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Special Appeal – Save the 388
The renowned and long running 388 clinic in Quebec, famed for its offer of psychoanalytic treatment for young adults suffering from psychosis, is in danger of closing. Please consider signing one of the two petitions against the proposed closure. If you are an academic or researcher, sign this petition; if you are a clinician, sign this one. As many will be aware, the 388 (named for its street address in Quebec City) has been operated by the non-profit organisation GIFRIC since 1982. Conceived by psychoanalysts Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, and Lucie Cantin it has gained an international reputation for its success in treating psychosis with a model that is respected around the world. Offering outpatient support for many who have extensive histories of psychiatric treatment and hospitalisation it helps patients towards independent living with community-based care using an approach informed by Lacanian and other analytic modalities. Despite its success in delivering these services at a cost to the government that is among the lowest per capita in the world, and its 40+ year track record of successful treatment, it faces closure due to funding cuts and the claim that it does not align with “accepted” treatment protocols for psychosis. 80 current patients will be at immediate risk of losing their treatment provided by the 388 were it to close later this spring as planned. For more background and discussion of the proposed closure, this CBC radio segment from the Canadian state broadcaster will be informative. A 2008 documentary about the work of the 388 is available to order on the GIFRIC site. The full press briefing about the plan from the Quebec National Assembly is also available.
New Publications
Lacan on Desire: Reading Seminar VI by Bruce Fink has just been published as part of the Palgrave Lacan Series. A companion to Lacan’s 1958-1959 Seminar on Desire and Its Interpretation, of which Fink was the English translator of the published edition, tackles the concerns that Lacan was elaborating at that point: fantasy, dreams, death, the object, and the signifier of the lack in the Other among others. Separate chapters deal more closely with some of the texts Lacan paid particular attention to over several sessions of that Seminar, including the dream of Ella Sharpe’s English patient and Lacan’s reading of Hamlet.
Cindy Zeiher has edited a collection putting the category of stupidity to work as a psychoanalytic question. Stupidity and Psychoanalysis: Lacanian Perspectives on New Subjectivities and Social Forms (Rowman and Littlefield, out now) includes a selection of long essays by philosophers, analysts and theorists to explore the imperative, importance and judgement of stupidity in the psychoanalysis/philosophy nexus. Topics covered include subjectivities, politics, capitalism, stupidity on and off the couch, misogyny, naivety, the status of knowledge, literary figures of stupidity as well as close attention to Lacan’s seminar, ‘Les Non-Dupes Errent’. Contributors are Cindy Zeiher, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Samo Tomšič, Antonio Viselli, Dany Nobus, David Ferraro, Adrian Johnston, Luis Izcovich, Christian Dunker, James Martell.
The Remains of Reason: On Meaning after Lacan, by Dominik Finkelde, was published last month by Northwestern University Press. The focus of this book is the central role of the unconscious in the relationship between mind and world. Its essays span questions of truth, perception, and meaning with reference to the influence of Freud, Kant, Hegel and the contemporary Ljubljana School. The foreword is penned by Eric Santner, author of probably the best book on Schreber, My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity.
Bodies to Wear: Four Lacanian Takes on Trans by Patricia Gherovici is a pamphlet published last month by Everyday Analysis. It reflects on some key concepts that underpin the author’s clinical work as a psychoanalyst with trans-identified analysands. It argues for the rediscovery of four terms that expand Lacan’s central insights and apply to the question of trans today. It is available in print and digital forms.
The latest edition of The Lacanian Review, the journal of the New Lacanian School and the World Association of Psychoanalysis, has just been released. Issue 16 takes the theme of ‘The Gaze’, and the contributing authors explore the status of the image and the gaze as object. It features papers on the uncanny aspect of the gaze, the object and its lack, the stain and the veil, and the gaze in art. Subscriptions to the journal are available via the link above.
The latest issue of 4+1, the NLS Cartels Newsletter, was circulated last month and can be read here (link downloads the PDF). Contributions come from Sophia Berouka, Peggy Papada, Juana Cavaliere Silva, Netta Nashilevich, Tsvetelina Ivanova, and Giorgos Stefanidis.
For French readers, Lacan’s Seminar XII, Problèmes cruciaux pour la psychanalyse [Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis] was published in France by Seuil and Le Champ Freudien last month. The text is established by Jacques-Alain Miller and is the 16th of Lacan’s 27 Seminars to have been ‘officially’ published in French. Miller remarks by way of introduction that this Seminar is “the major turning point”, marking the end of the ‘Return to Freud’ project of the 1950s and early 1960s and the beginning, “without mediation”, of Lacan’s original contributions. The focus of this Seminar is what Lacan calls in it – and in the short Autres Ecrits article that follows it – “the being of the subject”, an attempt to find a place for the subject’s being that does not reduce its status to merely an effect of the signifying structure of language. Lacan turns to topology in this attempt – chiefly the Mobius strip and the cross-cap – and the Seminar is notable for its exciting presentations given by Lacan’s guests at the Seminar. Among these were fellow analysts Serge Leclaire, Octave Mannoni, and Mousatpha Safouan; and those newly-attracted to Lacan’s teaching following his move to the École Normale Supérieure the year before, including Yves Duroux and a young Jacques-Alain Miller. The latter were among a wider group of researchers interested in the connection between psychoanalysis, logic and mathematics. Let’s hope an English translation of this important Seminar is not far behind.
