institut.lacan@gmail.com

**************************

ACTION COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF MITRA

COMMUNICATION FROM THE CALM

At 7.46 a.m. I received a mail from S*, otherwise Professior Siamak Movahedi, Professor and Chair.

The mail said : « This just came from a couple of psychiatrists: You can now relax.“Dear Dr Movahedi, I talked with dr Ghadiri a couple of minutes ago. He is discharging her from Hospital now. Sincerely yours,” »

I replied : « Please thank Dr Ghadiri for this wise decision. Would you give me your phone number ? I would like to congratulate you on this very emotional moment. Long live our friendship ! »

I consider this information to be correct. In all likelihood, Mitra is free. I am confidently waiting for a call or a mail from her or from one of her students.

Stay tuned !

Jacques-Alain Miller

Report on the Knotting Seminar of the NLS

London, Saturday 12^th January 2013

The Knotting Seminar of the NLS took place on Saturday 12 of January 2013 in London. It was preceded by the AGM of the LS-NLS.

Key speakers at the seminar were Yves Vanderverken, (for the Executive Committee of the NLS); Anne Ansermet (for ASREEP) and Natalie Wulfing (of the LS-NLS).  

The seminar took place both in English and French (with simultaneous translation) and the speakers offered remarkable clinical presentations on the theme of the forthcoming XIth Congress of the NLS.

First, Yves Vanderverken spoke about the function of the Knotting Seminar; since it is a seminar that operates across the different societies and groups that form the NLS and as such makes it possible for members of different societies to meet and get to know each other, sharing their work in preparation for the coming Congress.

In this sense the clinical presentations offered by the speakers highlighted some of the key issues that psychoanalysts face when working with psychotic subjects today.  

They invited us to reflect on and to delimit the coordinates of the Lacanian clinic in contrast with an organicistic scientific clinic that relies upon ready-made solutions to subjective suffering.  Similarly, and in order to formalize the specificity of our clinic, we need to discuss the question of what it is that we call psychosis today.

To elucidate this question, Yves proposed placing the three different case presentations in a series. This series demonstrates that analytic intervention is not regulated by a standardized clinic, which aims at reducing or getting rid of symptoms. On the contrary, the cases presented on the day are evidence that the analyst works with the symptom rather than against it.

As we will see in the cases discussed the work with the symptom creates the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a subjective invention. This subjective invention often makes it possible for the subject to somehow inscribe him/herself in the social bond.

Reformulating the Question of Psychosis

Yves Vanderveken discussed the case of a ten-year-old schizophrenic child, whose main anxiety refers to experiences of rejection by the other.

The little boy fails to make friends and often presented himself to the analyst with a bruised body (he was le bleu: the new boy).  Yves reads the symptom – he is Le bleu, his naming designated by the marks in the “real” of his body. Yves conceptualizes this as this child’s way of claiming an identification for himself: I am bleu, the bleu is me.

Interestingly, there was no anguish associated with these bodily marks and bruises. However, the analyst registered these marks as indicating that the child was at a high level of risk to himself.

Later on in the analysis this child, through drawings of robots that usually fell apart, finds a mediated way to elaborate and take some distance from his initial identification –Le bleu- as described above.

I am not going to report exhaustively on the different moments of the treatment. However, it is important to say that the different phases of the treatment show a mutation of the initial identification and that little by little the issue of the semblant comes on the stage.

During the treatment the child finds different ways to make a name for himself and to move away from an enigmatic jouissance. One may say that initially his names function as a conductor that carries and reflects his position as a rejected object (on the side of melancholia).

Similarly, it’s interesting to pause for a moment and consider the analyst’s calculated interventions. On one hand, the analyst supports the different declensions/ transformations of the names or significations that this child comes up with. He selects his affirmations, refuses to affirm others; because of negative connotations for example, the signifier rat (TEDE).

He not only function as the secretary of the psychotic subject but at a key calculated moment that takes its bearings from the boy’s discourse, Yves places the subject before the mirror and facilitates the unraveling and affirmation of a signifier that will place this boy in a linage.

On the other hand, and in an attempt to inscribe the marks on the body, the analyst always queries the child on his bruises. The signifier rat is later on transformed into the signifier elephant. This introduces the topic of filiation since the boy can trace his large ears, seen reflected in the mirror, back to his family members, allowing him to inscribe himself in a familiar structure.  Moreover, this body trait is associated with the signifier beautiful since his mother used to call him “beautiful ears”.

In summary, the analyst’s intervention and facilitation or not of the original signifier declension [as it is transformed] creates a new place for him in the world. He was later on given the name OCELLE and is able to put his sense of irony and invention to good use. This new place lies in between the original rejected object and being the animator. Finally, the different permutations engender a displacement of the originary jouissance and a finding of a place (even if a fragile one) in the social bond.

