Winter 2010 Sclinic Registration Open
Summer Immersion (July-Aug.) 2010 inscriptions still being accepted
Publications and Articles (To be Expanded Soon)
Robert Groome, Towards a Topology of the Subject, Aesthetics and Sublimation, Umbr(a), University of New York at Buffalo, 1999.
Robert Groome, The Phantom of Freud in Classical Logic, Science and Truth, Umbr(a), University of New York at Buffalo, 2000.
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Interventions
Past interventions (2000-09) are listed below. Some are downloadable in PDF; the remainder are archived at the library of P.L.A.C.E.
From L'être et l'événement to Lettre et signifier
A psychoanalytic critique of Badiou's reading of set theory by R. Groome
2009 Summer intensive seminar proceeds in two times: Part II is a critique of the notion of set and matheme as it is proposed in Badiou's L'être et L'événement (Lee); In Part II, we will present a properly formal and structural investigation. Course Outline Part II, presented below and on the Interface of PLACE. The texts below are in pre-print form and are updated weekly with regard to the current research at PLACE. The word 'New' is affixed to each recently updated text, while 'To Follow' signals the next section of the text scheduled for pre-print publication.
PART I. A Psychoanalytic Reading of Being and Event by A. Badiou
1- Preliminary Argument:(PDF-Download of Text)
2- The Undefined Matheme: From Stenography To Abbreviation Symbol: (PDF Download of Text)
3- (NEW) Undefined Set: Why is Badiou's set philosophy pre-Cantorian? (PDF Download of Text)
4- (To follow) Undefined Set: The Repetition Of One As Grammatical.
5- Informal Construction of the Matheme as both Signifier-Letter
6- Synoptic View On A Theory Of The Signifier As Collection
7- Synoptic View On A Theory of the Signifier and Topology of the Subject
8- Introductory Exercises
9- Structure Refused: Badiou's conception of an ordered pair.
10- From Politics in the Discourse of Philosophy To Science in the Discourse of Psychoanalysis
Part II: A Psychoanalytic Construction Of A Theory Of Sets As Abbreviation In A Model
1- The Paradox of Russell and Cantor
2- Zermelo and Russell resolutions: stratification and types.
3- Fraenkel's extension of Zermelo: the replacement principle
4- The Critique of Skolem: Definition and Models of Sets
5- Two Types of Selection: The Principle Of Choice And Forcing.
1- Preliminary Argument
Since Lacan, psychoanalysts have become interested in set theory, topology, and knot theory as a new and rigorous way of constructing a practice and theory. In reconstituting the field of the clinic and its didactic in this way, analysts are discovering numerous intersections with fields of rationality that had previously been viewed as mere problems of technique or philosophy.
One such intersection began in France quite some time ago, when the French philosopher, Alain Badiou, began an ambitious project of reworking classical questions of philosophy – Why is there something rather than nothing at all? – in the fields of set theory and logic. One could show that Badiou's project in the field of philosophy is not a chance encounter with the psychoanalytic project elaborated by Lacan: both men have proposed that the future of any possible progress in psychoanalysis and philosophy lies in an effective (Wirklichkeit) and material reworking through mathematics and logic.
My aim here is not to justify this intersection of fields, nor to describe summarily their procedures, but instead to underline by what odd turn of events such an intersection open up foundational problems, rather than constituting a new or a radical departure in the domain of psychoanalysis or philosophy. Assuming it resolved that philosophy and psychoanalysis have different foundations and fields of application, the question remains of how a work in set theory and logic differs once constructed according to the suppositions of their respective fields. Yet, if one follows the current publications on psychoanalysis and philosophy there is the tendency to amalgamate Lacan and Badiou, while relegating this 'odd turn of events' to the fashionable non-sense of 'French philosophy.
Thus, before introducing our set theoretical constructions in Part II, we must take a few precautions in Part I to disentangle the amalgamations and journalistic trends. My main preoccupation is not, however, one of making distinctions between oeuvres or disciplines, such a reading would remain infinite in its detail, rather my fundamental question is centered on what authorizes us today, in the field of psychoanalysis, to consider as essential a work in topology, set theory, and logic?
Rather than respond directly, perhaps it would be better, given the time and limits of our course, to use the current amalgamation and read Lacan and Badiou together, in order to crack one nut, with two stones.
