Podcast Summary: Between Us, Episode 53 – "What We’re Born Into"

Date: June 25, 2025
Host: John Totten
Guests: Karim Dajani (psychoanalyst), Eyal Rosmarin

Episode Overview

This compelling episode of "Between Us" dives deep into the ways our personal and collective lives are shaped by cultural, historical, and ideological forces, both in and outside the therapy room. Host John Totten is joined by psychoanalyst Karim Dajani and his colleague Eyal Rosmarin for an expansive discussion about the concept of the "social unconscious," the erasure of radical psychoanalytic thinkers, and the limitations of institutional psychoanalysis when facing the traumas of contemporary life—including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conversation moves fluidly from theory to lived experience, questioning what it means to belong, to dissent, and to survive within and against the structures that shape us.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Histories & Generational Inheritance

• Radio Roots & Cultural Transmission (00:00–00:39)
  • Karim describes his family’s roots in broadcasting in the Middle East and his mother's legacy as a poetry recitalist, establishing his lifelong immersion in storytelling and culture:
    • "I lived with the mic. I was born into that. Born into radio, basically." – Karim Dajani (00:30)

2. Therapy Room as Microcosm of the World

• Beyond the Treatment Room (03:15–06:31)
  • John Totten reflects on the evolution of the podcast, noting their growing focus on viewing global issues through a psychotherapy lens:
    • "It's harder and harder for me to deny that the treatment room is simply the world under a microscope... all the ills of society and all of its hubris as well. It walks into our offices." – John Totten (04:14)
  • He discusses how current events (e.g., Middle East conflicts, American politics) infiltrate both the therapist and client, collapsing the boundary between private and collective trauma.

3. The Social Unconscious: Theory & Erasure

• Historical Figures and Erasure in Psychoanalysis (08:55–24:03)

  • Karim offers an illuminating historical overview, introducing Srigan Borough and others who developed the idea that culture forms a "social unconscious," and how such work was systematically erased or marginalized from mainstream psychoanalysis.
    • "The social unconscious is structured right out of the get go by culture, which he called an arbitrary social system." – Karim Dajani (09:20)
  • He outlines how various psychoanalysts (e.g., Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan) developed theories and clinical approaches in response to societal oppression (misogyny, homophobia, racism).

• Interpersonal Psychoanalysis as Social Critique

  • The discussion details how Harry Stack Sullivan redefined psychosexual health to break with heteronormative assumptions:
    • "The aim of psychosexual development is for two people to be able to be involved with each other's genitals without undue anxiety. That is such a subversive explosive bomb." – Karim Dajani (16:46)

4. The Structure of Subjectivity & Cultural Codes

• Culture Precedes the Self (24:04–29:56)

  • Karim makes a crucial theoretical distinction: the community and its cultural system do not merely produce the superego (as Freud would have it), but function as "structuring structures"—shaping the ego and self even before the emergence of individuality:
    • "We are fundamentally different from the very beginning. We're fundamentally different while being radically the same." (24:59)
  • He draws on the concept of "ego habitus" to articulate how infants absorb cultural tools via the mother-infant dyad and community caregiving norms, ultimately shaping perceptions, values, and even unconscious process.

• Concrete Examples of Cultural Encoding

  • Karim shares a student’s observations about the collective care practices of Chinese families versus the individualized approach favored in white Western families:
    • "With the Chinese mothers...the whole group is in the room...the group that takes care of the infant, not the mother. Whereas with the white people, you have two individuals and a baby..." (29:56)

5. Liberation Psychology & Institutional Resistance

• The Danger of Subversive Ideas (33:39–34:50)
  • Karim references Ignacio Martín-Baró and liberation psychology, stressing how dangerous and disruptive to power these ideas remain:
    • "These ideas, as simple as they are, that we're trafficking in are extremely disruptive. And the resistance to them and to the people, the traffic in them, is very real and...very, very, very dangerous." (33:47)
  • The group discusses the institutional psychoanalytic resistance to acknowledging ideology in the clinic, as well as the erasure of nonconforming thinkers.

6. Ideological Allegiances and the Limits of Dialogue

• Navigating Group Loyalties and Rupture (39:25–44:10)
  • The episode shifts to the immediate present: the cooption of discourse on the Middle East and the incapacity of professional and social groups to tolerate severe ideological differences:
    • "Nobody is speaking from an ideologically free zone. Because it's impossible. It's like saying that you can not have an unconscious." – Karim Dajani (40:04)
  • Karim references South American psychoanalyst Pichon Riviere's theory: groups function best when they can tolerate maximal difference, but some splits (like over Israel/Palestine or race) cannot be bridged when ideological allegiances override group identity.

