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Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan resigned from the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SPP).'

Jacques Lacan founded the Ècole Freudienne de Paris ('Freudian School of Paris') (EFP) in 1964.

The use of the term 'school' in the name of the EFP indicated that it was an attempt to found a very different type of psychoanalytic institution from those which had been founded before.

The EFP was a 'school (French: école) rather than an 'association' or a 'society'.

The term 'school' highlighted the fact that the EFP was more a means of psychoanalytic formation centred around a doctrine than an institutional order centred around a group of important people.

Lacan was particularly keen to avoid the dangers of the hierarchy dominating the institution, which he saw in the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and which he blamed for the theoretical misunderstandings which had come to dominate the IPA; the IPA had become, he argued, a kind of church.[1]

However, it is also important to note that Lacan's criticisms of the IPA do not imply a criticism of the psychoanalytic institution per se; while Lacan is very critical of the dangers that beset all psychoanalytic institutions, the fact that he himself founded one is evidence that he thought that some kind of institutional framework was necessary for psychoanalysts.

Thus Lacan is just as skceptical of those analysts who reject all institutions as he is of those who turn the institution into a kind of church.

Many of Lacan's ideas cannot be understood without some understanding of the history of the EFP (1964-80), especially those of Lacan's ideas which relate to the training of analysts.

Membership

In this context it is important to note that the EFP was not merely a training institute, and that membership was not restricted to analysts/trainees, but was open to anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis.

All members had equal voting rights, which meant that the EFP was the first truly [[democratic] psychoanalytic organisation in history.

There were four categories of members in the EFP: M.E. (Membre de l'Ecole, or simple member), A.P. (Analyste Practiquant), A.M.E. (Analyste Membre de l'Ècole), and A.E. (Analyste de l'Ècole).

Members could, and often did, hold several titles simultaneously.

Those who applied for membership of the school were interviewed by a committee called the cardo (a word meaning a hinge on which a door turns) before being admitted as an M.E.

Only the A.M.E. and the A.E. were recognised as analysts by the school, although other members were not forbidden to conduct analyses, and could award themselves the title of A.P. to indicate that they were practising analysts.

The title of A.M.E. was granted to members of the school who satisfied a jury of senior members that they had conducted the analysis of two patients in a satisfactory manner; in this sense, the category of A.M.E, was similar to that of the titular members of other psychoanalytic societies.

The title of A.E, was awarded on the basis of a very different procedure, which Lacan called the pass.

The pass

The pass was instituted by Lacan in 1967 as a means of verifying the end of analysis, and constitutes the most original feature of the EFP.

Another original feature of the EFP was the promotion of research in small study groups known as cartels.

The final years of the EFP were dominated by intense controversy over the pass and other issues.

Dissolution

In 1980, Lacan dissolved the EFP, and in 1981 he created a new institution in its stead, the Ècole de la Cause Freudienne (ECF).

Some of the original members of the EFP followed Lacan into the ECF, whereas others left to set up a variety of other groups.

Some of these groups still exist today, as does the ECF.

Miscellaneous

First you are introduced to the concept of the School, since it is this concept, rather than that of the society, that oriented Lacan in his Founding Act, in 1964.

Jacques Lacan made use of the concept of the School to found the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1964, with the aim of providing an organization for those analysts and non-analysts following his orientation in the reconquest of the Freudian Field, a task to which Lacan gave the utmost importance.

This is what he said in his Founding Act:

"I found – as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause, the French School of Psychoanalysis, whose direction I will personally assume for the next four years, which nothing currently prohibits me from answering for.

I intend this title to represent the organism in which there is work to be accomplished – work which, in the field Freud has opened, restores the cutting edge of its truth; which brings the original praxis that he instituted under the name of psychoanalysis back to the duty incumbent on it in our world; which, through a sustained critique, denounces the deviations and the compromises that encumber its progress while degrading its use. This objective of our work is inseparable from the training to be dispensed within this movement of reconquest. That is, those that I have trained myself are admitted as fully qualified, just as anyone who can contribute to demonstrating that the experience of this training is well founded is invited to join.