To begin to respond, it will suffice to begin with Badiou's celebrated Being And Event (L'être et L'événement; LEE). Our first goal will be to determine with precision the reference to 'set' and 'matheme' theory in the general economy of LEE. To Badiou claims, we are reading a philosophical treatise on the one and multiple on whose basis it is possible to make the assertion that "ontology=mathematics". What is perhaps different in the way I will approach his text, is that outside of these preliminary comments, I will not be interested in either the philosophical or political goals he sets for his method, only what is constructible from the material provided from the text itself. This narrows down the field quite a bit and, no doubt, some may charge that the author has modified his methodology and themes since the publication of Logiques du Mondes. But this is precisely what I am seeking to avoid: a continual deferral of construction where it is possible to keep claiming one is "introducing" something or has changed their position with regard to a future text. My reading of the set theoretical propositions in LEE can not be exhaustive, but my economization of focus on the effective dimensions of LEE will not be hindered by such deferrals. For the claims that are being made in LEE are explicit and important enough to warrant more than a cursory look at their literal and set theoretical methods.
On The Greek Conception Of Education and The Teaching Of Psychoanalysis
By. J. Lacan (1970)
The redaction of a conference in 1970 by P. Rapport where Oury, Michaud, and Lacan discuss the problems posed in the teaching of psychoanalysis. What is the task of psychoanalysis? How does its goal and didactic differ from psychiatry or psychotherapy? If psychoanalysis must seperate its instruction from a mere aquisition of knowledge or university teaching, how does it do so without falling into a religous initiation or therapeutic club? These are a few of the questions that come to bear in this short article.
(Download PDF)
Allocution, by J. Lacan (April 19, 1970) Propositions on Teaching and Psychoanalysis
1. There is no teaching of psychoanalysis.
pas del’enseignement de la psychanalyse, de l’enseignement tout court.
2. I am astonished that it is taken for granted that teaching is a transmission of knowledge (savoir), their horizon being taken from the swing of the round trip from teacher to student. Their relation, why not? … is the boat whose sailing is no less a folie than the doctor/patient relation for example.
J’y donne réflexion, entendez-la balistique, à m’étonner qu’il ait paru à tout instant aller de soi que l’enseignement, c’était transmission d’un savoir, horizon étant pris de la balançoire à faire aller et retour de l’enseignant à l’enseigné : leur relation, pourquoi pas ? c’est le bateau qu’il y faut, à trouver à la foire de notre temps sa volée pas autrement folle que la relation médecin-malade par exemple.
(Download PDF ALLOCUTION)
Abridged Translation, R. Groome, Feb. 2009.
The Institutional Writings and Interventions of Lacan
(1/2009)
Materials are downloadable monthly and to be passed out at the Schlinic on the PLACE interface.
Joyce - The Symptom
(11/2008)
Joyce the Symptom (I). Conference given by J. Lacan in the large auditorium of the Sorbonne on the 16th of June, 1975, at the opening of the 5th International James Joyce Symposium. The text was established by Jacques-Alain Miller, partially from the notes of Eric Laurent. Published in L'âne, 1982, no. 6. Translated by Aaron Benanav. (download PDF)
Govern, Educate, Psychoanalyze ?
(5/2008)
1- Three Untenable Professions
Freud listed three professions as 'untenable', that of the educator, the politician, and the psychoanalyst . Nonetheless, he also noted there are always candidates looking to fill these positions. They are even positions that are reputed to be advantageous; that is not to say, that neither the governor, nor the educator, nor the psychoanalyst would have the slightest idea of what it is to govern, educate, or psychoanalyze. No doubt, they end up having just a bit of an idea – as the current governor of CA shows – but these 'intuitions' are rarely developed.
Here, the 2008 of PLACE cartel aims to ask: What is it to educate? govern ? or psychoanalyze ?
Does one have to have a "conception of Man" to educate, govern, or psychoanalyze? Do these ideas of education vary according to the ideas that one can have of the 'essence' of Man ? Or is this 'conception of Man', with a tighter grip, actually a defense against something more important: a certain anxiety that one is seized with when attempting to educate, govern, or psychoanalyze? Is the goal of education to make and complete the individual? Or does one more or less always end up educating oneself to the extent that one can ? At what point does the formation of a school and education naturally introduce clinical and therapeutic questions? If an educator, just as a therapist, is someone who thinks they are there to help others, how is this perspective guided by a conception of Man ? No doubt, a certain amount of education is necessary for humans to support being around each other, but what is lost in such attempts to educate through socialization?
What is the difference in this regard of governing/educating to analyzing? Does the analyst, unlike the therapist, attempt to teach anything or do good for anyone? Does psychoanalysis fall back into psychotherapy the moment it acquires a conception of Man ? What does a conception of Man, whether spiritual, behavioral, genetic, etc., serve to trivialize the moment it is taken as a given ?
