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The “Here and Now” of French Psychoanalysis: Conversations with Contemporary Psychoanalysts by Rachel Boué-Widawsky was published last month by Routledge. In this book, a compilation of conversations with the author, some of the leading figures in contemporary French psychoanalysis offer their perspectives on the field. Analysts interviewed include Julia Kristeva, Clotilde Leguil, Alain Vanier, and Dominique Scarfone. They discuss their clinical approach, the legacy of Freud, the impact of Lacan and the controversies in France around him, and recent contemporary issues such as race and gender politics and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just out from Routledge is The Major Literary Seminars of Jacques Lacan: Literature, Lituraterre, Litterature by Santanu Biswas, with a preface by Jacques-Alain Miller. Biswas divides Lacan’s interest in literature into the three phases denoted in the book’s title. In the first, running from 1955 to 1961, Lacan is interested in meaning, and Biswas includes Lacan’s commentaries on Poe’s The Purloined Letter, Sophocles’ Antigone, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Claudel’s The Coûfontaine Trilogy within this period. The second phase surrounds Lacan’s 1971 seminar on ‘Lituraterre’, and Biswas traces how literature turns to lituraterre. In the third phase, Lacan is more concerned with jouissance than meaning, and for Biswas this begins with Lacan’s Seminar XXIII in 1975-1976 on Joyce who, Lacan claimed, created literature from ‘litter.’
Towards the Limits of Freudian Thinking is a new collection of critical readings of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Edited by Herman Westerink, Jenny Willner, and Philippe Van Haute, its papers spans approaches from historical exegesis to philosophical reflections on Freud’s transformational text, with particular emphasis on the death and life drives. Lacanian perspectives are among the commentaries, which also reflect on the role of Freud’s collaborative project with Ferenczi in speculative bioanalysis, trauma, bonding, and aggression in post-WWI society. This book is part of Leuven University Press’s Figures of the Unconscious series which explore the interface between psychoanalysis and philosophy.
Newly-announced and now available to pre-order is Jean Allouch’s New Remarks on the Passage to the Act: Lacan and the Lacanians, translated by Oscar Zentner and due out in March 2025. It looks at what psychoanalysis might have to say about sudden acts of violence – from the crimes of the Papin sisters that interested a young Lacan, and the murder of Hélène Rytmann by Louis Althusser, to modern day acts of terrorism. Allouch, who died last year, was an internationally renowned psychoanalyst and one of the founders and directors of the review Littoral, as well as of the École Lacanienne de Psychanalyse (Paris). Though little of his work has been translated to English, this translation takes a step in that direction. French speakers may wish to check out his detailed re-examination of the Aimee case, Marguerite, ou l’Aimée de Lacan and his collection of 543 accounts from Lacan’s analysand’s of how Lacan practiced, Les Impromptus de Lacan. Thanks also to Richard G. Klein of Freud2Lacan.com for earlier this month making available Allouch’s paper ‘The Mirror Stage Revisited’, which can be found at number 212 on his Lacan page.
On YouTube, Dr Robert Beshara gives a fascinating talk on the artist Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), covering the different periods of Ye’s career, with particular focus on the period 2016-2021, which is also the focus of Beshara’s book A Psychoanalytic Biography of Ye: The Legacy of Unconditional Love released at the end of last year. In this talk for Lacan in Scotland, held in April, Ye’s much-publicised manic-depressive (or bipolar) subjectivity is discussed, as is his turn to fascism in recent years. Beshara makes interesting observations on the function of the signifier (Ray/Ye) and the comparisons between Ye and Nietzsche.
Video of ICI Berlin’s recent event on ‘Unconscious Sisterhood: Psychoanalysis after #MeToo’ (in English) is now available. Speakers Silvia Lippi and Patrice Maniglier, authors of 2023’s Soeurs, Pour une psychanalyse féministe (Sisters, A Plea for a Feminist Psychoanalysis) introduce a sororal psychoanalysis that aims to overcome the oppositions between the psychic and the social, the intimate and the political, the unconscious and the collective. Unconscious sisterhood is a concept they propose in order to describe a type of social link opposed to the phallic model of brotherhood. One of Lippi’s previous books, The Decision of Desire, received its English translation in 2020. Her and Maniglier have also published several articles in French, advocating psychoanalytically for transgender rights, and are currently preparing a new book on this subject.
The final part of Prof Dr Samuel McCormick’s 12-part series on Lacan’s Seminar XIX … Or Worse is now available via podcast or on YouTube. A new series of close commentaries on Seminar XX has now begun. Join the Lectures on Lacan Substack to follow along and be updated on future series.
Volume 7 of PsychoanalysisLacan, the journal of the Lacan Circle of Australia, is out now and available to download for free on the Lacan Circle’s site. Its theme for this volume is ‘Psychoanalysis in the World’ and its papers consider topics such as diagnosis, the object a, and psychoanalysis and literature.
In London (and online) the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research has unveiled its public seminar series for the new academic year. Beginning 28th September with a roundtable on the ‘Structures of Love’, the public seminars are also paralleled by a Short Course series on Diagnosis.
For those in Dublin, the Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation (a Society of the NLS) will have its opening event on 14th September. Titled ‘Divisions and their Remainders’ it will be a multidisciplinary conversation, free and open to all, with guest speakers Keire Murphy, David O’Connor, and Laura Tarafas. It is in-person only.
The New Lacanian School has also announced some upcoming dates for the diary in 2025. On 18th January, its Question of the School event will be available in both French and English, with attendance online. On 17th-18th May the annual NLS Congress, this year on ‘Painful Loves’, will take place in Paris. English simultaneous translation will be available. And between 12th-13th July the PIPOL 12 conference will take place in Brussels, also with English simultaneous translations, on the theme ‘Family and its Discontents.’
Finally, among the latest updates on Freud2Lacan.com is Lacan’s January 1970 interview with psychiatrist Georges Daumézon at the Henri-Rousselle hospital in Paris, in which Lacan discusses the contribution of psychoanalysis to psychiatric semiology. It is number 117 on the Lacan page. Also newly-available on the homepage is an updated chronology of important events in Freud’s early life (from his birth to the end of 1900), and an updated list of who analysed whom, from Freud onwards, including Lacan’s analysands. Thanks to Richard G. Klein and his team for their continued great work.
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