Those who enter this School will undertake to fulfil a task that is subject to both internal and external supervision. In exchange they are assured that nothing will be spared in order that anything valuable they do gets the attention it deserves and in the appropriate place."[2]

The roots of the concept of the School go back to Ancient Greece. Lacan explains its use in the Preface:

"It is the School that once more questions the principles of an evident qualification and with the consent of those who received it with merit. In which it reveals itself to be Freudian as well, proceeding now to an examination of the term School. This term should be taken in the sense of the ancient meaning of certain places of refuge, even as a base of operations against what could already be called the discontents of civilization. Considering the discontents of psychoanalysis, the School gives its field not only to a critical work but also to the opening up of the roots of the experience, to a judgement of the resulting way of life."

A School, then, in the way Lacan conceived it, has psychoanalysis as its object, and the restoration of its truth and transmission of its knowledge as its aim, offering it to supervision and scientific debate, founding in reason the qualification of the psychoanalyst. Its aim is the promotion of pure psychoanalysis as well as psychoanalysis applied to therapeutics, the formation of psychoanalysts and the investigation of the field opened by Freud and developed by Lacan. A School of psychoanalysis works against the discontents of civilization by not ignoring the discontents particular to its own field. It can act as a refuge, but one within which acts of intervention operative beyond its boundaries are elaborated. In the field opened by Freud, a School has the task of orienting those who persevere in the way indicated by the teaching of J. Lacan, a teaching whose particularity lies in its reference to the “transference of work”. In this regard, when defining the School as “an inaugural experience” in the Attached Note to the Founding Act, Lacan clarifies:


"To those who are able to pose the question of what it is that guides us, we shall reveal its reason. The teaching of psychoanalysis can not be transmitted from one subject to another except by means of a transference of work. The seminars (…) will found nothing if they don’t refer back to this transference. No doctrinal apparatus, and in particular our own, however propitious it be in the direction of one’s work, will be able to prejudge the conclusions which will be its issue."

When Lacan thought that the School which he had founded (the EFP) was not complying with its proposed objectives, was not achieving its concept, he had no hesitation in resorting – by way of solution - to its dissolution as a legal entity. This occurred in 1980 and was announced as follows in his Letter of Dissolution of January of that year:

"There is a problem in the School. It is not a mystery. It is also in this that I take my orientation, and not a moment too soon. This problem is shown to be one by having a solution, dissolution.

(…) In other words, I persevere. And I call to associate again those who, this January of 1980, want to follow Lacan.

(…) If I persevere, it is because the experience undergone calls for a counter-experience to compensate it".

Lacan then launches the Freudian Cause, this time together with some others. He formulates it as follows on the 18th of March 1980, as found in a text entitled Mr. A.:

"It is necessary to innovate, I said – with the reservation of adding: not entirely alone. I see it like this: that each one should collaborate in this. (…) it is a question of the Freudian Cause escaping from the group effect that I denounce."

It is the École de la Cause Freudienne (EFC), founded in 1981, the first School in the network of the Freudian Field, that takes up the challenge of this relaunching of the cause, in the mode of a counter-experience to the EFP, responding to the last institutional guidelines of Lacan, who, in March of that year, wrote in his Second Letter to the Forum:

"The School that I adopted as mine, remains. Still new and fragile, this is where the nucleus, through which it is possible that my teaching might last, will be put to the test."

The School of Lacan proved to be this ‘nucleus’ that allowed the expansion of his teachings in the years to follow. Under the aegis of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) – whose Delegate General was Jacques-Alain Miller from its foundation in 1992 until 2002, when he was followed by Graciela Brodsky – the concept of School has been maintained and renewed, giving impulse to the creation of the series of schools. Below are some key terms designed to serve as points of entry to certain texts of J.-A.. Miller in which the concept of the School is taken up in different ways according to the Lacanian orientation of his teachings.

- The School and Russell’s Paradox (see Miller’s texts: La Escuela de Lacan (20) and The Turin Theory on the Subject of the School) - The Subject of the School (see Miller’s text "The Turin Theory on the Subject of the School") - The School and applied psychoanalysis (developed in Miller’s course "Un effort de poésie", lesson 9) - The School and Lacanian action (developed in Miller’s course "Un effort de poésie", lessons 10 and 11)

See Also

References

  1. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p.4
  2. The Founding Act


---

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan resigned from the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SPP).'

