Seminar Leaders: Judith Hamilton, MD and Claire Lunney, MD
Course Description
This course is designed to give candidates a clinical view of Lacanian theory as it is put into practice with people with perversions and addictions.
This course will try to cover a wide ground in little time. It will offer the candidates selected readings of the original Lacan, a presentation of the concepts by a contemporary author, and clinical examples that illustrate the theory. People with addictions of many types have been noted to have increased in the last thirty years, and people with various perversions have been imposing a particular difficulty in society. Both conditions have been difficult to treat effectively and have elicited unique contributions from Lacanian clinicians. This course will introduce the candidates to two of the major clinical works. Because the chapters are long and detailed, and time is short, the candidates should not feel obliged to read the whole thing, just enough to whet their appetite for more study at this time or another.
Learning Objectives
Candidates will be able to:
- Be aware of the major concepts of Lacanian theory and technique (1.2a, 1.2b).
- Understand these concepts as they are applied in the two major groups of contemporary patients, those with perversion and those with addictions (1.2a, 1.3c).
- Understand the technical particularities of working with these patients (4.2, 4.3, 4.4).
Seminar 1
Required Readings
Overture to the Seminar (p.1-3); Introduction to the commentaries on Freud’s Papers on Technique (p.7-18) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953-1954. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. trans. John Forrester. Cambridge University Press.1988.
Swales, Stephanie, S. (2012). Chapter 2: Button ties of Lacanian theory. In Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (pp .20-53). New York, NY: Routledge.
Supplementary Reading
Ecrits: The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I. (p. 1-7)
Seminar 2
Required Readings
Swales, Stephanie, S. (2012). Chapter 3: The etiology of perversion. In Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (pp. 54-87). New York, NY: Routledge.
Swales, Stephanie, S. (2012). Chapter 6: Analysis of a case of (perverse) exhibitionism. In Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject (pp. 183-218). London: Routledge.
Supplementary Reading
Écrits: Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, introduction and theses I, II and III (p. 8-16)
Seminar 3
Required Readings
The Ego and the Other. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (pp. 38-51). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Malone, K. & Goldman Baldwin, Y. (2011). Introduction: Viewing addictions through Lacanian lenses. In Goldman Baldwin, Y., Malone, K. & Svolos, T (Eds.). Lacan and Addiction: An Anthology (pp.17-34). London: Karnac Books.
Supplementary Readings
Écrits: Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, theses IV and V (p. 16-29)
Aguirre, Maria Cristina (2011). Chapter 13: Bulimia, anxiety and the demand of the Other. In Y. Goldman Baldwin, K. Malone & T. Svolos, T (Eds.) Lacan and Addiction: An Anthology (pp. 177-185). London: Karnac Books.