Teaching Sessions
The Lacan Toronto Teaching Program was initiated in February 2015.
1:30 to 3:00 PM (After the reading group sessions.)
Open to the Public – Please distribute to anyone interested.
There is no registration requirement, nor charge for these meetings.
For 2023-24
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Date |
Reading Group Sessions 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM |
Teaching Sessions 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM |
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10 September 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Penny Georgiou, “The Signifier and the Speaking Being” |
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25 September 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, “Tolkien, Joyce and Lacan” |
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8 October 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Josh Finkelstein, “Clinical Utility of Early Romances in Obsession and Hysteria” |
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22 October 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Eve Watson, “The Drive and its Voice” |
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5 November 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Special event honoring Mari Ruti |
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19 November 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Eugénie Austin, “From Lacan’s Return to Freud to Lacan’s Skyrocket Beyond Freud” |
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3 December 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 11 |
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17 December 2023 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 12 |
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7 January 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 13 |
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21 January 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 14 |
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4 February 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 15 |
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18 February 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 16 |
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3 March 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 17 |
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17 March 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 18 |
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31 March 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 19 |
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14 April 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Dan Collins, Lacan: The Middle Seminars 20 |
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28 April 2024 |
Seminar 7 |
Olga Cox-Cameron |
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12 May 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Kristen Hennessy, “What Happens to Oedipus and Electra in Cases of Incest” |
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26 May 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Hilda Fernandez, “Topologies of the Baby” |
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9 June 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Rolf Flor, “The History of the Real” |
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23 June 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Jamieson Webster, “Psychoanalysis and the Question of Breathing” |
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7 July 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Todd McGowan, “Surplus Enjoyment in the Capitalist Universe” |
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21 July 2024 |
Seminar 16 |
Kevin Murphy, “Asexuality and Freudian-Lacanian Theory” |
Dan Collins’s seminar this year, Lacan: The Middle Seminars, will continue a project to study Lacan’s Seminars 12, 13, 14, and 15. These seminars have received very little scholarly attention up to the present in French or English. Last year, we explored Seminars 12 and 13. This year, we’ll continue with Seminars 14 and 15, The Logic of Fantasy and The Psychoanalytic Act. The transitional period of the middle seminars falls between two major turning points in Lacan’s work, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, discussed in Seminar 11, and the discourse theory of Seminar 17. We’ll use these seminars to look both back and forward in Lacan’s career, and we’ll explore Lacan’s trajectory during this time.
For 2022-23
September 11: Penny Georgiou, “Formation of Analysts: Fathoming Decisions of Being” September 25: Christina Laurita, “Addiction and Psychosis” October 9: Hilda Fernandez, TBD October 23: Russell Grigg, TBD November 6: Judith Hamilton, “No More Quilting Points: Only Lunch”
November 20: Eugénie Austin, “Sexuality in Psychoanalysis: Feminine Sexuality in Particular”
December 4: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 1
December 18: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 2
January 8, 2022: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 3
January 22: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 4
February 5: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 5
February 19: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 6
March 5: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 7
March 19: Dan Collins – Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 8
April 2: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 9
April 16: Dan Collins – “Lacan: The Middle Seminars” 10
April 30: Todd McGowan -“Das Ding’s Disappearing Act”
May 14: Kristen Hennessy -“The Law in the Consulting Room: Working With Forensic Populations”
May 28: Leon Brenner – “The Dermic Drive: The Signifying Logic of the Skin”
June 11: Rolf Flor – TBD
June 25: Serena Smith – “The Rim, the Void, and das Ding“
July 9: Josh Finkelstein – TBD
July 23: Chris Vanderwees and Daniel Adelman – TBD
For 2021-2022:
September 12: Derek Hook, “Re-reading the Rome discourse: Law, the ‘Hegelian Signifier,’ the Zero-Symbol and the Topology of Language/Death in Lacan’s ‘Function and Field'”
September 26: Judith Hamilton “The Clinical Implications of the Capitalist Discourse” (from the work of Stijn Vanheule)
October 10: Judith Hamilton “The Capitalist Discourse and the Shopping Addiction”
October 24: Joshua Finkelstein “Violence”
November 7: Rolf Flor “On the Organization of the Écrits”
November 21: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 1
December 5: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 2
December 19: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 3
January 9, 2022: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 4
January 23: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 5
February 6: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 6
February 20: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 7
March 6: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road” 8
March 20: Dan Collins – Lacan on the Road” 9
April 3: Dan Collins – “Lacan on the Road ” 10
April 17 (Easter): Hilda Fernandez “Treatment of Trauma from a Psychoanalytic Perspective”
May 1: Kristen Hennessy “Childhood Perversion”
May 15: Chris Vanderwees “Rhetoric of Listening”
May 29: Daniel Adelman “The Rhetorical Unconscious”
June 12: Eve Watson “Re-evaluating the Gaze and the Drives in Spectatorship”
June 26: Sheldon George “Race and the Sexuated Subject”
July 10: Ona Neirenberg and Salvatore Guido “Psychoanalysis and Writing”
July 24: Stephanie Swales “Liminality as it Affects Subjectivity Today”
Dan Collins’s Seminar – “Lacan on the Road”
Dates: November 21; December 5,19, 2021; January 9,23, 2022; February 6,20; March 6,20, April 3, 2022.
