Transmission Statement

We are a school, clinic, and research center creating a progress in the lives of individuals and community beyond the current deadlocks of mental health, education, and social welfare.

Overview

One of the most urgent questions cutting across these fields can be summarized by a question:

• If we do not attempt to eradicate or calm a mental symptom through drugs and therapy, what do we do?

To respond to such a question requires a new translation of an old problem: at the turn of the century Freud quit calling those who came to see him for therapy ‘patients’ and started using the term ‘analysand’ in order to indicate their participation in the analytic process. Unlike the revolving door approach of psychiatric assisted psychotherapy, psychoanalysis required a new critique of the doctor-patient relation that showed how a symptom is not merely something to be managed or calmed, but indexes a cause – thus, something to be listened to, researched, and constructed in a theory not simply by the doctor, but the patients themselves. However, the destiny of psychoanalysis in the U.S. was short-lived since it was subsumed by the dominant psychotherapeutic-psychiatric order and an acceptable cultural jargon.

PLACE introduces a more just translation of the psychoanalytic theory of Freud in a modern critique and theory of Jacques Lacan. It is our conviction that the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in the U.S. has not gone out of fashion, but has become impossible to think. As a consequence, the name ‘psychoanalysis’ provides us with not so much a well-worn tradition of psychoanalytic notables, schools, institutes, and theories, but landmarks an impossibility that has fallen into modern oblivion. It is this place of analysis – first brought out in an explication of the causes of racism, mental illness, war, and sexuality, then forgotten under the weight of a therapeutic framework and cultural panache – that focuses the modern research and clinic of PLACE.

Who?

We are neither a collection of professionals united by a common mission nor a group of people sharing a communal substance, be it economic, political, religious, artistic, or scientific. Rather we are the families and individuals that compose our communities across the country. No longer needing to represent the global problems of a community or individual our research is local in the sense that it is the work of those involved to present differences, singularities, and points of commonality – without basing them on a communion or representation of the qualities of a group or individual. As a consequence, our research need not pretend to educate the public or offer pre-planned services based on ‘ideas’ of the norm, good, true, beautiful, or useful in programs that can be ‘applied’ to everybody else. On the contrary, the clinical research at PLACE presents singular and specific solutions to local problems of people with names – not numbers in a mental health lottery.

How?

What is not often recognized by the traditional top-down mental health care system is that those who are too quickly called ‘patients’ have a practical knowledge of a symptom that is not readily acquired within an educational framework. For this reason the clinic of PLACE is also a school or ‘sclinic’. In no longer accepting to work either as patients in therapy or as students in a purely educational role, we bring together both practice and theory. A work of individuals with names is, however, what makes clinical research particularly difficult since it makes it necessary to open up a practice of singularity beyond the tendency to exclude and classify people under the norm and statistics of numbers. Making room for this place of singularity is just another name for the clinic whose theory, since Lacan, has been achieved in a topology.

Requests for more information are received by the secretary, then referred to the analysts currently working with P.L.A.C.E. Connected information on seminars, conferences, cartels, training analysis, and internships is also available.

Organizational History

P.L.A.C.E. was founded in January of 1998. We are a nonprofit 501c3 governed by a board of directors and trustees according to the statutes set by the state of California. P.L.A.C.E. supports itself on the contributions, grants, and endowments from those individuals and foundations concerned with creating a progress in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Now Accepting Registration For WINTER Semester 2012:

Registration Deadline JAN. 5, 2012 (Distance participation now available)

Cartel Vectorization begins Jan. 11, 2012

First Course begins Saturday – Feb 4. 15 2012

TWO COURSE PROPOSALS: 1) PART - II Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit Formalized in a Topology and/or-THE WORK OF PIERRE SOURY in Knot Theory. One course will be chosen. Each course lasts 2.5 hrs. and meets once per month. Text provided with course.

CARTEL PROPOSALS: various subjects in the field of analysis and topology are proposed each semester by those participating, then a small-work group is formed around such subjects by those interested. Two 2.5 hr cartels per month.

CONFERENCES: to be announced.

Modes of Participation:

1) Adherent cost = $850. per semester or $1,600. per year. = (Course and Cartel) = 4 two hour courses per month.

2) Guest cost = $650. per semester or $1,200. per year. = (Course or Cartel) = 1 three hour or 2 two hour courses per month.

For more information go to:http://www.lacanlosangelespsychoanalysis.com/classes/

1) A NEW BLOG/GLOB by R.T. Groome providing a site for research and addressing current events in Lacanian analysis/topology is now up at: http://lacanlosangelespsychoanalysis.com/.

2) WINTER 2012 PLACE SCLINIC: Registration until JAN. 5TH Scheduled to begin Feb. Early Registration Advised. Course Description to follow in July at: http://www.lacanlosangelespsychoanalysis.com/classes/

A) Course Title:Part II Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit Formalized in a Topology
B) Cartel Titles: To be established in JAN.- first vectorization JAN. 11th.

3) Public School CONFERENCE: From Revolution to Involution – Saturday at 12:00 noon - Feb. 7, 14, 21 – http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/3855

For further information please address your questions to the secretary of PLACE.