its own benefit? Yeah, that's, I mean, that is, I think, the fundamental divide between people who are psychoanalytic and people who are Marxists. So I am on the former camp. And I've had many arguments with my Marxist friends about this very thing. They're like, well, the structure of your desire that you're talking about is just an effect of capitalism. and we can imagine another structure of desire that exists outside of capitalism. And I guess I want to say, okay, maybe, but the point is that I don't think you can imagine,

as long as you're talking about a speaking being, you can imagine a structure of desire that's not inhabited by lack in some way. And so I think, I guess I would draw a firm line on that, that as long as you're talking about a speaking being, I don't see how lack isn't part of the, equation when it comes to desire. And then that raises, I think, the whole question of you have to be, there's still a desiring subject and that involved with lack, no matter what the socioeconomic structure is. And that is interesting, because I'm going to ask a question at the end of this discussion about Buddhism. And Buddhism, you know, formed 2,500 years ago.

It also has a theory of, you know, subjectivity and desire, which we'll get into in a bit. But, you know, the sort of same basic idea holds that, you know, Buddhism couldn't possibly be, you know, critiquing or understanding subjectivity under capitalism, it existed way before it. And the fact that psychoanalysis and Buddhism come to some at least similar conclusions about subjectivity is interesting. It might actually count in favor of your argument here that there's something here before and prior to capitalism. It's at least worth wrestling with. What do you respond to with regards to the question of idealism, this idea? Am I just, am I misunderstanding it by saying that psychoanalysis locates the primary?

cause of human suffering in the mind? Is that a wrong way to think about it? No, I mean, I don't think, no, I mean, human suffering, no, I just, in fact, I think there's a lot of human suffering that's caused by material of capitalist conditions for sure. And I wouldn't want to even say that it's primary. I would just say that there's some, I would just say there's a primacy of lack, that there's like, there's no way. And I don't think it's idealist. I think it's a result of the structural conditions under which subjectivity arises. So I don't think it's like there's an idea of subjectivity. I think it's subjectivity emerges through the subjection of a human animal to the signifier. And so given that structure, there's, I don't, I don't see how lack is

avoidable, but I don't think, I mean, the degree of suffering, I don't know. I mean, I think, like, there's some suffering, of course, just attached to that. But I, I'm, I'm perfectly willing to say, like, capital, in fact, I believe this, capitalism adds a lot of suffering unnecessarily to that. I see. That makes sense. Okay. Okay. So I want to get into, because you do this in your Hegel text, sort of critique Marxism from a Hegelian position, and then in this text, you critique Marxism from a psychoanalytic position. So I just really want you to lay this out. Obviously, a lot of my listeners are Marxist or Marxist adjacent, some sort of radical leftists of one form or another. And so I really want you to sort of be honest and, like, open about what this is, because I think

it benefits us to wrestle with these critiques. So what is the psychoanalytic critique of Marxism and how does Marxism maybe replicate the capitalist promise in its own weird way? Yeah, I mean, that's, I guess, my main critique is that as long as Marxism promises the end of antagonism or the overcoming of lack, then I think that's in a certain way, isn't that the exact same thing that capitalism promises? I mean, Marxism doesn't promise it, promises us in the form of a commodity. It promises it to us in the form of a new society. But I think the idea is the same that we'll achieve some kind of situation where we have overcome the lack that inhabits us or that we have as speaking beings. And so I guess for me, that's the big, you know,

problem for Marxism. And I guess that's the thing that makes me reluctant to call myself a Marxist, although in other ways I feel myself, you know, you say this term Marxist adjacent. I like that term because I feel myself very much aligned with the Marxist critique of capital and, you know, in all the, in a lot of ways. It's just that I'm not attached, I'm very not attached to that political promise that's, that Marxism, at least it seems to me, is invested in. And yeah, in your book on Hegel, you make a similar critique from a position based on Hegelian notions of contradiction. And in the psychoanalytic realm, it's, you talk about this idea of, you know, even after, these outward material conditions may be changed through some sort of revolution that in the psychoanalytic sense you'll still have to confront your own subjectivity and in the hegelian sense

contradiction continues to exist in just increasingly intractable forms and i think that's an interesting way to think about it from two different directions but do you really tie these two things together like what is the connection in your mind between the hegelian concept of contradiction and the sort of psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity as fundamentally lacking. Yeah, just two different ways of saying the same thing, basically. Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely right. You're right to see those as not tied. I mean, when I was working on the books, I didn't say to myself, well, I'm going to do this one, one way and then this other or the other way. You know, it just, it just kind of happened. But I, but for me, there's this fundamental, you know, tie between

