Impromptu bulletin of the ESP development
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Notice of the directorate
Towards the
Congress
The subject of our next AMP Congress was
launched in Buenos Aires in July 2000. From that time on, the debate on
psychoanalytic training has developed in all of our Schools. But our Schools
have also started to produce results from it. The nomination of new members is
examined case by case with regard to this training requirement which is
stronger the less it is formalised (as Jacques Alain Miller put it recently). Admission
by the pass is everywhere suspended at the AMP, at least until Brussels 2002. The
guarantees offered by our Schools are subject to critical examination. This is
a fundamental movement running through the WAP towards this Congress, which
will be reserved to members only. And all of a sudden Jacques-Alain Miller
arouses a wave of enthusiasm, a storm reaching the media, an opening of the
conversation well beyond our members, our Schools, our psychoanalytic
"milieu": to the "enlightened opinion". Psychoanalysis thus
has a chance to make a comeback in worldwide debate. Let us examine what this
is about. Is it about taking opinion as a witness of the right to reply? Indeed.
But it is essentially about awarding full value to our training requirements
for a psychoanalyst when a text questions this training at the ECF. Furthermore,
it is about "the Freudian education of the French people". Let
psychoanalysts’ voice be heard once again in the discontents of civilisation. The
stakes are high, the voice announcing it is at times soft, thundering,
demanding, or ironic, yet always touchingly felt as truth. It is our duty to
stand at its side. Alexandre Stevens Member of the WAP Council Brussels,
September 21, 2001
Information on the letters of Jacques-Alain Miller and their
consequences on the Internet http://agencelacan.online.fr/ (french) or http://www.wapol.org/009.htm (Français - Español - Italiano - English - Portugues)
Announcement of the
President of the ESP-development
The Nederlandstalige Lijst-EEP-D (Dutch speaking list ESP-d) Was founded nearly
a year ago by Marie-Hélène Brousse, president of the ESP-development at that
time.
The subscribers on the list have been accepted
as correspondents of the School. This to answer the rupture of the Ghent Gezelschap
with the ESP, opening a commonplace for debate for al the Dutch-speaking people
who whish to include their work with us in the School.
The Bureau of the List has organized a series
of activities since then, situating the list in a movement towards the School. Now
it is time to take the next step : the creation of a Dutch speaking Circle of
the ESP for the Flanders and the Netherlands.
The Directorate of the ESP development and François
Leguil, assessor for the Nederlandse Lijst, will organize conversations with
the Dutch speaking colleagues within the following weeks and months to examine
their wishes at the threshold of this new stage in Belgian and Dutch
psychoanalysis.
François Leguil, assessor of the N.L., member
of the Council of the ESP
Alexandre Stevens, President of the
ESP-Development
Brussels, September 22nd 2001
The Itinerant seminar of
the ESP
A period in the history of our work community ended in Buenos Aires 2000. It was a major scansion after twenty years of institutional initiatives, clinical innovations and meticulous transmission. Jacques-Alain Miller’s address demonstrated that even outside the Freudian Field, the "Lacanian orientation" is referred to, in order to ensure the future of psychoanalysis in a world tending to dissolve it in the effects of its own success. Given this state of affairs, it was obvious that we have to establish the present situation of psychoanalysis at the beginning of this twenty-first century and discuss the training as essential for the psychoanalyst: Brussels 2002 will be the site of this assessment. The ESP is a School unlike others : federative, it brings together the Escuela Lacaniana del Campo Freudiano in Spain, the Scuola Lacaniana di Psicoanalisi in formation in Italy, and the ESP-Development in the rest of Europe. At the end of June 2001 the new President proposed to the ESP Council the creation of an "Itinerant Seminar of the ESP" which will meet for three work sessions: the first one in Paris, the second at Madrid, the third in Rome. This will be a closed seminar. The participants will be the registered members of the ESP as well as a number of invited colleagues. Its ambition is to expound at each of these places elements of reflection on the subject of psychoanalytic training. The subject for Paris is : Training trajectories. The starting point will be training as it presently occurs in fact at the ESP: training as we experienced it, training as we have dispensed it. At Madrid a thesis will be evaluated: "Training, an attempt for de-identification", a title inspired by an intervention of an AE of the School One, Dominique Laurent. The question to be finally asked in Rome will be:” Endless training?" Preparatory documents and after-echoes of this Seminar will be found in the new electronic publication restricted to ESP members: HERMES. Marie-Helene Brousse and Jean-Pierre Klotz
The Freudian field in Ukraine
Return
from Ukraine, by Philippe De Georges
For the third time this year, the Freudian Field
held a seminar in Ukraine, this time in august. The recon quest takes a
particular form, connected to the disappearance of the acknowledgment and every
possibility to practice psychoanalysis in the whole of the USSR since the
twenties. Since ten years, psychoanalysis raises a certain interest within
intellectual circles and the environment of clinical practice and mental
health. But this interest is disputed with its counterpart that is inspired by American
theories (comportmentalism, cognitivism, Rebirth ...), techniques of
hypnosis that survived in the previous era, the works of Jung that appear for
some people coherent with the religious, spiritualistic and the taste for
"symbols" aftermath. The situation of the country which is very
difficult on the economic level, plays a major part : everyone has to assure
for the better his social practice and has to find the conditions to make this
simply bearable.
