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Beginning with the latest books, Dries Dulsster’s The Reign of Speech: On Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis was released at the end of October. Providing a detailed investigation of psychotherapy and supervision in the Lacanian orientation, Dulsster’s work combines interview data with analysts and ex-analysands alongside readings of Lacan’s texts from the Ecrits and the Seminar. He also offers the first systematic discussion of Lacanian supervision in the book’s second half.

Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue by Carl Waitz and Theresa Tisdale was also released at the end of October, courtesy of Routledge. Presenting this religious tradition as a way to extend psychoanalytic thinking, the pair contrast the “reflective and contemplative posture of Orthodoxy” with the attentive listening of psychoanalysis in its approach to human subjectivity. Different intersections between analysis and the Christian faith are explored, including how the two systems approach their respective trainings, whether to the ministry or to the position of psychoanalyst.

Christian Fierens’ The Jouissance Principle: Kant, Sade and Lacan on the Ethical Functioning of the Unconscious was published in November by Routledge. Examining this Lacanian concept as a “third principle in the functioning of the unconscious”, Fierens offers a cross-reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Lacan’s paper ‘Kant with Sade’ from the Ecrits. Fierens is an analyst and psychiatrist based in Belgium and his previous works include 2019’s The Soul of Narcissism.

Laura Tarsia and Kristina Valendinova edit a new volume, the latest from the CFAR Library, on Treating Autism Today: Lacanian Perspectives. Published in November, an international collection of analysts interrogate the approaches to autism currently dominant in the cognitive framework, contextualising it historically and providing clinical examples to illustrate different possible approaches as alternatives.

Letters in Quarantine: Psychoanalytic Chronicles of a Pandemic is a new collection edited by Florencia F.C. Shanahan, and published on behalf of the New Lacanian School, by Lacanian Press, the publishing house of Lacanian Compass. It is out now. As the title suggests, it brings together commentaries on the pandemic by members and friends of the seven Schools of the World Association of Psychoanalysis who contributed to the Lacanian Review Online between February and December 2020. The anthology collates texts which testify to the contribution of psychoanalysis during the first wave of COVID, on topics ranging from art, politics, film, poetry, science, and the clinic.

Yehuda Israely’s Paradoxes in Lacanian Psychoanalysis will be released in December, discussing the paradoxes inherent in the conditions of human suffering. The subject’s relation to the object, lack, the drives, and conscience are all examined, along with how they manifest through different forms of psychical distress, and the possible ways by which this can be alleviated. A clinical psychologist and analyst, Israely is Director of the Mobius Institute in Tel Aviv. His previous publications include 2020’s Lacanian Treatment: Psychoanalysis for Clinicians.

Looking ahead to the first quarter of next year, in March Alicia Valdés’ Toward a Feminist Lacanian Left: Psychoanalytic Theory and Intersectional Politics will offer a re-reading of Lacan’s work on sexuation in an attempt to problematise political antagonism and the political subject, questioning whether Lacanian psychoanalysis can offer a new ground for political feminism.

Also announced for April next year will be an edited collection titled The Marx Through Lacan Vocabulary: A Compass for Libidinal and Political Economies. Intended as a compendium of Marxist concepts read from a Lacanian perspective, it has been assembled by a team of Latin American Lacano-Marxists to help demonstrate the links between Lacanian and leftist thought, and the political application of psychoanalysis.

Lacan and Other Heresies: Lacanian Psychoanalytic Writings collates the papers of the Freudian School of Melbourne and Belgian analyst Christian Fierens on the school, the cartel, the pass, and interventions into discussions on the nature of the sexual relation and the structures of language. Also among its papers the topics of psychosis, the psychoanalysis of children, and a revisiting of the works of Sabina Spielrein are examined.

Chris Vanderwees and Kristen Hennessey have edited a new volume, Psychoanalysis, Politics, Oppression and Resistance: Lacanian Perspectives. It is now available for pre-order from the publishers Routledge and at Amazon, and is expected to be shipped by spring 2022. More information on the flyer here, which also includes a promotional code for 20% off for pre-orders. This innovative text addresses the lack of literature regarding intersectional approaches to psychoanalysis, underscoring the importance of thinking through race, class, and gender within psychoanalytic theory and practice.

A number of Lacanian contributions are offered in a section of the journal Psychoanalytic Study of the Child on trans kids, edited by Jordan Osserman and Hannah Wallerstein. Four contributors offer short essays, followed by a transcribed and edited version of the dialogue between them, taking these essays as a starting point. The section can be read online here. For those without access to the journal you can download PDFs of the articles here.

Amanda Diserholt’s paper offering a psychoanalytic reading of chronic fatigue was recently published as an original article in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. Titled ‘Fatigue as an unconscious refusal of the demands of late capitalism’ it is available to read via this link. Based on her doctoral research and interviews with chronic fatigue sufferers, Diserholt argues that the condition could represent a way of unconsciously refusing the demand for constant activity, a refusal which emerges at the intersection between the body and the social.

The World Association of Psychoanalysis will hold its Great International Online Conversation from March 31st-April 3rd 2022 under the title ‘Woman does not exist’ (drawn from Lacan’s Seminar XX, Encore, in 1973). Registration for the event is now open, and you can read the arguments on its site, as well as subscribing to the mailing list to stay updated. A call for papers for discussions during the simultaneous clinical sessions has also been announced.

The Guild of Psychotherapists is organising an exciting series of events under the heading ‘Decolonising Psychoanalysis’, which aims to bring clinical responses to academic decolonial work. The series kicks off on Saturday 19 February with a discussion between Robert Beshara and Fakhry Davids on ‘The Psychoanalysis of Racism and the Racism of Psychoanalysis’. Beshara is the author of Decolonial Psychoanalysis, which draws on Lacanian discourse analysis to formulate an approach to everyday Islamophobia.

Recording is now available on demand of the Freud Museum’s recent webinar with author Dr Leon Brenner, in discussion with Dr Henrik Lynggaard, on the themes of his recent book, The Autistic Subject – On the Threshold of Language. Brenner presents a case for the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the understanding and treatment of autism. Rejecting both cognitive and identitarian understandings, Brenner’s model instead takes autism to be a mode of subjectivity and a relation to language, rather than a developmental disorder. The talk is offered on a pay-what-you-can basis and Brenner’s book is now available at a 50% discount when ordered from the publishers Palgrave, using the code HOLIDAY21 at the checkout before 31st December.

On YouTube, Philip Lance interviews Darian Leader about the subject of his recent book, Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction, which was published by Polity earlier this year. Leader’s book, which he discusses in this interview, aims to encourage a debate around the relations between pleasure and pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in analytic theory.

Lastly, save the dates for Oct 14th-16th 2022 for the ‘Lacan: Clinic & Culture’ conference which is planned to take place at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. Another large-scale conference, similar to 2019’s Ecrits conference at Duquesne, more details are due to be announced shortly.

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