Sign up to the Newsletter to receive monthly updates on the latest Lacanian news
New Publications
Traumatic Neurosis Revisited: Drive-jouissance and the Wounds of Life by Leslie Chapman has just been published as part of the Palgrave Lacan Series. Chapman advances a view of trauma distinct from what he calls the “PTSD paradigm”, returning to Freud’s drive theory and the latter’s early model of Nachträglichkeit to offer a reassessment of trauma using Lacanian concepts of the Real, jouissance, and suture. With a particular emphasis on the cybernetic models of repetition that Lacan advanced in Seminar II, Chapman attempts to bridge the Lacanian idea of an inaugural trauma as an effect of the signifier and the more popular notion that trauma is a result of external events.
The Lacanian Teacher by Nick Stock and Nick Peim is another new title in the Palgrave Lacan Series. Given that Freud was fond of the quip that educating was, alongside healing and governing, one of the three “impossible professions” (SE XIX, p.273; SE XXIII, p.248) this book is a welcome response to that challenge, asking important questions about the position of the teacher – their enjoyment, their pedagogical fantasies, and what alternatives there might be to this ‘impossibility.’ The pair look at the question of what it means to be a Lacanian teacher, approaching it in terms of what Lacan said about teaching, his approach in conducting his own Seminars, and what we could take from his theories about the nature of teaching itself.
Lacan in Italy: Clinic, Politics, Aesthetics by Luca Di Gregorio explores the dissemination and development of Lacan’s ideas in Italy, a country where Lacan delivered some of his most important papers (including three ‘Rome Discourses’ over the course of his life) and which was the cultural backdrop to many of his intellectual inspirations. Di Gregorio charts the emergence and rise of Italian Lacanianism alongside the distinctive clinical, political, and sociocultural climate of the country. Works of influential Italian Lacanian figures like Sergio Benvenuto and Massimo Recalcati are discussed. It is available now direct from the publisher, on Amazon UK among other countries, and will be available soon via Amazon US.
Among the journals, Paola Mieli’s paper ‘The frame in analysis: On Lacan’s perspective’ appears in the latest volume of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (Volume 106, 2025 – Issue 2). The ‘frame’ here is “The possibility of sustaining the position of not-knowing.” It is available to buy or access via institutional access via the link above.
For French speakers, a new journal, Laps, announced its launch a few days ago. Published by the European University Network (RUE) its first issue, ‘Singularity’, brings together texts from the Study Day of the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII. The journal will aim to promote the transmission of psychoanalysis and strengthen the exchanges and debates on the current state of psychoanalysis in the university.
Upcoming Events
In date order, on 5th July the London Society of the New Lacanian School will welcome Véronique Voruz (Member of the London Society, NLS, ECF and WAP) to speak about ‘Anxiety and Love.’ The talk is part of the preparatory programme towards the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) Congress in 2026 which will focus on Lacan’s assertion that ‘there is no sexual relation.’ Attendance is in-person in London and online.
5th July will also see Initiative Toronto welcome psychoanalyst Bogdan Wolf (Member of the WAP and NLS) for a special seminar on ‘Unknown Love.’ The event is online, free, and open to all.
Also on 5th July will be the CFAR Annual Conference, this year on ‘Structures of Love: Psychoanalytic Perspectives.’ Can psychoanalysis tell us anything new about love? Analytic work shows that we can be in love without knowing it, and there is even a special kind of love that is fostered by the psychoanalytic relation itself, that Freud called transference love. This conference will explore psychoanalytic conceptions of love both within and beyond the clinic, moving from how love operates in relationships to the question of divine love. Attendance is in-person or online.
On 14th July the Freud Museum London will host Darian Leader for a talk titled ‘Why does art matter to psychoanalysis?’ Freud, Klein and Lacan all turned to art at moments in their work to help them elaborate clinical questions. What can art teach psychoanalysis, and what projects might they share? This talk will explore these questions, and the resonances between psychoanalysis and art. Tickets are available for in-person and online attendance.
On 17th and 24th July Jed Wilson will be giving a pair of talks in partnership with the International Institute of Psychoanalysis (IIP), as part of its Thursday Ateliers series. Entitled ‘Spaces, Times, and Dynamic Forces’, the talks will explore the intersection of psychoanalysis, topology, and dynamical systems theory, building on Lacan’s later work and expanding the concept of the Real as a topological space. Registrations are being handled via WhatsApp (+55 35 9730-5281).