An Enigmatic Certainty

The second case in the series was presented by Anne Ansermet, who very sensitively and eloquently conveyed the impossible conundrum presented by a girl who she saw at two different ages first when she was 8 years old and later on at 18.

This rather joyful and theatrical girl tests the limits of the understanding of the links between mind and body when she expresses with certainty her conviction of being a boy. This little girl has little to say about this certainty and this isolates and saddens her.

She feels trapped in the wrong body, a body that is not coherent with her internal image “a body in which she is enclosed today and which doesn’t belong to her”. A search for the right body brings her in her teenage years to hormone therapy. She gives this the status of a rebirth. After the operation she will be able to be recognized as a boy. It is interesting to see that in this case, the way to operate with this certainty is through a real operation, hormone replacement, rather than a symbolic one.

In the meantime it is interesting to notice in her discourse the interventions that have a pacifying effect. On the one hand is the intervention of her father who is able to relate to and recognize her sadness. He offers hope and trust “for every problem there is a solution”. He adds that he “would always love [her]” she felt grateful to him for this.

On the other hand, the analyst interventions rather than attempting to reeducate or reduce the question of sexual certainty to a malfunction, seems to suggest that there may be a different path toward understanding the ultimately unique sexual experience and aim at opening up a space  where this certainty can explored and tolerated.

What the Organs are for

The third case presented by Natalie Wulfing pointed us to Lacan’s “L’etourdit”: “The function of each organ poses a problem for the speaking being. This specifies the schizophrenic, on account of his being caught without the aid of any established discourse”

Natalie discussed the case of an analysand whose body is not supported/held by a fantasmatic screen but resorts to different bodily treatments (holistic therapies) as a way to inscribe herself in the semblant. This seems to be for her a way to “treat” or represent her body.

In a singular way and making use of the contemporary offers this lady attempts to inscribe herself in the social other. There is the desire to align body and language as an attempt to name or do with the impossible of the sexual relationship. Similarly, her speech in the context of analysis is a treatment of this.

The three cases presented on the day show the impossibility of wedding the signifier and matter. However, it is through singular invention and not through readymade solutions that this disjunction can be treated.

From the discussion and the different case presentation we could begin to grasp and formulate the different ways in which the practice of Lacanian analysts unfold and takes its orientation from the subject’s symptom. This is in stark contrast to standardized approaches oriented by readymade solutions. 

Reporter: Gabriela van den Hoven (LS-NLS)

institut
lacan

institut.lacan@gmail.com

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J.-A.
Miller’s Press Release

Feb. 9th 2013, 14 : 30
Paris Time

CREATION OF CALM

The
present lack of response of our iranians colleagues to our friendly entreaties
could mean a sustained effort will be necessary to free world-famous psychoanalyst
Mitra Kadivar, now detained in the Psychiatric Hospital of the Tehran
University of Medical Sciences. To extend and to intensify our international
and multidirectional endeavour, I thereby decide the creation of an ephemeral
global structure to be called Comité d’Action pour la Libération de Mitra
(CALM).

All
people joining the Mitra campaign will be considered members of CALM.

Up
until now, I relied on four activists to help me with nimbly coordinating the
campaign. They will now enter the parisian board of the Activist Temporary Accelerator
of CALM-Kadivar. They are :

–      
                  Anaëlle,
director of Le Diable probablement ;

–      
                  Anne
P, co-ordinator  of Lacan Quotidien ;

–      
                  Eve,
director of Le Champ freudien éditeur ;

–      
                  Maria,
director of La Règle du Jeu

As
members at large of the Activist Accelerator, I thereby formally appoint :

–      
                  Afshin, Iran

–      
                  Ana
V, Mexico

–      
                  Anne
B, Canada

–      
                  Florencia, Ireland

–      
                  Fouzia,
Morocco

–      
                  François, Suisse

–      
                  Gloria, Congo (RDC)

–      
                  Helai,
China

–      
                  Inga,
Russia

–      
                  Josefina,
USA

–      
                  Raquel,
Bolivia and Chile

–      
                  René, Danemark

–      
                  Russell,
Australia

–      
                  Victoria,
United Kingdom

–      
                  Yasmine,
Algeria and Tunisia

I
shall be waiting for those friends to notify me their agreement.

