Announced by Polity last month was a publication date for Lacan’s twenty-third Seminar, The Sinthome, due out in September under the editorship of Jacques-Alain Miller. This is the late Seminar in which Lacan conducted his prolonged discussion on the work of Joyce through the frame of a new theory of the symptom, to which he gave the old French spelling, sinthome. The blurb and chapter headings are now on Polity’s site, but in the meantime the French original is available here or an English translation from the unedited transcripts can be found here.

The Centre for Psychoanalysis at Middlesex University is offering an MSc by Research giving the opportunity to pursue independent research in an area of personal interest under supervision of one of the members of the Centre. The aim is to produce a dissertation of 25,000 words. The project can be undertaken either full-time (1 year) or part-time (2 years) starting in October 2016. The research interests of the Centre members can be found on its site and those interested can contact one of the members directly. Details of the Centre’s other activities can be found on its Facebook page.

Among them, the Centre has also put out a call for papers for its annual postgraduate conference ‘Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society’ for students working with psychoanalysis within any discipline. Now in is in its eighth year the conference will take place in London on Saturday 18th June. Submissions of abstracts are welcomed by 28th May. More info and booking details can be found here.

Gérard Miller’s documentary Rendez-vous chez Lacan, broadcast on French TV in 2011 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Lacan’s death, is now available on YouTube with English subtitles.

Backdoor Broadcasting continues its great work in making available recordings of recent Lacanian talks in London. Three recent seminars organised by the MA in Psychoanalysis at Kingston University and the London Graduate School.
are among them. Bruno de Halleux’s talk on ‘Sexuality Today’, Vicente Palomera’s ‘The Real and the Body’, and Marie-Hélène Brousse’s ‘The Symbolic and the Body’ were all part of its series on the theme ‘The Speaking Body is Today’s Unconscious’, which continues into March.

Interesting contributions continue to emerge on the NLS Messenger in preparation for the School’s 2016 Congress on the theme ‘Discreet Signs in Ordinary Psychosis’. Thomas Svolos’ contribution last month – ‘Ordinary Psychosis and Addiciton in the Postmodern Era’ – is one such notable example. Svolos tries to separate ordinary psychosis from addiction with reference to Lacan’s formulas of sexuation as developed around Seminars XIX and XX, with the hypothesis that “if ordinary psychosis is an articulation of the subjective position, addiction is the staging of a subject’s relation with the object a.” Read the full piece here.

A call for papers was announced last month for the conference ‘Islamic Psychoanalysis/Psychoanalytic Islam’ scheduled to take place in Manchester in June 2017. The formation of cartels on the topic is also being invited so that proposals for papers at the conference can be drawn up and work from the cartels can be presented at the conference.

The Viennese Psychoanalytic Seminar (VPS), promoted by the New Lacanian Field in Vienna and the Institute of the Freudian Field in Paris, is organising two upcoming events on 1st and 2nd April. The first day will involve a screening of À Ciel Ouvert, followed by discussion with Guy Poblome, therapeutic director of one of the units of Le Courtil featured in the film. The second day will be dedicated to a study of the place of psychoanalysis in clinical institutions. Poblome will speak on ‘A Practice enlightened by Psychoanalysis’ and Gil Caroz on ‘A Usage of Language as an Institution’ in the morning, while Andreas Steininger and Norbert Leber will present clinical vignettes followed by discussion in the afternoon. The event will be presented in French, English and German and more information is on the group’s site at lacanfeld.at/.

The Lacanian Forum of London has updated its site with details of its public events and programme of study for 2016. Among the public events it will be hosting is Radu Turcanu’s ‘Phobia as a Turning Point in Clinical Practice’ on 2nd April. The Library section of its site is starting to make available English translations of papers by prominent Lacanian analysts like Colette Soler. The Forum will be translating more of her recent lectures and they will appear on the site over the coming months.

As previously reported, a reminder that the Freud Museum, London will be holding its conference on Psychosis and Psychoanalysis on 20th March, and tickets are still available. Speakers from a Lacanian orientation include Jay Watts, Stijn Vanheule, and Christos Tombras.

In New York, Marie-Hélène Brousse will be giving a special guest lecture for Lacanian Compass in NYC on 18th March entitled ‘Anything Goes: The Imperatives of Jouissance in a Society of Permissiveness’. The event is free and open to all. More details here: lacaniancompass.com/.

Meanwhile, Jameison Webster will be speaking at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York on 11th March in a talk entitled ‘Reading Lacan’s ‘Variations on the Standard Treatment’. Full details and a link to sign up is available on the group’s Facebook page.

The Philadelphia Lacan Study Group has upcoming seminars in March and April as part of their series ‘Jacques Lacan: Ordinary and Extraordinary Psychosis’ and ‘Lacan Reads Freud’s Cases’. A reading list and further details are at LacanGroup.org.

The Los Angeles Review of Books has a great interview with Patricia Gherovici in which she discusses her forthcoming Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change: Lacanian Approaches to Sexual and Social Difference, due to be published by Routledge later this year. Gherovici eloquently argues the case for the importance of her research area for psychoanalysis: “The trans experience reawakens psychoanalysis; it cannot fall asleep on the couch, theoretically. It reminds us of these issues – the assumption of sexual position, sexuality, and that there is always some psychic work, a process of inscription, necessary to assume the body. Sometimes it is literal writing, and sometimes it is a process that requires a creative act, and a recognition in the world.” Gherovici’s previous work on gender, sexuation and trans issues, 2010’s Please Select Your Gender, is highly recommended as its predecessor.

Penny Georgiou will be the guest of The Cyprus Society of the School of the Freudian Letter on 19th March to present her seminar entitled ‘Conjectures on Navigating Life: Psychoanalysis from the Fetish (point) to the Sinthome (field)’. More details are available on the group’s Facebook event.

Bogdan Wolf last month published the second volume of his Lacanian Coordinates series, More Lacanian Coordinates: On Love, the Psychoanalytic Clinic, and the Ends of Analysis. It includes chapters exploring Lacan’s ideas on sexuation; ethics via the experience of Sophocles’ Antigone; obsessional neurosis; psychosis; knowledge; and the ends of analysis.

Released in France last month was Dossia Avdelidi’s La Psychose Ordinaire, looking at the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father in Lacan’s late teaching. The author’s argument centres around the change in the status of the Other, from the Other of the Law to the barred other where the Law is put in question. It is available now from the publishers, PUR (in French).

Finally, French speakers may also be aware of psychoanalyst Catherine Millot’s latest book La Vie avec Lacan [Life with Lacan], an account of her analysis – and “love affair” with Lacan – from 1972 to 1981. The book was released in France last month and was reviewed by Lacan biographer Elisabeth Roudinesco in Le Monde.

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