Those who are interested in psychoanalysis find
themselves in a pioneer situation, reinventing a discipline that has to prove
its seriousness and rediscovering step by step the difficulties of the
experience and the link between the concepts and their active use.
The existence of the works of Lacan and Freud
and of the worldwide psychoanalytical movement distinguish our Ukrainian
friends from the pioneers of the Freudian times. But basing oneself on these
achievements is not without difficulties : the works of Freud are not
completely translated (e.g. The rat man is not included in the five basic case
studies), and those of Lacan are only on the urge of being translated : we
dispose of the seminars I and II, television and some articles published by the
Erevan Circle of the European School in English. Colleagues who speak French
(or German) are rare. The don't have immediate access to the texts. The most
important difficulty is the impossibility to fiend a psychoanalyst to engage
oneself in a cure. We underline that some colleagues who have started to study French
will be able to start psychoanalytical training by coming to France.
These conditions set out the framework of
the works of the Freudian field in Ukraine. Those who face this courageous task
come together mainly in the Capital Kiev and in Donesk, a big city in the
mining reservoir. Cartels started or being started, studying fundamental texts
(e.g. Dora), ergo concepts (transference) or reflexions on the clinical cases
of the participants. The whole year, since the last seminar organized by Carole
Dewambrechies-La Sagna, Judith Miller and Anne Szulzynger the groups debated
and elaborated with this year's encounter in mind, justly placed under the
title of the
centennial anniversary of the birth of Jacques Lacan. Two reunions took place
in Kiev and in Donesk each assembling about thirty individuals. In each of
these reunions participants debated each others interventions resulting in
multiple and passionate questions and in intense debates on transference, which
was withheld as common theme. I was given the occasion to give a lecture based
on the different contributions from Lacan to this concept, emphasizing the
originality of his approach (particularly about the trend of the counter
transference which is very popular in this region) and its productivity
regarding the direction of the cure. Our debates were only possible thanks to
the presence of our colleague of the Erevan circle (Armenia) Knarik Aydinian
who put himself to the task and assured a permanent double translation.
After these two passionate encounters our Ukrainian
friends already put themselves at work : the four major cases by Freud which
are available in Russian, will be the basis of their works on sexuality and the
unconscious bearing in mind the seminar of 2002. Their desire to work is the guarantee of what is to follow.
Philippe De Georges
The Warsaw Circle in
formation
Yesterday
and Today
Riccardo Carrabino
I have entitled it ‘The Warsaw Circle in
Formation’, but I should have said ‘still’ in for-mation, given that by today
it should have been already registered.
In writing last year the provisional statutes
of the Warsaw Circle in Formation, Jacques-Alain Miller fixed a period of one
year until the formal constitution of the Circle and its offi-cial registration
before the Warsaw Court in accordance with the procedural proof of the Pol-ish
law for establishing associations. We were keen on this date, but the Warsaw
Court re-jected the Circle registration application on the 11th of June,
because of the trivial error made by the judge’s office in the reading of the
application. It was read ‘7 VI’ instead of ‘7 IV’ as the date for payment —
lawfully carried out — of the registration fee. As a result of this error a
procedure was automatically put to motion, whereby it is necessary to submit a
new applica-tion for registration. With a sufficient measure of confidence that
there be no further blunders on the part of the court office or the judge who
will closely deal with the matter, we expect the registration of ‘The Warsaw
Circle of the EEP’ to be received before the summer holidays in so far as
international association in accordance with the Polish law upholds the
principles of the EEP, and in particular EEP-D.
