April – May 2022. Reading Lacan: Philosophical Aspects of Lacanian Psychoanalysis Six Sessions. Thursdays, from 7:30-9:30. April 7, 14, 21, 28, May 5, 12, 2022. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Teachers: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
Jacques Lacan’s work is known for spanning an incredibly broad range of interests. Lacan was inspired by a vast array of disciplines from linguistics, anthropology, topology, and philosophy (to name a few) and, likewise, his own work influenced a very wide array of fields (film, literary and architectural theory, philosophy, anthropology). In this course, we will consider Lacan’s relation to philosophy by focusing on the genealogy of his thought in phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, structuralism, and the philosophy of science. Moreover, we will also consider the vicissitudes of his influence on subsequent philosophy. In this regard, we will reflect on the contributions made to contemporary philosophy by the thinkers of the Ljubljana School (Zizek, Dolar, Zupancic). Also, pertinent here will be the work of Lorenzo Chiesa, Joan Copjec and Alain Badiou. The various philosophical themes (to name a few) that will be studied will include the following: Hegel’s master and slave dialectic (as appropriated by Kojève), the influence of Koyré’s reflections on modern mathematical science, Lacan’s relation to Heidegger (with respect to language) and Merleau-Ponty (in relation to perception and hallucination), the work of Miller in formalizing a Lacanian epistemology, Badiou’s extension of Lacan’s involvement with logic and mathematics, the critique of post-structuralism put forward by the Ljubljana School. As we make our way into the 21st century the influence of Lacan’s thought will be increasingly felt not only in psychoanalytic theory and practice but also in the burgeoning of new philosophical perspectives founded on a Lacanian conception of the subject.
November – December 2021. Clinical Lacan: The Body in Lacanian Psychoanalysis Six sessions. Thursdays from 7:30-9:30. November 11, 18, 25, December 2, 9, 16, 2021. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton, Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
Language, speech, and discourse all have effects on the body. The effects of language on the body are articulated in the classical period of Lacan’s teaching in terms of a satisfaction linked to the constitution of the unity of the body in its image in the mirror stage. There is then mortification brought about by the body’s being indicated by signifiers which bring about the death of the thing. In the later Lacan, it becomes clear that the real of the body participates in drive and jouissance and in the cure.
As Jacques-Alain Miller writes: “The satisfaction proper to the mirror stage is the identification of the subject, conceived as original organic disarray, with what I will call a complete body image”. And as Alexandre Stevens writes, in relation to the later Lacan, “We must thus consider that the subject is ‘affected by [affecté de] two discordant bodies’ which are the organism as real, and the body grasped in its unity as an image. The body in its initial presence, as pure organism, as real, is fragmented and it is through the image that it is made One, but it is thus a wholly imaginary One. The only signification here is that of symbolic efficacy reduced to imaginary identification, but it is one that produces the satisfaction of jubilation of the young child in front of the mirror.” The body as indicated in the Borromean knot and then in the sinthome, as for James Joyce, is more complexly understood.
The body in Lacanian psychoanalysis will be presented in various aspects in this course, which will be best appreciated by those who know something about Lacan. Readings will be supplied throughout the course and discussion will be encouraged.
September – October 2021. Lacan from the Beginnings Five sessions, Thursday, 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm: September 23, 30, October 7, 14, 21, 2021. Presented by Judith Hamilton.
This course is offered for those who know little about the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who would like an introduction that begins with the earliest concepts he developed – the signifier, the three registers, the unconscious structured like a language, desire, the big Other – and which provides examples of their relevance to the clinical practice of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The evolution of his theory over 27 years and the related clinical approaches will be presented in the context of other psychoanalytic theories and cultural developments of the 20th century, including contemporary Lacanian theory and practices. It is hoped that this course will provide enough depth to prepare those who wish to go on studying Lacanian theory and practice, and enough breadth for those who want to be able to include the benefits of early, middle, and late Lacanian concepts in their clinical work. Readings will be suggested, and discussion will be welcomed.
