Changes

In [[{{Y}}|1953]], the venue of these lectures moved to the [[Hôpital Sainte-Anne]], here a larger audience could be accommodated. Although [[Lacan]] sometimes refers to the private lectures of 1951-2 and 1952-3 as the first two years of his "[[seminar]]", the term is now usually reserved for the public lectures which began in 1953. From that point on until his [[death]] in 1981, [[Lacan]] took a different theme each academic year and delivered a series of lectures on it. These twenty-seven annual series of lectures are usually referred to collectively as "the [[seminar]]", in the [[singular]].

After ten years at the [[Hôpital Sainte-Anne]], the [[seminar]] moved to the [[École Normale Supérieure]] in 1964, and to the Faculté de [[Droit ]] in 1973. These changes of venue were due to various reasons, not least of which was the [[need ]] to accommodate the constantly growing audience as the [[seminar]] gradually became a focal point in the Parisian [[intellectual ]] resurgence of the 1950s and 1960s.

Given [[Lacan]]'s [[insistence ]] that [[speech]] is the only medium of [[psychoanalysis]],<ref>{{E}} p. 40</ref> it is perhaps appropriate that the original means by which [[Lacan]] developed and expounded his [[ideas ]] should have been the spoken [[word]]. Indeed, as one commentator has remarked: "it must be [[recalled ]] that virtually all of Lacan's 'writings' were originally [[oral ]] presentations, that is many ways the open-ended Seminar was his preferred [[environment]]."

As [[Lacan]]'s [[seminar]]s became increasingly popular, [[demand ]] grew for written transcripts of the [[seminar]]. However, apart from a few small articles that he wrote on the basis of some lectures delivered in the course of the [[seminar]], [[Lacan]] never published any account of his own [[seminar]]s. In 1956-9 [[Lacan]] authorised Jean-Bertrand Pontalis to publish a few summaries of sections of the [[seminar]] during those years, but this as not enough to [[satisfy ]] the growing demand for written accounts of [[Lacan]]'s teaching. Hence unauthorised transcripts of [[Lacan]]'s [[seminar]] began increasingly to be circulated among his followers in an almost clandestine way. Even during [[Lacan]]'s lifetime, the [[seminar]] circulated in the [[form ]] of photocopies of diverse and unreliable written versions of the spoken text. Beginning in 1973, [[Lacan]] entrusted the transcription of the [[seminar]] to [[Jacques-Alain Miller]]. In 1973, [[Lacan]] allowed his son-in-law, [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], to publish an edited transcript of the lectures given in 1964, the eleventh year of the [[seminar]]. In an editor's note to ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]'', the first of his publications of [[Lacan]]'s [[seminars]], [[Miller]] writes:

<blockquote>"My [[intention ]] here was to be as unobtrusive as possible and to obtain from [[Jacques Lacan]]'s spoken [[work ]] an authentic version that would stand, in the [[future]], for the original, which does not [[exist]]."<ref>{{S11}} p. xi</ref></blockquote>

Since then, [[Miller]] has continued to bring out edited versions of [[other ]] years of the [[seminar]], although the [[number ]] published is still fewer than half. [[Miller]]'s [[role ]] in editing and publishing the [[seminar]] has led to some very heated arguments, with opponents claiming he has distorted [[Lacan]]'s original. However, as [[Miller]] himself has pointed out, the transition from an oral to a written medium, and the editing required by this, means that these published versions of the [[seminar]] could never be simple transcripts of the lectures given by [[Lacan]].<ref>[[Jacques-Alain Miller|Miller, Jacques-Alain]]. ''Entretien sur le Séminaire, avec François Ansermet. [[Paris]]: Navarin, 1985</ref> So far only nine of the yearly [[seminar]]s have been published in book form, while authorised extracts from [[others ]] have appeared in the journal [[Ornicar?]]. Unauthorised transcripts of the unpublished years of the [[seminar]] continue to circulate today, both in [[France]] and abroad.