Liste de diffusion de l'EuroFédération de Psychanalyse
Moral and Administrative Report from the President of the WAP, Leonardo Gorostiza
Buenos Aires 27th April 2012
Esteemed colleagues, dear friends of the WAP,
Today it is two years since I had the honour and the responsibility of taking on the presidency of our association. It is now time to look back at our administration and to try to situate how the WAP has been able to contribute to the development of the politics of its Schools, since the WAP is made of and by nothing but the Schools, which constitute it and give it body.
For this, as President of the WAP, I have tried to be as present as possible in each of them. Not only through contact –sometimes nearly daily thanks to electronic media– with each of the Presidents of the seven Schools, but also travelling frequently and participating, as far as possible, in each of their main events. This close presence has been, at least for me, something very important, because it allowed me – if I can put it like this - to perceive how each School lives, throbs, in ways that even though they share the same orientation, are always particular and also, according to each moment, changing.
This modality of administration, which I may simply call thus, "close", is something that I hope and wish to keep if - as I shall propose to the next WAP Council that will arise here today following the approval of the list of counsellors proposed by the Schools - I am re-elected for a new two-year term.
But for this to be possible, not only the agreement of the new Council will be essential, but also, and fundamentally, that this Assembly approves by voting the report I will now present to you.
The Council of the WAPAs I said two years ago at the General Assembly in 2010 and recalled in 2011 in Paris, the institutional structure of the WAP according to the Statutes approved in 2008, which brought to sixteen the number of counsellors, presents certain difficulties. In particular, its being a "heavy" structure when it comes to respond speedily to contingencies. In order to respond to this, I proposed on that occasion that perhaps we could use that which would be a difficulty by transforming it in the following way: by creating each time clearly defined responsibilities for each counsellor. Something like specific missions according to the circumstances. This was implemented during the first year. I asked several of the counsellors to carry out a precise survey on the themes of political interest for the WAP, on the news about legislation and attempts at regulation of the psy practices, on the relationship between Schools and Universities, on the current state of our Consultation Centres. This valuable information, summarised in part in the dossier of the Council meetings from January 2011, gave us an overview which confirms what we are witnessing today in an increasingly blatant way: a push towards regulation and attacks against psychoanalysis which are particularly virulent in Europe and of which - for now - there are only some sketches in America. The presentations by the Presidents of the School that we heard today bear witness to this.
Another novelty that we introduced in the Council was the creation of the Extended Bureau. As you know, the Bureau is composed of President, Secretary and Treasurer. While the Extended Bureau, which is not a statutory figure, includes in addition to the members of the Bureau, the secretary of homologations, the secretary of the pass and the secretary of the guarantee. It is like the strongest core that has to work on the three dimensions proper to the WAP as School One: admissions, guarantee and pass. This modality of functioning revealed itself as very useful, and together with the decision to extend by a day the annual meetings of the Council, made possible a careful work on the theme of homologations. I will be able to clarify what I am referring to during the discussion.
I shall move to the second point, which concerns precisely that which led us to the amendments of the statutes in 2008, with this result on the institutional structure of the WAP, including the need for an Annual General Meeting (an issue to be reviewed). I am referring to the purpose of obtaining recognition for the WAP as NGO at the UN.
The NGO toolThe efforts to obtain this objective, firmly initiated by Eric Laurent during his presidency of the WAP, finally bore fruit thanks to the work of the President of the EFP, our colleague Gil Caroz, who did not recoil before the many bureaucratic obstacles that had to be overcome in order for our demand to reach the UN. He himself has defined the status of NGO as an instrument, a tool. So it is a matter of knowing how to use it. To use it, for example, for the voice of psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation to be even better and more heard in the public debates in the face of the rise of the ideology of the cipher and evaluation.
Thus, on August 1st 2011 we received a notification from the Social and Economic Council of the UN (ECOSOC) stating that the WAP had been granted Special Consultative Status. What does this mean? That while it does not allow us to propose items on the agenda of the ECOSOC meetings, or to speak during those meetings, it does allow us to participate in certain meetings – though without a right to vote - and to circulate brief written statements, and also to take the floor and circulate longer statements in what are called meetings of subsidiary bodies. Gil Caroz may, during the conversation, expand on these issues.
But what I do want to communicate to you, before concluding this point, is that in this period we have been able to corroborate that in fact a statutory modality like the one we currently have is not necessary in order to obtain such recognition by the UN. Our current statutory structure is indeed required to obtain recognition as an Association of Public Utility in France. Therefore, one of our next objectives will be - if we agree not to advance in our request to obtain such recognition - to study the possibility of a new change in the statutes that will give back to the WAP a more flexible and lightweight structure.
That said, let us then pass to the actions that matter the most to us and which are fundamental to the WAP and the School One. Let us see where we are at after these two years of administration. Firstly: the Pass.
The PassA great impulse continues to animate the Pass. Several nominations were made by the Cartels. This makes the number of AS of the School One currently nineteen (19). Eleven (11) of these were nominated after the WAP Congress in April 2010. We have heard the testimonies of eight (8) of them during this Congress.
Last Sunday, in the premises of the EOL, we called for a Conversation on the Pass in the School One. I think that we may state that these steps continue to aim at strengthening the awakening and development of a community of the Pass within the School One. Thus, during this period of two years several developments concerning the device of the pass took place in different Schools.
Two Schools in America, the EOL and the EBP adopted new regulations of the Pass. For my part, I have worked closely - as extimate - with the Council of the EBP and its Secretariat of the Pass, on the drafting and adoption of the new regulations, as well as the designation and establishment of the list of passers. A trait stands out both in the Regulations of the EBP and in those of the EOL. The decided wager for its composition to come fundamentally from that which the Pass itself produces. That is to say, the greatest possible number of AS and former AS, or of some former passers. This produces a significant confidence in the set of communities of these two Schools, which is a central element for the implementation and continuity of the device. The same can be said of the important development that took place in November of last year during the Study-Days of the ELP in Zaragoza: a new regulation of the Pass was adopted by the Council of the ELP and approved at the Assembly of this School. Thus, the new Cartel of the Pass of the ELP was put in function.
