Among newly announced publications, Routledge released The Lacan Tradition, at the end of February. Edited by Lionel Bailly, David Lichtenstein, and Sharmini Bailly it comprises papers from prominent Lacanians such as Dany Nobus and Bernard Burgoyne looking at the evolution of Lacan’s theory and practice over the decades. It is part of Routledge’s series ‘The Lines of Development’, which also features Winnicott, Bion, Anna Freud, and Fairbairn and the object relations school. Published in the US last month, it is due to be released in the UK on 26th March.
The translation of Catherine Millot’s Life with Lacan is due out in March in the UK and April in the US from Polity. Originally published in France in 2016, this is not a work of theory but a personal account of Millot’s (very close) relationship with Lacan from 1972 until his death. Though she was also both his student and analysand, this book recounts her memories of travelling, dining, and holidaying with Lacan in the seventies. Millot is a notable analyst in her own right, having started teaching at the Department of Psychoanalysis at University of Paris VIII in 1975. She is perhaps most well-known in Lacanian circles for books like Horsexe: Essays on Transsexuality where she advances the theory of ‘push-to-woman’ to explain male transexuality as an indicator of psychosis.
A short volume by Arezoo Assemi A Psychoanalytic Reading of Brookner’s Novels in the Light of Lacan was published by Scholars’ Press last month. Assemi looks at the work of contemporary British novelist Anita Brooker, in particular how questions of subjectivity in Brooker’s characters can be read from a Lacanian perspective.
In French, Christian Fieran’s Lecture du sinthome was published by Erès in February. Drawing on Lacan’s late notion of sinthome and its presentation in Seminar XXIII, Fieran asks how the symptom can be approached, not to remove or camouflage it as it relates to a specific disorder, but to treat it as the site of human complexity and put it in motion as a “living invention”.
Looking further ahead to new publications announced last month for later in the year, Astrid Gessert edits the collection Obsessional Neurosis: Lacanian Perspectives which is due to be published by Routledge in June. The volume of essays aims to go “beyond the usual cliches which reduce obsession to the question ‘Am I alive or dead?’” and instead examine it across themes of debt, guilt, action, aggression, and solicitude. It is available to pre-order from the publishers Routledge, or via Amazon.
Also due to arrive in June from Routledge is Freud, Lacan, Zizek and Education: Exploring Unconscious Investments in Policy and Practice, edited by Claudia Lapping. It contends that “All areas of education policy and practice are driven by unconscious investments in ignorance, or idealised images of transformation of the individual, society, and economy”, and goes on to argue, using the three authors in the title, for how these can be revealed as the “other side of education”.
Among other publications, check out Olivier Ouvry’s paper ‘Lacan and Adolescence: The Contemporary Clinic of the “Sexual Non-rapport” and Pornography’ published on Frontiers in Psychology last month. It explores two clinical phenomena – pornography and conspiracy thinking – among adolescent boys and argues that “Watching pornographic material becomes equivalent to a conspiracy theory about the sexual non-rapport; both in fact deny the effect of what puberty introduces as radically new.”
Among upcoming events, the Freud Museum, London has a couple that may be of interest to Lacanians. First up, on 2 April Raul Moncayo will in conversation with Dany Nobus on ‘The Psychoanalytic Organization and the Lacanian School’, discussing Lacan’s innovations regarding psychoanalytic organisations. Next, on 26-26 May the Museum will be holding a major conference on David Lynch and psychoanalysis. The event will surely appeal to Lacanian Lynchians, for whom ‘there is no Other of the Other’ was reaffirmed in last year’s Twin Peaks reboot. Lacanian speakers include Todd McGowan, Carol Owens, Olga Cox Cameron and Jaice Sara Titus.
From April 20 to 22 The Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis will hold the first of its two annual International Lacan Seminars. Dr Luis Izcovich will present on “The differences between men and women in psychoanalysis: The holders of desire and the appellants of sex” and Dr Anita Izcovich will present on “The curse (malediction) on sex”. For more information visit the Centre’s events page.
Professor Ian Parker will be leading a Summer School in Oslo in July entitled ‘Psychoanalysis is not what you think: Subjectivity, history, and psychosocial studies’. Exploring the development and practice of psychoanalysis, “The lectures travel through different versions of psychoanalysis, making an argument for the importance of language, culture and history in its theory and practice.” The course will run from 23rd-27th July. The course outline by day is available here.
Lacan In Scotland will be putting on several events over the coming months with prominent Lacanian scholars and practitioners. On 23rd April Raul Moncayo from the San Francisco Bay Area Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis will discuss his upcoming book Knowing, Not-Knowing, and Jouissance, Levels, Symbols, and Codes of Experience in Freud, Lacan, and Psychoanalysis. This will be followed on 8th May by Aaron Schuster, Head of the Theory Program at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam; and on 29th June by Derek Hook practitioner and Associate Professor at Duquesne University, PA. Check out the full schedule of events here.
A Specialist Course at the University of Gent Doctoral School entitled ‘An Introduction to Lacan’s Seminar on Anxiety (1962) and its Relevance for Today’s Clinic and Culture’ will take place 27th-31st August, organised by Dr Lieven Jonckheere. It will provide a close reading of Lacan’s Xth Seminar and examine the cultural, academic, and clinical importance of anxiety today. Registration details are here.
The London Society of the New Lacanian School will publish a Special Issue of Psychoanalytic Notebooks – ‘Lacanian Politics and the Impasses of Democracy Today’ – at the beginning of March. This will coincide with a Workshop on 10th March, organised as part of the Laboratory for Lacanian Politics, with speakers including Adrian Price, English translator of Lacan’s Seminar X and Seminar XXIII. Price will be presenting material from his current work on Lacan’s Seminar XIX … or Worse (which is due to be published in August by Polity) under the theme ‘Brotherhood and Segregation’. Full details of the Workshop can be found here.
The World Association of Psychoanalysis continues to prepare for its XI Congress, taking place 2nd-6th April in Barcelona, with the theme ‘The Ordinary Psychoses and the Others Under Transference’. The latest collection of preparatory commentaries was published last month as ‘Papers’, available on the Congress site here (multilingual).
Kingston University, London is organising a Shakespeare Series Conference and on Saturday 7th April has scheduled an event on ‘Shakespeare and Lacan’, from 10am-6pm at the Garrick’s Temple, Hampton. Details are scant at present but check the link above for booking details coming soon.
Finally, following up on previous events, Radio Lacan offers audio recordings from the talks at last month’s Clinical Study Days event organised by Lacanian Compass on ‘Delights of the Ego’. Available in English are the contributions from Pierre-Gilles Guéguen, Marie-Hélène Brousse, and Jorge Assef. Also available among recordings on the site is Marie-Hélène Brousse’s talk last month on ‘Democracy without Fathers’ at the NYU, which in turn was organised by Lacanian Compass.
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Thank you so much 🙂