Jacques-Alain Miller has recently announced the creation of the International Lacanian Institute (LILI) as the international extension of the Lacan Institute based in Paris. The seven-point declaration announcing this news is worth quoting in full, as it contains news of some surprising but welcome developments:

1. The International Lacanian Institute (LILI) has been created. It is to be the worldwide extension of the Lacan Institute of Paris and has the same scientific and humanitarian ends.

2. The Lacan Institute will organise in collaboration with the journal La Règle du Jeu a cycle of lectures : « For an Intellectual Right to Interfere in World Affairs ». This cycle will take place in Paris. It is possible and hoped that this will be replicated in other towns and countries in agreement with the organisers of the Parisian cycle.

3. The publication of the journal of the Freudian Field Ornicar?, will begin again since it was stopped in 2004. No. 52 will appear during the last trimester of 2013.

4. The publication of Cahiers pour l’Analyse will begin again since it was stopped in 1969. No. 11 will appear during the first trimester of 2014. The following personalities will be invited to participate in a form that remains to be defined with each : Alain Grosrichard ; Jean-Claude Milner ; and François Regnault.     

5. The manuscripts of Jacques Lacan will start to appear in 2014 with the publishing house “La Martinière”. Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VI, “Le désir et son interprétation”, text established by Jacques-Alain Miller, will appear with the same publishing house next June. At the end of the year the first course to be published in French by Jacques-Alain Miller “Les Tout-seuls” will come out, text established by Christiane Alberti and Philippe Hellebois      

6. The Université populaire Jacques Lacan will be endowed with a premises in Paris. It will accommodate the activities of the following associations and societies: Freudian Field Foundation, Institute of the Freudian Field, Uforca, International Lacanian Institute, Navarin Editeur, Le Champ freudien éditeur, Lacan Quotidien. Other groups will be welcomed in agreement with the premises’ director.

7. For the event of the publishing of Seminar VI, I will resume my public course of l’Orientation Lacanienne.

The text of this declaration can be found on the blog of the AMP (World Association of Psychoanalysis) here. 

 

In the wake of last year’s case of Syrian Lacanian psychoanalyst Rafa Nashed it seems there are more problems for psychoanalytic practitioners in the Islamic world. A petition has been launched to support the Tunisian Lacanian psychoanalyst Rafa Ben Slama who is the target of a warrant by the Tunisian government. The petition states,

The undersigned, concerned not to interfere in Tunisian political life, but unconditional defenders of the freedom of expression in Tunisia as in all countries, demand the Tunisian authorities to abandon their investigation of psychoanalyst RAJA BEN SLAMA for a crime of opinion. They require that the warrant that was issued against her yesterday, Thursday 21 February, be cancelled rapidly. They will be attentive to the guarantees that protect Human Rights in Tunisia following the “Arab Spring”.

A site has been created to host the petition. You can view and sign it in English here: http://raja2013.com/

 

As mentioned a few months ago, the next Congress of the World Association of Psychoanalysis will take place in Paris in April next year on the theme of The Real in the 21st Century. The Congress now has a blog at http://www.congresamp2014.com, and last month the first edition of its newsletter, ‘What’s Up?’ was also published. The latter can be found here.

 

As it shifts its focus somewhat from last year’s battle over state regulation, the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy in the UK has penned a letter to the Times Higher Education supplement on the use or misuse of randomised control trials (RCTs) in assessing the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic intervention. The letter is on the Alliance’s site here.

 

A new site has launched to provide a forum for psychoanalysts, analysands and other interested parties looking to see “a more open psychoanalysis” – http://www.the-clearing.net. The site has a multi-disciplinary approach, rather than a Lacanian one, but it is worth checking out the few articles recently published and checking back for more later. Another non-Lacanian blog that has recently started and may be of interest is http://awriapt.wordpress.com/ – Are we really improving access to psychological therapies? 

 

Jacques-Alain Miller published an obituary to psychoanalyst Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, who died in January, on Lacan Quotidien (in French here). Pontalis is perhaps best known for his magnificent The Language of Psycho-Analysis, which he co-authored with Jean Laplanche, who died last year. 

 

Publications

A collection of articles from the Cahiers pour l’Analyse has been published under the editorship of Peter Hallward. Entitled Concept and Form: Volumes 1 and 2 (Vol. 1-2), the two-volume edition brings together translations of key texts into English in its first part and interviews and reminiscences with those who played a part in the journal until its demise in 1969 in the second. Some comments in the latter have recently given Jacques-Alain Miller, its chief editor, cause to protest with an open letter to Hallward.

 

The London Society of the New Lacanian School has published the latest edition of Psychoanalytical Notebooks, its Journal. Edition 26 looks at ‘Psychosis Today’. You can order it here: http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/Publications.htm. The opening paper, Eric Laurent’s ‘Ordinary Psychosis’, delivered in 2006 in Buenos Aires, can already be found online here.

 

Penny Georgiou has written a report on the London Society of the New Lacanian School’s Study Day on ‘Facets of Jealousy’ held last December. Her summary of the three speakers’ contributions is on the AMP’s site here.

 

The LS-NLS also held a Knottings Seminar looking ahead to the NLS Congress and discussing its theme of ‘Psychosis in the Geek Era’. A report on the speakers’ interventions in that seminar has been helpfully compiled by Gabriela van den Hoven here.

 

Bogdan Wolf is holding the last two meetings of his ‘Traces of the Unconscious’ seminar in London. The penultimate meeting is on Fri 15th March at 19:30. The concluding seminar in the series will take place on Wednesday 3rd April. The venue is the Artists Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion’s Square, London WC1R 4RL. £5 to cover room hire, everyone is welcome. Here is the synopsis:

Having followed Freud’s path of discovery of, and on the way to, the
unconscious, we have come to the point where Lacan, from Seminar XI,
found it fundamental, to reexamine it. Lacan found the unconscious as
belonging to the order of ‘unrealisable’ and unclosable. In what way
does the unconscious not close, in what way is it ‘Freudian’ or ‘ours’,
as J.-A. Miller punctuated it, and in what way is it topological? These
questions will preoccupy us during the last 2 meetings on the theme.

 

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