Paris 2014
Clinical Day: Call for papers/ Registration.
The Organising Committee of the IXth WAP Congress brings to you, this October, the seventh issue of its newsletter.
All issues of What’s up! are available on the website of the Congress: www.congresamp2014.com and you can
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WHAT CANNOT BE SAID
desire, fantasy, real
It will be preceded, on May 16th, by a Clinical Conversation reserved to the members of the NLS, under the auspices of the WAP
of the New Lacanian School
The London Society of the New Lacanian School
Cartel Open Day
Saturday 2nd November 2013
11.00am – 1.00pm
Bloomsbury Suite
University of London Union
Malet Street, WC1E 7HY
The experience of working in a cartel is something particular to the field of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is a format initially devised by Lacan himself according to what he understood as the core logic of psychoanalytic work.
Participation in a cartel is an eminently democratic way of getting to grips with Lacan’s teaching. It does not depend on any hierarchy of knowledge, position or clinical experience. It does not depend on membership of any organisation. It is indexed simply on the interest that each one has in learning a little bit more about the work of Lacan.
Thus each person works on a theme of their own choosing. They find a few others who are interested in working with them in the same area and together choose one other, designated the plus one, to help facilitate their work.
The very framework of the cartel helps to shift the centre of gravity of the work from the question of knowledge to that of desire. It can thus be a most rewarding and productive experience for all involved.
It also happens to be a privileged entry point to the world of Lacanian psychoanalysis and to participation in the work of a Lacanian School.
At the start of our new year’s activities the London Society of the New Lacanian School will be holding an open meeting of those who are interested in exploring this experience for themselves.
There will be a number of brief presentations by those already involved in cartel work, recounting their own experience of what is involved and something of what they have learned. There will be an opportunity to meet others interested in working in the same field and to discuss options for joining them in a cartel.
This year’s seminar activity in the London Society and in the New Lacanian School more widely will be based around a reading of the newly published Seminar VI, Desire and its Interpretation (1958-1959).
The particular interest of this seminar, as highlighted in Jacques-Alain Miller’s recent presentation at the NLS Congress in Athens, is that it is situated on the threshold of Lacan’s move away from what we now know as the classical period of his teaching, opening up the questions that will culminate in his later work.
Our reading of Seminar VI will thus take its bearings from its position between Seminar V on the Formations of the Unconscious, the seminar that perhaps contains the most detailed formulation of the themes of the classical teaching, and Seminar VII on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, which turns attention to the questions of jouissance and the real.
This also happens to be the period of Lacan’s work that covers a broad spectrum of key texts in the Ecrits, ranging from the ‘Instance of the Letter…’ to the ‘Subversion of the Subject …’, taking in the ‘Preliminary Question…’, the ‘Direction of the Treatment…’ and the ‘Signification of the Phallus…’, amongst others, along the way. It is clear then that there is ample scope within this period for choosing a productive theme of work on various concepts fundamental to Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Your choice of a theme of work does not of course have to be restricted to this register. It requires simply an interest in a question or a problem of your own that you wish to pursue and the opportunity to find some others who wish to work alongside you in the fertile field bequeathed to us by Lacan.
There is no charge for entry. Why not come along?
The Clinical Day of Wenesday, 16 April, 2014.
The Bulgarian Society for Lacanian Psychoanalysis (BSLP), successor of the Group of the Freudian Field in Bulgaria is organizing its 8th Clinical Atelier for work on cases.
There will be 4 meetings, the first one to be on October 9, 2013 from 19.00 till 20.30. The other 3 meetings will be on: October 13; November 27 and December 18 also from 19.00 till 20.30.
The meetings will be held in the premises of BSLP.
Responsible for the proceeding of the Clinical Atelier are Vessela Banova – psychoanalyst – member of the NLS and the WAP, President of BSLP; Evgeni Genchev – psychiatrist, psychoanalyst – member of the NLS and the WAP , Vice-President of BSLP and Dessislava Ivanova – psychoanalyst – member of the NLS and the WAP, member of the Board of Directors of the BSLP.
We are expecting your applications for participation and case presentation.
The London Society
“Guitrancourt Prologue”
by Jacques-Alain Miller
This text clarifies what the teaching provided by the Clinical Section is, and what it is not.
Nowhere in the world can one do a degree to become a psychoanalyst. And this is not by chance or through oversight, but for reasons regarding the essence of what psychoanalysis is.
One cannot imagine what a test to determine the ability of a psychoanalyst would be, as the practice of psychoanalysis is private and restricted to the most intimate confidences that a patient entrusts to an analyst. Let us acknowledge, however, that the analyst responds by an operation — interpretation — that concerns what is called the unconscious. Couldn’t this operation form the basis for a test, especially since interpretation in not the privilege of psychoanalysis? Any criticism of texts, documents or writing employs it as well. But the Freudian unconscious is only constituted in relation to the word I have spoken, cannot be confirmed without it and psychoanalytic interpretation is not probative in itself, but rather by the unforeseeable effects it has on the person who receives it and within the context of this very relationship. There’s no escaping it.
The result is that it is only the analysand who should be recognized as being able to attest to the abilities of the analyst, were his testimony not skewed by the effects of transference, which are established from the outset. This shows that the only acceptable testimony, the only one that can give some guarantee concerning the work that has been done, would be from an analysand after transference, but who still wishes to serve the cause of psychoanalysis.
What I call here the analysand’s testimony is the nucleus of the teaching of psychoanalysis insofar as it responds to the question of what can be communicated to the public of an essentially private experience.
Jacques Lacan established this testimony under the name of the pass (1967). To this teaching he gave his ideal, the matheme (1) (1974). A whole gradation exists between the two: testimony of the pass, still encumbered by the individual character of the subject, is confined to a small circle within the analytic group. Teaching on the basis of the matheme, which must be demonstrative, is for all, and that is where psychoanalysis meets the University.
This teaching has existed in France for fourteen years, and has made itself known in Belgium through the Freudian Field. Next January, it will take the form of the “Clinical Section”
It is important to state clearly what this teaching is and what it is not.
– It is academic; it is systematic and graduated; it is provided by qualified teachers; it is ratified by diplomas.
– It does not authorize one to practice psychoanalysis. Freud’s imperative that an analyst must be analyzed was not only confirmed by Lacan, but radicalized by his thesis that an analysis has no other end than the production of an analyst. In every case, transgression of this ethics carries a heavy price for the one who commits it.
– Whether in Paris, Brussels or Barcelona, whether these methods are public or private, the orientation is Lacanian. Those who receive it are defined as participants: this term is preferred to that of students because it highlights the high level of initiative given to them — the work they must complete will not be exacted from them. It depends on them; it will be guided and evaluated.
There is no paradox in stipulating that the strictest exigencies bear upon those who seek to take up a teaching function of an unprecedented kind within the Freudian Field, since knowledge (savoir), although it derives its authority from its coherence, only finds its truth in the unconscious, from a knowledge where there is no one to say “I know.” This means that we provide a teaching only provided that we support it with an unprecedented elaboration, however modest it may be.
We begin, in Spain as in Belgium, with the clinical part of this teaching.
The clinic is not a science, that is, a knowledge that can be demonstrated. It is an empirical knowledge, inseparable from the history of ideas. In teaching it, we not only compensate for the failures of a psychiatry, whose reliance on chemistry often causes it to neglect its classical treasure, we also introduce an element of certitude (the matheme of Hysteria).
The presentation of patients tomorrow will fill out this teaching. What is called in France the domain of “detailed study” [“études approfondies”] and which requires the writing of a doctoral dissertation will come later. In accordance with what in the past was under Lacan’s direction, we will proceed step-by-step.
Jacques-Alain Miller
15 August 1988
Translated by Ian Curtis
Reviewed by Philip Dravers
(1) From the Greek mathema, that which is learned.
