PROGRAMME

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• Presentation of the London Society of the NLS Annual Programme, 2021-2022  Click here.

• Argument for Reading Seminar "Encore" Click here.

• Argument for Seminar "Teachings of an Experience" Click here.

The Programme for 2021-2022 is coming soon!

Please also visit the LS2 Calendar which is being updated throughout the year

UPCOMING EVENTS

For further events, please check the full programme by clicking on the PDF link at the top of the page.

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Events for this Month

The details of these events can be found below with links to tickets. You may also wish to visit our Eventbrite Organiser Profile Page where you can follow us. (Ticket information will be updated shortly)

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NLS SEMINAR SERIES
Reading Lacan's Seminar XX: Encore

Those of you who followed our online reading of Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XVII (April - July 2020) might recall that in it, Lacan draws the line at any suggestion that the Freudian discourse might be based on biological facts of sexuality. Indeed in 1935 Freud wrote: “I object to all of you (Horney, Jones, Rado, etc.,) to the extent that you do not distinguish more clearly between what is psychic and what is biological, that you try to establish a neat parallelism between the two […] I would only like to emphasise that we must keep psychoanalysis separate from biology just as we have kept it separate from anatomy and physiology".[1] But Seminar XVII is also the seminar in which Lacan distances himself from Freud by rendering the Oedipus complex “strictly unusable”, criticising him for choosing to pursue his theory of the Oedipus instead of being oriented by the knowledge gained “from all these mouths of gold” of Anna, Emma, and Dora. [2] We follow Lacan in his path beyond the Oedipus complex, opening up to the field of jouissance and the question of its feminine mode which, Lacan declares, Freud abandoned. In fact, Freud could go no further insofar as he encountered the rock of castration.

The field of jouissance—­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­a field Jacques-Alain Miller named ‘Lacanian’ by giving this title to the chapter elaborating on it in Seminar XVII—highlights the cut between libido and nature. It is what the formulas of sexuation will come to articulate in Seminar XX insofar as the side chosen by each speaking being is not akin to any biological given or socially constructed gender but is instead a choice of jouissance. Having left behind Freud’s famous question about woman’s desire, Lacan provides a metaphor instead: “[Woman] lends herself to surplus jouissance because she, the woman, plunges her roots, like a flower, down into jouissance itself". [3] Thus Lacan uses his most political seminar to introduce what will come to be articulated in the subsequent seminars, and especially in Seminar XX, as the not-all, opening the path to the singular which characterises the ethics of our orientation.

Seminar XX is a seminar dedicated to the psychoanalytic themes of sexuality, love, desire, and jouissance. Most of Lacan’s famous aphorisms are found in it: the formulas of sexuation, the Other jouissance, supplementary jouissance, the not-all, and Woman does not exist. With Encore Lacan introduces a novel approach to sexuality that constitutes a break from traditional knowledge and its organisation around binaries. How can we think differently to man / woman? How can Lacan help us understand gender fluidity in today’s civilization? What are the consequences of the fact that there are women and not the Woman; a “Feminine principle” rather than a jouissance monopolised by women? [4]

We are inviting everyone to join us in our reading of Encore, which is a logical continuation of Seminar XVII, but also constitutes part of our preparations for the WAP’s Great International Online Conversation: “Woman does not exist" [5]; it brings together the seven schools and friends of the WAP in a great conversation of epistemic and clinical significance.

Peggy Papada

1] Freud, S., (1935). “Letter to Carl Muller-Braunschweg”, published as ‘Freud and female sexuality: a previously unpublished letter’, Psychiatry, 1971, pp. 328-9.
[2] Lacan, J., The Other Side of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII (1969-70), ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. R. Grigg, New York/ London, Norton, 2007, p. 99.
[3] Lacan, J., Ibid. p. 78.
[4] See Alberti.C. (2021) “Woman does not exist”, opening argument for the WAP’s Great International Online Conversation, available online: “Woman does not exist” – Grandes assises AMP 2022
[5] Grandes assises AMP 2022 – Paris

All meetings will take place online. Advance registration for each seminar is required. To register for the reading of the first chapter "On Jouissance" by Alexandre Stevens on Sunday 10th October please CLICK HERE For more information about this and other activities of the London Society of the NLS please visit our website at www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk

 

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NLS SEMINAR SERIES - TEACHINGS OF AN EXPERIENCE, by Véronique Voruz
A series of 5 seminars in conversation with Dossia Avdelidi, Florencia F.C. Shanahan, Anne Lysy and Alexandre Stevens

The pass is an interpretation Lacan made to the analytic community.

