Announced for 17th January in London is a special seminar celebrating 15 years of the Psychoanalytical Notebooks, the journal published by the London Society of the New Lacanian School. With the latest edition – number 28 – on the child, the London Society will host Alexandre Stevens, Director of Le Courtil in Belgium, an institution which specialises in the psychoanalytic treatment of autistic children using an innovative application of Lacanian theory. He will be joined by past and present editors of Psychoanalytic Notebooks, copies of which can be found here. Full details of this special seminar are on the NLS site here.

Following the seminar there will be a screening of Like an Open Sky, Mariana Otero’s excellent documentary about the work of Le Courtil, mentioned in last month’s news update. Alexandre Stevens will be joined by Viviane Green (lecturer in Psychosocial Studies and child and adolescent psychotherapist, APC, BCP), and Lisa Baraitser (reader in Psychosocial Studies and psychotherapist, BACP) for a discussion afterwards chaired by Natalie Wulfing of the NLS. Details on the screening can be found here.

Russell Grigg, translator of Lacan’s Seminars III and XVII, presented a talk on ‘Why Freud’s Theory of Melancholia is all Wrong’ on 26th November in London. Grigg argued that melancholia is a psychotic phenomenon resulting not from the loss of the object but from its over-proximity. Audio of his talk is now available thanks to the Backdoor Broadcasting Company. The talk was hosted by the staff of the Psychoanalysis MA at Kingston University which on 22nd January will also host a debate on psychoanalysis and the neurosciences between former President of the World Association of Psychoanalysis Eric Laurent and Catherine Malabou, Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston. This is certainly one to look out for and a recording of that talk will hopefully follow for those who can’t make it to London to attend in person.

Registrations have opened for the next Congress of the New Lacanian School coming up in Geneva in May under the theme ‘Moments of Crisis’. A discounted price of €140 is avaialble until the end of January – sign up here. A guide to accomodation in Geneva is also offered on the NLS site and the Congress is now on Twitter – follow at https://twitter.com/crisisnls. A series of preparatory seminars examining the theme are being held by various NLS groups around the world, with more information on the School’s site at www.amp-nls.org.

Adrian Price, translator of Lacan’s Seminar X on Anxiety into English, will be speaking in Dublin on Thursday 18th December on ‘The Invocatory Drive: From a still small voice to the scream of nature’. In Seminar X Lacan begins a renovation of the idea of the object to that of a semblance, and Price will look at the invocatory drive as the consequence of this “emptying out” of the object to reveal the drive behind it. The event is free and open to all. More details from the Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation, which is hosting the talk, here.

Registration has now opened for the Narcissism and Melancholia conference at Warwick University on 11th and 12th March 2015. Speakers include prominent analytical writers such as Elizabeth Lunbeck, Ranjana Khanna, Stephen Frosh, Michael Rustin, John Fletcher, and John Forrester. Full details of the event, including a draft programme and details of how to register are available here. The event is hosted by Psychoanalysis Across the Disciplines, a research network designed to bring together researchers and practitioners at Warwick and elsewhere whose work draws on any aspect of psychoanalysis.

Après-Coup, the New York-based psychoanalytic association, continues its series introducing Lacan through the three registers with seminars each month until early June. The seminars are free and open to the public. Full details here.

Finally, as trailed previously on this site, a major conference took place in Paris in November organised by the École de la Cause freudienne under the title Être mère, Being a Mother. 3,100 people attended the two-day conference looking at fantasies of maternity in psychoanalysis. The event received a substantial amount of coverage in the French press (extracts here) and the congress’s site – http://www.etremere.fr/ – contains many of the preparatory texts and resources compiled ahead of the event.

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