A petition against the exclusion of psychoanalysis and in support of diversity in research and care methods has been launched in Europe. It has been prompted by the latest attempt from the film maker Sophie Robert to have psychoanalysts ousted from the public sphere. Her campaign this time aims to prevent psychoanalysts from being able to give expert testimony in court cases, and to block psychoanalysis from being taught in certain university settings. This article in the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on 22nd October – ‘Why psychoanalysts must be excluded from the courts’ – presents her case. The petition in response is the initiative of the European Inter-University Seminar on Teaching and Research in Psychopathology and Psychoanalysis (SIUEERPP). At time of writing it has over 30,000 signatories. Read more about the campaign (in English, half-way down this page) and lend your voice to the petition here. Readers may remember that Roberts was the film maker whose 2011 documentary Le Mur became the subject of legal action by the psychoanalytic community, resulting in its banning on order of the French courts for having deliberately misled audiences in its portrayal of the analysts featured in the film.

Among new publications, two new books from Routledge will have their release dates just before Christmas on 20th December. Firstly, Carol Owens’ and Stephanie Swales’ Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch, explores ambivalence through topics as diverse as Aristotle, zombies, and Breaking Bad. Secondly Guy Le Gaufey’s short volume Lacan and the Formulas of Sexuation: Exploring Logical Consistency and Clinical Consequences is a close examination of Lacan’s late work on sexual difference. Remember that LacanOnline.com visitors get 20% off and free global shipping on all Routledge titles using the code on this page.

The Nation/State Fantasy: A Psychoanalytical Genealogy of Nationalism, by Moran M. Mandelbaum, will be released by Palgrave Macmillan in December. It deploys a psychoanalytical and discourse analytical approach to the origins of nationalism in early modern European thought, seeking to understand the continued endurance of the nation-state ideal in contemporary international politics using Lacanian theory.

Among newly announced titles for next year, due for a March release by Academica Press is Turkish sociologist Suheyb Ögüt’s Being and Symptom: The Intersection of Sociology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and Continental Philosophy. Seeking to account for political sovereignty by examining the status of sexuality in defining the social order, Ögüt combines traditional political theorists such as Hobbes, Hegel and Foucault with mathematicians like Nash and historians like Girard.

Looking further ahead into next year, Massimo Recalcati’s The Son’s Secret, a narration of the tragedies of Oedipus with the parable of the prodigal son, has been announced for release in May by Polity.

Among the journals, the Lacan Circle of Australia has its own free online journal, ‘Psychoanalysis Lacan’, of which the three most recent volumes are now available. The first volume includes several testimonies of the pass; the second addresses the notion of crisis (which formed the theme of the NLS Congress in 2015); and the most recent volume comments on the contribution of Jean-Claude Milner among other thinkers.

The latest edition of The Lacanian Review, No.8, Nightmare, has now been released. It takes up Lacan’s proposition in Seminar XI that a nightmare wakes us up in order to continue dreaming, and features new translations of Lacan’s short presentation ‘Aristotle’s Dream’, alongside work by Jacques-Alain Miller, Eric Laurent, and Marie-Helene Brousse. The full table of contents and a link to buy or subscribe is here.

Joachim Cauwe and Stijn Vanheule’s paper ‘Manoeuvres of Transference in Psychosis: A Case Study of Melancholia from a Lacanian Perspective’ is available free online until 15th December. It was first published in 2018 in the British Journal of Psychotherapy. The authors discuss their work with a patient, following the logic of psychotic melancholia, in which the insufficiency of the Other to mediate the experience of jouissance makes the handling of the transference especially challenging.

Several new podcasts of note were made available last month. From the Freud Museum London firstly was Dr Yael Baldwin’s talk ‘Words and Signifiers Still Matter: The Relevance of Lacanian Therapy Today’. Dr Baldwin discusses the importance of speech and the materiality of the signifier with special reference to cases of addiction. The event was chaired by Prof Dany Nobus.

Second, an interview with Prof Ian Parker discussing his new book Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Context: Subjectivity, History, and Autobiography is now available thanks to the New Books in Psychoanalysis team. Jordan Osserman interviews Prof Parker about the interface of psychoanalysis and politics, his background training as a clinical psychologist, and the institutional place of psychoanalysis within academia and the contemporary clinic.

Third, thanks to Radio Lacan a podcast is now available of Anne Lysy’s address for Lacanian Compass in October on ‘Interpretation in the Era of the Speaking Being’. It draws from her short paper on interpretation and the body which is itself part of the work towards the theme of the 13th Clinical Study Days of Lacanian Compass, on Jouissance, which will take place in New York in February.

Finally, Radio Lacan also has a recording of Dalila Arpin’s talk ‘What Does an Analysis Satisfy?’ which was delivered in mid-October to the ICLO Society of the NLS in Ireland.

Among events, the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Ghent has announced its Doctoral School for summer next year, taking place 6th-10th July, with Dr Calum Neil leading a close reading of Lacan’s Seminar XVII, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Looking at Lacanian discourse theory and its relevance for today’s clinic and culture, there will also be guest lectures by Paul Verhaeghe and Stijn Vanheule.

The inaugural event of the Freud Lacan Institute will be a two-day seminar on 6th-7th December in Dublin on ‘Sex, Love, and Reproduction in the Age of Technology’, featuring a multi-disciplinary array of speakers from various fields, including psychoanalysis. Full details and booking are available through Eventbrite.

Lacanian psychoanalyst Bernard Burgoyne will be giving a seminar in London, announced for 7th March next year, on ‘Pre-Socratic Greece and Pathways taken in Psychoanalysis’. Hosted by the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Burgoyne will look at the philosophical orientations of psychoanalysis, in particular that of phenomenology. Tickets – which include a glass of wine – are available now through Eventbrite at discounted early bird rates.

‘Psychoanalysis After Freud: Jacques Lacan’ is the title of a one-day intensive course planned by The Freud Museum London for March next year. Dr Keith Barrett will lead the event exploring Lacan’s re-interpretation of Freud and his approaches to neurosis, psychosis, and human sexuality.

Bruno de Halleux will be giving a seminar at the London Society of the NLS on Saturday 14th December, in preparation for the NLS’s XVIIIth Congress taking place in Ghent next summer on the theme ‘Interpretation: From Truth to Event’. Halleux will be titling his talk ‘An Interpretation that Wakes One Up’ and tickets are now available to purchase through the link above.

Finally, Lacanian Compass and the NLS are offering a free video seminar by Fabian Naparstek on 15th December, presenting ‘The Raw and the Cooked of the Dream’ as part of the preparatory work towards the Clinical Study Days 13 on jouissance next February. The seminar will be conducted through Webex and details of how to register are available here. Dr Naparstek is a Professor in the psychopathology department at the University of Buenos Aires.

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