Meanwhile, the ECF, for its part, inaugurated during this period a new functioning in the device. The two cartels were merged into one Commission de la Passe, which included the coordinator of the Secretariat of the Pass within it, now as plus one of the Committee. During the Conversation held last Sunday at the EOL we considered in depth the reasons for and the consequences of this development.
Thus, it appears that we are in a time where the regulations are diverse, according to each place, and at the same time, that they are not eternal. Namely, that they may vary according to the places and times that each School and the School One go through. This trait, more akin to contingency, deserves to be highlighted because it is an indication of the fact that, as Jacques-Alain Miller pointed out, what matters is not the regulations themselves but that there is a community of the pass that animates them.
The School One thus maintains the functioning of the device in four Schools (ECF, EOL, EBP and ELP), which also receive demands from members of other Schools through the WAP Secretariat of the Pass. This represents – as indicated by Laure Naveau - an important mobilization of the members and of the spirit of the Pass in each of the Schools and in the School One. In each case, what is harvested there is the most precious of the experience of an analysis. Thus, it is possible to know "how one becomes an analyst in the 21st Century", and the way in which psychoanalysis is practiced case by case.
We can therefore conclude that the Pass in the Schools, but also very clearly in the School One, enjoys at present a great vitality. Mauricio Tarrab called it, during the Conversation last Sunday at the EOL, "the springtime of the pass".
The experience of the Pass reveals itself thus able to traverse the differences of languages and localisms. For this reason, in January of last year I proposed to hold a WAP soirée at the ECF dedicated to the Pass and, in particular, to this most peculiar trait of the School One: its trans-linguistic character. We conversed, on that occasion, around "The pass and the languages in the School One".
The texts of this meeting, of great resonance in the ECF, were uploaded on the WAP website.
On this point, that is, what of the pass is available on line, we have made a decision that the testimonies of the AS are uploaded after a certain time and in the space reserved for members. It seemed to us that to upload them quickly and open to every "navigator" would have been incongruent with the interpretation made by Jacques-Alain Miller during the last Great Conversation of the School One in Paris about the risk of making a McDonald's of the pass. The publication of the testimonies in paper is thus privileged, while its online publication is merely deferred.
Finally, I want to publicly thank Laure Naveau, Secretary of the Pass of the WAP during these two years who today steps down from the Council, in whom I always found support and a decided work – as far as the WAP is concerned - for that which is most agalmatic in our Schools to be treated with appropriate care.
The GuaranteeAs you may recall, in my address to the Assembly in 2010, I proposed the creation, within the Council of the WAP, of a Secretariat of the Guarantee, with a primary specific aim: to establish a first update of this question within the framework of the WAP. This is an issue that always has a certain opacity which I understand pertains to the function and pertinence of the title of AMS in our community and in this epoch.
As I anticipated in the Assembly last year in Paris, it was time to introduce a permutation in the WAP America Commission of the Guarantee which had been in office since 2006. At the beginning of this year, and after this Commission had carried out its last nominations in June 2011 during ENAPOL, the permutations were introduced.
At the same time we decided on a reformulation of the European Secretariat of the Guarantee (SEG), which will now have – as reported in a recent communiqué - the mission of considering possible nominations and awarding the title of AMS within the ambit of the ELP, the SLP and the NLS. The Commission of the Guarantee of the ECF continues, as before, to award this title within the scope of its School.
Both of these changes, the permutation of the WAP America Commission and the new SEG remain in force until 2014, at which time both devices and their composition will have to be reconsidered.
Moreover, notwithstanding what was reported last year about the Commissions of the Guarantee of the ECF and of the EOL having decided to resume speaking in public, that is, to take up again a work of teaching, we have to say that this did not have sufficient impact. Only one activity in that sense took place in 2011 by the ECF Commission, and the Commission of the EOL did not hold any. This is something to be interpreted, elucidated.
From the reports written by Philippe La Sagna, WAP Secretary of the Guarantee, we can highlight two axes of the question. Firstly, the value and function that the title of AMS may have in the perspective of the position that psychoanalysis ought to occupy in society. Secondly, one must not forget that there is an articulation between the pass and the AMS, when they are able to designate passers.
During this Congress, we conducted a meeting with the members of the new American Commission of the Guarantee and of the SEG, in order to open an exchange around the scope and value of the title of AMS in our time, as well as the relevance of continuing to question and encourage a teaching by the Commissions.
HomologationsDuring these two years, when considering the proposals of homologation brought to the WAP Council by each of the Schools, we have verified that the Councils of the Schools implement those devices which, at each moment, they consider more appropriate for the admission interviews, but these interviews are still aimed primarily at examining the subjective position of the applicant, his or her relationship to the unconscious, and also – and fundamentally - the reasons from within the analytic experience that precipitated the decision to request the entry into the School. Also, to explore what each candidate can bring to the School, from the libidinal, the political and the epistemic viewpoints. Because maintaining analytic rigor in the homologations also means not giving ground with regards to the requirement of formation. In addition, being admitted as member of a School and of the WAP also implies having verified the applicant's willingness to transcend the local in order to get involved in the analytic community in its national and, as far as possible, international dimensions.
In these two years we have generally found clear and reasoned fundamentals in the proposals presented by the different Schools. This has enabled us to make decisions respecting the analytic requirement of considering each case in its singularity, beyond the percentages necessary to take into account in order to maintain the balance of the Schools within the WAP. In general, the ratio of number of proposals in the Schools was satisfactory. There was no excess or shortage.
As regards the modalities of the procedures implemented in each School, this last year prompted a reflection about the information disseminated in certain cases by the Councils in order to orientate the demands, and also about the responses given when the applicants are not proposed for homologation or are not homologated. The Council concluded on the importance that the orientation of the demands should not override a certain opacity (I underline "certain" opacity) about what the School "expects", so that the applicant may articulate his or her demand in a more singular manner. It was also concluded that the responses with respect to the demands for entry should not be confused with the modality proper to the reports of the procedure of the pass, which does not imply that there cannot be a response.