the psychoanalytic way of understanding subjectivity and the Hegelian sense of contradiction. And I guess the only thing that is different is that Hegel is much more, he's thinking much more, he's like even, even ontological questions are wrapped up in contradiction. And for psychoanalysis, it's just a question of how subjectivity relates to society. And that's where, you know, that's where that it ends up being, you know, I mean, contradiction is, is okay to understand that, but it's more that the psyche ends up coming up against its own lack and can't overcome that. So if you, I guess you could call that contradiction, but it's just way, too. ways of thinking about, to my mind, the same kind of process. Yeah, that's incredibly helpful as well. So, you know, this question, obviously we're getting at it. We got at it a little bit in the last episode as well, but I'll just ask it again, because I want to hear you sort of go off on this. What would Marxism or maybe left-wing revolutionary movements more broadly look like if they sort of fully embraced both your understanding, your related understandings of contradiction and this psychoanalytic critique you just raised? What would a movement look like

that really took that into account and embraced those critiques and really worked through them. Yeah, that's a hard question. I don't know. I mean, I think it would have to make, understand equality in terms of lack. So I think it would mean, like, changing the focus of what, like, instead of trying to bring more goods to society, understand, like, coming to grips with the fact that there's some kind of fundamental lack that we're dealing with and basing everything that we reproduce and everything that we do on basing it on that. So I can't be much more concrete than that. And I know that that's very unsatisfying, but I just don't, it's not like I have a good political prescription to offer. You know, I just have a, I'm just not a political, I'm not a concrete political thinker.

I just think about the way in which it's, you know, if I had it, I guess I would do it. I would be running for trying to create some kind of party or trying to do something, you know, but I just don't. And so I guess what I would say is always keep the necessity of lack in mind. So I'll never get tied to this dream of overcoming lack. And I think that's where, you know, leftist projects have gone awry in the past. And so that's, I guess that's the only thing I would say. Like, keep a focus on the fact that lack is the thing that is not, the thing that is hindering us can also be the thing that's helping us and the thing that we need. I see. Yeah, so maybe a way to summarize that is that, you know, proletarian revolution, any sort of left-wing revolution, they're not panaceas.

They don't solve every contradiction and they certainly don't solve the problems of subjectivity that will still be around after any successful revolution. And it behooves serious Marxist thinkers to take that into account and to not let themselves get lost in the illusion that revolution means the end of all contradiction or the end of that feeling of that deep lack in our own subjectivity. Would that be a fair way to summarize it? Yeah, it's fair. And like maybe it makes it worse. I mean, I think that we have to be prepared for that. And in a good way, right? Like, you know, like we really have to confront the fact that we're lacking beings and we can no longer have this promise either of the capitalist future that's going to be better or of even a socialist

future that's going to be better because we already have the socialist future. So I think, know, I think one way is we think of revolution as a thing of stripping us away of our promise, our hope in the future. So I don't know. So it's a, it's a, I know that's not a very sanguine way to think of it. But no, yeah, I like that. Yeah, no, I like that. Because you do talk about this on your show a bit. And it's this idea that while Marxism for whatever its flaws may be, it certainly offers a positive political program in the form of, you know, parties and revolution, authoritarian power, all this stuff that we're very familiar with. Psychoanalysis doesn't necessarily have that, and you admit that openly here and other places. So I guess I'll flip the question

around a little bit. What does Marxism possibly offer to psychoanalysis? What would really truly, and I think you are representative of this, but I'm sure there are plenty of psychoanalysis thinkers that aren't at all concerned with Marxism. What can or does Marxism offer to psychoanalysis? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. And I think what it offers is this form of organization. And I think psychoanalysis is famous for being terrible as an organizing principle, right? Like every psychoanalytic group that gets together ends up collapsing because, you know, they're very much aware of the lack and it ends up that the group can ever be sustained. And so, I mean, I actually, I've worked to actually create a kind of psychoanalysis.

a group that's very much focused on a political project. We get together every year or so, and we're trying to do things. But I think it's, I think it's, that would be the way in which it has something to learn for Marxism, the structure of organization. And also, of course, the analysis of economy. Like, I think there's nothing, there's nothing, nothing has surpassed Marxism as a way of analyzing capitalist economy. Like, I think that's just, to me, there's just no question.

question about that. The contribution that Marxism makes to the analysis of capital's economy still very much holds, I think. One similarity I also think about and I'd like to get your thoughts on is just the idea that within Marxism, there is theory and then there's practice. And the theory really pushes you to practice. It's sort of like, you know, you will be looked down on by Marxists if you call yourself a Marxist and never engage at all in any practice and just sort of obsess over theory, right? So there's this. like sort of dual practice there. And then in Buddhism, there's a similar thing, right?