Dan Collins’s seminar this year, “Lacan on the Road”, will take up several of Lacan’s “minor works,” which he delivered away from his Seminar and at various locales. In these pieces that he delivered “on the road,” Lacan often presented his thinking in a very different manner. He was more aphoristic, more urgent, and he often presented developments that anticipated those of the Seminar. These works taken together constitute another introduction to Lacan, or an introduction to another Lacan.
“Lacan on the Road” Syllabus
1. 21 November 2022 “Some Reflections on the Ego” (1951)
“The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real” (1953)
“Rome Discourse” (1953)
2. 5 December 2021 “Interview with Jacques Lacan” (L’Express) (1957)
“True Psychoanalysis, and False” (1958)
“Discourse to Catholics” (1960)
3. 19 December 2021 “Of Structure as an Inmixing of Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever”
(1966)
My Teaching (1967)
“The Mistaking of the Subject Supposed to Know” (1967)
“From Rome ’53 to Rome ’67: Psychoanalysis. Reason for a Defeat” (1967)
4. 9 January 2022 “Analyticon” (1969)
“Radiophonie” (1970)
“Tokyo Discourse” (1971)
5. 23 January 2022 “On Psychoanalytic Discourse” (1972)
“Death is in the Domain of Faith” (1972)
“Extraordinary Session of the Belgian School of Psychoanalysis” (1972)
6. 6 February 2022 “Psychoanalysis in Its Reference to the Sexual Relation” (1973)
“Excursus” (1973)
7. 20 February 2022 Television (1974)
“La Troisième” (1974)
“Freud Forever” (1974)
8. 6 March 2022 “The Lacanian Phenomenon” (1974)
“Conference in London” (1975)
“Geneva Lecture on the Symptom” (1975)
Lectures in America (1975)
9. 20 March 2022 “On James Joyce as a Symptom” (1976)
“Remarks on Hysteria” (1977)
“Aristotle’s Dream” (1978)
10. 3 April 2022 “Lecture at Professor Deniker’s Clinic, Hôpital Sainte-Anne” (1978)
“Overture to the First International Conference of the Freudian Field, Caracas”
(1980)
2020-21
Lacan Toronto is a group that promotes the Lacanian orientation in psychoanalysis through its reading group and teaching sessions. In the academic year 2020 – 2021, we are in the midst of our reading of Bruce Fink’s translation of Lacan’s Seminar 6, Desire and its Interpretation (1958 – 1959). When we complete Seminar 6, we’ll begin reading Seminar 4, The Object Relation (1956-1957). We meet on Sundays (currently by Zoom). To be added to our mailing list, contact Judith Hamilton (jehamilton@rogers.com).