Analysts are not produced by the acquisition of knowledge, or any amount of clinical experience. According to the Lacan of the Proposition of 67, an Analyst of the School is the logical product of the analytic discourse taken to its ultimate consequence; and it entails profound subjective reconfigurations for those that pursue it to its end.

In the past decade, the mechanisms for the nomination of AS in the various Schools of the WAP have worked well to the extent that there have been many more nominations over the past decade than in the years that spanned the Proposition and the re-actualising of the pass by Jacques-Alain Miller and Éric Laurent in 2010 within the ECF.

Having completed my mandate in October 2018, this seminar is dedicated to exploring, in the after-effect, what teachings can be drawn from the unprecedented experience that Lacan invented in order to set the analytic discourse distinctly and irrevocably apart from all other human practices of the social bond.  

The purpose of this series of seminar is two-fold: to evaluate the dispositifs of the pass and the mandate, on the one hand, and to extract a modicum of knowledge on the constitution of human reality, on the other.

In the opening seminar, I will present the mechanism at its origin as well as current debates around the pass.

In the intermediary seminars, I will elaborate three points that have stood out for me as retaining considerable opacity during the experience of the mandate.

The first point concerns the question of destiny. What is destiny for psychoanalysis, if indeed speaking beings are to the utmost extent determined by the signifier and the jouissance that it carries? What is the share of belief in the actualisation of said destiny? How to disentangle destinal fiction from sinthomal fate? And what can be separated from, and what can’t?

The second has to do with the gaze and its implication in the constitution of the scopic field. Each one of us lives in an “image-world”, as Lacan put it in The Lacanian Phenomenon, or again, as he told Catherine Millot in a private conversation, “a world is the dream of a body”. What awakening is there from one’s scopic reality?

The third concerns the function of nomination: the nominations that pepper the course of an analysis, those that come from familial others, the ones we attribute to ourselves over the time of the experience, and finally, the nomination to the function of AS – two letters that irreversibly mark the speaking body that receives their imprint.    

The concluding seminar will consider the continuing pertinence of the procedure in its clinical, epistemic and political dimensions, out of the teachings of an experience.

Véronique Voruz          


Dates

18 September 2021 – Opening
23 October 2021 with Dossia Avdelidi
27 November 2021 with Florencia Shanahan
29 January 2022 with Anne Lysy
28 May 2022 – Conversation

Tickets for the 5 seminars: £50

PURCHASE A TICKET

Please note: Ticket sales will end at 15:30 UK time on the 18th September 2021.

 

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Cartels: Fixation and Repetition & “Woman does not exist"

Dear colleagues and friends of the London Society,

Two of the main themes we’ll be working on during 2021-2022 are the theme of next year’s NLS congress, Fixation and Repetition, and the theme of the Great International Online Conversation of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, “Woman does not exist”. As part of our preparations, we are organising an online reading of Lacan’s Seminar XX, Encore, details of which will be revealed soon!

We are encouraging everyone to form cartels on the above themes so that you can actively participate in their development by pursuing your own questions.

There are many resources available already so that you can start thinking about the question you might wish to pursue:

Find the argument of the NLS congress, by Alexandre Stevens, President of the NLS, here: https://www.amp-nls.org/nls-messager/towards-the-nls-congress-2022-argument/ and on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/7XZ73C22AeQ

The argument for the WAP’s International Conversation, by Christiane Alberti, chair of the “Grandes Assises”, is available in print and video form here: https://www.grandesassisesamp2022.com/en/la-femme-nexiste-pas-2/

For further assistance with cartel work, please contact the LS members responsible for cartels: Sophia Berouka, sophia_berouka@hotmail.com & Oriol Cobacho, oriolcob@gmail.com

We look forward to a rich year of work around these exciting themes!

The Bureau of the London Society

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ANNOUNCING

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PREPARATORY EVENT TOWARDS THE 6th EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, PIPOL 10
Contributions by: Eva Bailo, Neus Carbonell (ELP), Andy Maldo, Cecilia Naranjo (Member of the PIPOL team), Peggy Papada & Bogdan Wolf
(Saturday, 26 June: 11:00-12:30 pm BST)

Building on our event last month with Domenico Cosenza, President of the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis, we will continue our work towards PIPOL 10 with another preparatory event on the 26th of June at 11:00 am (BST), just a week before the congress! There will be interventions by: Eva Bailo, Neus Carbonell (ELP), Andy Maldo, Cecilia Naranjo (Member of the PIPOL team), Peggy Papada & Bogdan Wolf.

