Vanessa Sinclair: Reflections on Melancholia

In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I’m joined by psychoanalyst, writer, and host of Rendering Unconscious, Vanessa Sinclair, for a wide-ranging and deeply human conversation at the intersection of psychology, film, culture, enchantment, and resistance.

We begin by tracing Vanessa’s journey from Miami to New York to Sweden, her early adoption of telehealth long before it became the norm, and the origins of her podcast as a way of sustaining intellectual and creative community across borders. From there, we dive into a rich clinical and philosophical discussion of Melancholia (2011), which Vanessa describes as her favorite film of all time.

Using Melancholia as a lens, we explore depression and anxiety not simply as pathologies to be cured, but as meaningful responses to a profoundly disordered world. We contrast Kirsten Dunst’s melancholic attunement with Charlotte Gainsbourg’s anxious drive for control, examine how certainty, rationalism, and “trusting the experts” can collapse under existential pressure, and reflect on how denial, productivity, and optimism can become fragile defenses in the face of catastrophe.

From there, the conversation opens outward into questions of intuition, magical thinking, colonialism, patriarchy, monotheism, pluralism, and the loss of an enchanted worldview. Vanessa offers a powerful critique of how modern culture trains us to distrust our inner compass—pathologizing intuition, ritual, synchronicity, and imagination—while outsourcing meaning to algorithms, experts, and online consensus. We talk about art, astrology, animism, psychoanalysis, and why having your own experience of something matters more than reading reviews or interpretations first.

Clinically, we reflect on the dangers of romanticizing depression while still honoring its depth, especially in the context of systemic injustice, poverty, medical trauma, and institutional failure. Vanessa shares moving reflections from her work in hospital settings and HIV clinics, underscoring the limits of therapy when material conditions are fundamentally inhumane—and why self-care, community, and moments of joy are not luxuries but necessities.

We close by returning to the film’s final images of relational connection in the face of annihilation, and what they suggest about how meaning, care, and presence might still be possible—even when the world feels like it’s ending.

This is a conversation about depression, anxiety, art, magic, justice, and what it means to remain human in a disenchanted age—and why reclaiming depth, intuition, and connection may be one of the most radical acts available to us.