Episode 2 - Stirring up some "good trouble."

US Congressman John Lewis once famously encouraged all Americans to "get in good trouble, necessary trouble." On this episode of the podcast, Deb and Maury further explain why they think it's a good thing to stir up some trouble through their project of "Deconstructing Davanloo."

First, Deb explains that the term "deconstruction" does not mean tearing something down, but rather that the title of the podcast is a nod to the work of post-structuralist philosopher, Jaques Derrida. Derrida used the term deconstruction to challenge the idea that texts have fixed or essential meanings. Derridean deconstruction is therefore a process of looking for multiple meanings within textual data while recognizing that there is no true, one-to-one correspondence between the signifier (word) and signified (the thing the word is trying to symbolize). Maury suggests that the sheer amount of data with Davanloo's cases offers us a treasure trove of text, open for interpretation of multiple and layered meanings.

Deb and Maury offer the project of this podcast as a counterpoint to more "orthodox" readings of Davanloo, where his work has been taken as handed down wisdom to be accepted as is. Deb references Aner Govrin's 2016 book, Conservative and radical perspectives on psychoanalytic knowledge: The fascinated and the disenchanted, as helpful in framing the ISTDP community as consisting of both "fascinated" and "troubled" sub-communities. Govrin's work suggests that an intellectual community needs both camps, the fascinated and the troubled, to be active in order to ensure ongoing vitality and evolution. (Errata: Deb mis-communicated the title of Govrin's book, full reference below). Deb and Maury agree that while they see themselves leaning more towards a "troubled" reading of Davanloo, they are simultaneously fascinated by his work, and that both the "troubled" and the "fascinated" are part of a necessary dialectic.

In that vein, Deb and Maury take turns sharing the top 3 things they love about Davanloo. For Maury it is Davanloo's "maverick" stance of pushing against the status quo in psychoanalysis, his development of the pathways of anxiety discharge, and his emphasis of timing in clinical interventions. Deb's top 3 things she admires about Davanloo are his confidence in calling it like he sees it, his desire to "bust open the door" to the unconscious, and his emphasis on working through conflicts of conscience.

Deb and Maury and the episode by letting listeners that episode 3 will be a deep reading of Davanloo's engagement with Freudian theory through his references to Freud in "Unlocking the Unconscious," specifically in the beginning of the chapters Clinical Manifestations of Superego Pathology, Part 1, and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy with Highly Resistant Patients, I: Handling Resistance. They also encourage listeners to send them questions, comments or concerns by reaching out to either of them directly or messaging on their instagram account, @deconstructing_davanloo

References:

Davanloo, H. (1990). Unlocking the unconscious: Selected papers of Habib Davanloo, MD. John Wiley and Sons.

Govrin, A. (2016). Conservative and radical perspectives on psychoanalytic knowledge: The fascinated and the disenchanted. Routledge.