Announced last month for
publication in September is the ‘official’ English translation of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, on transference, under the direction
of Jacques-Alain Miller. This Seminar, presented between 1960 and 1961, is
especially interesting for the fact that instead of commentating on the already
voluminous contributions made by post-Freudian analysts on the transference
(and counter-transference) which were available by that tiime, Lacan chose
instead to focus on Plato’s text The Symposium to approach the topic. Lacan’s comments on
this text look in particular at Alcibiades’ speech to the guests at the
banquet, which put Socrates in the place of love and identify in him a
mysterious ‘agalma’ which makes Alcibiades attracted to Socrates. This is a
position that Socrates refuses, however, and he instead takes the Lacanian
approach of sending Alcibiades’ message back to him in inverted form by
highlighting that his true object of desire is Agathon. This new edition of
Seminar VIII is part of an acceleration of the translation of Lacan’s work into
an authorised collection, and is translated from the French by Bruce Fink.
Relatedly, and perhaps as a
prelude to the publication of Seminar VIII, the Affiliated Psychoanalytic
Workgroups announced last month that it will look at the theme of transference
in its thirteenth annual conference taking place in Ghent, Belgium on 21st-23rd
August. Keynote speakers will be Kazushige Shingu and Paul Verhaeghe. Full
details on the flyer here.
Back in 1997 Rebus Press
published The Klein-Lacan Dialogues, a collection of papers by key
thinkers from the two schools’ perspectives on subjects including phantasy,
transference, and interpretation. Now, following from a conference on the same
theme held in 2011, Karnac has announced for October this year the publication
of The New Klein-Lacan Dialogues. The new edition features
contributions by prominent Lacanians such as Bernard Burgoyne (editor of the
original volume) and Kleinians such as Robert Hinshelwood. Pre-order from the
publishers here.
The publication of volume
29 of Psychoanalytic Notebooks, the journal of the London Society of the
New Lacanian School, was announced in April. On the theme of sexual orientation
– pertinent in the context of the involvement of leading Lacanians in debates
over the legalisation of gay marriage, especially in France – it includes
contributions from Jacques-Alain Miller, Pierre Naveau, and Hervé Castanet. Order
here.
The Letter, the Irish Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis,
updated its site last month to provide links to download the publication’s previous
papers. Its news
section also contains updates on forthcoming talks in Dublin from the Irish
School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the International Lacanian Association
(ALI).
The SITE for Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, which trains practitioners in the Lacanian orientation as well
as others, published the latest edition of its own journal, Sitegeist, in April.
Edited by Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz it is available for order here.
For French speakers seeking a
transcript of Lacan’s Seminar VII on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Patrick
Valas has very helpfully updated his site in April to provide a new
transcription of the Seminar here.
Jacques Lacan: Between Psychoanalysis and Politics, a new
volume edited by Samo Tomsic and Andreja Zevnik, was announced for release in
August. It looks at the contribution Lacan’s work could make to international
politics and includes contributions from internationally recognised scholars in
the field.
Finally in terms of new
publications, as heralded in last month’s news
post, Lacanian Ink 45, on the ‘wicked Other’, was released in April as is
now available to buy on Amazon. Subscribe on Lacan.com
to receive the new editions (two a year) as they come out.
In terms of events, the Centre
for Freudian Analysis and Research – CFAR – in London announced the timetable of its public seminars for the summer term of
2015 last month. Starting on the 25th April, a particular focus for this term
is ‘How Lacan Practiced’. This is a topic which has been covered extensively on
this site before (see for example here, here, here, here, and here), by drawing on the testimonies of Lacan’s analysands
and others close to him, which have been collected by figures such as Alain
Didier-Weill and Jean Allouch (the latter in his wonderful collection Allo Lacan? – Certainment Pas.) Other talks in CFAR’s
schedule include two by Paul Verhaeghe on madness and identity in a time of
loneliness. See the full schedule here.
Radio Lacan continues to
publish English content in the form of podcasts. Uploaded in the last month
were a report
on Marie-Hélène Brousse’s Seminar in New York in April by María Cristina
Aguirre (where Brousse comments on the ‘religious freedoms’ act in the US last
month and the terrorist attacks in Paris in January); ‘The Death
Drive Unhinged, or Besson’s Dream of Annihilating Life’ by Natalie Wülfing;
Getting out
of feeblemindedness by Despina Andropoulou; and Geert Hoornaert’s contribution
to the recent seminar on the Parlêtre” organised by GIEP-NLS,
the Israeli Society of the NLS.
Video of Prof Aron Dunlop’s
lecture, ‘Living
in the Age of Anxiety: Jacques Lacan in Dialogue with Paul Tillich and Hannah
Arendt’ was uploaded to YouTube in April.
Dunlop looks at Lacan’s tenth
seminar, from 1962-63, in relation to recent Tom Cruise movies and Bill
Murray’s Groundhog Day from 1993, and the concepts of repetition and the death
drive.
Those living or working in New
York City can find details about the upcoming events of the two groups of the
Lacanian orientation there – the New York Freud and Lacan Analytic Group, and
the Jacques Lacan Workshop – on the Lacanian Compass site here.
In an article which should be
of interest to Lacanians, The New York Times published a piece in April critical of the ‘mindfulness’ movement,
warning against its rapid rise as a current in the psy- field. Virginia
Heffernan traces the origins of the movement from Buddhist-inflected techniques
(later scrubbed of their religious meaning); through to its links with
fashionable strategies for achieving personal success such as positive
thinking, the recovery approach, and self-help; and to the work of Jon
Kabat-Zinn in popularising ‘mindfulness’ in its use in business and the
commercial sphere. Of the latter as an indication of the aims of mindfulness
Heffernan especially counsels scepticism, and we might see parallels with the
way that Lacan criticised the approach of the ego’s psychologists in the 1950s,
or current Lacanians today criticise CBT – in each case the critique is
directed against a conformist model of ‘adaptation’ and the supposed
establishment of a ‘conflict-free’ sphere in human life. Heffernan concludes by
arguing from a perspective that Lacanians will be sympathetic to – that
“suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced”. A short article well worth reading.
Finally, yours truly will be
giving two talks in Cyprus in early May at Cyprus Society of the School of the
Freudian Letter. ‘From a Tickle to an Inferno – The Theory of Jouissance in
Psychoanalysis’ and ‘The Fruit and the Flame – What did Lacan say about Love?’
will then be written up as articles on this site in the near future. Stay
tuned.
Got news? Get in touch.
No comments:
Post a Comment