|
Date |
Reading Group Session 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM (and special events) |
Teaching Session 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
|
|
6 September 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Judith Hamilton, “Lacan, COVID, and Politics” |
|
20 September 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Carlos Rivas, “Sexuality and Sexuation” |
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4 October 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Carlos Rivas, “From Sin to Pride” |
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18 October 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Eve Watson, “The Analyst’s Desire and the Psychoanalytic Group” |
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1 November 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On Hamlet” |
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15 November 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Bruce Fink, “Objects Lost and Found” |
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22 November 2020 |
Serge Benvenuto—special event, “On Perversions” |
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29 November 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 1 |
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13 December 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 2 |
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20 December 2020 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 3 |
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10 January 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 4 |
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24 January 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 5 |
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7 February 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 6 |
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21 February 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 7 |
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7 March 2021 |
Kristen Hennessy (morning session) “On Child Analysis: Technique and Structure” |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 8 |
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21 March 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 9 |
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4 April 2021(Easter) |
Seminar 6 |
Dan Collins, “On the Drive” 10 |
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18 April 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Ian Parker—Special Event |
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2 May 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Joan Guenther, “The Invention of the Symptom, Pierre Bruno” |
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16 May 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Chris Vanderwees, Daniel Adleman, “Other Sides: Rhetoric and Psychoanalysis” |
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30 May 2021 |
Seminar 6 |
Chris Vanderwees, Daniel Adleman, “Other Sides: Rhetoric and Psychoanalysis” |
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13 June 2021 |
Seminar 4 |
Hilda Fernandez, “On Love and the Non-Sexual Relation” |
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27 June 2021 |
Seminar 4 |
Courtney Douds, Josh Finkelstein, TBD |
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11 July 2021 |
Seminar 4 |
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25 July 2021 |
Seminar 4 |
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2019-20
Dan Collins – From November 17, 2019 – March 29, 2020, Dan Collins gave a 10-session series on Metapsychology. This year’s seminar will examine Freud’s metapsychology.
We’ll look at the term and the concept of metapsychology and ask why it is deployed to differentiate a specific kind of psychoanalytic thinking. For each metapsychological text
of Freud’s that we examine, we’ll ask about its Lacanian implications. Throughout, we’ll ask the question of whether Lacan’s explication of Freud’s metapsychology is an attempt to
support it or refute it.
November 17 – March 29: Dan Collins, On Metapsychology
April 12: Tom O’Brien, “The Repression of Bruno Schulz”
April 26: Case Presentations by guests Courtney Douds and Josh Finkelstein
May 10: Ines Andersen, “Introduction to the Interpretation of Dreams”
May 24: Ines Andersen, “Introduction to the Use of Dreams”
June 7: Chris Vanderwees, “Translating François Peraldi’s Le sujet”
June 21: Chris Vanderwees, “Translating François Peraldi’s Le sujet” (part 2)
July 5: Alex Manzoni, “Psychoanalysis and Law”
July 19: Alex Manzoni, “Psychoanalysis and Law” (part 2)
On Metapsychology – Dan Collins’s Seminar 2019-20
Dates: November 17; December 1, 15; January 5, 19; February
2, 16; March 1, 15, 29
Special Event: This was cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND MARXISM
April 4, 2020
Location: St. John the Compassionate Mission
155 Broadview Avenue, Toronto
(between Queen and Dundas)
Guest Speakers: Ian Parker and David Pavón-Cuéllar
David Pavón Cuéllar and Ian Parker will discuss their
work in progress Psychoanalysis: Critical Psychology for Liberation
Movements. This manifesto is for movements of liberation
for a better world, about the interrelationship between
the miserable exploitative oppressive reality of life today and
our “internal” lives, our psychology. Psychoanalysis grasps
that intimate interconnection between this reality and what
feels deep within each of us. We must understand the nature of
that interconnection to build a practical alternative to capitalism,
sexism, and racism. Our task is to reconstruct psychoanalysis
as an authentic form of “critical psychology” with the
help of ideas gathered in the Marxist political-intellectual tradition
and in the extensive theoretical and practical work carried
out for a century at the intersection between Marxism and
psychoanalysis. We address the role of the unconscious, repetition,
drive and transference in clinical and political analysis
in order to address questions of subjective transformation.
This event will feature responses by Lacan Toronto members
and open discussion.
September 8: Dan Collins “On Lacan’s Big Graph”
September 22: Ramiro Armas, “Deleuze and Badiou, Mathematical Extimacies”
October 6: Ramiro Armas, “Deleuze and Badiou, Mathematical Extimacies” (part 2)
October 20: Judith Hamilton, “The Ego: Narcissism and Aggressiveness”
November 3: Chris Vanderwees, “The Direction of the Treatment for the Homeless Subject Who Is Finally in Question”
2018-19
Reza Naderi – March 17, April 14, 28, May 12, 26, 2019. Seminar on Badiou. These sessions are from 1:30-3:00, on the 2nd floor of the Deer Park Library, side door, at 40 St. Clair Ave. East, Toronto.
Dan Collins began to teach, October 14, 28, November 11, 25, December 9, 2018, the first five of ten sessions on “Interpretation”. He will teach the next five sessions from January 6, 20, February 3, 17, March 3, 2019.
