COURSE SEVEN – Reading Lacan: Lacan’s Seminar IV: Object Relations and Freudian Structures. 1956-57.

Course Coordinator: Judith Hamilton

Seminar Leaders: Judith Hamilton, Carlos Rivas, Alireza Taheri

Thursday, 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm: April 8, 15, 22, 29, May 6, 13, 2021 (6 evenings)

Fees: $360

Registration Deadline: March 30, 2021
Preregistration is required.

** DISTANCE PARTICIPATION ONLY – This course will be conducted online.

In this course, the leaders will present topics derived from a reading of Lacan’s Seminar IV. According to Lacan, Freud did not care about the object but about the “lack” of the object. Lacan’s study was based on the function of the object in phobia (Freud’s case of Little Hans) and in fetishism (Freud’s A Child is Being Beaten, his study of da Vinci, and the observation of a little girl by one of Anna Freud’s students). The lack of the object involved a renunciation, in the infantile triad of the Oedipus complex, brought about by the law of the Father, of a third, imaginary term which Lacan called the phallus. He outlined three forms of lack: frustration, privation and castration, involving the three registers of objects (the real, the imaginary and the symbolic phallus). In this process, mother falls from the Symbolic (Other) to the Real, while the objects, through the mediation of the phallus, “from Real become Symbolic.” (derived from Marcelle Marini, 1992) This results in the structuring preference for the father, as the Name-of-the-Father, the founding signifier of the Symbolic. From this seminar, one follows the development of Lacan’s teaching on the outcome of the Oedipus complex, with its discussion of the permutations of object choice, and assesses the depth of its relevance to contemporary clinical practice with respect to the family and the child’s place within it: the “unwanted” child and melancholia and the possibility of “devastation” wrought on the child by the mother’s desire. Lacan anticipates here the symbolic fragmentation and deconstruction of the concept of the family in our day. (derived from Carol Owens and Nadezhda Almqvist, 2019)

Reading material will be supplied, although it is recommended that participants obtain a copy of Lacan’s Seminar IV.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the course:

1. Participants will be familiar with terms, concepts and their uses that Lacan introduced in Seminar IV.
2. Participants will have learned about interventions in treatments implied by the material of this seminar.
3. Participants will have learned about Lacanian techniques as they are used in various clinical settings and populations.

Judith Hamilton, MD, FRCP, (Psych)

Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst in Private Practice. She teaches in the ATPPP and in the Extension Program of the TPS. She is a co-founder of Lacan Toronto. Faculty TPS&I.

Carlos Rivas, RP

Carlos Rivas, RP, studied psychology, philosophy and social sciences in Venezuela. He trained in Gestalt Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Motivational Interviewing, Focusing, and EMDR, and in 2005 was the recipient of the Venezuelan National Award for Research in Psychotherapy. He has a private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Member of Lacan Toronto; Guest of the TPS.

Alireza Taheri, PhD, RP

Alireza Taheri, PhD, RP, wrote his dissertation for the University of Cambridge on Nietzsche, Freud and Lacan. He also holds an MA in philosophy from Essex and an MSc in psychoanalytic thought from University College London. He has done psychoanalytic work in London (UK). He works in private practice in Toronto. Candidate at TIP.