7. Critique of Institutional Psychoanalysis

• The Myth of Apoliticism (45:25–51:10)

  • The speakers sharply critique the notion that psychoanalysis can remove itself from social or political realities.
    • "When you think that you're not political, you're political." – John Totten (50:06)
    • "The people that say they stand above politics and that their concern is clinical ... traffic in the language of purity with the nuance being lost on them." – Karim Dajani (50:26)

• Erasure as Power Maintenance

  • The output expresses frustration and embarrassment at the historical and ongoing suppression of alternative psychoanalytic approaches:
    • "This thing that I've been talking about, the social unconscious, has been, you know, erased and re-erased since the inception of the field. Which is—should be embarrassing." – Karim Dajani (50:53)

8. Possibilities for Change: From the Bottom Up

• Teaching Future Generations (51:46–54:00)
  • In spite of institutional resistance, Karim emphasizes the importance of teaching students and building community outside existing power structures:
    • "I think the way to change the world and, and to change psychoanalysis, it's from the bottom, bro. You got to change it from the bottom, not from the top." – Karim Dajani (51:47)
  • He discusses the value—and cost—of traditional training, and the urgent need for new, accessible modes of psychoanalytic education.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cultural Encoding:

  • "The mother imparts her personality and her community to the baby...determines our perception of the world." – Karim Dajani (09:22)

• On The Social Unconscious:

  • "Subjectivity coheres in the space between the body, the object, and the community, and that the community, with its meaning making system, that is culture, is both a social necessity and a profoundly consequential psychic structure." – Karim Dajani (22:34)

• On Institutional Denial:

  • "That animal [the old-guard psychoanalyst] is not only not extinct, that animal is in charge...and here's the deal...part of the deal is to hide, is to obfuscate..." – Karim Dajani (46:04)

• On the Necessity of Recognizing Ideological Positions:

  • "It's fine for you to have your view, but you need to understand that your view is an ideological position, just like my view is." – Karim Dajani (49:33)

• On Hope and Resistance:

  • "We need to stop talking to the institutions, and we need to start putting our efforts into the people on the bottom. People that are training, the people that are not ideologically, institutionally compromised." – Karim Dajani (57:04)

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–00:39: Dajani’s radio heritage and cultural backdrop
• 03:15–06:31: The treatment room as a reflection of the world
• 08:55–24:03: Deep-dive into the social unconscious, key theorists, erasure in psychoanalysis
• 16:11–17:31: Sullivan’s subversive reframing of psychosexual health
• 24:04–29:56: Theoretical battle: culture, superego, and the structure of the psyche
• 29:56–32:41: Cultural differences in early caregiving/internalization
• 33:39–34:50: Liberation psychology and the risks of challenging orthodoxy
• 40:00–44:10: Group allegiance, discourse breakdowns, and ideological rifts
• 45:25–51:10: Critique of institutional psychoanalysis’ resistance to the social
• 51:46–54:00: Building a movement from below; training’s promises and pitfalls
• 54:00–57:18: Dajani’s biography, personal motivations, and current mindset

Episode Tone and Language

• The tone is earnest, impassioned, and intellectually rigorous, with both clinical and political urgency. Dajani’s language is historically grounded, theoretical, but marked by personal conviction and even vulnerability (“I’m in an extremely compromised state of mind. Suffering greatly…” – 56:20).
• The hosts facilitate an accessible yet profound dialogue, oscillating between clinical anecdotes, historical debate, and reflections on the current political moment.

Conclusion

"What We’re Born Into" provides both a history lesson and a call to arms. The episode not only tracks how psychoanalysis has ignored or erased its own radical roots but insists on the centrality of culture and ideology in shaping both psychic and collective suffering. Dajani and Totten, joined by Rosmarin, make a compelling case that change must come not from institutional halls but from a new generation—one that has the courage to face paradox, difference, and social reality head on.

Recommended for:

• Therapists, psychoanalysts, and social workers questioning the boundaries between society and psyche
• Anyone struggling to talk about Israel/Palestine conflict productively
• Listeners interested in how collective trauma gets embedded at the personal level
• Students and early-career clinicians looking for an accessible entry into liberation psychology and the concept of the social unconscious