Join us for this morning of work as we are making our way towards the 6th European Congress of Psychoanalysis. PIPOL brings together the 4 European Schools of Psychoanalysis (New Lacanian, School, École de la cause freudienne- France, Escuela Lacaniana de Psicoanalisis - Spain, Scuola Lacaniana di Psicoanalisi - Italy) and a large community of practitioners oriented by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is a European congress in 4 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish with simultaneous translation.

PIPOL 10 will be held online on 3 & 4 July, 2021. Saturday is dedicated to case presentations in small “rooms” with mixed languages. On Sunday there will be round tables, orientation texts, testimonies of Analysts of the School. Jacques-Alain Miller will be present to chair a table on the question of gender and in particular gender dysphoria. No doubt the theme of PIPOL 10 “Wanting a child? Desire for family and clinic of filiations” resonates with all the questions debated by psychoanalysis and society at large, as Dominique Holvoet, Director of the congress, put it in a recent interview, available here.

THE EVENT IS FREE and OPEN TO ALL: click here to register.
Please note that the ticket bookings will end at 9:30am on the day.

Register for the PIPOL 10 Congress here.

Visit OMBILIC, the congress blog for orientation texts, videos and other resources.

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London Society Reading Seminar
Desire and its Interpretation
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VI

A Course of Seminars
With Susana Huler

Saturdays 14.30-16.00 (Zoom)
24 October & 21 November 2020
23 January, 27 February, 13 March, 24 April, 29 May, 26 June 2021

“We shall resume our reading of Seminar VI from the lessons on Hamlet on and we shall come to know the use Lacan makes of the vector of desire in the direction of the cure. Lacan criticises analysis that works through identification and provokes the analysand to react with an acting-out of a perversion. This is read by him as a protest of the subject in defence of his desire. Lacan concludes that “Desire is the relation of the subject to his being.” (Susana Huler)

Due to current restrictions on social gathering brought about by Coronavirus pandemic, the seminar will be held on Zoom in a slightly modified format, with short presentations by London Society members and an extended commentary of the chapters under discussion by Susana Huler. Once again, all attendees are invited to engage actively in the reading and will have the opportunity to take part in the discussions on the day.

NEXT SESSION: Chapter XXVII

Saturday,  26th June 2021—14:30-16:00 (BST)

This final meeting of the Reading Seminar VI series will explore the last session of Desire and Its Interpretation, entitled 'Toward Sublimation'. We will consider Lacan's critique there of the appeal, in object relations theory, to a notion of 'reality' that obscures the place of desire in the speaking subject who "is caught up - just like we are - in the consequences and risks speech entails". We will also explore the link Lacan makes between social conformism, cultural sublimation, and perversion as "a protest that [...] arises in the dimension of desire".

This session will include a short presentation by Aino-Marjatta Mäki and an extended commentary of this final session by Susana Huler.

Tickets: £8

PURCHASE A TICKET

Please note: Ticket sales will end one hour before the seminar is due to begin.

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NLS Seminar—“The Horrible Solitude of Jouissance"
with Bruno de Halleux (Saturday, 1 May: 14:30-16:00)

This fifth and final instalment of our series of NLS Seminars preparing our way towards the upcoming NLS Congress on "The Bodily Effects of Language"—which will take place on the weekend of the 22-23 May 2021—will be delivered by special guest, Bruno de Halleux (member of the ECF, NLS and WAP). His title, “The Horrible Solitude of Jouissance”, takes its lead from an expression made by Jacques-Alain Miller and developed in his course of seminars in the Lacanian Orientation at Paris VIII.
For multiple resources on the theme of the Congress and the opportunity to register for it, please visit the NLS Congress Website at: https://www.nlscongress2021.com/home-en.

More details about this present seminar will be uploaded to our website shortly.

NLS Seminar with Bruno de Halleux
Saturday, 1 May—14:30-16:00
Tickets £10

PURCHASE A TICKET

Please note: Ticket sales will end at 1pm on the day.

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Introduction to the Lacanian Clinics of Psychosis
Language and the Body in Schreber

The second year of the London Society’s course ‘Introduction to the Lacanian Clinics of Psychosis’ will be structured around a detailed re-examination of the Schreber case history. Lacan’s reading of Schreber, as pursued in his third seminar and in his Question Preliminary to any Possible Treatment of Psychosis, provided the basis for his elaboration of the concepts of foreclosure, the Name of the Father and the paternal metaphor, foundation of the classical Lacanian clinic of psychosis.