I
am looking for other correspondents, connected to those countries and
organizations, and  able to get in touch
with (ITW) :

–      
                  Amnesty International,
ITW Salil Shetty, Secretary
General ;

–      
                  Austria and Germany,
able to translate to German ;

–      
                  Berkley
Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs,
ITW Thomas Banchoff, Director

–      
                  European Commission,
ITW with Lady Catherine Ashton ;

–      
                  Holy See,
ITW members of the Sacred College, and eventually the pope ;

–      
                  International
Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, ITW
Bekele Geleta, SG ;

–      
                  IPA,
ITW the president, Charles M. T.
Hanly ;

–      
                  Iranian
Red Crescent Society, ITW the president ;

–      
                  South Africa,
ITW Nelson Mandela ;

–      
                  UNO,
ITW Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary
General, and Remigiusz Achilles Henczel, President
of the Human Rights Council ;

–      
                  WHO (OMS), ITW Dr Margaret Chan,
Director-General.

Nota
bene. This e-mail is sent to my friend François Zimeray,
who happens to be the French Ambassador for Human Rights,
MDH.

Personal.
This Press Release was written under the influence of Bartok : The Miraculous Mandarin, Chicago
Symphony Orchestra and Chorus-Pierre Boulez, and Rodolphe Burger : /Cheval-mouvement, album dedicated to
Lena.

Personal 2. Dear Dalia Awadat, you tried to get in touch with me through
Facebook. Could you rather send me a e-mail ? I am not familiar with
Facebook. I see you published a video « RIP Ramy Chemaly »
viewed by 38,159 persons on You Tube. Would you make one for Mitra ? Best
regards. jam@lacanian.net

18th and 19th May 2013     |     XIth NLS Congress in Athens        18 et 19 mai 2013     |     XIè Congrès de la NLS à Athènes  

Sign HERE

SOS MITRA

APPEAL TO THE PSYCHOANALYSTS,

TO FRIENDS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREEDOM

Paris, 7 February
2013

Attention ! No
errors ! The campaign for Mitra is not finished. It has just started. This
is the most perilous moment. The authorities of the University of Medical
Sciences of Tehran have taken a direct blow. Dr Mohammad Ghadiri, medical
director of the psychiatric hospital has seen his name circulating throughout
all the medias. And no, not as the name of a Nobel prize winner, but as Mitra’s
guard, the man upon which, in the eyes of the world, depends Mitra’s well
being, Mitra’s freedom, Mitra’s life.

This Thursday
morning, for the fist time since Saturday, I have not found a mail in my inbox
from Mitra. Perhaps she is sulking. Perhaps, in the launching of the campaign,
there has been something that has upset her. Mitra is a perfectionist. But
perhaps this morning’s silence is due to Dr Ghadiri being in a bad mood. Has he
cut the connection ? Or is it rather that, having seen the amplitude that
this affair is going to take, other more powerful hands have taken up the
controls behind him ?

We have nothing
against our Iranian psychiatric colleagues. We would be pleased to be able to
visit them in Iran, and for them to visit us here in France, in America, in
Australia. At the moment, there are certain obstacles to overcome before this
can happen, but these exchanges will be taken up again one day. Yes, the day
will arrive when Iran will regain its place in the concert of nations. That
day, between Iran and the rest of the world, or at least the great democracies,
how nice it would be for there not be a dispute named : Mitra Kadivar.

I pleaded for many
weeks with the psychiatrists of the University of Medical Sciences for us to
find together the means of bringing to an end this miserable affair of
neighbours that has unduly implicated psychiatry. I wrote to them saying that
neither they in Tehran, nor we in Paris, wanted this affair to overflow into
the world. My interlocutor asked me to trust him, that everything would be
alright. Under judicial warrant, he should have done a psychiatric examination
of Mitra, it was an obligation from which he could not withdraw.

I trusted him. I
waited. I even discussed with my colleague N*, the designated expert,
Mitra’s case, the comments she had made to him, of how to interpret them. To
put it short, I collaborated. All that is here in my inbox. Conserved in copy
on the Time Machine. The result of my collegial efforts was : a diagnosis
of schizophrenia with a late triggering ; Mitra bound to her bed ; a
forced injection of haloperidol. I heard this from Mitra’s students. I
expressed my stupefaction to N*. No reply. I tried again. The connection
was dead. I had been shown to the door.

So I came back
through the window. I told Mitra’s students, members of the Freudian
Association, to go and find the authorities of the University of Medical
Sciences. The elements of a solution began to be sketched out. Guy Briole and
Pierre-Gilles Guéguen would leave for Tehran on a scientific and cultural
mission, would give some lectures at the University, would get access to Mitra.