I want to thank the Councils of the Schools for the care they have put into the presentation of the reports during these two years, which encouraged and facilitated the work of the WAP Council and allowed for the singularity of each of the demands to be stressed.
Also, the extension we decided to give to the time for consideration of the proposals by the Extended Bureau has been crucial to being able to discuss each of them afterwards in an argued manner, in the whole Council.
As significant facts we could observe, in the last proposals of homologation of several Schools, a certain decrease in the age of the applicants in respect of previous years, and a more significant presence of psychiatrists, particularly this year (2012), in the proposals by the EOL.
Finally, I also give special thanks to Xavier Esqué, who today steps down from the Council, for his rigorous work and the care he put in the preparation of the proposals for their detailed consideration during these two years. He knew how to carry on with the enormous work undertaken years ago by Jésus Santiago.
The SchoolsWe have already heard from the Presidents of the Schools. Each of them has transmitted very well the central axes of their politics and the point at which they find themselves. I will not repeat what they have already put very well. I will only highlight some points.
If we look at Europe, it is clear that psychoanalysis is suffering there perhaps one of the most violent attacks in all of its history. Particularly in France, but no less in Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland, one observes repeated manoeuvres attempting, in one way or another, to extinguish the flame of the Freudian invention. What was said a few minutes ago by Jean-Daniel Matet is shocking. The legal tricks seeking to exclude psychoanalysis as a treatment for autism, the making of a film which, on the same subject, maliciously aims to ridicule our practice. But the response of the ECF - animated as always by the careful reading that Jacques-Alain Miller makes of the discursive movements of the time and his knowing how to transform each of these contingencies into opportunities for the affirmation of the analytic discourse - has been and is rapid and strong.
I think that the other Schools are slowly learning from this example, which does not mean copying the forms. For if in Europe the Schools evidently share a common problem, this is not so much the case of the Schools in America, or the NLS, made of such diverse languages and geographies.
For example, the formula of the Forum, which has proved so effective for the ECF, the ELP and the SLP, could not be automatically transferred to the American Schools. This does not prevent these Schools from inventing other devices or other forms of the Forum, that are proper to them, in so far as the attacks which we observe are manifestly increasing in Europe will soon, under other faces, begin to appear in this continent.
But for this decided and essential action with respect to what happens "outside the consulting room" not to lead us to lose our way – the way of the analytic discourse -, it is also necessary that each of the Schools strengthen their concern and carefulness for so-called pure psychoanalysis. It is at this point that what I said earlier about the status of the Pass in the Schools of the WAP is crucial.
But not everything is the pass in the Schools. There are other spaces that make what we call "analytical formation" which also need to be maintained and preserved, as well as the affecto societatis, the libidinal bond fundamental to sustaining and strengthening both the "Forum" and the "Pass", which must be inextricably articulated.
Thus, if we take the example of the ELP, this School surprised the Freudian Field in June 2010 with the Forum on Autism which gathered 600 people in Barcelona. The impulse of this call was well taken advantage of and in October of the same year the ELP took a major step by reaching more than 400 participants in its Study-Days, something unheard of in the times of inertia of this School. This impetus was not only maintained last year, but was also renewed – as I already anticipated - during the Study-Days in Zaragoza, which had almost the same number of participants, where the new Regulation of the pass was approved. And as pointed out by its President, Carmen Cuñat, the creation of a Press Office – and I verified this live in situ - is allowing the ELP and psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation to make themselves heard more strongly in a social environment which has been traditionally reluctant to psychoanalysis. A new Forum is currently underway.
For its part, the SLP is giving strong signs of continuing with a deceleration of the centrifugal tendency which up until very recently caused the dispersion of libido in local activities to the detriment of a movement of centralisation around the Scuola and the WAP. The WAP-EFP Seminar, coordinated first by Eric Laurent and then by Gil Caroz and Pierre-Gilles Guéguen, as well as the setting up of new central headquarters, has favoured the beginning of a centripetal movement towards the One of theScuola.
Last February I was able to travel for the first time to the Scuola. Thus, I could share with the colleagues of the SLP, who travelled to Milan despite the harsh winter and the storm of "Siberian snow" hitting Italy in those days, an excellent Conversazione Clinica; we could also talk in depth about the possibility of establishing, in a short time, a device of the pass proper to the Scuola. Here also, in a School where the initiative of the Forum opens up the possibility of a dialogue with intellectuals from other disciplines,thus bringing it out of the ostracism of localisms, the horizon of the pass must be affirmed. But in its own time, without forcing it.
Finally, the NLS. It also had its Congresses during these two years. First in Geneva (2010), then in London (2011). On both occasions I could personally witness the intense work of this amazing School,very well described minutes ago by its President Anne Lysy, made of multiple Societies and groups based in many cities and with diverse languages. There I noted that despite this great heterogeneity, its groups and members share, increasingly, the same orientation. We shall meet once again at the next NLS Congress in June in Tel-Aviv.
I do wish to note here the central role that the EFP has already and will increasingly have in the construction of a true psychoanalytic Europe of the Lacanian Orientation. In this regard, as pointed out by its current president, Gil Caroz, the EFP responds to a reading of political reality concerning psychoanalysis on an "external" and an "internal" plane. On the "external" front, the EFP translates the will to give the European community of the Lacanian Orientation the necessary consistency to defend psychoanalysis at a European level against the ideology of evaluation, the spread of CBTs and the neurosciences, and also the legislative initiatives that attack psychoanalysis. On the internal front, it aims at supporting the relationship of the psychoanalyst to his unconscious, with the horizon of the Pass as the essential element of his formation. Furthermore, the EFP addresses the « nouveaux venus » who approach the European Schools from their political commitment (the Forums). Thus, the EFP has the ambition of maintaining a paradoxical knotting between a collective political commitment of large scale and the principle of a «demassification of the enunciation».
The success of PIPOL 5 last year in Brussels, which was the first European Congress of Psychoanalysis, speaks of the dynamism and the growing importance the EFP.
