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The Perfume of Soul from Freud to Lacan: A Critical Reading of Smelling, Breathing and Subjectivity by Berjanet Jazani was released in July by Routledge. A welcome contribution on an original topic, Jazani uses autobiographical, clinical, and cultural examples to question the role of olfaction in subjectivity and sexuality, and examine what consideration it has been given in psychoanalytic theory. Opening with a discussion of the medical and philosophical treatments of smell and breathing, she goes on to question whether there is such a thing as an ‘olfactory drive’, before looking at the link between breathing and life in practices of asphyxiation, choking and strangulation. Jazani is a medical doctor and psychoanalyst based in London and her previous works include Lacanian Psychoanalysis from Clinic to Culture (2020) and Lacan, Mortality, Life and Language (2021).
A new updated edition of Sherry Turkle’s Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud’s French Revolution, the story of the rise of psychoanalytic culture in France after 1968 and the influence of Jacques Lacan, was released in July by Routledge. This edition has an updated preface, so readers unfamiliar with this influential book – which was one of the first to properly situate Lacanian psychoanalysis in the minds of an Anglo-American audience – will find it an entertaining narrative of the dramas surrounding Lacan, his school, and the debates that animated them. It will likely pair well with the forthcoming overview of the current psychoanalytic landscape in France, Rachel Boué-Widawsky’s The “Here and Now” of French Psychoanalysis: Conversations with Contemporary Psychoanalysts, which will be out later in August and contains seventeen interviews with practicing French analysts about their work, their practice, and their involvement with psychoanalytic organisations.
Merve Günday’s Reading Keats’s Poetry: Alternative Subject Positions and Subject-Object Relations was published by Routledge in July. Günday uses a Lacanian framework to present Keats’ work as a reaction against the trauma of modernity on the human subject. The book’s four chapters examine some of the Romantic poet’s most famous work alongside concepts from different periods of Lacan’s teaching: desire in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, psychosis in ‘Isabella’ and ‘Lamia’, and topology in ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn.’
The Concept of the Individual in Psychoanalysis: The Ego, the Self, the Subject, and the Person by Raul Moncayo is also out now from Routledge. As the title suggests, it looks at the origins of the concepts used to describe the individual as the object of study in psychoanalysis. In addition to Freud and Lacan, also referenced are Jung, Kohut, and Winnicott’s handling of this concept, and the different modes by which it is understood in English, French, German and Chinese traditions considered.
On YouTube, Stephanie Swales’ seminar on ‘Empathy in the Age of the ‘Subject-Supposed-to-be Empathic”, which was hosted by Lacan In Scotland in March, is now available. She discusses the place of empathy in the Lacanian clinic and how it could be productively used. Is it possible to make use of empathy in a way that honours the non-rapport of the sexual relation and stems from the position of the analyst in Lacanian clinical practice? The answer, in short, is yes.
Bruce Fink is interviewed on the Hermitix podcast discussing his latest book, Miss-ing: Psychoanalysis 2.0 which was published in May, his work on the English translation of Seminar XVIII (due out later this year), and his book-length commentary on Seminar VI, Desire and its Configuration, which is forthcoming from Palgrave. Stay tuned for more on that.
Drs Eve Watson and Helena Texier discuss the work of the Dublin-based Freud Lacan Institute in the recent Rendering Unconscious podcast, video of which is available on YouTube.
More brilliant resources for Lacan scholars on Freud2Lacan.com thanks to Richard G. Klein and his team. In the past month, newly-uploaded documents include: a translation of the presentation Lacan gave titled ‘Objects and Representations’ at Saint-Anne Hospital in Paris on 21st November 1978, just before starting his Seminar that year on Topology and Time (number 158 on this page); a translation of Lacan’s poem Air d’etre sujet, which he signed as ‘Là-quand’, penned in the spring of 1976 (no. 138); translation of a preface Lacan wrote for the paperback version of the Ecrits (see Préface à l’édition des Écrits en livre de poche under the ‘Autres Ecrits’ section (no. 154); a letter Lacan wrote in October 1980 published in le Courrier de la Cause Freudienne (no. 154, at the bottom of the ‘Autres Ecrits’ section); and a translation of the introduction Lacan wrote to the journal Scilicet (Latin for ‘Of course’, or literally ‘You can know’) which appeared in 1968, and was republished in the Autres Ecrits (found under Introduction de Scilicet au titre de la revue de l’EFP, no. 154 in the ‘Autres Ecrits’ section).
Turning to events, the New Lacanian School has announced the title of the 2025 NLS Congress, ‘Painful Loves.’ It will take place 17th-18th May 2025 in Paris. The presentation of the theme, by Patricia Bosquin-Caroz, is available on YouTube, and the text on the NLS site (click Congress, top right). You can subscribe to the NLS newsletter to keep up to date with more details in the months to come. Among groups and schools of the NLS that are hosting preparatory events, the Lacan Circle of Australia has announced a Study Day on ‘Painful Loves’ for 31st August, in Perth or via Zoom. Keynote speaker Russell Grigg will be joined by Jonathan Redmond, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth and Laurent Shervington to discuss theoretical developments in Lacanian psychoanalysis via two films, The Banshees of Inisherin and Brokeback Mountain.
Robert Beshara will be giving ‘A Psychoanalytic Reading of Ye’ in an online talk for the Freud Museum on 4th September. Beshara will present a reading of Ye’s complex subjectivity between 2016 and 2021, through the lens of Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis. Seminar attendees should also expect a creative interpretation of the project/object known as Kanye West during this same period. Booking is on a pay-what-you-can basis, and a recording will be provided for ticket holders after the event.
The EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis has announced its PIPOL 12 conference to take place 12th and 13th July 2025 in Brussels. The title of next year’s event will be ‘Family and its Discontents.’ More details to follow.
Finally, for Arabic speakers, translation is now available of Duane Rouselle’s Jacques Lacan and American Sociology, which was originally published with Palgrave. This translation is courtesy of a publishing house in Egypt. See the flyer (in Arabic) here.
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