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New Publications
A Psychoanalysis of Act and Action by Diego Enrique Londoño-Paredes has just been published by Routledge, a study of the philosophy of action using Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. As well as examining the various forms in which Lacan describes the act and action – ‘the act’, transgressive acts, acting out, and the passage à l’acte – this book reconsiders the interpretative boundaries of action, asking questions of where first-person authority lies, the difference between knowledge and belief, and where truth can be found between demand and desire. Londoño-Paredes uses clinical examples drawn from well-known cases like that of the Rat Man, his own clinical work, and from from real crimes.
Monstrosity and the Psychoanalytic Dimensions of the Uncanny by Rodrigo Gonsalves is also new from Routledge and presents the uncanny and monstrosity as fundamental concepts in addressing experiences of anguish, desire, suffering and alienation. As well as returning to Freud’s famous 1919 paper ‘The Uncanny’, Gonsalves considers the place of monsters in contemporary culture – how we create and embrace them as figures in horror movies, for instance, their philosophical import, and what their presence can tell us about our fears, anxieties and the strangeness of modern sociability.
Understanding Lacan, Understanding Modernism, edited by Thomas Waller and Sinan Richards, is a new collection from Bloomsbury exploring the influence of modernist art and literature on Lacan’s work and its relevance for psychoanalysis. The development of Lacan’s ideas is closely entwined with the modernist movement. His friendship circle included modernist figures like André Breton and Salvador Dalí, Lacan published in the surrealist magazine Minotaure, and his interest in James Joyce predates his Seminar on Joyce by more than 50 years, back to when Lacan was present at Joyce’s reading of Ulysses at Shakespeare and Co in 1923. The papers in this volume also explore Lacan’s work alongside that of writers T.S. Eliot, Beckett, Kafka, Benjamin, and Henry James. It finishes with a helpful glossary of selected Lacanian terms such as object a, fantasy, the letter, and sexuation.
The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst and The Mind of Complex Numbers and the Subject in Analyses are two short studies by Raul Moncayo published in the Routledge Focus series last month. The former is a meditation on knowing, truth and ignorance that takes inspiration from Mahayana Buddhism in its presentation of clinical material; the latter uses topology and the complex plane to assess the prospects for psychoanalytical intervention in clinical problems.
From the journals, Raffaele De Luca Picione’s article ‘Psychoanalytical praxis based on Jacques Lacan’s knot topology’ appeared in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis last month. It presents Lacan’s late work on the Borromean knot and the sinthome as ways to think about how human subjectivity is organised through the real, imaginary, and symbolic registers.
Contemporary Heretic, a psychoanalytic blog for a politics of the present announced its second issue, devoted to War, in September. It offers papers on the theme by Francine Danniau, Bogdan Wolf, Nicolas Duchenne, and Scott Wilson. Contributions are welcome for analysts and non-analysts to speak about the burning issues in the contemporary world, and can be made on the themes already published and/or on the new focus themes of Asylum, Victim, Waste, Lie.
New Videos and Podcasts
For Lacan in Scotland Timmy Davis, founder of The Psychedelic Experience Clinic, speaks about the subjective impact of psychedelics in clinical and non-clinical contexts, drawing on insight from Lacanian theory. His talk, Psychedelics & Psychoanalysis: Exploring Ego Death Through a Lacanian Lens, is available on YouTube.
Derek Hook presents a new series on Lacan’s theory of paranoia on YouTube. Beginning with Lacan’s doctoral thesis from 1932, he then covers paranoia as a diagnostic category and the case of Lacan’s patient Aimee in parts two and three, with part four on the mechanisms of projection available to channel members. Check out his other member-only video last month, in which he recreates and explains Lacan’s famous optical model of the inverted bouquet from Seminar I.
The Ordinary Unhappiness podcast continues its excellent series of discussions on psychoanalysis and popular culture, welcoming Valerie Steele last month to discuss her forthcoming book, Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis, and the exhibition of the same name that opened in New York in September. Steele and hosts present fashion as a field of overdetermined material commodities and complex articulations of identity and desire in a discussion that encompasses Lacan’s mirror stage, Riviere’s theory of masquerade, and Anzieu’s ‘skin ego.’
Upcoming Events
On 4th October, Lacanian Compass will welcome Miquel Bassols as the guest speaker on ‘Love, Jouissance, and its Misunderstandings’. This online event is free and open to all.
Also on 4th October, Simone Atenea Medina Polo will present for the Rendering Unconscious Podcast on ‘The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: Tiresias, The Patron Saint of Psychoanalysis.’ This is the third event in The Queerness of Psychoanalysis series hosted by RU Centre for Psychoanalysis. The first two events are available here.
On 17th and 18th October, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver will be holding its LaConference 2025 on Feminine Desire. The conference will honour the works of the late Mari Ruti and Anne Dufourmantelle, with keynote speakers Ana Hounie, Carol Owens, and Noëlle McAfee. Attendance is available via Zoom as well as in-person. The full programme and registration is available via the link above.
On 18th October, Psychoanalysis Pakistan will welcome Roger Litten to give an introductory seminar on clinical psychoanalysis in the Lacanian orientation, titled ‘Why Lacan.’ Video of last month’s talk for Psychoanalysis Pakistan by Frank Rollier on Cartels and the School is also now available.
On 19th October, 9:30 PM Tehran Time/18 PM Paris Time, Lacan Tehran will offering a free online seminar, in English with Persian translation, ‘What is Not Writing & From the Unwritable to the Lacanian Clinic.’ This is an opportunity to engage with a published author’s experience of writing in Iran, accompanied by a clinical discussion on the parallels between writing and psychoanalysis, and the conditions that enable speech in the Lacanian clinic. It also raises questions for further thought regarding the desire of the psychoanalyst, the realities of practicing psychoanalysis today, and considerations on how to make entry into analysis possible for the subject. Registration is by email on the flyer via the link above.
On 31st October, the Lacan Circle of Australia will welcome Florencia F.C. Shanahan for a free public lecture, ‘Where Truth No Longer Applies.’ It is only in-person in Melbourne but open to all.
New Resources
Many new translations of rare texts over on Freud2Lacan.com this past month. These include an early 1931 medical report co-authored by Lacan and one Joseph Lévy-Valensi on ‘Morbid Jealousy’ (number 13 on the Lacan page). Translated by Richard G. Klein, it was uncovered by Dany Nobus during research for his forthcoming two-volume biography of Lacan. The paper was never published nor included in any bibliography of Lacan’s work, but it is notable for being a clinical report that predates by just a few months Lacan’s first meeting with his patient Aimée. From 1935 is Richard G. Klein’s translation (side-by-side with Russell Grigg’s and the French original) of Lacan’s review of Henry Ey’s Hallucinations et délires (number 51). And from the later Lacan’s work we have Anthony Chadwick’s translations of Lacan’s 1974 intervention at a Cause freudienne meeting in Milan (Why ‘Sic‘, number 174); his 1975 response to a cartel in Strasbourg working on ‘Flesh and Word/Body and Signifier’ (number 183); and Lacan’s concluding remarks at the Congress on ‘Transmission’ for the École freudienne de Paris in 1978 (number 231). Special thanks finally to Quinn Foercher for his translation of Jean-Michel Vappereau’s entire book, NŒUD (Knot), which is number 272 on the Lacan page.
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