April – May 2021. Reading Lacan: Seminar IV: Object Relations and Freudian Structures. Six Sessions. Thursdays, from 7:30-10:00 April 8, 15, 22, 29, May 6, 13, 2021. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
In this course, the leaders will present topics derived from a reading of Lacan’s Seminar IV. According to Lacan, Freud did not care about the object but about the “lack” of the object. Lacan’s study was based on the function of the object in phobia (Freud’s case of Little Hans) and in fetishism (Freud’s A Child is Being Beaten, his study of da Vinci, and the observation of a little girl by one of Anna Freud’s students). The lack of the object involved a renunciation, in the infantile triad of the Oedipus complex, brought about by the law of the Father, of a third, imaginary term which Lacan called the phallus. He outlined three forms of lack: frustration, privation and castration, involving the three registers of objects (the real, the imaginary and the symbolic phallus). In this process, mother falls from the Symbolic (Other) to the Real, while the objects, through the mediation of the phallus, “from Real become Symbolic.” (derived from Marcelle Marini, 1992) This results in the structuring preference for the father, as the Name-of-the-Father, the founding signifier of the Symbolic. From this seminar, one follows the development of Lacan’s teaching on the outcome of the Oedipus complex, with its discussion of the permutations of object choice, and assesses the depth of its relevance to contemporary clinical practice with respect to the family and the child’s place within it: the “unwanted” child and melancholia and the possibility of “devastation” wrought on the child by the mother’s desire. Lacan anticipates here the symbolic fragmentation and deconstruction of the concept of the family in our day. (derived from Carol Owens and Nadezhda Almqvist, 2019)
November – December 2020. Clinical Lacan: Dreams in the Lacanian Clinic Six sessions. Thursdays from 7:30-10:00 November 12, 19, 26, December 3, 10, 17, 2020. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
In this course, we will present Lacan’s comments about the use of dreams as material for understanding the unconscious, its elements and structures and its relation to the life of a patient. Because Lacan bases many of his examples and descriptions of the mechanisms on those described by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), we will first present Freud’s work and then relate it to some of the basic categories of Lacan’s theory – the big Other, desire, the imaginary and the symbolic – illustrating with clinical examples. Then we will present and discuss several dreams, of Freud’s own and from patients whom he saw in analysis, that Freud presented and interpreted. We will take up Lacan’s detailed discussion of these dreams, showing how they illustrate Lacan’s theories and the direction of his treatments. In the second section of the course, we will consider dreams from the standpoint of the later Lacan for whom the concept of the subject of/and the unconscious is taken up in that of the speaking being, desire is replaced by drive, which seeks the satisfaction of jouissance in the Real of the body. These latter concepts are useful for treating a broader range of patients, including psychotic patients, than for those neurotics patients treated mainly, effectively, by concepts from the early Lacan.
March-April 2020. Reading Lacan: Seminar XX: Encore. On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-73. Five sessions. Thursdays, 7:30 – 10:00 PM: March 9, 16, 30, April 2, 9, 2020. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
In this course, the leaders will present topics derived from a reading of Lacan’s Seminar XX. This Seminar is among the most cited and most read of Lacan’s work. It is dense and cryptic and requires much discussion. It concerns femininity, masculinity, the sexual relation, jouissance, love and knowledge. For example, woman would only enter into the sexual relation as “mother” and man depending on castration. Hence “there is no real sexual relation,” and love as well as speech make up for this absence. Whereas both the masculine and the feminine experience phallic jouissance, the feminine has as well a supplementary jouissance about which she can say very little. Love is at once the “ignorance of desire”, the insignia of narcissism, a fundamental passion of the soul, the encounter of two desires as well as a kind of symbolic suicide. Regarding knowledge, “the unconscious is not the fact that being thinks” – though that is what is implied by what is said thereof in traditional science – “the unconscious is the fact that being, by speaking, enjoys, and…wants to know nothing more about it.” Finally it was in this seminar that Lacan first played with pieces of string, developed the concept of the Borromean knot and spoke of Saint Paul, Freud, Aristotle and Christianity.
November – December 2019. Clinical Lacan: Interpretations and Constructions. 6 sessions: Thursdays, 7:30-10:00 PM; November 14, 21, 28, December 5, 12, 19, 2019. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas. To register, go to the torontopsychoanalysis.com site and click on the Extension Program (Course FOUR); The course is divided into 2 sections: Part A will begin at the beginning, in the period of early Lacan, and be useful for participants with little or no understanding of Lacan’s work. Part B will be presentations oriented towards the later Lacan, useful to those who are already familiar with Lacan. One can sign up for either part separately or both parts, or add Part B to Part A during the course. Fees: Part A $180; Part B $180; Parts A and B $360
November 14, December 5 – Judith – Interpretations, and “Interpretations in reverse”; November 21, December 12 – Ali – The Rome discourse, and Interpretation and intervention in psychosis; November 28, December 19 – Carlos – Construction of the case, and The Pass.
January – February 2019.
