PLACE – Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin
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.
Research
In psychoanalysis, there has existed from the very first an inseparable bond between cure and research.
—The Question of Lay Analysis, S. Freud
A different orientation to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
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, logic, and linguistics to optics, physics, and psychoanalysis.
Our aim here is to make these fundamental problems available online, while indicating their origins and a discussion from which an advancement in analysis may be expected.
- 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.
- Other Problems …
CRUCIAL QUESTIONS
• Do you have questions about what Lacanian analysis is and how it works?
• Are you looking to address a certain suffering or disorientation of desire?
• Would you like to know more about how the practice of Lacanian analysis at PLACE differs from other analytic associations, post-Lacanian or otherwise?
• Do you have questions about the logic and mathematics opened up by Lacan’s work and how this work is being pursued today?
• Are you interested in how contemporary Lacanian analysis has established its independence from psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry?
PLACE Open House
You are invited to join us for a weekly tea at the PLACE library, where these questions—and others you bring—can be discussed with discretion and attention to each person’s concerns. Before being interrupted by the COVID pandemic, our tearoom and library had been a tradition since 2006.
If you cannot attend in person, a virtual seat has been arranged so that you can come in via Zoom.
To participate is simple: reserve a seat in advance or just drop in by calling, texting, or emailing us, and we will send you the library address, door, or Zoom code. Either way, starting Sept. 23rd, we’ll meet every Wednesday from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in Santa Monica, CA.
Analytic Tea Room and Library
Santa Monica, California
Phone: 310-388-4372
Email: places@topoi.net
Below are some of the questions raised so far. Rather than offer general answers and descriptions online, we prefer to address them one by one, attending to what is singular to each question and the person asking it, at a specific time and place.
What is contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysis? The problem of suffering
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 affiliates 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. 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: PLACES@topoi.net