Jacques Lacan founded the Ècole Freudienne de Paris ('Freudian School of Paris') (EFP) in 1964.

The use of the term 'school' in the name of the EFP indicated that it was an attempt to found a very different type of psychoanalytic institution from those which had been founded before.

The EFP was a 'school (French: école) rather than an 'association' or a 'society'.

The term 'school' highlighted the fact that the EFP was more a means of psychoanalytic formation centred around a doctrine than an institutional order centred around a group of important people.

Lacan was particularly keen to avoid the dangers of the hierarchy dominating the institution, which he saw in the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and which he blamed for the theoretical misunderstandings which had come to dominate the IPA; the IPA had become, he argued, a kind of church.[1]

However, it is also important to note that Lacan's criticisms of the IPA do not imply a criticism of the psychoanalytic institution per se; while Lacan is very critical of the dangers that beset all psychoanalytic institutions, the fact that he himself founded one is evidence that he thought that some kind of institutional framework was necessary for psychoanalysts.

Thus Lacan is just as skceptical of those analysts who reject all institutions as he is of those who turn the institution into a kind of church.

Many of Lacan's ideas cannot be understood without some understanding of the history of the EFP (1964-80), especially those of Lacan's ideas which relate to the training of analysts.

Membership

In this context it is important to note that the EFP was not merely a training institute, and that membership was not restricted to analysts/trainees, but was open to anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis.

All members had equal voting rights, which meant that the EFP was the first truly [[democratic] psychoanalytic organisation in history.

There were four categories of members in the EFP: M.E. (Membre de l'Ecole, or simple member), A.P. (Analyste Practiquant), A.M.E. (Analyste Membre de l'Ècole), and A.E. (Analyste de l'Ècole).

Members could, and often did, hold several titles simultaneously.

Those who applied for membership of the school were interviewed by a committee called the cardo (a word meaning a hinge on which a door turns) before being admitted as an M.E.

Only the A.M.E. and the A.E. were recognised as analysts by the school, although other members were not forbidden to conduct analyses, and could award themselves the title of A.P. to indicate that they were practising analysts.

The title of A.M.E. was granted to members of the school who satisfied a jury of senior members that they had conducted the analysis of two patients in a satisfactory manner; in this sense, the category of A.M.E, was similar to that of the titular members of other psychoanalytic societies.

The title of A.E, was awarded on the basis of a very different procedure, which Lacan called the pass.

The pass

The pass was instituted by Lacan in 1967 as a means of verifying the end of analysis, and constitutes the most original feature of the EFP.

Another original feature of the EFP was the promotion of research in small study groups known as cartels.

The final years of the EFP were dominated by intense controversy over the pass and other issues.

Dissolution

In 1980, Lacan dissolved the EFP, and in 1981 he created a new institution in its stead, the Ècole de la Cause Freudienne (ECF).

Some of the original members of the EFP followed Lacan into the ECF, whereas others left to set up a variety of other groups.

Some of these groups still exist today, as does the ECF.


Miscellaneous

First you are introduced to the concept of the School, since it is this concept, rather than that of the society, that oriented Lacan in his Founding Act, in 1964.

Jacques Lacan made use of the concept of the School to found the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1964, with the aim of providing an organization for those analysts and non-analysts following his orientation in the reconquest of the Freudian Field, a task to which Lacan gave the utmost importance.

This is what he said in his Founding Act:

"I found – as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause, the French School of Psychoanalysis, whose direction I will personally assume for the next four years, which nothing currently prohibits me from answering for.

I intend this title to represent the organism in which there is work to be accomplished – work which, in the field Freud has opened, restores the cutting edge of its truth; which brings the original praxis that he instituted under the name of psychoanalysis back to the duty incumbent on it in our world; which, through a sustained critique, denounces the deviations and the compromises that encumber its progress while degrading its use. This objective of our work is inseparable from the training to be dispensed within this movement of reconquest. That is, those that I have trained myself are admitted as fully qualified, just as anyone who can contribute to demonstrating that the experience of this training is well founded is invited to join.

