Teaching Seminar:
Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Questions & Answers
with Samuel McCormick, Ph.D.
Date: October 25th, 2026
Time: 02:30 PM – 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/95692229311
Description: Rather than beginning with a prepared lecture, this session will be devoted entirely to questions. Participants are invited to bring any questions they have about Lacanian psychoanalysis — particular concepts, clinical problems, or any other points of difficulty they have encountered in Lacan’s work. There is no need for these questions to be especially polished or advanced. A basic question, a point of confusion, a disagreement with Lacan, or something that simply doesn’t make sense can be an excellent place to begin. We will use these questions from the group to determine the direction of the session.
Samuel McCormick is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University and the founder of Lectures on Lacan, an online learning community dedicated to clear, coherent, and accessible readings of key texts in Lacanian psychoanalysis. He is the award-winning author of several books, including Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals; The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk; and, most recently, Origins of Desire & Ethics of the Drive in Lacanian Psychoanalysis: A Reading Companion to Seminar XI. Professor McCormick is also the Series Editor for Routledge Guides to Lacan.
~~~
Ongoing Reading Group:
Seminar X: Anxiety (Third session)
Discussion lead by Meera Lee, Ph.D., LP,
Date: October 25th, 2026
Time: 12:30 PM – 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82826952007?pwd=LhdN048pn5I8NdIMYVXGqq2bSA6Iya.1
Description: in his tenth seminar, delivered from 1962 to 1963, Lacan stated that anxiety is “that which does not deceive” and is “not without an object.” Situated between the preceding seminar on identification and the subsequent seminar on the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Seminar X marks a transitional point in Lacan’s teaching, as he moves from the symbolic and the signifier toward the real and affect and, consequently, develops the idea of object a more fully. In this ten-week teaching seminar, we will read Lacan’s Seminar X to understand these axiomatic formulations of anxiety in the context of this crucial shift in his teaching. We will begin with Freud’s two essays, “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety” and “Civilization and Its Discontents,” as Lacan himself begins his seminar in response to the former. We will then proceed to a close reading of Seminar X and conclude with two contemporary commentaries on Lacanian anxiety by Jacques-Alain Miller and Éric Laurent.