There's the theory and then there's like the practice of meditation. And in psychoanalysis, there's the theory and then there's also the practice of psychoanalysis itself. So what do you think about that sort of duality? And is it fair to say that psychoanalysis does have a practice in a way that other theories generally don't have, but Marxism does? Yeah, I guess it does. But I mean, the problem is that a lot of people that are psychoanalytic theorists are not practicing analysts. So then, you know, what does it say about their practice? And I mean, the only thing I could say is that we're practicing patients, right? Like our practice in that sense is as analytic patients. But I do take your point that it is one of these ways of thinking that is not just a pure philosophy, but it is tied to a certain praxis. And the other part of the practice is that it's very much engaged in the analytic project itself. So one of the things that we do as

psychoanalytic thinkers is constantly analyze different cultural things psychoanalytically. Like I know everybody I know has a psychoanalytic take on Donald Trump and an analytic take on the attack on Iran, not just like as this wag the dog thing, but like what set worked psychically. And, you know, a psychoanalytic take on every film that comes out. So like when Joker came out, that was a huge point of contestation among psychoanalytic thinkers. Like, is this going to be a great psychoanalytic masterpiece or is it a total disaster? So, like, I guess that's one of the ways in which that connection to practice is constantly at work for these people that don't have an analytic practice.

Because a lot of, you know, a lot of the people that are psychoanalysts just have an analytic practice and I spend a lot of time working on that. And I have a lot of friends that do that. But I'm just not, that's just not I'm ever going to do that. My thing is going to be as an analytic patient and as a, you know, as an analyst of, a psychoanalyst of culture and political and socio-cultural events. And as a patient, do you feel like it does help that you have made progress sort of with understanding yourself or something in your experience as a patient?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's things there's no question about that. Like I, although the only thing is I drove my analyst into retirement, so I don't know if that was a, I don't know if that was it. I felt like it was a successful analysis, but for him it was like the end of analysis. But, you know, he said, oh, it has nothing to do with you, blah, blah, blah. But, okay. Well, that's amazing. That's hilarious. All right.

So, yeah, let's go ahead and move on. And, you know, I labeled this in the outline part two, general questions that Brett has wanted to ask Todd and now finally can. And there is some sort of self-indulgence here because I listen to your podcast a lot. I obviously read your work. and I have constantly these questions that I was like, God, I wish I could ask Todd this question, or I wish I could follow up on that thing he said in that podcast. So this is my little opportunity to do that. And you actually did mention this need to psychoanalyze Trump in your answer to the last question.

So I'm just sort of broadly thinking here. You know, I've read like Ernst Becker's, the denial of death, which plays on the death drive. I'm familiar with the role of the death drive in the sort of realm of psychoanalysis. But I was just hoping that you could offer us some sort of, psychoanalytic understanding related to the death drive if it plays a role in your opinion of fascism and of Trump specifically of sort of American neo-reactionaries and neo-Nazi fascists that we see on the rise in the last few years and Trump. So you can take that question in whatever direction you want. Okay, I'm going to say something you're going to find either

strange unsatisfying or totally dissatisfying and strange. So I think that it's, I think that it's actually a flight from death drive. I mean, and maybe because there is no flight from death drive, there's actually a kind of satisfaction of death drive in that flight from it, then okay, yes. But I think, so the idea I think is that, so if death drive is this repetition that we can't get out of, that it's, which is organized around our own failure to have any object, to ever be complete in the way that we repeat this failure, then it seems to me like fascism and the paranoia that I would associate with Trump are ways to maybe find a way

to get out of the problem of drive, even though they end up repeating it. And I think one of the, the way that they do that is that they locate loss in some other. And they think, I'm going to push over onto, I'm going to assign all loss onto this other figure so that I can be this figure of perfect satisfaction without any problem of loss. And so the destruction all gets put onto the other, like it can be the immigrant, it can be Iran, it can be whoever. and then I get to sustain my position as satisfactor, I get this fantasy of myself as being satisfied without the encumbrance of loss

and the problem of death drive. But I think that what happens is that death drive keeps coming back like it never works. Like the wall doesn't get built correctly that really doesn't keep immigrants out. Some other problem occurs. And so the cycle of death drives ends up getting repeated, but the process is still the same.

So the idea of psychoanalysis is there's some kernel of sacrifice attached to subjects' enjoyment, and that's death drive. And so it seems to me like fascism is the attempt to say, I'm going to put all that sacrifice onto the other, a specific other, and avoid it for myself. And so the analytic position, or the, I guess, properly speaking, psychoanalytic position would be that I have to undergo that sacrifice for myself. Like, I extra experience it. I can't put it on the other.