Alongside an examination of these fundamental concepts, this year’s course will pursue the question of language and the body in Schreber, in alignment with the theme of the forthcoming Congress of the NLS ‘Bodily Effects of Language’. In his argument for the Congress, Alexandre Stevens outlines the broad trajectory of Lacan’s work that takes us from the Other of language in the early teaching to an Other of the body as elaborated in Seminar XX: Encore. Associated with this trajectory we can trace modifications in Lacan’s conception of the subject, the body, the symptom, and of the means and goals of psychoanalytic interpretation.

Our examination of the Schreber case, based primarily on material extracted from certain chapters of Schreber’s Memoirs, will detail two possible approaches to the reading of Schreber according to whether we prioritise his relation to an Other of speech and language or to an Other of jouissance. We will propose that many of the key questions of the contemporary Lacanian clinic of psychosis are played out in the space of this articulation.

Dates
First Meeting: Saturday, 7th November 2020, 14.30-16.00 via Zoom
Subsequent dates: Saturday 12th December 2020, 9th January 2021, 13th February 2021.
Further dates to be confirmed.
Speakers include: Roger Litten, Gabriela van den Hoven, Colin Wright, Susana Huler.

References

• Schreber, D. P., Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, New York Review of Books, 2000.
• Freud, S., (1911) Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, Standard Edition, Volume XII.
• Lacan, J., “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis”, Ecrits, Norton, 2006.
• The Seminar Book III, The Psychoses, Norton, 1993.
• The Seminar Book XX, Encore, Norton, 1998
• Miller, J.-A, Lacanian Biology and the Body Event, Lacanian Ink (17/18)

NEXT MEETING – Saturday, 13th February 2021 at 14:30 GMT

Tickets: £8

 

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Ordinary Psychosis Today
A Series of Seminars for the New Year

Since its introduction in 1998, the concept of ordinary psychosis has provoked more questions about the Lacanian clinic than it has provided answers. J.-A. Miller’s seminal text “Ordinary Psychosis Revisited” is where these questions first came into focus in a way that allowed us to read clinical cases in a new way. This followed a moment of uncertainty that put many analytical practitioners on the spot: is it psychosis or is it neurosis? This hesitation often pointed to an insufficiency in the differential clinic organised solely in terms of either the inscription or foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father – a concept from Lacan’s early teaching which, in some quarters, has been raised to an almost universal power. Miller’s ordinary psychosis does not fall within this remit. Deduced from Lacan’s teaching nevertheless, it no longer offers the wholesale assurance traditionally attributed to the universal. What we see now are the effects of a displacement and diffusion of the Name-of-the-Father into so many semblants seeking to bolster and shore up what might otherwise fail. Some indications of this shift can be striking, showing phenomena of disconnection and of unplugging in either one or more of the three registers R.S.I. Others emerge as minute and discreet signs, traumatic marks and subtle resonances pointing to variants of what Lacan called a disturbance at the innermost juncture of the subject’s sense of life, the body and language. Over the course of 3 meetings, this mini-series will follow Miller’s invention and elucidation to the letter, while drawing on clinical references and consequences to which the reading list below gives ample testimony.

With the participation of Sophia Berouka, Oriol Cobacho, Nicolas Duchenne, Aino-Marjatta Mäki, Alan Rowan and Bogdan Wolf (introduction and moderation).

Saturdays: 23 January, 27 February, and 27 March 2021.

Tickets £8

To purchase a ticket through Eventbrite for one or multiple events in this series click below.

Purchase a Ticket

The details for each Zoom meeting will be sent to attendees a few hours before the seminar begins

Reading List

• J.-A. Miller – “Ordinary psychosis revisited” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26,
• J.-A. Miller & others – “The conversation of Arcachon (extracts)” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26,
• J. Lacan – On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis (Écrits),
• J.-P. Deffieux – “Not so rare a case” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26, 19, and 7,
• H. Castanet – “A subject in the fog” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26 and 19,
• E. Laurent – “Ordinary psychosis” and “Psychoanalytic treatments of the psychoses” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26,
• Y.-C. Stavy – “Readings of the hallucinatory phenomenon in Lacan’s teaching: clinical and ethical consequences” (presented in the Clinical Section of Marseille, June 2020),
• Y. Vanderveken – “Towards a generalisation of the clinic of discreet signs” in The Lacanian Review 1,
• M.-H. Brousse – “Ordinary psychosis in the light of Lacan’s theory of discourse” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 26 and 19,
• G. Caroz – “Some remarks on the direction of the treatment in ordinary psychosis” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 19,
• J.-L. Gault – “City full of ghosts” in Psychoanalytical Notebooks 19.

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“'The Analysts' Banquet”
Closed Reading Seminar