I move on to a brief presentation of the
activities that have been taking place in Warsaw in order to outline the
context of the present situation.
[A] — I gave my first seminar on the theory of
the clinic, which lasted 10 days, in Warsaw in May of 1995.
This seminar opened the possible perspective
for an active presence of the School in War-saw and many other cities in
Poland. The most macroscopic and immediate effect was the official participation
of the EEP-D Directorate member Carole Dewambréchies in the Warsaw Study-days —
the first ones — in May of 1996. In November of that year Jean-Daniel Matet
founded, on behalf of the School, the French-Polish Circle in Paris.
Every year since then until June 1999, I held a
seminar for 5-6 days reading and com-menting on the texts of Lacan (mainly
seminars) and Freud. Apart from the seminars, many encounters have been devoted
each year to the discussion of clinical cases presented by the Polish friends. These
discussions were much appreciated by them, as one could grasp — the absolute
novelty for them — the School’s approach to the clinic — the completely novel
ap-proach in relation to that which had not been supposed by them.
Until 1999 there was an attempt to create
cartels and to make them work. But the result was quite insufficient. The only
result — a very positive one in my view — was the collapse of the imaginary
myth of the possibility of existence of the so-called ‘translation cartels’ of
Lacan’s texts oriented by the production of translations which would not be the
result of a long and intense already carried out work on the texts. In effect,
it became clear that it is not possible to translate Lacan into Polish without
a long and assiduous work on the text in order to grasp, or at least try to
grasp, either the structure and the signifying and conceptual articula-tion of
it or, above all, the points of impasse in its reading. >From this
perspective, a great deal of intensive work was done during my seminars to
translate passages, more or less long ones, of the texts commented upon.
In this context, we also put a lot of work into
creating a terminology which could render into Polish many of the terms and
neologisms which are often to be found in the Lacanian texts. I say ‘creating’,
because in many cases it is not possible to translate them, as it is the case
with ‘unary trait’ or ‘object relation’.
This work, intense and continuous, served to
demonstrate the whole series of equivoca-tions and errors which testify to a
radical incomprehension of the Lacanian text and teaching. Consideration was
given, for example, to the signifiers: demande, translated as ‘request’, that
is to say as ‘pro?ba’, prière or ‘courtesy request’; subversion, translated as
‘obalenie’, destruc-tion; and further question (préliminaire), translated as
‘pytanie’, that is to say interrogation, requête, as in ‘to pose a question’.
In April 1999 there was a radical change in my
presence in Poland. I have started to go to Warsaw 4 times a year, 40-45 days a
year in total, to offer to the Poles either a possibility to undergo analysis
in their own language in Poland, with an analyst of Lacanian formation, or a
possibility of having a supervision. Only some among them would have had
elsewhere the opportunity to go — a few times and irregularly — to a foreigner
for analysis. This offer on my part, which was moreover sought for a long time,
was welcomed with enthusiasm. Today, after two years, I cannot welcome all
demands for analysis, as I do not meet them except for extending the length —
not possible at the moment— of my presence in Warsaw for each of my visits. And
one should add that during each visit there is also a study-day seminar on a
text by Lacan related to the Seminar already commented on during the course of
5 seminars in June. And there is also at least one organisational reunion on
life and activities of the Circle.
Starting from June 1999, members of the
Directorate of the EEP-D (Marie-Hélène Doguet-Dziomba, Pierre Thèves) and
members of the cartel ‘Vers la Pologne’ (Barbara Gorczyca, Serge Dziomba)
actively participated at the Warsaw Study-days. Starting from 2000-01 some of
these colleagues, and others (Guy Trobas) have begun to go to Warsaw fre-quently,
and it is anticipated they will continue to manifest their presence in the
ongoing work. Finally, during the Study-days of 9-10 June this year, an Italian
colleague Carlo Viganó gave a presentation and, on the following day, also
opened the annual seminar with a presentation and discussion of a clinical
case.
I appreciate and seek such participants, as I
am well aware that the transference to the School implies that there be a
‘many’ which makes School.