So I think that's the basic opposition between sort of fascism and, I don't know what I would call it, like psychoanalytic democratic subjectivity or egalitarian subjectivity. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Okay, that does make sense. I just get this idea, and I want to talk about death drive because, and I think a lot of people do talk about it in this way, they look at, you know, this country, especially from a younger perspective of like a millennial looking at the Trump administration and these assholes and fucking clowns that that run this country. And we see that these are tend to be,

at least in America, older white men who are approaching their own deaths. And as they get closer and closer to their own deaths, you see this attempt, or at least some sort of psychoanalytic attempt, maybe, and maybe I'm wrong here, of people like Trump to sort of intensify or accelerate the situation because as their own death, looms, they're sort of like driving, those in power are sort of driving the entire country in that direction. I don't know, it's sort of blurry for me, but what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I mean, I think that's true. Like, I think that, that I think we, I think the whole point really of psychoanalysis is that there is an enjoyment that's tied to

sacrifice. And, and that's why it seems to me like it's very clear why all this climate denial stuff works. Like, right, like, that you get, there's a certain enjoyment that comes from just destroying the environment. And I think that's what we see happening in the case of Trump. And, you know, I'm not sure if it's tied to his age because I'm not sure if he's that different. He'd be that different if he when he was 30 versus when he's 70, but maybe. I mean, it'd be interesting to think that maybe as he gets older and as some of these guys get older, that their enjoyment in sacrifice, which is, I think, what it is, right? It's enjoyment in this pure destruction, destructiveness. That does that,

get exacerbated as they get older. I mean, who's the greatest exemplar of that? It's Hitler. He was like 50-something when he died. You know, so it wasn't that, so I'm not sure that it's always tied to aging. Because I think oftentimes aging can pull you back from that, can make you realize that, like,

oh, that enjoyment I have in sacrifice isn't really, it's not really doing it for me anymore. You know, so I guess I'm not, I mean, maybe you're right. I mean, maybe you're probably right, But I guess for me, it's not necessarily tied to aging as it's more tied to a certain psychic disposition that says, I'm going to create this more and more enjoyment for myself through the more and more radical sacrifice that I make. And I'm going to let the other bear the burden of the sacrifice. So that's, I think, the thing, that the other has to bear the burden of the sacrifice. Okay, yeah.

Actually, I think you're right about that. And I think you're actually making a really important point about age isn't really super helpful. necessarily here. And in the same way, is it fair to say, like, sort of linking up your notions of contradiction with this psychoanalytic stuff, is it fair to say in the same way that fascist and reactionaries in Trump want to put the sacrifice on others? In dialectical terms, they want to purge the dialectic of contradiction. Is that a fair sort of analysis? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's what they're trying to do. Right. Like, it's an, it's an absolute attempt to avoid any kind of contradiction. And they think, like, if we just get rid of the

other, then we can, and if we put down the other in a certain way, we can have a society free of contradiction. Of course, the problem is that they don't really want that. I mean, I think that's what we can't stop repeating enough, is that they don't really want the world free of contradiction that they claim they want, because their whole appeal is based upon not being successful in what they're doing. Because if they were really successful, then no one would have the enjoyment attached to voting for them. So I think that's the thing about fascism that it sets up a situation where it can never win. And the more it gets closer to winning, actually, the more it defeats its appeal psychically. So it actually has to try to, not try to, but

unconsciously sabotage itself and fail. That's really interesting. And that does speak to why these big fascist movements, they explode onto the scene, but they really don't have staying power, Italian fascism, German fascism, Pinochet and Chile. I mean, you know, eventually these things will either, you know, have a sort of socialist or progressive revolution in the face of their repression or capitalism sort of reasserts itself and takes back over, but you don't see these hundred-year reigns of, you know, fascist rule. And I think you're getting at a reason why that doesn't happen. Right. If it's successful, it's over. Absolutely. Yeah. Like the very psychic energy that propels it can't be successful.

Yeah. Fascinating. So then I heard you talk about this on one of your podcasts once. You talk about like this resistance to socialism, this resistance to to socialist revolution, particularly, even among people who, you know, by all measures would probably benefit from it. But you talk about, you know, you don't, I think you say something like they don't want us to take away their unsatisfactory net or something like that. Can you elaborate on that and clear that up? Yeah, I think that, I think that, you know, it's like the way, like I think people are attached to their dissatisfaction in a profound way. And so I think that's one of the real barriers that a socialist project has to overcome, that the idea that we don't, like, I mean, just think how much more fun it is to complain to other people than it is to say how nice things are. Like, I mean, it's boring. Like, you consider, like, everybody I know that just, I have a couple of people I know that all they do is say nice things.

And I just, I'm with them for like five minutes and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to shoot myself in the head. So, you know, like, it's just boring. And so, I mean, of course, you'll say, like, there are other things we could talk about. There are other kinds of troubles. Yes, but I think there is something about just that we're attached to this, the dissatisfaction that we get from the capitalist system and overcoming that is a big thing to overcome. That's all I want to say. That I think that's a key point. And I also think, you know, with this, like the idea of someone who's, well, you know, Adam Smith has this great thing.

I talked about this one. maybe you listen to the podcast with Ryan that Adam Smith has a great thing from theory of moral sentiments which he wrote like 17 years before wealth of nations and he says the wealthier actually live a miserable contemptible life but we can't let anybody see that

because if everybody if anybody found out then they would not aspire to be wealthy and do all the things to keep society going and you know it's interesting because I think this is really true that the people who are more attached to the idea that the wealthy really enjoy

are the people who don't have wealth. And that's why, you know, like this opposition to the wealth tax in America, it's absurd, right? Like, how can that be? Like, it's never going to affect you. It's never going to, or the inheritance tax, same thing, it's never going to apply to you. Why would you be against it? And it's because people identify, I think, this pure enjoyment with people who have a lot, and they think, I'll lose that point of identification if you take anything from them.

And so I feel like that's a real barrier to overcome in terms of socialist egalitarian revolution on the left. So I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's not possible to overcome it. I just think it's a real thing to think about and to work through. Yeah, I think it's really, really helpful to understand that problem. And, you know, we can only benefit by taking that into account and really thinking deeply through that. So the next question I want to ask, and these questions are going to seem sort of disjointed because they are. um did uh because i i when i talk about frey psychoanalysis there's a lot in it that i like

but there is this i feel and maybe i'm wrong because you know i'm not as smart as you about this stuff but i feel like um i i want to like turn away from the hyper emphasis on on sex and the libidinal sort of urges and that whole undercurrent to to his philosophy even though um has a father of two me and my wife have this inside joke where whenever our kids do something that is clearly obvious in a sort of Freudian psychoanalytic sense, like when my son will get in between me and my wife or try to get aggressive with me to cuddle up with my wife or something, we'll say this thing out loud. We're like, Freud was right. Freud is right. And we say that all throughout the day and it's sort of an inside joke.

So that part of me clearly sort of understands even my own life through that. But I guess my overall question is, did Freud's focus on the sexual and the libidinal persist with consistent strength throughout the entirety of his work, or did it play less of a role with time? How should we think about that? Yeah, that's great. I love this question. I'm going to answer it in three contradictory, totally contradictory ways. The first way is that everybody that I know has kids, I've had kids too, and the automatic, the thing that they do as the kids are young, they're like, Freud is right. It's kind of instant reaction. But I think two things. I think, I think, I think, It's important note that in 1920, Freud revises his entire theory, and so he dislodges what he

calls the pleasure principle from priority in the psyche and puts what we've been talking about death drive as the fundamental thing, and he does this in this book beyond the pleasure principle. And so then all of a sudden from that point, there's still the emphasis on sex, but it's much different because the way that the psyche gets played, it's not always just interested in sex. It's interested in this, that the subject's desire is much more interested in how it undoes itself. And so that does, that's, that totally changes the playing field. Okay, so that's the number one point and I think the main point. But about Freud's in thinking about sex, I think his idea, and I think we have to clarify what exactly he means by sex, and I don't

think he himself totally clarified this. But I think sex for Freud is not just like in and out, whatever. I know that's not the only whatever, penetration or anything. But Freud's whole point I think is that sex, the human version of sex, one of the things he does is he radically distances it from reproduction. So in and out was kind of a joke, but part of what Freud does is say it's not about that. It can be about that sex is about, it's all of a sudden, sorry for the way of

speaking, it penetrates into all these other parts of subjectivity in society. So in a certain sense, Freud's Freud's idea is, yes, sex, but only if we understand sex as part of everything, it's incorporated all of subjectivity, not to say that everything that I do is sexual, but just that my desire is not, you can't just, it's all the time that the structure of my desire is everywhere. It's not just in the sexual activity. It's in all these other things. And it's not that, again, it's not that when I go to teach a class, I'm, it's like I'm having sex. sex, no, but instead that my desire has to be wrapped up in that, otherwise I wouldn't do it.

So I guess those are the two ways of answering it, that it's a way of thinking about desire, not just in the pure confines of sexual act, that in some sense Freud's whole point is that we can't just think of sex in that narrow sense anymore. Yeah, and I think in the book you talk about like a batter walking up to the plate, sort of obsessively fixing his batting gloves or like, you know, a lot of athletes will show these little weird things they do, either shooting a free throw or up at the line. And you talk about that as sort of a form of sublimation, I think, is right. Could you talk about that a little bit to help me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So sublimation means that I create this, these things of, I mean,

I think, look, you might think of sex as just what are the things that we create, like, as objects for ourselves? And I think we create these little rituals that give them, that give ourselves something to value and something to find pleasure in. And I think that's what Freud means when he says sexuality, the way in which these little rituals or these little things that we do, we find pleasure in them. That pleasure is something more than just physical sensation, right? Like the physical sensation of doing that, it's nothing.

But there's some other kind of pleasure attached to it, and that's what Freud calls sex. I see. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. And it actually helps me clarify some ideas I have myself. I'm like a, and I'll just bounce this idea if you let me know what you think. I'm heavily, heavily tattooed. And I always talk like people say, you know, why do you go back for tattoos and like what is this whole thing about? And I thought about this a lot throughout my life. And I think there is something ritualistic about it, this going into the chair sitting down, having pain inflicted on you. And you come out the other side with something to show for that pain. In another way, I like a marijuana habits right it's like yeah there's the high of smoking marijuana but why do people do it every single day and I think there's something ritualistic about going to pulling out your little weed box grinding up the marijuana putting it in a joint or whatever that whole ritualistic process feels grounding it feels you get satisfaction out of the process of doing it in the case of tattooing when it's explicitly unpleasant the actual physical sensation and in the case

of marijuana, it's the ritual before even the high that gets you really satisfied. So those are sort of things that I wrestle with. What are your, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I just think those are like, those are sexual activities, right? For me, I mean, again, like, I'm not saying that as a way, as a negative way or like, but I mean, for Freud, like, what are these activities that we, you know, attach a certain worth or value to and find pleasure in, even though they're painful? What are these activities? That's, that's what sex is for Freud. so it's this radically expansive idea of sex and not this instead it's not the reductive of oh I see you know the the the the terrorists flew the planes into the phallic tower I mean I find that

ridiculous like instead it's like what are these little activities that I get extra worth attached to them that's where I think that's what Freud's means by sex and and that's what he means but I mean I use the term desire mostly to talk about that but I think that's what it's getting at the same thing that Freud's getting at. Okay. Thank you for that. That's incredibly, incredibly clarifying for me. Two more questions before we go towards the conclusion. I love this conversation. I could go forever. But I want to ask, before I get into Buddhism, I want to ask about science really quick. There is this sort of question that people wrestle with, like, you know, especially Marxists who even want to defend the sort of scientific socialism

put forward by Marx and angles. Like, actually, there is something scientific about the Marxist tradition. They'll obviously say, but yeah, but psychoanalysis and Freud, are not science. And I think I've even heard you admit that openly on your show that of course it's not science. And a part of me thinks, because Freud saw himself as doing science, but his object of study was subjectivity, which sort of puts it outside the realm of science proper, because science really has no way, based on its methodology, to really systematically approach subjectivity. You sort of need third-person objectivity for that. So what are your thoughts about psychoanalysis as a science or not a science, how we should think about it in that realm?

Yeah, that's very well put. And I think, Freud, I mean, oftentimes great thinkers have no idea what they're talking about when they're trying to, when they're trying to understand the position of their own thought, right? They just, it's very common, I think that they don't have any idea. And this, I think this is an example. Freud, this is, and I think as part of it is the prejudice of the 19th century, you know, he wanted so much for psychoanalysis to have this sacred status of a science. And sorry, it just doesn't. For the way, for the reason that you just said that the whole point of a science is, you know, it's a science is. is the subject cannot matter. The subject, and that's why I think it's a little dicey for Marxism, right? Because if the proletariat is the subject of Marxist revolt, then you can't, it's not just replaceable, right? Like the whole point of a scientific experiment is you take out the subject, you put in a different subject, you get the same result, so subjectivity doesn't matter, right? Like that's the, it seems like to me that's the idea of scientific method. And so this idea that subject doesn't matter, I think for psychoanalysis, you've put it exactly right.

The subject is everything. So you can't, like, how could you do it? Like, you're taking out the subject and then you're going to study this. That doesn't make any sense. Like, how the subject affects things is what we're paying attention to as psychoanalytic thinkers. So the insertion of the subject in the experiment is everything. It can't be taken out. So, yeah, I think that there's just, we just have to bite the bullet on.

that, that psychoanalysis is an attempt to wrestle with the modern world or modernity that comes about along with science. And I think there are these two things that come into being at the same time, subjectivity and modern science. And psychoanalysis is trying to think about this form or deforming power of subjectivity and how that, and oftentimes thinks about how it relates to modern science, but it's not itself a science. I don't think it can be. Okay. Are there psychoanalytic thinkers who continue to assert that it is, though, today? Yeah, I think so, because they're tied to this idea that, okay, the brain sciences are going to actually find these neurological things that prove that Freud was right. And I just think, you know, I don't think you can do that. Like, even if that's true, that doesn't answer the, that still doesn't ever solve the problem of subjectivity, because subjectivity is what happens when you, you, when, you, when, you, when,