New Recordings
Dr Dan Collins presents on Lacan’s Graph of Desire in Seminar XVI in the latest Lacan in Scotland talk now available on YouTube. Lacan’s presentation on the graph in this Seminar is markedly different from the versions he presents of it in Seminar V and in the ‘Subversion of the Subject’ paper from the Ecrits. Collins looks at what shifts in Lacan’s thinking might account for this and what theoretical advances can be discerned from it.
The New Books in Psychoanalysis podcast released two new episodes in February that will be of interest to Lacanians. The first is an interview with Jamieson Webster discussing her upcoming book On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe, based on her experiences in Covid wards during the pandemic and her observations on becoming a mother. Second is Eugene W. Holland discussing his book published at the end of last year, Perversions of the Market: Sadism, Masochism, and the Culture of Capitalism which uses Lacan alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis model to consider the psychodynamics of market capitalism.
Upcoming Events
Beginning 8th March and continuing till 14th June, Dr. Hilda Fernandez will be leading a clinical seminar series, ‘A Psychoanalysis Begins: From preliminary interviews to the orientation of treatment’, presented by the Lacan Salon and supported by the SFU Institute for the Humanities, These fortnightly Saturday seminars will explore what conditions are necessary to start an analysis, considering that psychoanalysis, a long-term treatment, poses demands on both analyst and analysand. It will theoretically explore various aspects pertaining the beginning of treatment, such as the first contact, the preliminary interviews, the function and location of the analyst, the diagnosis layers, and the orientation of the treatment. The seminars will discuss theoretical concepts through some clinical examples and will allow plenty of time for small groups workshopping ideas. Registration and more details via the link above.
On 15th March The Lacan Circle of Australia will begin its seminar series on Lacan’s Seminar XVI: From an Other to the other, which was published in English translation last year. The series will run over ten Saturdays up to 24th May, in-person in Melbourne, online via Zoom, and recorded. The series will address Lacan’s formulation and development of clinical concepts especially with respect to perversion and anxiety; sublimation; the changing nature of satisfaction under capitalism and the notion of surplus jouissance; the status of science and knowledge in relation to psychoanalysis; the place of discourse, and the signifier and the big Other. It will be co-taught by Ellen Smith, Kate Briggs, David Ferarro, and Serena Smith. Full details and registration via the link above.
Also on 15th March, the New Washington School of Psychiatry and the Lacanian Forum of Washington D.C. will continue its Seminar Series ‘Inside the Lacanian Clinic’ by welcoming Macario Giraldo, Ph.D. to present ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Or Between the Real and Reality.’ The full series of talks, which continues up to the end of May, is also available on their site.
On 16th and 30th March respectively Lacan Toronto welcomes two guest speakers as its programme of teaching seminars for 2025 continues. On 16th March, Calum Neill will present ‘On Destitution’, followed by Sanem Güvenç ‘On Segregation’ on 30th March. Sessions will take place on Zoom and there is no registration or fee to participate. Full details and future events schedule via the link above.
On Sat 22nd March Après-Coup will be hosting a workshop on ‘Lacan, Pearl King, and the IPA: Clinical and Political Implications’ with Nicolas Guérin and Manuel Hernández. The two seminars will look at the clinical and political effects of object a in Lacan’s reading of Pearl King’s case from Seminar XII (see no. 116 on the Lacan page of Freud2Lacan.com for the text of this); and at Pearl King’s role in the schisms of the IPA in parallel with Lacan’s relationship with the Tavistock group in London. The event is available in-person in New York City or online via Zoom.
In June, Jason Childs will be running a seminar series delivered via Zoom offering an ‘Introduction to Lacanian Clinical Practice.’ This four-part workshop will offer clinicians, trainees/candidates, and others with an interest in clinical psychoanalysis a way into Lacanian theory and practice, while also laying a solid foundation for further study. It will present Lacan as a powerful critic who invites us to challenge received ideas about talk therapy and those who seek it. Registration is open now via the link above.
New Resources
Thanks to the ongoing work of the team at Freud2Lacan.com we now have new translations of Lacan’s 1931 paper Structures des psychoses paranoïaques (‘Structures of the paranoiac number 13 on this page) and his 1933 paper Alcoolisme subaigu à pouls normal ou ralenti coexistence du syndrome d’automatisme mental (‘Subacute alcoholism with normal or slowed pulse coexistence of mental automatism syndrome’, number 41.)
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