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Beginning with new book releases in the past month, and Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers by Stijn Vanheule has just been published by Other Press. Approaching the topic of psychosis in a manner that is more accessible to the general reader – for whom it is perhaps intended – Vanheule aims to communicate something of the experience both of suffering from, and working with, psychosis. Although a short book, its last chapter, ‘Ideas About How to Tame Psychotic Experiences’, presents models of inventiveness and creativity as restitutive responses to psychosis. Vanhuele cites recent writers’ testimonies of their psychotic experiences – including from Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias and Annie Rogers’ Incandescent Alphabets – as well as looking at the more storied examples of Joyce and Schreber discussed by Lacan and Freud.
A Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis: Consciousness Enjoying Uncertainty by John Dall’Aglio was published last month as part of the Palgrave Lacan Series. Delivering a philosophical and scientific basis for Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis, Dall’Aglio examines the work of proponents for neuropsychoanalysis like Mark Solms and Ariane Bazan, alongside Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience, Karl Friston’s free energy principle, Adrian Johnston’s transcendental materialist philosophy, and Darian Leader’s critique of jouissance in Lacanian theory. As a sample, check out the recent seminar Dall’Aglio gave for Lacan in Scotland, and look out for his upcoming talk for the Active Inference Institute on 1st November.
Culture and Politics on the Couch: Lacanian Interventions, by Thomas Svolos, was also released last month in the Palgrave Lacan Series. What kind of perspective can a practicing analyst offer on politics, social and cultural affairs? Svolos looks at such issues using analytic concepts like desire, libido and jouissance in a collection that brings together his work on topics ranging from race, climate change and partisan politics to science fiction and Bruce Springsteen.
A Social Ontology of Psychosis: Genea-logical Treatise on Lacan’s Conception of Psychosis by Diego Enrique Londoño-Paredes is out now from Routledge. Taking the concept of the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father in Lacanian theory as it is applied to psychosis in particular, Londoño-Paredes traces its historical and theoretical development. From set theory to Searle’s social ontology, ancient Mesopotamia to Modernity, and encompassing Claudel’s theatre and the Coen brothers’ films along the way, this is an ambitious and comprehensive book on the operation of the Name-of-the-Father. Londoño-Paredes is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist from the Université Rennes 2, France, a member of the psychoanalytic association Analítica, and Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Universidad Manuela Beltrán.
Psychoanalytic Sociology: A New Theory of the Social Bond by Duane Rousselle has just been published by Bloomsbury. Proposing a new theory of the social bond in which singularity and strangeness have become elevated to the very principle of social order, Rousselle uses Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis with Marxist and anarchist theory, offering a perspective on estrangement within civilisation alongside recent developments in the cultural logic of capitalism. An extract and contents from the book are available via the link above.
Lacan and Psychoanalytic Obsolescence by Jean-Michel Rabaté was published in the past month by Routledge. Subtitled ‘The Importance of Lacan as an Irritant’, the book explores how psychoanalysis can be kept fresh and vital so as to avoid being pigeonholed into narrow corners of life and social discourse. The essays in Rabaté’s collection explore topics such as affect, translation, and fiction.
Lastly among new books, those interested in reading around Lacan to the work of his contemporaries and former students might be interested to know of a new title in French, Vocabulaire de Laplanche, that offers commentaries on Jean Laplanche’s use of analytic terminology. Under the direction of Hélène Tessier, its format is inspired by the magisterial work for which Laplanche is perhaps best known, The Language of Psychoanalysis, co-authored with Jean Pontalis.
Turning to upcoming events, the Colorado Analytic Forum has begun its fall series of School Talks which this year will ask ‘What difference does having a counter-experience as a reference of origin make for an analyst today?’ The next event is on 16th October with Gabriela Zorzutti, followed by Sonia Alberti on 13th November, and finally Colette Soler on 7th December. All events are open, free and hybrid.
The London Society of the New Lacanian School will open its programme of events for 2024-2025 on 19th October with a Cartel Study Day entirely dedicated to Jacques-Alain Miller’s Analysis Laid Bare (published in English translation last year from its French title L’os d’une cure). Participation is available in-person or via Zoom. Neus Carbonell – current NLS Cartel Delegate, member of the Escuela Lacaniana de Psicoanálisis (ELP, Spain), the NLS, and the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) – will be guest participant.
The Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation will host two seminars with Fabian Fajnwaks on Fri 18th and Sat 19th October, the first on Foucault’s Error on Pleasure and the second titled Unloving: A Version of the Inexistence of the Sexual Relation? Registration for both is available at a discount and the events will be in-person in Dublin.
Lacanian Compass will be hosting two events in New York in October with Marie-Hélène Brousse, author of The Feminine: A Mode of Jouissance, which was published by the World Association of Psychoanalysis in 2022. On Fri 25th October she will give a presentation of her book, which will be followed on Sat 26th Oct by a lecture, case presentations, and discussion under the title ‘There is no Sexual Rapport’. Register here (in-person only).
Afro-Pessimism and Psychoanalysis will be the subject of Prof. Derek Hook’s talk for the Guild of Psychotherapists on Sat 26th October, in discussion with psychoanalyst Maxine Dennis, as part of the Decolonising Psychoanalysis series organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The talk looks at the surprising and radical ways that the emerging theory of Afro-pessimism engages with psychoanalytic thought, and how these ideas can be applied to the clinical situation. Registrants to the seminar will have access to the recording for a month after the event.
On Thurs 7th Nov Dr Adam Schneider will present a seminar on ‘Psychological Freedom and Original Sin: Rahner with Lacan’ for the Catholic Psychotherapy Association. Schneider will draw on Lacan’s ideas regarding the ethics of speech and unconscious desire from Lacan’s Seminar VII on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis and his Discourse to Catholics. Schneider’s webinar will cover material from his forthcoming book on Catholicism and psychoanalysis, which will be published by Routledge.
The London Workshop of the Freudian Field will take as its theme for the academic year 2024-2025 ‘Sexual Life’. Beginning 9th November and running until 7th June, the programme will feature a series of analysts combining theoretical seminars in the morning and illustrations with clinical cases in the afternoon. Read more about the theme, the full programme, and how to register here. The series is available in-person and online via Zoom.
On YouTube, Derek Hook presents a three-part exploration of Lacan’s approach to dream analysis, tackling interpretation, Lacan’s comments in Seminar II on Freud’s famous dream of Irma’s injection which opens the Interpretation of Dreams, and the question of whose wish or desire might a dream fulfil.
Lacan in Scotland’s seminar with Dr Carol Owens on ‘Psychoanalysis with Adolescents: Liminal Creatures in a Changing World’ is now available on YouTube. Recorded on 30th March, Owens discusses her own Lacanian practice and orientation in working with young people in Dublin, and how she views adolescent symptoms – “those pertaining by definition to what we may think of as ‘the liminal'” – as responses to a rapidly changing and increasingly impermanent symbolic order.
Prof. Dr. Samuel McCormick’s Lectures on Lacan series on Substack and YouTube continues, with a new series just begun on Lacan’s 1972 text L’Etourdit. The series on Seminar XX, Encore, is still underway, with the schedule running up to mid-November. An archive of previous series is available here.
Lastly, as the death of Fredric Jameson was announced last month, here is his lecture on Lacan, filmed in 2000 by Michael Chanan, who pens a short article alongside it in memorium.
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