But in addition, there is another very important aspect linked to the NLS, to which the EFP also contributes. I am referring to the opening towards Eastern Europe, highlighted in the intervention by the President of the Freudian Field, Judith Miller. It is due to her drive, and more recently to the presence of Jacques-Alain Miller in Moscow, that little by little,step by step, the reconquest of the Freudian Field in those latitudes is consolidating. The Council of the WAP has been sensitive to this quest and we decided to fully support it. Both in the meetings of January 2011 and in 2012, we invited Judith Miller and the members of the Secretariat for Eastern Europe to inform us of their work. From this exchange two decisions by the Council emerged. Firstly to create, within the website of the WAP, that which its director Mauricio Tarrab proposed to call "A window to Eastern Europe"; a place of connection with the activities developed there by the groups of the Freudian Field. Secondly, to grant initially during 2012 10,000 Euros to contribute to the deepening of the analytic formation of the practitioners in that geographic area. This is a task that the WAP will continue to privilege and to support in the next administration.
Another important dimension linked to the NLS is the work carried out in the USA. In order to establish a more fluid connection with the groups that exist there, I have designated one of our councillors, more precisely Pierre-Gilles Guéguen, as Delegate of the WAP Council in the USA. From this, two significant events arose. First, the three existing groups met under a common signifier, that of the already existent electronic publication, Lacanian Compass. Their activities through the so-called Video Seminars and the Clinical Study Days were maintained and consolidated. A noticeable change was introduced by a joint activity between the University of Paris 8 and the Popular University Jacques Lacan which, in connection with the university field in the USA, allowed for the first PULSE (Paris-USA Lacan Seminar) to take place in NYC at the end of 2011. Surely this will be a path to be deepened and to which the WAP will give its full support.
However, despite the success of this first initiative, we cannot ignore the resistance that American culture continues to offer to the entry of the clinical consequences of Lacan's teaching. This realization is what led us finally not to implement an idea which many of you might know. We have decided not to hold what would had been the IXth Congress of the WAP in NYC next year. It seemed to us, and we discussed this with Jacques-Alain Miller, that it would have been meaningless to call for a Congress like the one in Comandatuba, now on the island of Manhattan. We could do it, the experience and the means are not lacking but… what resonance could something like this have had beyond our field? The fact is that one has to surrender to an evidence. Psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation spreads mainly through the Romance languages. And while this should not lead us to give up the effort to develop our presence in the Anglo-Saxon language, in the short term the possibility of installing an enclave in the USA has more to do with the Spanish language, or the Spanglish, which is increasingly developing. Hence the decision announced in the Communique of the Council meetings to hold next year not a Congress, but a Colloquium of the Lacanian Orientation in Miami. We must still work on this. Therefore, the next Congress, the IXth WAP Congress will take place once again in Paris, from the 14th to the 18th of April 2014. The Director of the IXth Congress has already been appointed. It will be our colleague, AS in exercise of the ELP and the ECF, Guy Briole.
And where are we at in Latin America?
The EOL continues its work firmly, strongly and steadily. Among others, three facts stood out during this period. Firstly, last year's amendment of its Statutes which introduced the possibility of a more rapid renewal of the Council members and a greater articulation with the Directory of the School. This aims at something that is in the spirit of the EOL and which is slowly taking shape: to allow for a genuine generational renewal where management efficiency is not opposed to maintaining the exigency in the analytic formation. This is indispensable, not only for the EOL but for all the Schools of the WAP. Secondly, the organization of a Conversation where all the members were invited to take the floor, to say at what point analytic formation is in the EOL after twenty years of existence. Thirdly, a decision taken by the Council to be well informed about the scope of the new Mental Health Act in Argentina, its incidence on psychoanalytic practice and the possibility and desirability of influencing the drafting of its regulation and in what way. This is a task especially in step with the times. As you can see, the purchase and renovation of what will be the new headquarters of the EOL does not divert the attention of the instances and their members from what must be the core objectives of a School. The strength of its most recent Study-Days on Lacanian Praxis, also bears witness to it.
For its part, the EBP, as I pointed out at the Assembly of last year, was able to hold its traditional Encontro Brasileiro do Campo Freudiano in Sao Paulo, after years of misencounters and difficulties; this intense and formidable city is a strategic pole for the development of the Lacanian Orientation. The affecto societatis of the EBP seems to have found there a new impulse. This is something that is maintained and which I consider marks the entry into a new phase for the EBP, and which is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that 145 members of the EBP attended this Congress, a remarkable number if we take into account that the number of members of this School is 191. In addition, the EBP is perhaps one of the American Schools that is most sensitive to what happens outside of its borders. I could verify how it mobilised itself before the call we made for the liberation of Rafah Nached set in motion by Jacques-Alain Miller. Interventions in the city on the use of drugs and on violence are some of the axes which – as pointed out by its outgoing President, Ana Lydia Santiago - the EBP aims at approaching in the near future.
Finally, the NEL which, from its Study-Days in Bogotá (where it celebrated its ten years of existence) through the clinical and political interventions of its members, both at the Study-Days and at the Congress and the Assembly, accounted for a certain breakthrough. As I said at the past Assembly in Paris, I have worked with the NEL Executive Committee in order to boost a greater participation of the Branches in the perspective of the One of the NEL. Thus emerged the idea of giving its Federative Council a greater participation in the politic of the School. Thanks to the tireless work of its President Piedad Spurrier meetings of the Councillors and the Directors of the different Branches with the President were successively held via webex. I think that this is a modality that has to be maintained and deepened in the future, since it contributes precisely to obtain that which is so difficult in a School made of geographically diverse Branches: the feeling of being part of a same community. But also, a progress in the central preoccupation of this School may begin to be glimpsed: the accent increasingly put on the formation of their members, through the value and enhancement given to the function of supervision and the carefulness in the construction of clinical cases. Another fact to be highlighted in the area of the NEL is what is happening in the important and historic Branch in Caracas. I mean what I believe and wish to understand as a genuine rapprochement between the members of the two Associations that exist there, whose distancing for ten years seems to be coming to an end. The capture of the entropic dimension of that distance, so long maintained, is perhaps the condition that is making possible a step which will surely be crucial not only for Caracas but for the whole of the NEL.
