“These affairs are certainly not lacking then, but it is in this that they are lacking something: that is, understanding each other as man, as woman, that is to say, sexually.

Would a man and a woman thus understand each other only in being silent?  There is no doubt about this.

Because man and woman have no need to speak in order to be taken into a discourse.  As such, they are occurrences of discourse.”   - Jacques Lacan

We invite all who are interested, (are some not?!) to our annual conference to hear papers and discuss the implications of Lacanian theory with respect to an interrogation of the question of sexuality within this all too human condition.

Let us continue to recognise and work our own subjection to a discourse that disallows us from ignoring, despite our ignorance, the status of gender and the tragicomic dimension of our attempts to find a sexual rapport.

GUEST SPEAKER
Guy le Gaufey

In 2011 the school is pleased to be joined in its work by Guy Le Gaufey who will present at the Homage for the first time some new work on Lacan’s  dictum, “There is no sexual relation.”

Guy Le Gaufey has been an analyst in Paris since 1974. Member of the École Freudienne de Paris until its dissolution in 1980, then co-founder of the revue Littoral in 1981 and of the École lacanienne de Psychanalyse in 1985, of which he was director for eight years. He is author of numerous papers and books including: L’incomplétude du symbolique (Epel, 1991), L’éviction de l’origine (Epel, 1994), Le lasso spéculaire (Epel, 1997), Anatomie de la troisième personne (Epel, 1999), Le pas tout de Lacan. Consistance logique, consequences cliniques (Epel, 2006), C’est à quel sujet? (Epel, 2009). He has also translated works from English to French, for Epel and other publishers. His works can be read at: http://web.me.com/legaufey

TITLES AND ABSTRACTS:

Incest, Identity and Difference
David Pereira.

Freud at the Tobacconist’s
Michael Plastow.

The formulae of sexuation that Lacan wrote do not give any definitive answers to the enigmas of sex and sexual difference. If anything they raise far more questions than they answer. But Lacan’s formulations in their turn take up the questions posed by Freud and which he articulated as the enigmas of feminine sexuality and, indeed, the deadly riddle of the Sphinx. Here we endeavour to circumscribe the manner in which Freud kept such questions open. It was Freud’s work, Freud’s writing, that opened up the paths that were later pursued by Lacan. We take up Freud’s articulation of these questions by crossing this reading of Freud with that of a poem by Fernando Pessoa in order to see what monstrous creature might be produced by such a copulation.

Dimensions of Discourse
Madeline Andrews

On June 9th, 1971, Lacan addressed his seminar audience with the following question, "to make oneself understood as man, as woman, which means sexually, would the man and the woman understand one another by saying nothing?"  Responding to their silence, he went on to remark that, "there is no question of that, because the man, the woman, have no need to speak to be caught up in a discourse . . . as such, they are facts of discourse". This paper is addressed to that fact of discourse articulated by Lacan in terms of a "dit-mension"; that dimension of speech, which the discourse of the psychoanalyst privileges so as to hear, what cannot be transmitted from the place of understanding.

Saying No to Sex
Peter Gunn

Say No to Sex! So goes the severe paternal directive. And yet, for the neurotic, saying already carries the paternal function of negation. With reference to the logic of Lacan’s formulae of sexuation and the clinic of the psychoses, this paper will consider what imposes itself by way of the body when the saying no functions all too well.

The Two of Us
Rodney Kleiman

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