AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYSIS

Workshop 2023-4

An Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Based on Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1915-17),

with additional references from the teaching of Jacques Lacan

“the return to Freud’s texts […] has convinced me […] that there is no firmer grasp on human reality than that provided by the Freudian experience and that one must return to the source and apprehend these texts, in every sense of the word.”
(Jacques Lacan, “The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real”)

Taking up the wager offered to us by Lacan in the very text in which he introduces his three registers, our series of workshops this year offers us the chance to get to grips with Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1915-17). To help us in this task, invited speakers from across the Freudian Field will present on specific topics, each drawing from one or more of Freud’s lectures. 

Taking them up in the order of their appearance, we will discuss: parapraxes; interpretation; dreams; the unconscious; the symptom; anxiety; and transference – each one a fundamental part of psychoanalysis, both as an experience and as a practice. Of course, in taking up these central concepts from these Lectures, we will also endeavour to situate them within the overall context of Freud’s work, and in relation to subsequent developments by Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller.

To this end, we have taken as an emblem for our series the idea of a ‘turntable’ introduced by Miller in his “Seminar of Barcelona on Die Wege der Symptombildung”, itself a commentary on Lectures XVI and XXIII, given as part of the Freudian Field Lectures in Barcelona in 1996. Here, Miller speaks of the need to construct a turntable capable, first, of distributing and communicating the different parts of Freud’s work, secondly, of distributing and communicating the various constructions elaborated by Lacan, and finally of distributing and communicating the work of Freud and Lacan with each other. And, to counter any idea that the goal is one of encyclopedic knowledge, he adds:

“This turntable is indispensable for the orientation of our work […] in the Freudian Field this year – to orient us, but also to disorient us a little bit. In order to be well oriented in an analytic theme one must also disorient oneself a little; that is, not think the theme in too familiar a way. Getting a little bit lost has all its value.” 

As paradoxical as it might appear, such a turntable will serve as our compass this year as we investigate the “roundabout paths” of the symptom and the elliptical logic of the unconscious. By taking up the challenge of constructing such a device we aim to provide a series of seminars geared not only towards those relatively new to psychoanalysis – and especially, as Freud put it in 1930, towards young people eager for knowledge – but also towards more seasoned practitioners from across the Freudian Field. 

Practical details: The Workshop series will consist of 7 sessions of 4 hours each, plus one hour of group work and discussion. Each 4-hour session will be split between a morning seminar, in which the speaker will provide a theoretical development of the day’s theme, and an afternoon seminar in which the topic in question will be illustrated with a clinical case or cases drawn, either from the speakers own practice, the history of psychoanalysis, or some other clinical source.

The programme has been established under the personal direction of Jacques-Alain Miller.

For further information, please seen the Programme and Presentation of the Theme  on our website.

Saturdays, 11am-5pm GMT / BST (London Time).

Dates in 2023: 4 November, 16 December

Dates in 2024: 27 January, 09 March, 06 April, 27 April, 22 June

N.B. The price quoted for tickets includes access to the whole series of 7 dates, for both morning and afternoon sessions.

Neus Carbonell; Véronique Voruz; Shula Eldar; Dalila Arpin; Vicente Palomera; Gil Caroz; Anne Lysy

Note: The London Workshop of the Freudian Field is an English-Language event.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Main References:

Freud, S. "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis". The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.  Vols. XV & XVI.

Lacan, J. "Geneva Lecture on the Symptom". Analaysis 1 (1989).

Miller, J-A. "Salvation Through Waste". The Lacanian Review 14 (2023).

Miller, J-A. "The Seminar of Barcelona on Die Wege des Symptombildung". Psychoanalyitical Notebooks 1 (1998).

For a more in depth list of references updated for each session please visit the Bibliography page of our website.

Visit our YouTube Channel and Subscribe: