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How would psychoanalysis change if it placed community mental health at the center of its priorities? Austin talks with psychoanalysts Nancy Burke and Matthew Oyer about the history and present of community psychoanalysis: from Freud’s free clinics and institutional psychotherapy to Chicago’s Kedzie Center and LoSAH Center of Hope, New York’s Greene Clinic, and a new Community Psychoanalysis Training program connecting clinicians and institutions across cities. They discuss the effects of ICE raids on clinical work in Chicago, psychoanalytic approaches to psychosis, the economics of analytic training, and the problem of making intensive treatment available to people who have historically been excluded from it. Along the way, the conversation asks what psychoanalysis might learn—and become—when community practice is understood not simply as a site for applying psychoanalytic ideas, but as a place where new psychoanalytic ideas can emerge. Little Hysterics is a podcast of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, featuring conversations with clinicians, artists, and thinkers about psychoanalytic ideas and the contemporary clinic. References: Elizabeth Ann Danto, Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918–1938  Sigmund Freud, “Lines of Advance in Psycho-Analytic Therapy” (1919 [1918])  Sigmund Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926)  François Tosquelles / Jean Oury / institutional psychotherapy  Alfred H. Stanton & Morris S. Schwartz, The Mental Hospital: A Study of Institutional Participation in Psychiatric Illness and Treatment  Gabriel Tupinambá  Lafargue Clinic  Sites mentioned:  Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago: The Kedzie Center: thekedziecenter.org LoSAH Center of Hope: losahcenter.org The Greene Clinic: greeneclinic.com The Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis: communitypsychoanalysis.org img: A dying man surrounded by fantastic and mythological figures. Coloured etching with watercolour, 30.4 × 40.8 cm. Wellcome Collection, 16062i. View at Wellcome Collection

Dr. Gila Ashtor joins Austin McCann for a wide-ranging conversation on Jean Laplanche, the future of psychoanalysis, and why the field must be willing to question its own foundations. Beginning with their shared path into psychoanalysis through the humanities, they discuss the relationship between theory and clinical practice, the limits of contemporary analytic training, and the importance of cultivating a culture of critique rather than preserving tradition for its own sake. The conversation explores Laplanche's theories of seduction, enlarged sexuality, and the fundamental anthropological situation, offering an accessible introduction to one of psychoanalysis's most original contemporary thinkers. Along the way, they examine why concepts like the Oedipus complex may need to be rethought, what it means to practice "faithful infidelity" toward Freud, and how psychoanalysis can remain open to transformation without abandoning its past. The episode concludes by turning to contemporary clinical questions—including dissociation, pseudo-selfhood, AI therapy, and the role of risk and asymmetry in treatment—arguing that psychoanalysis offers something increasingly rare: a space where genuine intimacy, uncertainty, and transformation remain possible. *image: "Incipit Vita Nova (Here begins a new life)" (Aubrey Beardsley, 1893, c/o The Public Domain Review)

In this episode of Little Hysterics, Austin McCann speaks with psychoanalyst Carlos Padrón and clinical social worker Darragh Sheehan about the “social turn” in psychoanalysis, the gentrification of social work, and how neoliberalism is reshaping clinical practice. *** show notes: Center for Critical and Clinical Analysis https://www.cccacommunity.com/ Carlos Padrón “Spiritual Misery and the Absence of Experience: Towards a Political and Poetic Psychoanalysis.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ba68d8ba9ab951e0bf4bea6/t/69401441504b450203eed036/1765807169403/Spiritual+Misery+and+the+Absence+of+Experience+-+Padron.pdf “The Political Potentiality of the Psychoanalytic Process.”  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/650efcc37d0d663a4a766651/t/686eb3897503de640d6eb03b/1752085398223/The+Political+Potentialy+of+the+Psychoanalytic+Process%2C+Carlos+Padr%C3%B3n.pdf Darragh Sheehan  “From Public Service to Private Practice: The Collapse of the Social Work Profession.” (March 2025)  https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/03/collapse-social-work/ “The Gentrification of Social Work: Why a ‘Political Mental Health’ Must Be Public.” (December 2025)  https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/12/the-gentrification-of-social-work-why-a-political-mental-health-must-be-public/ “The Quiet Crisis in Mental Health: The Medicalization and Deskilling of Psychotherapy.” (April 2025)  https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/04/quiet-crisis-mental-health/ "Glittering Generalities & Pop-leftist 'Psychotherapy Speak." (September 2024) https://www.sublationmag.com/post/glittering-generalities-pop-leftist-psychotherapy-speak Basia Winograd, dir. Psychoanalysis in El Barrio (2016), featuring Carlos Padrón https://pep-web.org/browse/document/pepgrantvs.001.0010a Works Referenced Cushman, Philip. Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy. 1995. Danto, Elizabeth Ann. Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918–1938. 2005. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1952. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. 1961. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970. Freud, Sigmund. Studies on Hysteria. 1895. Lear, Jonathan. Freud. 2005. Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. 1971.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_psychotherapy 

In this episode of Little Hysterics, Austin sits down with psychoanalytic scholar and clinician Derek Hook to discuss his new book about Frantz Fanon, the difference between psychoanalysis and conventional psychotherapy, psychoanalysis’s relationship with political action, and the Derek's attempt at making difficult theory accessible. Derek's book Fanon, Psychoanalysis, and Critical Decolonial Psychology is available here: https://www.routledge.com/Fanon-Psychoanalysis-and-Critical-Decolonial-Psychology-The-Mind-of-Apartheid/Hook/p/book/9781032308012