Making room for a new mode of practice through a critical return to the discovery of Freud and a construction in the topology introduced by J. Lacan. This website aims to provide a portal for this paradigm shift.
In psychoanalysis, there has existed from the very first an inseparable bond between cure and research.
The Question of Lay Analysis, S. Freud
Lacan left over 100 problems for the future of analysis that his students and analysands preserved but did not make public. Instead, they were copied and circulated among small work groups (cartels) in Paris from 1980 to 2000. These problems range from mathematics – topology, number theory, set theory, and groups – and logic to optics, linguistics, physics, and psychoanalysis. Our aim here is to make these problems available online for the first time, while indicating their origins and a discussion from which an advancement in analysis may be expected. We have also supplemented this collection with another set of Open Problems, directly drawn from the more well-known publications of Lacan that have tended to remain at the level of Open Questions rather than constructible problems.
- Problem 1 – The Knot Classification Problem and its Borromean Basis
- Problem 2 – Coordinate the two pairs conscience–conscient and inconscience–inconscient, then show that le conscient is not simply defined in terms of la conscience, just as l’inconscient is not simply defined in terms of l’inconscience.
- Problems 3,4, …
CRUCIAL QUESTIONS
What is contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysis? The problem of suffering
What is a psychoanalyst today?
How do I find a psychoanalyst?
What is it to achieve an analysis?
What is the minor clinic of analysis? A history of silence
What is the difference between the talking and writing cure of psychoanalysis?
What is the difference between the major and minor clinic? Modes
Where is the clinic of psychoanalysis with regard to psychosis and neurosis-perversion today?
ORGANIZATIONAL
HISTORY
OPEN SOURCE
Constructed on a transparent network of sources – library, courses, seminars, work groups, and private analysis – open to anyone. In many instances, Zoom can overcome distance and time barriers.
PLACE began in Los Angeles, California, in January 1998, when one of its founders returned from Paris to set up its framework in Santa Monica, CA. It has since grown, with additions in both Berlin and Paris.
PLACE has its roots in the late Lacan, where some of its participants and founders worked in Paris from the 1970s to 2000. At this time, the work was closely connected to the topological seminars and courses of the late J.M. Vappereau at Topologie en Extension, with the courses of J.C. Milner (linguistics) and R. Guitart (category theory) serving as points of convergence at the University of Paris and the College of Philosophy. After one of PLACE’s founders moved to California, a decision was made to reintroduce this Lacanian framework under a different name and different context in the U.S.. As a consequence, PLACE was instituted in 2006 as an educational non-profit 501.c.3. It was founded on a double movement: to make room for a place of Lacanian analysis that would neither be reduced to a humanities department nor a mental health profession. PLACE is supported by private contributions, grants, and endowments from individuals and foundations committed to promoting an authentic praxis of analysis.
If you care to visit, participate in the school-clinic, or work at analysis, send an email to: PLACE@topoi.net XX