Reading Lacan: Topics from the Later and Late Lacan. Thursday, 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm: January 17, 24, 31, February 7, 14, 2019.
In this course, the leaders will present and discuss a range of concepts from the later and late Lacan, supplying clinical and cultural examples throughout. The concepts they will cover include: changes in the symbolic, imaginary and real; topology to describe the mind; the subject as parlêtre and its structure as the Borromean knot; jouissance, drive and the body; the Other jouissance; lalangue and the real of the unconscious; naming as the remaining function of the Name-of-the-Father; symptoms and sinthome as the fourth ring and solution to functioning; the enigmatic affects of the unconscious; equivocation as a technique; and psychoanalysis as poetry. The participants will be sent selections from Lacan’s Seminars XX – XXIV to read along with related papers. A very helpful book that presents Lacan’s trajectory, his basic thoughts and contributions, and a summary of each of his writings is by Marcelle Marini, “Jacques Lacan: the French Context”, 1992, by Rutgers University Press (with kindle form on Amazon).
Leaders: Judith Hamilton, Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas
Fees: $300
November – December 2018.
The Apple of My “I”. 6 sessions: Thursdays, 7:30-10:00 PM; November 8, 15, 22, 29, December 6, 13, 2018. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas. To register, go to the torontopsychoanalysis.com site and click on the Extension Program (Course FOUR); The course is divided into 2 sections: Part A will begin at the beginning, in the period of early Lacan, and be useful for participants with little or no understanding of Lacan’s work. Part B will be presentations oriented towards the later Lacan, useful to those who are already familiar with Lacan. One can sign up for either part separately or both parts, or add Part B to Part A during the course. Fees: Part A $180; Part B $180; Parts A and B $360
November 8 and 29: Ali – The Mirror Stage; the Imaginary; Language and the Ego in Joyce; the Sinthome; Lalangue.
November 15 and December 6: Carlos – the Body in Lacan, early and late Lacan.
November 22 and December 13: Judith – Symptoms: Freudian and Lacanian – from the 1950’s generation (era of positivism, modernism and capitalism) to those of the 21st century (era of relativism, post-modernism and late capitalism)
November – December 2017.
Clinical Lacan: Beyond Oedipus. 6 sessions: Thursdays, 7:30-10:00 PM; November 9, 16, 23, 30, December 7, 14, 2017. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas. To register, go to the torontopsychoanalysis.com site and click on the Extension Program (Course Three); Fees are $290.
November 9 and 30: Ali – Overview of Oedipus (Freud, Lacan’s Family complexes, Seminar V, Seminar XVII, Seminar XXIII)
November 16 and December 7: Carlos – applications of the Oedipus and beyond; private into public; potential use of Oedipus and the negative Oedipus in the framing of masculinities.
November 23 and December 14: Judith – case studies to illustrate the ideas.
November – December 2016.
Lacan in the Clinic. 6 sessions: Thursdays, 7:30-10:00 PM; November 10, 17, 24, December 1, 8, 15, 2016. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas.
November 10: Contemporary subjectivity; Choice of Jouissance – Carlos
November 17: Ordinary psychosis; James Joyce; Clinical case – Ali
November 24: Ellie Ragland’s paper: Anorexia in the Elderly – Judith
December 1: Dissociative phenomena – Carlos
December 8: Desire, Trauma and Re-enactment using Lacan’s homage to Marguerite Duras in “The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein” – Ali
December 15: Consumerism, Capitalism, Addiction – Judith
January – February 2016.
Reading Lacan. Reading together Lacan’s Seminar VIII: Transference.
5 sessions: Thursdays, 7:30-10:00; January 21, 28, February 4, 11, 18, 2016.
Leaders: Judith Hamilton, Clive Thomson, Claire Lunney.
November – December 2015.
Lacan Unpacked. Uses of Lacan in the Clinic. 5 sessions: Sundays, 10:00-1:00; November 8, 15, 22, December 6, 13, 2015. Co-ordinated by Judith Hamilton. Additional Leaders: Clive Thomson, Ali Taheri, Carlos Rivas, Sean Meggeson.
November 8: Language in practice – Sean; Gender, sex – Carlos
November 15: Borderlines in Lacan – Judith; Psychotherapy for psychosis – Ali
November 22: Gender in the clinic – Clive; Addictions – Sean
December 6: Trauma, Community services – Carlos; Approaches to borderlines – Judith
December 13: Hysteria – Clive; The “push to woman” in the psychoses – Ali
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