Judith Hamilton, September 16, 30, 2018. Theoretical Studies: “On Truth”. Preparation for the APW meeting in October 5-7, 2018.
2017-18
From Minutes, Sept. 22, 2019, Last fall, in 2017, October 22-December 17, Dan Collins gave the first 5 of a 10-session series on Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis which he is translating anew from the French. This spring he gave the other 5 sessions on Seminar XI. The dates were from March 11 to May 6, 2018.
Other teaching sessions in the late fall consisted of Clinical studies, using the book by Yael Baldwin called, “Let’s Keep Talking:…”
Then, using the book edited by Carol Owens and Stephanie Quinn called “Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children, and Adolescents: Further Notes on the Child”, we studied together chapters that illuminated clinical approaches to the children and adolescents whom we may see in our clinics.
Then, Chris Vanderwees, July 8 and 22, August 5, 2018, in Theoretical Studies, presented “The death drive, from pre-Freud through Freud and Lacan”.
Professor Allan Pero, University of Western Ontario, discussed with us, July 22, his paper called: “A Voice in the Alethosphere: Analysis and the Discourse of Economics”.
2016-17
Dan Collins – 5 sessions – The Signifier
JANUARY-JULY 2017 SUNDAYS; TPS; 10:00-1:00 and1:30-3:00
January 8, 2017 – Dan Collins
January 22, 2017
February 5, 2017
February 19, 2017
March 5, 2017
March 19, 2017
March 26, 2017
April 9, 2017
April 23, 2017
May 7, 2017
May 21, 2017
June 4, 2017
June 18, 2017
July 2, 2017
July 16, 2017
July 30, 2017
Lacan Teaching Sessions for Fall 2016
Dan Collins – 5 sessions – Evolution of Lacanian Concepts
in preparation for Eve Watson’s presentation
September 11
Presenter: Judith Hamilton
Sigmund Freud, “Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman” (1920), in SE, vol. 18.
Presenter: Chris Vanderwees
Ernest Jones, “The Early Development of Female Sexuality” (1927), in IJP 8.
Presenter: Joan Guenther
Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade” (1929), in IJP 10.
Presenter: Jacqueline Kutt
Sigmund Freud, “Female Sexuality” (1931), in SE, vol. 21.
September 25
Presenter: Debora Nitkin
Sigmund Freud, “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria [‘Dora’]” (1905), SE, vol. 7.
October 9 Presenter: Dan Collins
Jacques Lacan, “Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Female Sexuality” (1958) in Écrits.
Jacques Lacan, “The Signification of the Phallus” (1958) in Écrits.
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth (1992) Freud on Women: a Reader. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc
2015-16
DATES FOR LACAN Toronto and TEACHING
JANUARY – JULY, 2016
10:00-1:00 1:30-3:00
January 9, 2016 – Dan Collins – The Late Lacan
January 23, 2016 – Dan Collins
February 6, 2016 – Dan Collins
February 20, 2016 – Dan Collins
March 6, 2016 – Dan Collins
March 19, 2016 – Sean Meggeson
April 3, 2016 – Sean Meggeson
April 16, 2016 – Sean Meggeson
April 30, 2016 – Concetta Principe
May 14, 2016 – Concetta Principe
May 28, 2016
June 11, 2016 – Chris Vandervees
June 25, 2016 – Chris Vandervees
July 9, 2016
July 23, 2016
THE LATE LACAN – Dan Collins – Spring 2016
Introductory
Assumptions: more difficult than the early Lacan – manipulation of Borromean knots; discourse ran ahead of his audience; Lacan himself found it more difficult. In Sem. XXIV – “I don’t find as long as I don’t seek. He often says I’m frustrated, embarrassed and complains about his sense of struggling with this work. Dan thinks he does a lot more finding in his late work. In the early work, he is a researcher, working on theory, easier. Later work – chains of nuggets, aphorisms; but Dan finds is a sense of urgency to answer unsolved questions, before he dies.
Some think he was “simply old” as tough this allows us to be dismissed.
“There is a late Lacan.” As though in a sustained effort to master that work. Creates a discontinuity in his career, when there isn’t such. The later topics are thought of as the Real, jouissance, feminine sexuality, the structure of the unconscious, the symptom; but when did he not speak about these things. The Millerians are focused on the “21st century” but this is now 35 years after his death. Did Lacan predict the changes? Are we slowly modifying Lacan to make it match current patients? Is there an attempt to force the late Lacan into current relevance. Lacan himself “returned to” the early work of Freud. The current French Lacanian readers are just that, readers making interpretations. There is a “late Lacan” but it is related to the unsolved problems remaining after the early Lacan.
What really does distinguish his later work, the content of his arguments.
Sexuality in Sem. X is seen again in Sem. XX.
of little a; Big phi and barredA
Early work on paranoia and that in the Seminar on Joyce.
Topology and knot theory: Borromean knot not until Seminar XVIII, as well the torus. But knotting goes back to Seminar IX. Two interlocking toruses seem to him to be a good representation of the subject and the big Other. If we notice that the diameter of the walls of the second torus is the same as the hole in the centre of the first do-nut, the second going around the first represents the constant impact of the Other’s demand on the subject. Meanwhile the emptiness created on the interior wall of the subject represents desire. Now the big Other has disappeared. The subject is just experiencing demand and desire.
Then the big Other comes back in another pair of interlocking circles. This whole leads to the Venn diagrams which appear in Seminar IX. Lacan describes also that a torus can be described by an interior 8. This model develops into a model for the trajectory of analysis in Seminar XI. In Seminar IX he describes analysis as looping the loop many times (working through). The purpose is to break through the identification with the analyst. Any analysis that ends up with identification with the analyst demonstrates its limits.
In Seminar XXIV he refers to something that is not immediately obvious why. Assume three toruses. What will we see if we turn the Symbolic inside out by means of a cut, and it becomes a torus, enveloping the Imaginary and the Real. This is reverse of what was there before. This is where we can see that the use of the cut in relation to the symbolic risks giving an entire emphasis on the unconscious. Everything has been symbolized. The fact that the Imaginary and the Real are entirely enclosed by the Symbolic leaves the subject wholly in the Symbolic (the unconscious). What’s wrong with this – an accomplishment could be a return to the prior state. It requires another cut to restore the Borromean knot to its original form. This is the same that is formulated in Seminar XI. This is why you have to loop the loop more than once. So, what is the status of interpretation in the late Lacan.
Miller has stated that interpretation is no longer needed. In the classical use of interpretation, it feeds the symptom. It encourages identification with the analyst or his interpretations in the approach to the symptom. But finally, in “interpretation” we must starve the symptom. This breaks the identification with the analyst and his interpretations. We must leave S1 in its unmeaning, enigmatic isolation, a halt to interpretation, no longer trying to explain and rationalize. It’s not necessarily a new argument.
In Aristotle’s work on logic and rhetoric, you can rationalize anything. But the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally to both sides. In analysis, rationalization, the Symbolic, can always take over. E.g. The Apollian absorbs the Dionysian.
In any comparing of the early and late Lacans, Dan would try and take a “middle way”. He would read the early Lacan in the light of the late Lacan.
September – October 2015.
Psychoanalysis, Linguistics and the Clinic. – Dan Collins
At the Deer Park Library, 2nd floor, 40 St, Clair Ave. East, from 1:30-3:00. Saturdays. No charge for these sessions. Given by Dan Collins
September 5 – From Ferdinand Saussure to Noam Chomsky
September 19 – Grammatical
October 3 – Semiotic shift
October 17 – Language
October 31 – Roman Jacobson’s contribution
2014-15
May – July 2015.
Topics in Lacan Studies.
At the Deer Park Library, 2nd floor, 40 St. Clair. Ave. East, from 1:30-3:00. Saturdays. No charge for these sessions.
May 9 – Psychosis – Alireza Taheri
May 23 – Psychosis – Alireza Taheri
June 6 – Gay Identity from a Lacanian Perspective I – Carlos Rivas
June 20 – Gay Identity from a Lacanian Perspective II – Carlos Rivas
July 4 – Ethics of Psychoanalysis – Seminar 7 – Randall Terada
July 18 – Ethics of Psychoanalysis – Seminar 7 – Randall Terada
May – July 2015.
The Speaking Being in Lacan.
At Ste. 5016, 3080 Yonge Street (at Lawrence and Yonge St.), from 11:00-12:30. Sundays. Given by Ines Anderson and Debora Nitkin
May 17 – The mirror stage – Debora Nitkin
May 31 – The body in Lacan – Ines Anderson
June 14 – Wording the body – Debora Nitkin
June 28 – The mortified and the sexed body – Ines Anderson
July 12 – Anorexia and bulimia in Lacan – Ines and Debora
The Lacan Toronto Teaching Program was initiated in February 2015.