Beginning 26th July, the Lacan Circle of Australia is offering a 10-week course on ‘Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XII: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis’, presented by Russell Grigg. Attendance is offered in-person (Melbourne) or on Zoom and recordings will be available. Grigg will be the English translator for this Seminar, which was published in French in February, and which will be available in English from Polity in 2027.
Looking further ahead, the Freud-Lacan Institute has announced its Research Symposium for 4th October 2025, at the Museum of Literature Ireland, under the title, ‘Chronic Depression and Trauma in Childhood: the role of long term psychotherapy – evidence and efficacy.’ More details and pre-reads on the FLI site.
Coming up next year, the Pakistan Psychoanalytic Society has announced its ‘Rally of Cartels’ event for mid-2026. This event will offer those working in cartels within Pakistan the opportunity to present their work. It will be hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Aga Khan University.
New Recordings
Prof Derek Hook was Lacan In Scotland’s guest recently for his talk on ‘Lacan on Time’, which is now available on YouTube. Hook discusses some of Lacan’s ideas on time – including scansion as an appeal to the future, how there are some truths which are only true because they are anticipated, and why the return of the repressed comes not from the past but from the future. He gives a good explication of how Lacan presents these ideas in Seminar I (pp.158-159) and how Lacan uses the work of the cyberneticists of his time like Norbert Wiener to explain Freud’s idea of Nachträglichkeit (afterwardness) crucial to understanding trauma as well as repression.
Derek Hook has also discussed the Lacanian designation of ‘ordinary psychosis’ as part of a new series on his YouTube channel. He provides a reading of the idea using Miller’s 2008 paper, ‘Ordinary Psychosis Revisited’, looking at how this idea compares to the differential diagnosis as it is understood outside the Lacanian clinic, and the ways that ordinary psychosis may manifest in discreet, quiet ways.
Dr Kevin Murphy’s recent talk on ‘The Asexual Subject’ for Lacan In Scotland is now available on YouTube. Noting that there is nothing in Freud or Lacan’s work about asexuality as a sexual orientation as such, Murphy turns to Freud’s 1925 paper on ‘Negation’ for the aetiology of the asexual position, before going on to propose – referencing Lacan’s understanding of the Oedipal situation – that asexuality describes the rejection of the position of the ‘imaginary phallus’ and by extension the annulment of the substitution of the ‘symbolic phallus.’
Lacan Web TV uploaded a recording of Jacques-Alain Miller’s 2012 presentation, ‘Jacques Lacan: the knot, last love’, with English subtitles, last month. Miller talks about Lacan as a person and his style of teaching, before addressing his interest in topology and how this topology “is present in his very sentences themselves.” This latest video is part of a series of Miller’s presentations that LWTV has uploaded, with recordings going back to the late 1980s.
Meanwhile, on NLS-TV (the channel of the New Lacanian School), a couple of videos from May’s NLS Congress on ‘Painful Loves’ have been uploaded: the opening address by NLS President Patricia Bosquin-Caroz and the presentation of the theme of the next World Association of Psychoanalysis Congress in 2026, ‘There is no sexual relation’, by Ruzanna Hakobyan.
Psychoanalysis Pakistan has published recordings of two lectures by Frank Rollier from its conference earlier this year. They explore Psychoanalysis Versus Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Non-Desire to Heal.
New Resources
Latest updates on Richard G. Klein’s excellent Freud2Lacan.com over the past month add more new translations of rare material from Lacan and Freud’s work. On the homepage, the bilingual version of the Complete Freud-Fliess Correspondence – which is not available in either the Standard Edition nor the new Revised Standard Edition – has been further updated, with parts V and VI now added, encompassing Letters 53-94. Some smaller translations of Lacan’s are also newly available, including on the Lacan page (number 156) a 1972 commentary on P.Delaunay’s talk ‘The specular moment in the cure, a moment of rupture’ which the latter presented at a Congress of the École freudienne de Paris on ‘Psychoanalytical technique; and (number 155) Lacan’s remarks on P. Lemoine’s paper on the desire of the doctor (À propos du désir du médecin) from May 1971.
Got news? Get in touch.
Sign up to the Newsletter to receive monthly updates on the latest Lacanian news
