In recent years a lot of Lacanians have grown weary of the constant conflations of Zizek’s teaching with Lacan’s. As Zizek himself has grown in popularity many, especially in the United States, have been introduced to Lacan through the medium of Zizek’s work and some have found it all too easy to equate Lacan’s work with Zizek’s. Despite the problems with this conflation, it has to be said that the arrival of Slavoj Zizek’s new film, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, should be warmly welcomed. The film, now on selected release, is the follow-up to 2006’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Both are highly recommended. And if you’re a hardcore Lacanian, if nothing else, this new film should remind you how brilliant The Sublime Object of Ideology was. (And probably how much you hated this). Details of where it’s screening are on the film’s Facebook page here. The poster art is reproduced at the top of this page.

Bruce Fink, translator of the Écrits, released the first of a new two-volume anthology of his papers in September. The papers span the course of the last twenty years, many of which have never been published or were only available in relatively obscure journals. The first volume of Against Understanding was released in the UK in late September, but a US audience will have to wait until late October, with the second volume released ahead of the first, strangely.

September also saw the release of a new translation of two short papers by Lacan delivered in the seventies. The Triumph of Religion (preceded by Discourse to Catholics), and On the Names-of-the-Father, both translated by Bruce Fink, are now available in the UK. Those in the US will, again, have to wait until 21st October when On the Names-of-the-Father will also be published.

As previously reported, the NLS Congress in 2014 will be on the working title ‘A great disorder of the Real in the XXIst century’. Following the recent publication in French of Seminar VI, Desire and its Interpretation, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, preparatory work will use this text as a key focus. NLS President Dominique Holvoet has written an ‘argument’ to orientate the work towards the Congress and given the theme a new title: What Cannot Be Said: Desire, Real, Fantasy.

Following on this theme, the latest edition of Psychoanalytical Notebooks, volume 27 on ‘Science and the Real’, was published in September by the London Society of the New Lacanian School. The long-running journal has always featured new articles, translations and papers given at previous NLS and WAP conferences.You can view the contents of this and earlier editions, and order a copy, on the LS-NLS site here.

In Ireland, the Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation will also be putting on a seminar on Saturday 12th October in Dublin dealing with the question of the Real. Guest speaker Veronique Voruz’s talk is titled ‘Disorder in the Real and Inexistence of the Other: What Subjective Effects?’ Here’s the flyer.

The Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation was the first to show an English-language version of Ivan Ruiz’s film Other Voices in September, and a write-up of the event by Joanne Conway was posted on the group’s site here. The film can be seen as a response to Sophie Robert’s documentary Le Mur, a film which criticised the psychoanalytic approach to autism and which led to Le Mur being banned in France as a result of a court case for misrepresentation brought by several of the psychoanalysts featured (more background here).

The UK-based organisation, The SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, launched its new website in September. Also, coming up on the evening of Friday 18th October is the SITE’s Open Evening for those thinking about undertaking the group’s psychoanalytic training here in the UK. All the information on that event, and others, here.

The following day, on Saturday 19th October, the College of Psychoanalysts UK will be holding its Research Study Day at Birkbeck College, University of London. The CP-UK’s site still only displays the details of the first Study Day, which took place in April this year, but here are the details of the upcoming event, which have been circulated via email:

College of Psychoanalysts UK
Research Study Day
Saturday October 19th 2013, 10am – 4pm
Birkbeck College, Malet Street, Room 538
The question of research has been an abiding one for psychoanalysis. From the outset Freud expressed the view that research was the purpose of the psychoanalytic endeavour, above and beyond its application as a form of therapeutics, seeing it as integral to the training of psychoanalysts. The question is even more pertinent in the current climate of empirically driven therapies, where there is an urgent need for psychoanalysis to position itself clearly and distinctly in this emerging landscape.
CPUK is pleased to announce its second study day addressing these questions, focusing on various forms of research in the field. Following the success of our first study day, this one will follow a similar format, with a number of brief summaries, lasting no more than 20 minutes, of current research interests of various members of the college. After each presentation there will be opportunity for participants to discuss both the specific and broader implications of their work in an informal and collegial atmosphere.
Contributors:
Brid Greally critiques the evidence based model promoted by NICE, using the work of Luce Irigaray and others to reformulate its positivistic foundations as a contemporary instance of the ‘male imaginary’, and exploring its detrimental effect on the development of a more progressive psychoanalytic practice.
Sara Cooper asks whether there a fertile overlap between cognitive work, behavioural work and psychoanalytic work in the treatment of obsessional and phobic patients.
Richard Klein considers Lacan’s hypothesis that ‘we are all mad’ alongside Freud’s contention that psychical construction occupies a delusional form. These ideas are pursued in terms of their implications for entry into analysis through the concept of sinthome, exploring its contrast with current psychiatric nosology.
Dorothy Hamilton examines Meltzer’s thesis proclaiming the significance of beauty, and asks what support for it we can adduce both from our practice and from our cultural inheritance.
Cost: £25 by Oct. 16th, £30 on door. To book, contact Nic Bayley nicholas.bayley@conted.ox.ac.uk
The Research Day will be followed by the AGM of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (Members only) at 4.30pm

The Philadelphia Lacan Study Group will be hosting two Reading Seminars in October and November on ‘Writing and Psychosis: Lacan/Schreber’. The first is on Wednesday October 23rd and the second Wednesday November 20th. Both groups take place at the University of Pennsylvania and are curated by Patricia Gherovici, who wrote the excellent Please Select Your Gender back in 2010. For more details see the group’s website.

Also in the US, a reminder that the Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workgroups of Boston, MA, is staging its eleventh annual conference, this year on the imaginary register, on 11th-13th October. Bruce Fink will be among the guest speakers. Full details and a link to register can be found on this page.

There are still some tickets left for the one-day conference New Approaches to Film and Psychoanalysis, organised by Birkbeck College, University of London, and hosted at the Freud Museum. The event is on 14th October in London. Click here to register for free.

Finally, for French speakers, the text of Jacques-Alain Miller’s intervention at Pipol 6 (the second Congress of the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis) which took place in July, has now been published. The text will appear in the journal Mental, number 31, to be published in early 2014, but is also available right now here: ‘A reflection on Oedipus and its beyond’.

 

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