More new publications arrived in April or were announced for release in the coming months.

The collection Perversion Now!, edited by Diana Caine and Colin Wright, was published as part of the Palgrave Lacan Series. Written by Lacanian practitioners and theorists, it explores perversion from multiple angles across 24 chapters, drawing on work from the conference of the same name which took place in September 2015. The London book launch, an open event, will be on Saturday 17th June from 6pm at the Horse Hospital, located in the Mews just south of Russell Square tube.

Karnac published Thomas Svolos’ Twenty-First Century Psychoanalysis last month, looking at the future for Lacan and psychoanalysis in light of its historical trajectory and the demands of the contemporary clinic.

Slightly further ahead in year, the August publication of Josephine Sharoni’s Lacan and Fantasy Literature: Portents of Modernity in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Fiction was announced last month, in which Sharoni takes a Lacanian view of British fantasy novels of the late 19th century.

A reminder as well that Lacan’s Seminar V, Formations of the Unconscious, will be published in an English translation by Russell Grigg on 12th May in UK and 12th June in the US. It is now available for pre-order. This is the seminar from 1957-58 which is the basis for many of the major papers in the Écrits, most notably ‘The Signification of the Phallus’ and ‘The Subversion of the Subject’. The seminar begins with a sustained discussion of Freud’s work on wit, moving then to Lacan’s reconceptualisation of the Oedipus complex as three moments, an exposition of the so-called graph of desire, and finishing with his most developed exploration of obsession through a series of clinical examples.

Among the journals, the third edition of The Lacanian Review, Segregations, was published on 27th April, examining how psychoanalysis accounts for the contemporary extension of segregative processes. A preview of the table of contents and how to order or subscribe can be found on the ECF’s site.

The latest edition of the NLS Cartels’ newsletter, 4+one, was sent out in April. In both English and French it documents some of the work produced by members of the cartels either on the theme of the NLS Congress or more generally. Anyone wishing to join an NLS cartel will also find details in the newsletter of who to contact for cartels registered in their country or region, and the NLS site also keeps a catalogue of cartels for each year, grouped by area of work.

Chief among the events taking place last month was the XVth Congress of the NLS in Paris under the title ‘About the Unconscious’. Gathering 750 delegates, speakers included the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who gave an address on the first day; Russell Grigg who introduced his new English translation of Lacan’s Seminar V; and Jacques-Alain Miller who chaired the clinical conversations on the second day. Photos from the Congress are available from the event’s Twitter and a number of preparatory texts and commentaries are on the Congress’ site. Radio Lacan also has interviews following the Congress with secretaries of the NLS Pamela King and Thomas Von Rumst, and Maria Cristina Aguirre of Lacanian Compass – a group newly-associated with the NLS.

Among upcoming events, Lacanian Compass’ May 2017 program spans events in New York, Houston, Miami, and Omaha, including its eleventh Clinical Study Days on ‘The Delights of the Ego’, which will take place 9th-11th February 2018 in New York City. As a result of the recent association of the group within the NLS and the growing attention the American delegation received at the recent Congress, speakers from Europe will include Lilia Mahjoub, President of the NLS, who will open the study days; Pierre-Gilles Gueguen, special delegate of the WAP for the US; and Veronique Voruz, who will give a testimony of the pass.

In New York, Analytica is organising two events coming up in May, the first on ‘Mass Psychology and the Civilization of Discontent’ on 8th, and the second on 19th bringing together a panel of experts on psychoanalysis, anti-psychiatry, and critical legal studies to discuss the clinic of psychosis under the title ‘To Have Done with the Judgement of God: The Analyst as Advocate (A Cure for Psychosis)’. The flyer for the latter is here. Visit Analytica’s events page for more details and a link to register.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber is the most well-known first-person account of madness and has profoundly shaped the way we think about psychosis, from Freud’s time to our own. Schreber Live! is a 2-hour phantasmagorical event featuring art, music, lectures, and performances inspired by the text. The event will take place throughout the entire Jefferson Market Library in New York on 20th May — guests will walk around the building immersed in the words and poetry of Judge Schreber. Plus art, lectures, performances, film, & more. Full details are on the event’s page here.

Among new resources, Richard G. Klein’s wonderful Freud2Lacan.com now hosts two new translations of Lacan’s presentation ‘The Symbol and its Religious Function’ given at the 1954 Congress of Religious Psychology in Paris that year. Andrew Stein and Anthony Chadwick’s respective translations appear side-by-side with the original French.

Thanks also to Dr Klein for drawing attention to the transcript (in French) of Lacan’s intervention at the 1967 Conférence sur la psychanalyse et la formation du psychiatre , a short speech given to psychiatrists at Sainte-Anne barely a month after the famous Proposition of 9th October concerning the pass and the ends of analysis.

In the wider milieu, over the course of April the French psychoanalytic community was called to mobile against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen who has made it through to the second round of the French presidential election, taking place on 7th May. A petition was launched to to register psychoanalysts’ opposition, which to date has received almost 17,000 signatories. A number of events took place in France last month to garner support against her candidacy. The ECF’s Forum held on 28th April in Paris was one such event, and Radio Lacan carries three reports from Damien Guyonnet, Nathalie Georges and Nicolas Landriscini on the meeting. The Forum SCALP – one of the new alliances Jacques-Alain Miller has initiated under the provisional title of Réseau Alpha [Alpha Network] to campaign for such causes – also organised an event with the Cause Freudienne Midi Pyrénées and the Collège Clinique de Toulouse, a report on which from Eduardo Scarone is also on Radio Lacan. That site also has an exclusive interview with Jacques-Alain Miller conducted on 17th April in which he discusses the current political situation and the involvement of the Lacanian community in opposition to the perceived growth of far-right populism.

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