Published last month by Karnac Books, as part of the CFAR Library, was Luis Izcovich’s The Marks of a Psychoanalysis. Izcovich’s book looks at the effects of analysis, what it changes in someone’s life, and at what point we can say that a subject has had an analysis. “Does a mark exist that establishes the analytic experience as something completely new”, he asks, “that is, an experience that leaves a trace that is not accessible to someone who has not had an analysis?” Izcovich is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and founding member of the School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field. In 2015 he also established the publishing house Éditions Stilus which aims to disseminate works of psychoanalysis in France.

Karnac also published last month Yannis Grammatopoulos’ Above the Ground and Beneath the Clouds: Schizophrenia in Lacanian Psychoanalysis, on the history, conceptualisation, and treatment of schizophrenia in the Lacanian orientation. In its focus on the status of the schizophrenic body and language, it explores the case of the late 19th century Greek writer Georgios Vizyenos, who invented an extraordinary way to anchor the body before his admission to a psychiatric institution in 1896.

Patricia Gherovici’s latest book, Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference, was also published last month, by Routledge. The book draws on the author’s clinical work with gender-variant patients and argues for a depathologizing of the transgender experience, while offering an original analysis of sexual difference. For a sample of Gherovici’s approach to this topic, check out this video of her recent lecture, ‘Psychoanalysis needs a sex change’, from 2016.

Published in French last month was Armand Ohanoglu’s account of his analysis with Lacan, Ma dernière séance chez Lacan. Despite its title, the book recounts the more than five years Ohanoglu spent in analysis with Lacan, beginning with the moment he picked up the phone to make an appointment. As a sample, here is a short translation of Ohanoglu’s wonderful account of that call:

– Yes
– Armand: I’d like to speak to Dr. Lacan
– Lacan: Yes
– Armand: I’d like to come and see you. In short, to speak to you.
– Lacan: Speak to me about what?
– Armand: Well, I’ve done a bit of analysis and I want to continue with you.
– Lacan: With whom?
– Armand: Bah, with you!
– Lacan: I mean with whom were you in analysis?
– Armand: Madame Céline Blanchard
– Lacan: Hmmm! Don’t know her. Hang on [I hear a long sigh] … Come over tomorrow at 6:15
– Armand: But, Monsieur, I work until exactly… [he cuts me off].
– Lacan: Exactly! Come over tomorrow at 6:15.
With a very firm tone he hangs up.

Newly-announced as forthcoming later in the year from the Palgrave Lacan Series is the volume Lacan and the Nonhuman, edited by Gautam Basu Thakur and Jonathan Michael Dickstein, due for publication in October. The book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest on the topic of the nonhuman.

Also announced last month for release in October by Routledge was Art, Death and Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Efrat Biberman and Shirley Sharon-Zisser. The book looks specifically at the death drive and repetition through the works of artists Gerhard Richter, Jeff Wall, and contemporary Israeli artists Deganit Berest and Yitzhak Livneh, as well as through the writings of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

Among new events, Lacan’s English, a one-day conference organised by the Paris-based Association de psychanalyse Encore, has been announced for 23rd September in London. It will look at the encounter between Lacan and the English language, between English speakers and lacanian theory, and between languages and the unconscious. The conference will be in English and French with simultaneous translation. A flyer with full details of the programme of speakers is here.

The London Society of the New Lacanian School will be launching the Laboratory of Lacanian Politics in the UK on Saturday 8th July. Guest speaker will be Gil Caroz, former president of the Euro Federation of Psychoanalysis. Full details and a link to register are on the LS-NLS site here.

From the US, Lacanian Compass will be hosting a video seminar on 9th July with Thomas Svolos discussing his latest book Twenty-First Century Psychoanalysis. Svolos will be interviewed by Liliana Kruszel. The seminar will be broadcast online through Webex. Details of how to register and get a login are available here.

In Toronto this month, the Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workgroups will be holding its fifteenth annual conference, ‘On Fantasy’, from 14th-16th July. It will showcase the product of the APW-affiliated reading groups’ study of Lacan’s fourteenth seminar, ‘The Logic of Fantasy’, from 1966-1967. Lacan’s translator Russell Grigg will be the guest speaker.

Coming up later in the year, on 1st October the Freud Museum, London will host an intensive day course on Lacan and Kafka: Knowledge, Enjoyment and the Big Other with course tutor Lorenzo Chiesa. Through a comparative reading of Lacan’s Seminars and Kafka’s The Castle and The Burrow, the course will introduce a number of pivotal psychoanalytic notions such as the object a, the big Other, the fantasy of absolute knowledge, and surplus-enjoyment.

A recording of the recent ICLO-NLS seminar on ‘Anxiety in Human Life – A Lacanian Reading’ with Alan Rowan is now available on Radio Lacan. The site has many other recent recordings from WAP and NLS events for non-English speakers, including Jacques-Alain Miller’s address ‘Praise to the Heretics’ at the SLP Congress in Turin in May (in French and Spanish), and all eight sessions of Pierre Naveau’s course at the ECF on ‘Unconscious and the Drive – The Resonances of the Word’ (in French).

As previously noted, CFAR’s Annual Conference, which this year is titled ‘Why can’t we sleep? Psychoanalysis and insomnia’ will take place Saturday 8th July in London, with speakers including Chloe Aridjis, Vincent Dachy, Marie Darrieussecq, Darian Leader and Anne Worthington. Further details and how to book are on CFAR’s site.

The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis will be resuming its series of clinical workshops this coming October, beginning with Philip Hill’s three-part mini-series ‘How useful are Freud and Lacan’s ideas in the clinic?’. The workshops will run 7th October, 21st October, and 4th November in London.

Bogdan Wolf of the NLS will be concluding his ten-part seminar series ‘Between Anxiety and Love’, on 5th July in London. The final session will address ‘Anxiety and the Binary Clinic’. Full details and a link to book here.

A reminder also that the Freud Museum, London will be welcoming Lorenzo Chiesa on 4th July for a discussion of his recent book The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan. Full details and a link to register are on the Museum’s site.

Finally, French speakers may enjoy videos of Jacques B. Siboni’s latest workshop on the topological clinic, exploring topological considerations of the object a. Siboni looks at five different knottings which conditions the structure of paranoia, fantasy, neurosis, schizophrenia, and the sinthome. Videos from all the previous workshops are available on the Lutecium site.

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