[B] — During the year the activities of the
Warsaw Circle unfold according, more or less, to the following schema. In June
there were Warsaw Study-days and my annual seminar open to the public in course
of which, generally speaking, there was a commentary on a Lacan’s semi-nar. There
are also meetings of the Circle with regard to the programme of activities in
the next year. In September, December and March I will again hold, for a day or
two, an open seminar devoted to those texts of Lacan or Freud which relate to
the seminar that took place in June. At the same time, between October and May,
members of the Circle organise, inter-changeably in Warsaw and in Pozna?,
monthly work encounters, open to the public, on La-can’s Seminar which will be
presented and commented upon in June of the following year, and, also, on the
texts of Freud or Lacan which are referred to in Lacan’s Seminar above. Starting
from 2001-02, in September, December and March, we will also have encounters,
closed to the Circle members only, to discuss clinical cases, where the emphasis
will be on what makes a ‘case’ and on the questions of demand and
subjectivation. There will also be an inter-cartel meeting in March.
That year, between October 2000 and June 2001,
in Warsaw there was also a monthly seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
presented by Bogdan Wolf. His report on the aims and progress of that seminar
can be found after the present report.
All activities of the Warsaw Circle are
regularly published in the newsletter of both Pol-ish Circles of the EEP-D
Wie?ci. Speaking of which, it was agreed last June that from now on the
contents be more rich and better articulated.
[C] — As for the currant situation, one should
stress that the creation of the Warsaw Circle in Formation and the commencement
of the registration procedure — the events for which I my-self and other
members of the Circle express our gratitude first of all to Jacques-Alain
Miller and, then, also, to Marie-Hélène Brousse and the Directorate of the
EEP-D — have had a cata-lyst function from the point of view of the symbolic
relation and of desire of being actively situated inside the School in the
position of work. >From this perspective certain events de-serve to be
remembered.
Before the proposal to hold and organise in
Warsaw — jointly with the Cracow Circle — the Study-day commemorating Lacan’s
birthday centenary, work has already been done on the project, which will soon
be submitted for evaluation and approval of Judith Miller.
Secondly, there is a proposal — already
discussed and approved by with enthusiasm dur-ing the last 6th Warsaw
Study-days — of creating a Review of Psychoanalysis in Polish, for the Poles,
to be published in Poland and produced by the two Polish Circles of the School
un-der direction of the EEP-D. It will initially appear only once a year, and
bear the title Psycho-analiza [‘Psychoanalysis’]. One of the fundamental
reasons, among those for choosing this title, is the fact that it will be the
first review of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic clinic in Poland. The title
aims to define and engage the field of psychoanalysis — as ethics and clinic —
in Poland for the Polish.
The definitive planning as to editing and
drafting of this review will take place this Sep-tember when precise
information will be available concerning the modalities of editing and the
Polish law with respect to periodicals.
Thirdly, the Circle have decided to organise
work encounters — for the time being in the form of seminars and lectures — in
the other cities in Poland where live some of its members. It is anticipated
that I will hold an open encounter in Pozna? in March 2002, although its exact
time and format will be defined in September.
Fourthly, we wanted to found two cartels, which
were quickly constituted and started to work. I myself will have the function
of plus one in both of them. Their themes concern Freu-dian metapsychology in
the case of the first one, and, in the case of the second, transference and its
imaginary aspects.
Fifthly, and lastly, but by no means least, one
should mention the commitment — at last — to define the psychoanalytic clinic
in the practice of the School in Poland.
In order to signify the historic and positional
cut, or a turning point, in relation to the pass, I introduced in my last
seminar the presentation of clinical cases. Two colleagues pre-sented their
cases which were discussed from the point of view of the ‘case’ and, above all,
that of demand. The discussion, which had a strong influence on the
participants at the semi-nar, proved that the problematic of demand is specific
and founding for the practice in the School, and, at the same time, that it is
radically alien to psychoanalysis, or so-called psycho-analysis, exercised in
Poland until today by the Polish outside the School. The second point, but
closely related to the first one, on which the discussion largely focused,
concerns psycho-analyst as Lacanian: for the psychoanalyst to be Lacanian, is
it to respond to the specular structure of the ‘definition of self’, or to
imply a symbolic foundation in a process of forma-tion, for the analyst, inside
a School that remembers Lacan historically and clinically?
What became evident in the unfolding of this
debate, was the effect of putting into ques-tion the presence in Poland of the
so-called ‘Lacanian practice’ outside the places which are in the course of
being formed, and which point to situating the practice inside the School of
La-can and in the context of an explicit and institutional reference to this
School.