It remains to be mentioned, in America, the recent creation of FAPOL, the American Federation of Psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation. As noted in our last communique this federation takes over what was previously the WAP-America Council. Thus, its Council now consists of: the president of FAPOL, the Presidents and Directors of each of the Schools in America, and the President of the WAP. Elisa Alvarenga, until now president of the WAP America Council, will continue as president of FAPOL until 2014. We have just held a FAPOL Council meeting where we worked on the preparation of ENAPOL 6 which will take place here, in Buenos Aires, next year.
Furthermore, the WAP Council has decided, given the importance of maintaining a close bond both with the Euro-Federation (EFP) and with the American Federation (FAPOL), that the presidents of both Federations will be permanent "guests" at the WAP Council meetings during their mandate. So our colleague Gil Caroz, who also steps down from the Council today, will continue to work until 2013 with the Council as current President of the EFP, and he will continue to help us in the difficult task of keeping a good dialogue with the instances of the UN.
If we look at Europe, it is clear that psychoanalysis is suffering there perhaps one of the most violent attacks in all of its history. Particularly in France, but no less in Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland, one observes repeated manoeuvres attempting, in one way or another, to extinguish the flame of the Freudian invention. What was said a few minutes ago by Jean-Daniel Matet is shocking. The legal tricks seeking to exclude psychoanalysis as a treatment for autism, the making of a film which, on the same subject, maliciously aims to ridicule our practice. But the response of the ECF - animated as always by the careful reading that Jacques-Alain Miller makes of the discursive movements of the time and his knowing how to transform each of these contingencies into opportunities for the affirmation of the analytic discourse - has been and is rapid and strong.
I think that the other Schools are slowly learning from this example, which does not mean copying the forms. For if in Europe the Schools evidently share a common problem, this is not so much the case of the Schools in America, or the NLS, made of such diverse languages and geographies.
For example, the formula of the Forum, which has proved so effective for the ECF, the ELP and the SLP, could not be automatically transferred to the American Schools. This does not prevent these Schools from inventing other devices or other forms of the Forum, that are proper to them, in so far as the attacks which we observe are manifestly increasing in Europe will soon, under other faces, begin to appear in this continent.
But for this decided and essential action with respect to what happens "outside the consulting room" not to lead us to lose our way – the way of the analytic discourse -, it is also necessary that each of the Schools strengthen their concern and carefulness for so-called pure psychoanalysis. It is at this point that what I said earlier about the status of the Pass in the Schools of the WAP is crucial.
But not everything is the pass in the Schools. There are other spaces that make what we call "analytical formation" which also need to be maintained and preserved, as well as the affecto societatis, the libidinal bond fundamental to sustaining and strengthening both the "Forum" and the "Pass", which must be inextricably articulated.
Thus, if we take the example of the ELP, this School surprised the Freudian Field in June 2010 with the Forum on Autism which gathered 600 people in Barcelona. The impulse of this call was well taken advantage of and in October of the same year the ELP took a major step by reaching more than 400 participants in its Study-Days, something unheard of in the times of inertia of this School. This impetus was not only maintained last year, but was also renewed – as I already anticipated - during the Study-Days in Zaragoza, which had almost the same number of participants, where the new Regulation of the pass was approved. And as pointed out by its President, Carmen Cuñat, the creation of a Press Office – and I verified this live in situ - is allowing the ELP and psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation to make themselves heard more strongly in a social environment which has been traditionally reluctant to psychoanalysis. A new Forum is currently underway.
For its part, the SLP is giving strong signs of continuing with a deceleration of the centrifugal tendency which up until very recently caused the dispersion of libido in local activities to the detriment of a movement of centralisation around the Scuola and the WAP. The WAP-EFP Seminar, coordinated first by Eric Laurent and then by Gil Caroz and Pierre-Gilles Guéguen, as well as the setting up of new central headquarters, has favoured the beginning of a centripetal movement towards the One of theScuola.
Last February I was able to travel for the first time to the Scuola. Thus, I could share with the colleagues of the SLP, who travelled to Milan despite the harsh winter and the storm of "Siberian snow" hitting Italy in those days, an excellent Conversazione Clinica; we could also talk in depth about the possibility of establishing, in a short time, a device of the pass proper to the Scuola. Here also, in a School where the initiative of the Forum opens up the possibility of a dialogue with intellectuals from other disciplines,thus bringing it out of the ostracism of localisms, the horizon of the pass must be affirmed. But in its own time, without forcing it.
Finally, the NLS. It also had its Congresses during these two years. First in Geneva (2010), then in London (2011). On both occasions I could personally witness the intense work of this amazing School,very well described minutes ago by its President Anne Lysy, made of multiple Societies and groups based in many cities and with diverse languages. There I noted that despite this great heterogeneity, its groups and members share, increasingly, the same orientation. We shall meet once again at the next NLS Congress in June in Tel-Aviv.
I do wish to note here the central role that the EFP has already and will increasingly have in the construction of a true psychoanalytic Europe of the Lacanian Orientation. In this regard, as pointed out by its current president, Gil Caroz, the EFP responds to a reading of political reality concerning psychoanalysis on an "external" and an "internal" plane. On the "external" front, the EFP translates the will to give the European community of the Lacanian Orientation the necessary consistency to defend psychoanalysis at a European level against the ideology of evaluation, the spread of CBTs and the neurosciences, and also the legislative initiatives that attack psychoanalysis. On the internal front, it aims at supporting the relationship of the psychoanalyst to his unconscious, with the horizon of the Pass as the essential element of his formation. Furthermore, the EFP addresses the « nouveaux venus » who approach the European Schools from their political commitment (the Forums). Thus, the EFP has the ambition of maintaining a paradoxical knotting between a collective political commitment of large scale and the principle of a «demassification of the enunciation».
The success of PIPOL 5 last year in Brussels, which was the first European Congress of Psychoanalysis, speaks of the dynamism and the growing importance the EFP.