insert this other figure, this other force within that, into the program. So it's not like you can just say there's this deterministic thing that goes along because subject is a hiccup in that movement of determination. So there's no, I guess for me, no matter what happens in terms of scientific discoveries, that that hiccup, as long as it continues to exist, they're not, you're never going to be able to integrate the two. I see. I see. And I guess you're right. is a whole sort of subfield of neuroscience that attempts to ground psychoanalysis in the objective science of neuroscience, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Okay, so let's move on to this last question before the conclusion, and it's about Buddhism, and it's kind of a long question that I wrote out so I could really be precise with how I asked it. So the question is, Buddhism like psychoanalysis has a theory of desire and satisfaction, which locates desire fueled and structured by an illusory sense of self as a primary source of. psychological suffering or in the Buddhist tradition, it's called duca, which translates more precisely to unsatisfactoriness, like a constant unsatisfactoriness. Unlike psychoanalysis, though, Buddhism does seem to have a way out, a systematic meditation practice, which through

awareness and concentration sort of displaces the ego as the psychological center of gravity and allows one to view themselves and their desires and thoughts and feelings from a sort of metacognitive perspective that chips away at the illusion of the self, and ultimately, result in enlightenment, which, you know, can be understood as sort of peer conscious awareness free from the myopic confines of the tiny petulant ego. So that was a long sort of preamble, but the question is, what are your thoughts on the similarities and differences between Buddhism and psychoanalysis on this front? And am I wrong in asserting that psychoanalysis offers no way out? No, I think that's right. And I think, I think you're, it seems like to me you did a

pretty good job of saying exactly where the difference lies. And then I would just say the similarity is, of course, that both attacked the idea of ego as illusory. Like, that's fundamental for psychoanalysis, is ego is illusion. And you can't have any, like any investment in the ego is always causing a problem and is always a mistake in investment. And I guess the only thing I would say is that for psychoanalysis, desire itself is an illusion. So that's, I think that's where the rubber hits the road in terms of the conflict between the two, right? Like, for Buddhism, desire is ultimately illusion, and for psychoanalysis, there is no subject without desire.

So subject is subject of desire, and so that lack attached to subjectivity is intractable. Like, you can't, like, the idea of, like, somehow through meditation, giving up, like, I think meditation might help you to come to face, to grips with your lack. But I think from the perspective of psychoanalysis, there would be no meditation that could ever get you to overcome lack and see that it's just an illusion because that would, it seems to me, like it'd be overcoming the very possibility of overcoming attached to my ability to meditate. You see, like I would see it as a kind of like Baron von Munchausen like lifting himself up by his own, by his own pants. I see. Okay, that's really interesting. because I find as somebody like obviously I'm much more into Buddhism and psychoanalysis I'm still

sort of learning a lot about psychoanalysis I've been into Buddhism since I was a teenager and over a decade of meditated practice and I do find better I think it's better it sounds better doesn't it yeah it does I do find though that like studying psychoanalysis actually gives me a lot of really useful tools and concepts and ideas to even understand my own Buddhist practice with so there is something that I think psychoanalysis offers at the very, very least, this sort of conceptual toolkit by which to understand your own subjectivity. If you're engaged in systematic introspective practices like meditation, the tools given to you by psychoanalysis, even with their contradictions and conflicts, I think, can still be super helpful, or at least in my experience, has been somewhat helpful in thinking through my own

subjectivity, if you will. That's excellent. I'm glad that's true. But I think one of the things that psychoanalysis says, it's often out in the world, not introspection when we discover the truth of our psyche. So I think there are these three things that are kind of interesting. So I have a dream. So I know the dream is in the psyche, but okay, it's still this thing that's totally foreign

to me. I have a dream and then it confronts me and I have to confront my desire. I didn't know I have, a slip that I have. So I mean to say one thing and I say something else. And then I'm like, oh, my God, my desire is attached to that thing that I say. And the other thing is a joke. Like I hear a joke or I speak, I say a joke. and the thing that I say that I, oh, I'm just joking, I actually tell the truth of my desire.

So I guess for psychoanalysis, it's not, like, introspection often doesn't work because there's this barrier of the unconscious to uncovering what I'm trying to uncover. Like consciousness is itself the barrier, so that I have to think about ways in which I look at my activity. And this I think it has in common with Marxism, right? but I look at what I'm actually doing. Those are, I gave three examples, but anything I'm doing in the world where I see my desire must be manifested out in the world because that's what I'm doing. So it's very much attached to looking at what I'm doing as a way of understanding my desire

rather than, you know, engaging in this process of introspection. I mean, I think introspection is good, but I think nothing replaces that, replaces looking at how I act in the world and then analyzing how I'm actually. in order to understand what I'm doing is a manifestation of my desire. I see. Okay. That's actually, yeah, really clarifying and super, super interesting. All right, yeah, so I'll let that conversation go.

