australian
centre for
psychoanalysis
Inc A0019394K
ABN 28 638 225 012
presents the:
XVIth Lacan Symposium
Psychoanalytic contributions
today: social bonds and identity
Saturday, May 23, 2015
9.30am - 1.30pm
Treacy Conference Centre,
126 The Avenue, Parkville.
PROGRAM
Saturday May 23
9.00am - 9.30am
Registration
9.30 - 9.50
Introduction: Silvia Rodríguez, President of the ACP
9.50 - 10.20
Leonardo Rodríguez: Social bonds, identity and human discourse
10.20 - 10.30
Discussion
Psychoanalysis has made substantial contributions to the study of the pragmatics of language, or
language in action. The analytic experience has also generated some questions that are the object
of current research on discourse and its constitutive effects. The studies on language acquisition and
the pragmatics of discourse, in turn, have inspired conceptual developments among psychoanalysts
that have direct applications for the understanding of the social bond that the analytic discourse is,
as well as other discourses. The paper will discuss these questions with particular attention to the
institution of human identity and its foundations in lalangue.
Leonardo S. Rodríguez, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, Analyst Member of the School of Psychoanalysis
of the Forums of the Lacanian Field, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychiatry, Monash
University, Coordinator of the Master of Psychoanalysis program, Victoria University, and teaches in
the ACP’s Program of Theoretical and Clinical Studies.
10.30 - 10.50
Esther Faye: Sinthomatic sublimation and identity in a case of
melancholia
10.50 - 11.00
Discussion
With that very particular type of object loss experienced in melancholia, where the ‘suicided’
object, the object as the Thing, is exposed in its realness and falls as a shadow onto the subject’s
ego – the bodily ego now becoming identified with this immortal Thing – the melancholic subject
is thrown out of time. But to the anxious agitation and despair that accompany the return of
this real jouissance may come a particular kind of solution – the artifice of art as sublimation
– that can restore something of the social bond. Sinthomatically re-linking the bodily ego that
has been unlinked from the Real and the Symbolic, sublimation can provide the subject with
a compensatory narcissistic structure, a stepladder, escabeau as Lacan calls it, that inserts the
subject back into the social bond. What that might look like will be discussed via a case of
melancholia.
Esther Faye is a Registered Practising Psychoanalyst with the ACP and Analyst Member of the
School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field. She teaches in the ACP’s Program
of Theoretical and Clinical Studies in Psychoanalysis and regularly presents her work at seminars,
colloquia and symposia, as well as in publications.
11.00 - 11.20
Carmelo Scuderi: Adolescence and crime: re-humanising the subject
11.20 - 11.30
Discussion
Lacan stated that psychoanalysis does not dehumanise the criminal (1950). In this paper I will discuss
how re-humanising the adolescent (the child) who breaks the law concerns being able to speak and
to listen to the adolescent in a manner different from others. That manner conceives of the child’s
crimes as a symptom, therefore a solution, but nevertheless a pathogenic effect of an ineffective
structuring function of the Oedipus complex
Carmelo Scuderi is a psychoanalyst, clinical and forensic psychologist and senior drug and alcohol
clinician at the Children’s Court Clinic in Melbourne. He also works in private practice.
11.30 - 12.00
Morning tea
12.00 - 12.20
Susan Schwartz: A singular identity
12.20 - 12.30
Discussion
The neurotic subject is nameless, Lacan tells us; his proper name bothers him.
How then can this subject find a name, an identity? In the process of an analysis, we can uncover
his identifications, those traits, those semblants that enable the subject to belong and to make
relationships. These are his interpretations of the Other’s desire oriented by ideals and by love.
The proper name that is the subject’s real identity does not come from the Other. This nomination
is a product of the indecipherable real of the subject’s symptom. To what extent can we speak
about a name that does not come from the Other? And what is it to identify with the symptom at
the end of an analysis? Is this nomination one that makes or breaks links? These are some of the
questions this paper will address.
Susan Schwartz is a psychoanalyst in private practice, a Registered Practicing Analyst with the
ACP and Analyst Member of the School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field. She
is committed to the transmission of psychoanalysis through presenting her research, publishing,
and teaching in the ACP’s Program of Theoretical and Clinical Studies.
12.30 - 12.50
Barbara Hübl: Psychoanalysis with adolescents in an educational setting
12.50 - 1.00
Discussion
What contribution can an analytic social bond make to adolescents in a secondary school setting,
where the aim is to educate and the population needs to be governed? Some reflections on
possibilities and challenges particularly in the new age of social media.
Barbara Hübl works in private practice and in a state secondary school. She is a Member of the ACP,
the Forum of Melbourne and of the School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field.
1.00 - 1.20
Belinda Mackie: Group identity and social bonds in a group of
traumatised war orphans
1.20 - 1.30
Discussion
In 1945 six children were evacuated from Theresienstadt concentration camp to the Bulldogs Bank
War Nursery in South London where they were observed and cared for by Anna Freud and others
for a year. The children’s focus was exclusively directed to their own group. They cared greatly for
each other and not for anybody or anything else. All they wanted was to be together and became
upset when they were separated. This insistence on being inseparable made it impossible in the
beginning to treat the children as individuals or to vary their lives according to their special needs.
One of the chief questions was whether the bonding that formed such an extreme adaptation for
this group of child inmates could give way to a more fluid adaptable sense of individuality within a
safer community. This paper will consider this scenario in the context of group identity and social
bonds.
Belinda Mackie is a member of the ACP and a psychoanalyst in private practice in Melbourne.
COST
XVIth Lacan Symposium
Saturday May 23rd
Treacy Conference Centre, 126 The Avenue Parkville, Victoria.
PRICES IN AUD
ACP MEMBER
$80
STUDENTS
$30
GENERAL ADMISSION
$90
Payments can be made by:
1. Electronic Transfer:
Transfer the payment amount to the ACP, Bank:
Commonwealth, BSB: 063172, Account Number: 1015 3043.
If paying via electronic funds transfer, Please include your name in the transfer, and “Symposium”.
2. Cheque:
Payable to the Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis.
Post payment to:
The Treasurer, Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis, PO Box 509, Carlton South VIC 3053.
3. Credit card: Visa/Mastercard
Name on card: ..............................................................
Card Number: ................................................................ Expiry date: .......... /...........
Please deduct $......................... from my credit card
Signature: .......................................................................
Tea and coffee on arrival and morning tea are included in the price of admission.
For further information contact Jayson Rom at [email protected] or Barbara Hübl
at [email protected]