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Beginning with the latest and forthcoming publications, Ian Parker’s Psychoanalysis, Clinic and Context: Subjectivity, History and Autobiography was released in April. Based on his experiences as an analyst and academic, Parker recounts the historical development of psychoanalytic culture and its clinical practice in different parts of the world. The political disputes within the analytic community, psychoanalysis in Japan, and approaches to trauma are among the areas considered. (A 20% discount and free global shipping is available when ordered from the publishers Routledge. See the link and details at the top of this page).

Tomasz Sawczuk’s On the Road to Lost Fathers: Jack Kerouac in a Lacanian Perspective will be released in early May. It is the first book to explore the correspondences between Lacan’s work and that of the American writer. Kerouac became enamoured with psychoanalysis in the mid-1950s, and Sawczuk draws parallels between the Beat author’s style and Lacan’s musings on free association. The book also explores the status of the father through Kerouac’s work, still a much-discussed theme in the Lacanian field. 

Also newly-announced as forthcoming later in the year is Zoe Charalambous’s Writing Fantasy and the Identity of the Writer: A Psychosocial Writer’s Workbook.  Using creative writing exercises alongside Lacanian analytic theory to shift writer identity, Charalambous provides guidelines, exercises and case studies to trace the writing of fantasy. It is due for release by Palgrave in August.

From the journals, the latest edition of The Lacanian Review, titled ‘Get Real’, has just been released. Containing a new translation by Philip Dravers of Lacan’s late lecture ‘The Third’, it also features three new translations of Miller’s work, and Marie-Hélène Brousse’s commentary on the real in relation to quantum physics. Free shipping is available for subscriptions received by 15th May. 

The latest issue of The Candidate Journal – a peer-reviewed online publication dedicated to exploring psychoanalysis across generations, institutes, and theories –  takes ‘Screens’ as its theme and contains a range of papers exploring the topic from the perspective of politics, the digital environment, aesthetics, and subjectivity. Articles by Bob Samuels, Alison Bancroft, and Patrick Scanlon feature. Past editions of the journal going back to 2006 are also available here.

The May edition of the newsletter of the NLS cartels, 4+1, is now available as a Special Issue ahead of the NLS Congress in Tel Aviv next month. It features several short commentaries on the theme of urgency, including Patricia Tassara’s ‘The Pass: Urgency and sinthome’, Julia Evans’ ‘Why is trauma urgent?’, and Jeff Erbe’s cartel testimony ‘From Lapsus to Linking’.

Among papers, the latest edition of the journal American Imago (Vol 76, Number 1, Spring 2019) contains Joanna Kellond’s paper ‘Modernity, Alienation, and the Mirror in the Work of Lacan and Winnicott’. The article sits behind a paywall but anyone with institutional access via Shibboleth or Campus Proxy.

Several new and upcoming events will be of interest to Lacanians. Beginning in London, the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR) has announced details of its Summer Term public seminar programme beginning in May. The schedule will feature a Round Table on sulking, self-pity and spite (18th May); a talk on Francis Bacon by Dany Nobus (8th June); and the Valerie Love Memorial Lecture on madness and depictions of madness by Alexandra Langley and Darian Leader (29th June). Details of CFAR’s Summer Conference on Desire and Jouissance (13th July) have also been announced and can be found here.

Amanda Diserholt will be giving a talk in Edinburgh on 21st May for Lacan in Scotland on ‘Fatigue as Resistance to the Ideologies of Late Capitalism’, exploring fatigue in modern society from a psychoanalytic perspective. The seminar is free and open to all. Full details are available on the event’s Facebook page and tickets can be reserved through Eventbrite.

In New York, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) has announced a one-day conference on Psychosis: Lacan on the Inclination toward Terror, Mania, Depression, and Hallucinatory States for 1st June. Speakers include Lacanian scholars and analysts Stijn Vanheule, Jamieson Webster, Derek Hook, and Genevieve Morel. Abstracts of the contributions and full details can be found via the link above. 

The Freud Museum London has a full schedule for May, with several events like to be of interest to Lacanians. Alenka Zupančič will be discussing ‘What is Sex?’ – also the title of her recent book – on 11th May, arguing that sexuality represents a ‘short circuit’ between ontology and epistemology. The following day, 12th May, a one-day conference will explore comedy in our troubled times. ‘Beyond the Joke: Comedy and Psychoanalysis’ will feature Lacanian speakers Patricia Gherovici, Alfie Bown, Dan Bristow, Isabel Millar, and Zupančič again. Lastly, Lorenzo Chiesa’s one-day intensive course on Lacan and Kafka: Knowledge, Enjoyment, and the Big Other will take place on 19th May, elucidating Lacanian theory through the work of the bohemian novelist. 

In Cyprus, Lacanian psychoanalyst Mark Fisher will be the guest of the Cyprus Society of the School of the Freudian Letter for two seminars on 18th May. The first, Failures and Fashions in Therapies will consider therapeutic approaches – from mesmerism, to psychoanalysis, and CBT – that have initially promised great benefit and become popular only to later disappoint and decline in their popularity and effectiveness. The aim of the session is “to consider the importance and meanings of failure”. The second session,  Where does it hurt? Pain: Its Killing and Alleviation will discuss pain, suffering, alleviation, and its cures. Both seminars will be in conducted in English.

Lastly, the Lacan Circle of Australia has issued a Call for Papers for its two-day international conference on ‘The Real Unconscious’, running 13th-14th July in Melbourne. The keynote speaker will be Alexandre Stevens, vice-president of the NLS and founder of Le Courtil, a psychoanalytic institution in Belgium specialising in the treatment of autistic children. You can read more about their activities and the connection to Lacan’s work on topology here.

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