Again, that could be an episode on its own. And I think I'm going to do some more work. I've done an episode or two on meditation, and I plan on doing more because there actually seems to be a real interest, especially on the Marxist or, you know, radical left that makes up my audience of these approaches to subjectivity because we all know that Marxism, you know, doesn't really address subjectivity in any systematic way, at least not in the way, or at least not as systematically as Buddhism and psychoanalysis does. So you often find yourself as a Marxist or somebody that has that sort of general orientation,

also searching to sort of find the sort of side of subjectivity, a way to examine that that Marxism might not always offer. So I don't know. I just think it's interesting. And people, obviously, in my listener, show a lot of interest with these discussions. So there has to be something there, you know. Right. I mean, even after the revolution, we'll still have to discuss the problem of subjectivity, right? Yeah. And that is one big thing I definitely pull out of your work. And I've integrated into my sort of Marxist outlook fully. You do tell that story of like, what did Carl, Karl Marx and Jenny used to joke around with each other, what they say?

Oh, they said like, after the revolution, we don't have to worry about this. I think to myself, like, there's the whole problem. Like, of course you'll have to worry about it. yeah i love that that's that's really funny and i mean we talk that way too a lot uh sort of tongue and cheek but still it's it's funny to know that they they thought like that and talked like that too that's yeah it's cool it's cool yeah um all right so the concluding sort of question is just a way to put a bow on this conversation um what can leftists and specifically sort of marxists uh learn from psychoanalysis in your opinion ultimately and i know you've touched on that but maybe just put a bow on it here and can someone defend psychoanalysis while still being a

committed and principled materialist Marxist, in your opinion? Okay, so answer the last question first, definitely. Like, I think that there's a way to, I mean, I have a lot of friends of mine that try to integrate both psychoanalysis and Marxism together. And I

think they do it pretty successfully. So I think that, and I try to integrate, you know, less Marxism, but a lot of Marxist ideas into my psychoanalytic project. So I think that them, too, are not, there's no fundamental incompatibility there. But I think the idea of the problem of subjectivity and paying attention to the problem of subjectivity or subjectivity

as a problem, and taking that and taking the inability of desire to find its realization to make that central to the political project, I think is, that's the real lesson of psychoanalysis. So try to, how can we reconceive politics that doesn't look at political action or the political goal as the solution to our desire, but a way. way of, but as a way of sustaining the problem of our desire in maybe giving it a new articulation or something like that. So that's, I guess that's how I would, I would think of the, of the, what psychoanalysis might have to contribute to the, to the Marxist project. Wonderful. Well, Todd, thank you so much again for coming on. The book is Capitalism and Desire, the psychic cost of free markets. I'll put a link to

that in the show notes. Before we let you go, would you like to let listeners know where they can find you and your work online? Sure. I'm at, uh, they can email me. I'm at Todd. dot McGowan at UVM.edu. And, uh, my books are on Amazon and our, our little podcast is called Y Theory and it's, uh, what is it on? It's on Apple Podcasts and SpotCloud. What is it called? SoundCloud, I guess. SoundCloud. SoundCloud. There we go. Yeah, absolutely. And if, if anything, any part of this discussion at all piqued your interest as a listener, you will love Y Theory. It's really, really engaging. It can be challenging, especially if you're not really fully informed on psychoanalysis,

but it's a great way to learn. And I've been learning so much from that. So thanks again, Todd. Let's keep in touch. And I'll definitely have you back on because I just love talking to you. Okay, Brett, it was great, great talking to you. I really appreciate it. The rain and started tapping on the window near my bed.

There was a loophole in my dreaming. So I got out of it. And to my surprise, my eyes were wide and already open. Just my night's done. my dresser where those nightmares had just been so i dressed myself and left them out into the gray streets but everything seemed different and completely new to me the sky the trees houses buildings even my own body and each person i encountered i couldn't wait to me and i came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health i said there's nothing that i can do for you you can't do for yourself

He said, oh, yes, he can't just hold my hand. I think that that would help. So I sat with him a while. Then I asked him how he felt. He said, I think I'm cured. You're in fact, I'm sure. I think he's stranger for your therapeutic smile. So that's how I learn the lesson that everyone is alone

And your eyes must do some raining If you're ever gonna grow But when crying don't help You can compose yourself, it's best to compose a poem An honest verse of longing Or a simple song of hope That's why I'm singing, baby, don't worry because now I've got you back and every time you feel like crying I'm going to try and make

your laugh and if I can if it just hurts too bad then we'll wait for it to pass and I will keep you company for those days so long and black and we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve of love's uneven remain there's our lives a fraction of a haul but if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall then I think we'd see the beauty then we'd stand staring in awe at our still lives posed like a bowl of horses like a story told by the fault lines and a soul Thank you.