But in addition, there is another very important aspect linked to the NLS, to which the EFP also contributes. I am referring to the opening towards Eastern Europe, highlighted in the intervention by the President of the Freudian Field, Judith Miller. It is due to her drive, and more recently to the presence of Jacques-Alain Miller in Moscow, that little by little,step by step, the reconquest of the Freudian Field in those latitudes is consolidating. The Council of the WAP has been sensitive to this quest and we decided to fully support it. Both in the meetings of January 2011 and in 2012, we invited Judith Miller and the members of the Secretariat for Eastern Europe to inform us of their work. From this exchange two decisions by the Council emerged. Firstly to create, within the website of the WAP, that which its director Mauricio Tarrab proposed to call "A window to Eastern Europe"; a place of connection with the activities developed there by the groups of the Freudian Field. Secondly, to grant initially during 2012 10,000 Euros to contribute to the deepening of the analytic formation of the practitioners in that geographic area. This is a task that the WAP will continue to privilege and to support in the next administration.
Another important dimension linked to the NLS is the work carried out in the USA. In order to establish a more fluid connection with the groups that exist there, I have designated one of our councillors, more precisely Pierre-Gilles Guéguen, as Delegate of the WAP Council in the USA. From this, two significant events arose. First, the three existing groups met under a common signifier, that of the already existent electronic publication, Lacanian Compass. Their activities through the so-called Video Seminars and the Clinical Study Days were maintained and consolidated. A noticeable change was introduced by a joint activity between the University of Paris 8 and the Popular University Jacques Lacan which, in connection with the university field in the USA, allowed for the first PULSE (Paris-USA Lacan Seminar) to take place in NYC at the end of 2011. Surely this will be a path to be deepened and to which the WAP will give its full support.
However, despite the success of this first initiative, we cannot ignore the resistance that American culture continues to offer to the entry of the clinical consequences of Lacan's teaching. This realization is what led us finally not to implement an idea which many of you might know. We have decided not to hold what would had been the IXth Congress of the WAP in NYC next year. It seemed to us, and we discussed this with Jacques-Alain Miller, that it would have been meaningless to call for a Congress like the one in Comandatuba, now on the island of Manhattan. We could do it, the experience and the means are not lacking but… what resonance could something like this have had beyond our field? The fact is that one has to surrender to an evidence. Psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation spreads mainly through the Romance languages. And while this should not lead us to give up the effort to develop our presence in the Anglo-Saxon language, in the short term the possibility of installing an enclave in the USA has more to do with the Spanish language, or the Spanglish, which is increasingly developing. Hence the decision announced in the Communique of the Council meetings to hold next year not a Congress, but a Colloquium of the Lacanian Orientation in Miami. We must still work on this. Therefore, the next Congress, the IXth WAP Congress will take place once again in Paris, from the 14th to the 18th of April 2014. The Director of the IXth Congress has already been appointed. It will be our colleague, AS in exercise of the ELP and the ECF, Guy Briole.
And where are we at in Latin America?
The EOL continues its work firmly, strongly and steadily. Among others, three facts stood out during this period. Firstly, last year's amendment of its Statutes which introduced the possibility of a more rapid renewal of the Council members and a greater articulation with the Directory of the School. This aims at something that is in the spirit of the EOL and which is slowly taking shape: to allow for a genuine generational renewal where management efficiency is not opposed to maintaining the exigency in the analytic formation. This is indispensable, not only for the EOL but for all the Schools of the WAP. Secondly, the organization of a Conversation where all the members were invited to take the floor, to say at what point analytic formation is in the EOL after twenty years of existence. Thirdly, a decision taken by the Council to be well informed about the scope of the new Mental Health Act in Argentina, its incidence on psychoanalytic practice and the possibility and desirability of influencing the drafting of its regulation and in what way. This is a task especially in step with the times. As you can see, the purchase and renovation of what will be the new headquarters of the EOL does not divert the attention of the instances and their members from what must be the core objectives of a School. The strength of its most recent Study-Days on Lacanian Praxis, also bears witness to it.
For its part, the EBP, as I pointed out at the Assembly of last year, was able to hold its traditional Encontro Brasileiro do Campo Freudiano in Sao Paulo, after years of misencounters and difficulties; this intense and formidable city is a strategic pole for the development of the Lacanian Orientation. The affecto societatis of the EBP seems to have found there a new impulse. This is something that is maintained and which I consider marks the entry into a new phase for the EBP, and which is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that 145 members of the EBP attended this Congress, a remarkable number if we take into account that the number of members of this School is 191. In addition, the EBP is perhaps one of the American Schools that is most sensitive to what happens outside of its borders. I could verify how it mobilised itself before the call we made for the liberation of Rafah Nached set in motion by Jacques-Alain Miller. Interventions in the city on the use of drugs and on violence are some of the axes which – as pointed out by its outgoing President, Ana Lydia Santiago - the EBP aims at approaching in the near future.
Finally, the NEL which, from its Study-Days in Bogotá (where it celebrated its ten years of existence) through the clinical and political interventions of its members, both at the Study-Days and at the Congress and the Assembly, accounted for a certain breakthrough. As I said at the past Assembly in Paris, I have worked with the NEL Executive Committee in order to boost a greater participation of the Branches in the perspective of the One of the NEL. Thus emerged the idea of giving its Federative Council a greater participation in the politic of the School. Thanks to the tireless work of its President Piedad Spurrier meetings of the Councillors and the Directors of the different Branches with the President were successively held via webex. I think that this is a modality that has to be maintained and deepened in the future, since it contributes precisely to obtain that which is so difficult in a School made of geographically diverse Branches: the feeling of being part of a same community. But also, a progress in the central preoccupation of this School may begin to be glimpsed: the accent increasingly put on the formation of their members, through the value and enhancement given to the function of supervision and the carefulness in the construction of clinical cases. Another fact to be highlighted in the area of the NEL is what is happening in the important and historic Branch in Caracas. I mean what I believe and wish to understand as a genuine rapprochement between the members of the two Associations that exist there, whose distancing for ten years seems to be coming to an end. The capture of the entropic dimension of that distance, so long maintained, is perhaps the condition that is making possible a step which will surely be crucial not only for Caracas but for the whole of the NEL.
