Clinical Study Days 9 New York : Call forPapers extended to January 31

is made today
of certain
psychic trends
or
so-called epidemics
in
society–the rise
of addiction,
or depression,
or autism, or
inattention,
and so forth—all

of which is
frequently
linked to
changes in
social
structure–a
culture of
permissiveness,
the decline of
the father or
authority
structures,
and the
excesses of
consumerism. 



There

is another no
less
prevalent, but
more subtle
dimension to
these psychic
changes–the
fact that
contemporary
subjects are
often not
striving,
desiring
pleasure, in
some sort of
uncomplicated
fashion, such
as the way in
which
happiness is
measured in
psychological
or
sociological
rating scales,
fulfilling the
Declaration’s
‘pursuit of
happiness.’
 Rather, that
we see the
subject driven
by sets of
imperatives,
demands
produced for
sure in the
social world,
but at the
same time and
ever yet more
insidiously
internalized
and reworked
as the demands
of what, in
older Freudian
language, was
referred to as
the superego.
Not a desire
for some thing
chosen by a
subject, but a
subject
incessantly
driven by a
force, a
jouissance,
out of
control,
without
limits.



For