Initial probe: the moment the recognition of desire is misrecognized as a desire to be recognized as a type of ego – the educated man, the good citizen, sports hero, artist, balanced kid, etc. – the problem of desire is assimilated to what deviates from the norm: the uneducated man, uncivilized, unathletic, unartistic, unbalanced, etc. What is artificial – or in-human – in such descriptive typologies is obvious. For example, today it can not be determined whether the yearly augmentations of mental syndromes found in the DSM-X (the psychotherapist’s Diagnostic Statistics Manual) are the result of the discovery of more mental disorders (biological or cultural), or the result of an increasingly abusive conception of Man.
In relation to governing and educating, the profession of analysis is new, and the analysts have very well realized the difficulty of their position. So much so, that many fall back onto the position of the educator and governor in improvising forms of psychotherapeutic counseling. In fact, like the current governor of California, this pirouette does not prohibit certain improvisations from achieving effects, even if those involved would have little idea of what it is they are doing or if these effects are towards a progress. What is this generalized, " I do not know how any of this works ..." or ignorance, which the modern educator, governor, and analyst is engaged ?
II – The Discourse of Science: From Conception of Man to Place of the Subject
Our cartel would like to situate these questions in theory and practice, while extending the question to that of the scientist – which Freud never attempted, but was accomplished in Lacan’s reading of Freud.
What is the anxiety of the scientist? What is it when at the beginning of 2008 both Cloned Beef and the movie Legends arrive on the market place? What is it that the scientist, in the wake of a certain ignorance of the effects of their theory, must at strategic points be restricted by ethical committees ? But with a second take, might these anticipatory scenes of destruction and horror themselves be a way of defending against a certain anxiety? Is this anxiety a way that the scientist recognizes, beyond his/her knowledge and its possible horrific effects, that there is is something real in what s/he is working on ?
What is this real ? How does the anxiety and ignorance of a real confront the educator, governor, psychoanalyst, and scientist – not simply as what works or achieves itself in the successful "conception of Man", but in what does not work with such conceptions ?
Our first cartel seeks to put the Lacanian notion of the real to the test, while developing its ramifications for those involved in education, government, science and psychoanalysis. We will conclude by showing how it has become possible with Lacanian anlaysis not to confuse a Place of the Subject with a Conception of Man.
Part I – The Art of Psychoanalytic Speech
Part II – Qualities Without Man
Aug. 4, 2006 /R. Groome/ Summer 2006/Santa Monica
The Writing of Catastrophe:
From Natural Disaster to Social Psychosis
(a work in progress)
Why is it so difficult to speak and write of Catastrophe ?
Every epoch asks this perenial question: Why have we lost our artists, philosophers, journalists, scientists, and statesmen who would be able to write one verse, play, or analysis of Catastrophe that would enlighten the public ? Where are our modern day tragedians ?
Our brief article would like to sketch a response to this difficult question not simply by talking about Catastrophe, but by opening a dialogue with Catastrophe, that is to say, by making room for a discussion on the difficulties of speaking and writing of Catastrophe. For in every natural and cultural catastrophe there is an Other Catastrophe that goes unheard of or is misread by the common journalistic and humanitarian response to disaster.
(continued)
Open Letter to Badiou [9/2004]
0 - From Psychoanalytic Classicism to the Topological Baroque
Badiou's readings of Lacan are sufficiently important to have elicited a recent series of conferences in 2003 at UCLA entitled: Lacan and the Real, Lacan's Anti-philosophy, and The Mathemes of the Real, and in 2004 at UC Irvine. Owing to the unusual perspicacity of the commentator as much as to the exceptional difficulty, if not incomprehensible nature of the Lacanian corpus, his readings give rise to several problems.
(Badiou continued)
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in France Today [6/2004]
In September of 2003 the French National Assembly voted unanimously and without public debate for a bill known as the “Accoyer Amendment” to regulate the practice of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, in France. The following articles and interview, translated from Le Monde, came in response to what seemed to psychoanalysts to be a hasty and ill-considered move on the part of the French legislative body.
(Accoyer continued)
• Regulate the Unconscious? [pdf download]
• On the Social Utility of the Ear [pdf download]
• Interview with Paul-Laurent Assoun [pdf download]
Thinking Wrongly about Freud [5/2000]
(What every schoolchild should know . . .) By Ika B. Roub
The reception of psychoanalysis in the grand public is a baffling episode in the intellectual history of the twentieth century, an episode which is not finished and will have no doubt to be followed closely in the twenty-first. As such, the Los Angeles Times and the Skirball Cultural Center, are to be applauded for presenting a series of articles on Freud and psychoanalysis (3/30-31/2000) and a family art workshop on "Freud: Inkblots and Dreams" (at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA)
(Skirball continued)
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