It remains to be mentioned, in America, the recent creation of FAPOL, the American Federation of Psychoanalysis of the Lacanian Orientation. As noted in our last communique this federation takes over what was previously the WAP-America Council. Thus, its Council now consists of: the president of FAPOL, the Presidents and Directors of each of the Schools in America, and the President of the WAP. Elisa Alvarenga, until now president of the WAP America Council, will continue as president of FAPOL until 2014. We have just held a FAPOL Council meeting where we worked on the preparation of ENAPOL 6 which will take place here, in Buenos Aires, next year.
Furthermore, the WAP Council has decided, given the importance of maintaining a close bond both with the Euro-Federation (EFP) and with the American Federation (FAPOL), that the presidents of both Federations will be permanent "guests" at the WAP Council meetings during their mandate. So our colleague Gil Caroz, who also steps down from the Council today, will continue to work until 2013 with the Council as current President of the EFP, and he will continue to help us in the difficult task of keeping a good dialogue with the instances of the UN.
VIIIth WAP Congress Obviously I will not expand on the VIIIth Congress just ended. It only remains for me to firstly acknowledge the work carried out by the Action Committee Scilicet of the School One, by its members who knew how to encourage the work in each of the Schools towards this WAP Congress. Each one of them, according to the particularities of their Schools. My thanks then to Susana Amado (EOL), François Ansermet (NLS), Doménico Cosenza (SLP), Juan Fernando Pérez (NEL), Antoni Vincens (ELP), Rose-Paule Vinciguerra (ECF) and, of course, to Angelina Harari (EBP), who was able to coordinate and animate the edition of Papers, in whose issues, in addition to the members of the Action Committee, colleagues from different Schools also participated. And also to Marta Davidovich, responsible for the edition of Papers, who was able to find the good design and speed that a multilingual virtual publication requires, where translators are key.
Then, once again to thank its Director Flory Kruger and the Organizing Committee, and all of those who collaborated with them in any way, for the excellent work and the affect they put into doing it.
It will be up to you afterwards to give your opinions and suggestions. About what went well, about what did not, but also about what should be modified with the next one in mind.
Also, given the importance of what we worked on during these days, I have decided to promote a paper publication containing all the plenary sessions of this Congress. That is, a publication of the WAP in several languages which, like the Acts of the Congress, allows the wealth of what has been posed to be collected and disseminated.
With regards to numbers, the total number of WAP members who attended was 746, divided as follows according to the Schools: EBP 145, ECF 81, ELP 43, EOL 388, NEL 64, NLS 9, SLP 19.
I move on now to the last point of what I wished to transmit to you today. I am referring to a perspective on something that has strongly marked our last year. I mean the incidence of psychoanalysis, of our position, on politics. I wish to give you here my perspective.
Then, once again to thank its Director Flory Kruger and the Organizing Committee, and all of those who collaborated with them in any way, for the excellent work and the affect they put into doing it.
It will be up to you afterwards to give your opinions and suggestions. About what went well, about what did not, but also about what should be modified with the next one in mind.
Also, given the importance of what we worked on during these days, I have decided to promote a paper publication containing all the plenary sessions of this Congress. That is, a publication of the WAP in several languages which, like the Acts of the Congress, allows the wealth of what has been posed to be collected and disseminated.
With regards to numbers, the total number of WAP members who attended was 746, divided as follows according to the Schools: EBP 145, ECF 81, ELP 43, EOL 388, NEL 64, NLS 9, SLP 19.
I move on now to the last point of what I wished to transmit to you today. I am referring to a perspective on something that has strongly marked our last year. I mean the incidence of psychoanalysis, of our position, on politics. I wish to give you here my perspective.
Psychoanalysis and politicsIt has been already said, we know it well, that last year was a year marked by the 30th anniversary of the death of Jacques Lacan. All of the Schools of the WAP, each in its own way, followed the same orientation: that the commemoration was not – as opportunely pointed out by Jean-Daniel Matet - "…building a monument to the glory of the deceased but updating that which is transmitted of a desire that is at work". This is how we understood it and this is how we transmitted it to the different Schools of the WAP.
Likewise, the creation for that purpose, by Jacques-Alain Miller, of the virtual publication Lacan Quotidien, was a turning point. It became an essential tool for the dissemination and the fight for the liberation of Rafah Nached.
In the WAP we immediately decided to propagate and multiply this movement through the Schools. The Schools responded to our request each in their own way and according to their spheres of influence. Part of this was, and continues to be, due to the enormous effort of colleagues who undertook the translation – which is still on-going - of the successive editions of Lacan Quotidien, or the selection of some of its texts. At this point I want to thank them publicly for this essential task which often goes unnoticed. The same goes for Oscar Ventura, responsible for WAP Uqbar, who on this occasion, and as always, responded quickly for the rapid dissemination of the communications and updates on the progress of the case to get to each of you in the best possible way. Also, to Mauricio Tarrab who, as responsible for the WAP website, worked hard on the creation and the setting up on line of the Blog for the liberation of Rafah.
However, I must also say that, in some cases, I seemed to perceive that the appearance of our orientation on the political scene could lead to a certain slippage. Because each time that we insert ourselves into the political field as psychoanalysts, we run the risk of slipping towards group phenomena or confusing the politics of psychoanalysis with party politics.
That is why with regard to the WAP Council meetings last January I convened the councillors to present their ideas on this point in the texts of our working document and I proposed to hold a WAP soirée at the headquarters of the ECF under the title "Psychoanalysis in today's politics".
In both cases the idea was to extract and calibrate the consequences of Jacques-Alain Miller's statement in his communication of September 13th 2011, where he said – as was recalled today - that in this 21st Century psychoanalysis is a social issue and it has become now a material force, a political force.