Dr Ghadiri summoned a big meeting at the
hospital attended by the department’s psychiatrists, their
psychologist-psychoanalyst, and four of Mitra’s students. The medical director
justified the measures that had been taken. The students contested them: they
spoke with Mitra, she was as usual, not in the slightest bit mad. The
psychologist supported them : she considered that nobody in the department
was able to evaluate Mitra ; let our French colleagues intervene, she
said. Dr Ghadiri said that he agreed, but it was his responsibility to attend
all the interviews of Mitra with the French. The four students sent me a
detailed rapport of the meeting. They emphasise the conditions posed by
Ghadiri. I replied that his conditions were accepted.

End of the
sequence : Mitra was authorised to connect for one hour a day. Saturday,
her first mail arrived.

However, plan B was
scuppered on Monday.

The Quai d’Orsay,
(the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) feared they could not ensure the safety of
our envoys. Seeing us ready to go against their instructions, our diplomats
strove to dissuade them from leaving. Guy Briole was invited to make an urgent
visit to the Ambassador Z*.  Monday
morning, the Ambassador and his team informed him of certain realities. Briole
has the status of a military doctor ; over there, he was told, they would
only see “military” ; he would be taken for an agent from the intelligence
services. In the case of a difficulty, they told him, we couldn’t do anything.

Laurent Fabius
himself, our Minister of Foreign Affaires, before leaving for Mali, took pains
to address a personal letter to Jean-Daniel Mattet, president of the Ecole de
la Cause freudienne. He urged him to suspend the sending of Briole and Guéguen
to Tehran.

Finally, Mitra
herself told me she was opposed to the journey. Why should the University of
Medical Sciences have to be given, as the price of her freedom, the treasure of
psychoanalytic knowledge ? Does it deserve to have access to Freud and
Lacan ? What has it done to be so redeemed and rewarded ?

“It ain't over till
the fat lady sings”, they say in America. The lady of Tehran is slim. And she
has just spoken. It’s no. She doesn’t want Freud and Lacan to serve as a ransom
for her freedom. You cannot bend a Mitra Kadivar. Monday evening February 4,
“it’s over”.

The appeal to
professional fraternity failed. The university friendly agreement was a
stillborn. There remains plan C : an opinion campaign. I wrote to
Mitra : “Thursday, you will be famous.” She replied : “I am looking
forward to Thursday”.

Olivia at “Le
Point” magazine, Maria at “La Règle du jeu” magazine, and Anne from “Lacan
Quotidien”, were alerted. Eve, at the Champ freudien editions, bought the URL
mitra2013.com, and with her husband set up a dedicated site. The first
potential signatures were solicited by letter, by mail and telephone. The
initial significant material was put together in haste : I wrote the
communication of February 5 ; I invented, with Bernard, the letter to the
Iranian psychiatrists, under the supervision of our friend X*, an expert
diplomat in Human rights.

Psychoanalysts !
We are divided into a multitude of different trends. There is the IPA and there
are the Lacanians. In the IPA, there are the inheritors of Ego-psychology, the
Kleinians, the eclectic Argentineans and the Argentineans of strict obedience,
my friends of the APA and those of the APdeBA, the followers of Kohut, of
Kernberg, of the French school, of neuro-psychoanalysis, there is bit of
everything. I am asking Vera, who knows everybody, to contact everybody. I am
appealing to my old friend, to my old master, my dear friend Horacio
Etchegoyen, former President of the IPA. Please Horacio, sign for Mitra. Un abrazo fuerte. I am also appealing to
the current President of the IPA, whom I have not had the opportunity to meet.

The Lacanians, we
are like the Talmudists : two rabbis, three opinions. We know each other
well, we’ve fought each other well, we’ll perhaps fight again one day. I am
appealing to all, to my friend Jean Allouch, to my ex-friend Elisabeth
Roudinesco, from Claude Landman to Marc Strauss, who are my neighbours in Paris
6th. I am appealing to all the others.

There are also the
independent psychoanalysts, who are perhaps not the most numerous. There are
the psychotherapists, more numerous, if I might say, than the analysts stricto
sensu. I am appealing to the World Association of Psychotherapy, and to its
founder, Alfred Pritz, in recollection of our dinner in front of the Odéon
theatre with Nicole Aknin and Lilia Mahjoub.

There are the
psychologists. There are the psychiatrists. To all, all the grades, the
with-out grades, the Societies, the Schools, the journals, I’m asking you to
say with us to our Iranian colleagues the price that we accord to the respect
of the human person. This person is not abstract. She is here and now, she is
straight away, Mitra Kadivar.

Let’s go ! All
together, let’s get her out of there. Afterwards, we can start our joyous
arguments again.

Jacques-Alain
Miller

Published
by La règle du jeu

laregledujeu.org

Translated
by Victoria Woollard

Sign HERE