Those who enter this School will undertake to fulfil a task that is subject to both internal and external supervision. In exchange they are assured that nothing will be spared in order that anything valuable they do gets the attention it deserves and in the appropriate place."[2]

The roots of the concept of the School go back to Ancient Greece. Lacan explains its use in the Preface:

"It is the School that once more questions the principles of an evident qualification and with the consent of those who received it with merit. In which it reveals itself to be Freudian as well, proceeding now to an examination of the term School. This term should be taken in the sense of the ancient meaning of certain places of refuge, even as a base of operations against what could already be called the discontents of civilization. Considering the discontents of psychoanalysis, the School gives its field not only to a critical work but also to the opening up of the roots of the experience, to a judgement of the resulting way of life."

A School, then, in the way Lacan conceived it, has psychoanalysis as its object, and the restoration of its truth and transmission of its knowledge as its aim, offering it to supervision and scientific debate, founding in reason the qualification of the psychoanalyst. Its aim is the promotion of pure psychoanalysis as well as psychoanalysis applied to therapeutics, the formation of psychoanalysts and the investigation of the field opened by Freud and developed by Lacan. A School of psychoanalysis works against the discontents of civilization by not ignoring the discontents particular to its own field. It can act as a refuge, but one within which acts of intervention operative beyond its boundaries are elaborated. In the field opened by Freud, a School has the task of orienting those who persevere in the way indicated by the teaching of J. Lacan, a teaching whose particularity lies in its reference to the “transference of work”. In this regard, when defining the School as “an inaugural experience” in the Attached Note to the Founding Act, Lacan clarifies:


"To those who are able to pose the question of what it is that guides us, we shall reveal its reason. The teaching of psychoanalysis can not be transmitted from one subject to another except by means of a transference of work. The seminars (…) will found nothing if they don’t refer back to this transference. No doctrinal apparatus, and in particular our own, however propitious it be in the direction of one’s work, will be able to prejudge the conclusions which will be its issue."

When Lacan thought that the School which he had founded (the EFP) was not complying with its proposed objectives, was not achieving its concept, he had no hesitation in resorting – by way of solution - to its dissolution as a legal entity. This occurred in 1980 and was announced as follows in his Letter of Dissolution of January of that year:

"There is a problem in the School. It is not a mystery. It is also in this that I take my orientation, and not a moment too soon. This problem is shown to be one by having a solution, dissolution.

(…) In other words, I persevere. And I call to associate again those who, this January of 1980, want to follow Lacan.

(…) If I persevere, it is because the experience undergone calls for a counter-experience to compensate it".

Lacan then launches the Freudian Cause, this time together with some others. He formulates it as follows on the 18th of March 1980, as found in a text entitled Mr. A.:

"It is necessary to innovate, I said – with the reservation of adding: not entirely alone. I see it like this: that each one should collaborate in this. (…) it is a question of the Freudian Cause escaping from the group effect that I denounce."

It is the École de la Cause Freudienne (EFC), founded in 1981, the first School in the network of the Freudian Field, that takes up the challenge of this relaunching of the cause, in the mode of a counter-experience to the EFP, responding to the last institutional guidelines of Lacan, who, in March of that year, wrote in his Second Letter to the Forum:

"The School that I adopted as mine, remains. Still new and fragile, this is where the nucleus, through which it is possible that my teaching might last, will be put to the test."

The School of Lacan proved to be this ‘nucleus’ that allowed the expansion of his teachings in the years to follow. Under the aegis of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) – whose Delegate General was Jacques-Alain Miller from its foundation in 1992 until 2002, when he was followed by Graciela Brodsky – the concept of School has been maintained and renewed, giving impulse to the creation of the series of schools. Below are some key terms designed to serve as points of entry to certain texts of J.-A.. Miller in which the concept of the School is taken up in different ways according to the Lacanian orientation of his teachings.

- The School and Russell’s Paradox (see Miller’s texts: La Escuela de Lacan (20) and The Turin Theory on the Subject of the School) - The Subject of the School (see Miller’s text "The Turin Theory on the Subject of the School") - The School and applied psychoanalysis (developed in Miller’s course "Un effort de poésie", lesson 9) - The School and Lacanian action (developed in Miller’s course "Un effort de poésie", lessons 10 and 11)

See Also

References

  1. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p.4
  2. The Founding Act