APWis pleased to announce a Clinical Study Weekend

held at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PASaturday and Sunday, 8 – 9 October 2011

on

 Jacques Lacan’s Seminar 24:

Love is the Failure of the Unbewoops

(L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue, s’aile à mourre)

Registrants for the study weekend will receive a privately produced English translationof the seminar.

Speakers will include:

Dan Collins (Buffalo), Patricia Gherovici (Philadelphia),Liz Monahan (Dublin), Dany Nobus (London), Eve Watson (Dublin)

The format will include speakers’ presentations and roundtable discussion.

“Long ago, I happened to say, imitating a famous painter, ‘I don’t seek, I find.’ At thepoint I’m at now, I don’t find as long as I don’t seek.”

Lacan, Seminar 24

Seminar 24 (1976 – 1977) comes quite late in Lacan’s career, and many who areunfamiliar with his work in this period may be put off by the dense wordplay of theseminar’s title and its abstruse discussions of topology. But in many ways, the “lateLacan” is surprisingly straightforward. In this seminar, Lacan provides a kind of condensation and summation of his late work. The tone is often conversational andintimate. In addition, Seminar 24 is one of Lacan’s most clinically relevant seminars,with important remarks on of psychosis, neurosis, and interpretation. Participants onthe APW study weekend will have a opportunity to discuss the clinical worth of Lacan’s late work.

 

HOW TO REGISTER

The early registration window for APW’s Study Weekend on Lacan’s Seminar 24closes on August 31st. Registration fees for the weekend are $180 until August 31 and$220 after August 31. All registrants will receive a copy of Seminar 24 in English.

To register, go the registration page on APW’s website (apwonline.org). Just fillout the online registration form and click on “submit.”

Payment option 1: Click the “Buy Now” button to be directed to PayPal to pay by PayPal or credit card.

Payment option 2: If you’d rather pay by check, simply fill out the online formand click “submit” so that we have your information; then, mail a check for yourregistration to:

APWPO Box 281Buffalo, NY 14224

Once we receive your paid registration, we’ll send you a copy of Seminar 24 translatedinto English.

HOTELS

The weekend of 8-9 October will be a very busy one in Pittsburgh with manyevents going on. We recommend that you book your accommodations early. Two hotelswe recommend are both within walking distance of Duquesne:

The Pittsburgh Marriott City Center112 Washington Place, Pittsburgh412-471-4000

Doubletree Hotel and SuitesOne Bigelow Square, Pittsburgh412-281-5800

 

PROGRAM

The sessions for the study weekend will run from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day.The morning session will run from 9:00 to noon and the afternoon from 2:00 to 5:00. OnSaturday morning we’ll ask participants to gather at 8:30 for registration.

Saturday, 8 October

9:00 - 12:00Dan Collins

“Chomskyan Sentences”

Dan will argue that the title of theseminar is not—or not simply—Joycean, but israther Lacan’s answer to the Chomskyan habitof creating sentences to show the difference between deep structure and surface structure.Chomsky’s sentences rely on semantics to revealgrammar while Lacan’s do the opposite.Reflecting upon the seminar’s comments onpoetic interpretation, Dan will discuss theclinical implications of Lacan’s approach.

2:00 - 5:00Eve Watson

with Liz Monahan (respondent)

“Making Psychoanalysis More Scientific:From the Tragedy of Myth to the

Knotting of the Symptom”

Eve will trace Lacan’s move away fromthe Freudian unconscious to what he designatesas the specifically “Lacanian unconscious” thathe refers to in “The Inauguration of the ClinicalProgram” as he moves from the FreudianOedipal myth to the notion of the sinthome. Evewill also focus on textual points in Seminar 24where Lacan underlines this move and tracethem in his earlier work, in particular inSeminars 9 (Identification) and 17 (The Other Sideof Psychoanalysis). Liz will respond to Eve’spresentation.

Sunday, 9 October

9:00 - 12:00Patricia Gherovici

“Fail Better: Lacan’s Symptom”

Patricia starts with Lacan’s idea of theunconscious as failure or insuccess so as toexplore Freud’s failures as well. She tackles thenotion of failure via Beckett and Blanchot inorder to underline Lacan’s originality when hemoved from the symptom to the sinthome. Thesinthome is a way of failing but of “failing better” (Beckett). Patricia traces the move fromOedipus to the sinthome and surveys its mainpractical uses in the clinic. The sinthome canseparate a child from a mother or a subject fromits symptom without the direct intervention of the father/phallus.

2:00 - 5:00Dany Nobus

“Once They Were Poets:The Function and Field of Sonority and Meaning

in Psychoanalysis”

Dany will explore the very last pages of the seminar, in which Lacan states that he’s notenough of a poet, in relation to the notion of “lalangue” and the significance of meaning forthe end of analysis.

Questions? Please e-mail Dan Collins at dcollins716@verizon.net

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