[D] — I will end with information about the
Warsaw Circle, ‘foreseen’ as already registered.
At the General Assembly of 28th April this year
the governing bodies of the Circle were elected as follows:
Bureau: Chair — Riccardo Carrabino, Secretary —
Agnieszka Kurek, Treasurer — Da-nuta Heinrich.
Revision Commission: Chair — Tomasz Czub,
Members — Barbara Kowalów and Bog-dan Wolf.
Before taking up its functions, the Bureau
decided to make a proposal for either M.-H. Brousse, the departing President of
the EEP-D and the currant President of the EEP, or Alex-andre Stevens, the new
President of the EEP-D, to become members of the Warsaw Circle. Both Presidents
agreed and accepted this proposal.
The proposal will materialise, of course, when
the Bureau assumes its functions, that is to say after the Circle’s
registration. We are certain that the proposal presented to both Presi-dents,
and their acceptance of it, will serve as good omen for the existence and
activities of the Warsaw Circle in the School.
A similar proposal was made to M.-H.
Doguet-Dziomba and S. Dziomba, which they ac-cepted, during their participation
in the Warsaw Study-days.
The Bureau will present this proposal to all
those in the School who played a role in the ‘prehistory of the Warsaw Circle. It
is our wish that they accept it.
It can thus be said that at the point of its
birth, the Warsaw Circle is in a very good com-pany. As for our concern, we are
committed not to disappoint it — we dare count on our de-sire for work in the
School and ‘for’ the School in Poland.
Palermo, 01.08.01
Seminars on ethics of
psychoanalysis in poland
Between October 2000 and June 2001, I gave in
Warsaw a series of monthly seminars, eight in total, around Lacan’s Seminar The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis. The series was primarily based on the Polish
translation of Lacan’s Seminar, which I completed last year. When I say
‘completed’, I mean that the first draft has been finished, although the
translation itself is still in the process of revision. Lacan’s Seminar VII is
thus the second one, after Seminar XI, on the way to be made available in
Polish.
Some parts of the material were therefore made
available to the participants.
The purpose of these seminars was to create a
place, within the Lacanian orientation of the School in Poland, to speak about
the ethics of psychoanalysis from the Lacanian perspective. The seminars were
open to the public, although most of the participants consisted of the members
of both the Warsaw and Cracow Circles of the EEP-D. Such a joined participation
was, for example, stressed by Guy Trobas during my meeting with the members of
the cartel ‘Vers la Pologne’.
But the participants of the seminar on ethics
also included nonclinicians who have a standing interest in psychoanalysis from
the Lacanian perspective. There were among them students of psychology, medical
practitioners, philosophers.
With such a diversity of ears, two things were
to be emphasised from the start. Firstly, that the ethics of psychoanalysis,
unlike the ethics of others, thinkers and theologians alike, is tied with
clinical practice. In other words, the ethical insistence comes under a formula
of ‘no ethics of psychoanalysis without the clinic’. Secondly, my emphasis was
on the common language in the field of Lacanian orientation as developed and
supported by Jacques-Alain Miller. And this meant an adherence to the ongoing
work in Poland in terms of both a step towards a common orientation and the
continued work on translation, that is to say translation rather than
transliteration. It seems to me that not only such a link between the step
towards ‘a common orientation’ and the work on translation in Poland exists,
but that its significance has gradually increased over the last few years. To
these two points I would add the third one, namely the primacy of articulation
of the problem before its further elaboration as a schema or a matheme. These
three elements were then constitutive in my seminars on ethics.
The series served to consolidate the ongoing
work in the analytical community in the School in Poland in the sense of
supporting, to use R. Carrabino’s words, the participation of ‘many which make
School’.
The encounters, which focused on the first half
of Seminar VII (the place of das Ding in psychoanalysis, the question of
sublimation, and the paradoxes of jouissance), were received with interest and
lively response, especially, but not only, from those who actively participate
in the work of the Circles in Poland.
There were usually questions and a discussion
at the end of each seminar. For example, a question was raised by a philosopher
claiming that psychoanalysis is an ‘ontology’ — a view to be challenged with
the view to allowing a room to address the question of a symptom. What better
‘example’ of ethics of psychoanalysis if not that in which a work of symptom is
put into use in relation to desire?
At the last meeting in June this year, there
was a demand from the participants that the seminars on ethics continue next
year.
Bogdan Wolf
01.08.01
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