For this, I orientated and orientate myself by a simple indication of Lacan from his Seminar 17 where, when posing the question of the place psychoanalysis has in the political, he notes: "The intrusion into the political can only be made by recognizing that the only discourse there is, and not just analytic discourse, is the discourse of jouissance…" [1]. From this perspective, which is the one that we must renew today in a decided manner before the scientistic attacks of the clinic of autism, the interventions of the colleagues who participated in that soirée at the ECF were decanted for me in the following formula that I want to recall before you:
"Whenever there is a push to the "extrusion" of psychoanalysis, that is, a rejection of the hole, we must respond with the "intrusion" of psychoanalysis into politics. And how? With a politics of the "anti-universal modesty", with a heterodox logic of extimacy, reminding politicians that there is always a hole, namely, that there is an unconscious."
It is my way of understanding what Jacques-Alain Miller called in that communication "to activate the potency of the gaps".
Because as he himself indicated in 2008, "… it would be of no use for psychoanalysis to project without mediation into the universal its politics, its principles, its ethics, demanding the adherence of all, denouncing a world that sacrifices all singularity to statistics." (…) Because "…the world will not conform to the desire of the analyst. It is up to us to act, through complex mediations, for that desire to endure."[2] Thus, I make these words mine because this is the central and indispensable goal of the WAP and its Schools: to act for that desire, the desire of the psychoanalyst, to endure.
Dear colleagues, dear friends of the WAP,
To conclude, I want to express my sincere thanks to all the councillors of the WAP with whom we have worked in an intense but also entertaining way. We have created what for me has been an excellent work atmosphere, which has led to ties of friendship and camaraderie. To all of them, and especially to those who today leave their place in the Council, many thanks. I am referring to María Hortensia Cárdenas, Gil Caroz, Xavier Esqué, Marco Focchi, Nora Gonçalves, Laure Naveau, Vicente Palomera and Mónica Torres.
In one way or another, we will continue counting on you. And tonight, at the party of the 21st Century, we will toast these years of shared work.
So, now, dear colleagues, I submit for your consideration and your vote this Moral Report of the WAP, of the task we have tried to pursue as best as possible in these two years of administration. You now have the floor. We listen to you.
Likewise, the creation for that purpose, by Jacques-Alain Miller, of the virtual publication Lacan Quotidien, was a turning point. It became an essential tool for the dissemination and the fight for the liberation of Rafah Nached.
In the WAP we immediately decided to propagate and multiply this movement through the Schools. The Schools responded to our request each in their own way and according to their spheres of influence. Part of this was, and continues to be, due to the enormous effort of colleagues who undertook the translation – which is still on-going - of the successive editions of Lacan Quotidien, or the selection of some of its texts. At this point I want to thank them publicly for this essential task which often goes unnoticed. The same goes for Oscar Ventura, responsible for WAP Uqbar, who on this occasion, and as always, responded quickly for the rapid dissemination of the communications and updates on the progress of the case to get to each of you in the best possible way. Also, to Mauricio Tarrab who, as responsible for the WAP website, worked hard on the creation and the setting up on line of the Blog for the liberation of Rafah.
However, I must also say that, in some cases, I seemed to perceive that the appearance of our orientation on the political scene could lead to a certain slippage. Because each time that we insert ourselves into the political field as psychoanalysts, we run the risk of slipping towards group phenomena or confusing the politics of psychoanalysis with party politics.
That is why with regard to the WAP Council meetings last January I convened the councillors to present their ideas on this point in the texts of our working document and I proposed to hold a WAP soirée at the headquarters of the ECF under the title "Psychoanalysis in today's politics".
In both cases the idea was to extract and calibrate the consequences of Jacques-Alain Miller's statement in his communication of September 13th 2011, where he said – as was recalled today - that in this 21st Century psychoanalysis is a social issue and it has become now a material force, a political force.
For this, I orientated and orientate myself by a simple indication of Lacan from his Seminar 17 where, when posing the question of the place psychoanalysis has in the political, he notes: "The intrusion into the political can only be made by recognizing that the only discourse there is, and not just analytic discourse, is the discourse of jouissance…" [1]. From this perspective, which is the one that we must renew today in a decided manner before the scientistic attacks of the clinic of autism, the interventions of the colleagues who participated in that soirée at the ECF were decanted for me in the following formula that I want to recall before you:
"Whenever there is a push to the "extrusion" of psychoanalysis, that is, a rejection of the hole, we must respond with the "intrusion" of psychoanalysis into politics. And how? With a politics of the "anti-universal modesty", with a heterodox logic of extimacy, reminding politicians that there is always a hole, namely, that there is an unconscious."
It is my way of understanding what Jacques-Alain Miller called in that communication "to activate the potency of the gaps".
Because as he himself indicated in 2008, "… it would be of no use for psychoanalysis to project without mediation into the universal its politics, its principles, its ethics, demanding the adherence of all, denouncing a world that sacrifices all singularity to statistics." (…) Because "…the world will not conform to the desire of the analyst. It is up to us to act, through complex mediations, for that desire to endure."[2] Thus, I make these words mine because this is the central and indispensable goal of the WAP and its Schools: to act for that desire, the desire of the psychoanalyst, to endure.
Dear colleagues, dear friends of the WAP,
To conclude, I want to express my sincere thanks to all the councillors of the WAP with whom we have worked in an intense but also entertaining way. We have created what for me has been an excellent work atmosphere, which has led to ties of friendship and camaraderie. To all of them, and especially to those who today leave their place in the Council, many thanks. I am referring to María Hortensia Cárdenas, Gil Caroz, Xavier Esqué, Marco Focchi, Nora Gonçalves, Laure Naveau, Vicente Palomera and Mónica Torres.
In one way or another, we will continue counting on you. And tonight, at the party of the 21st Century, we will toast these years of shared work.
So, now, dear colleagues, I submit for your consideration and your vote this Moral Report of the WAP, of the task we have tried to pursue as best as possible in these two years of administration. You now have the floor. We listen to you.
Thank you very much.
Leonardo Gorostiza, Buenos Aires 27th April 2012.
Reviewed by Roger Litten
N O T E S
1-
|
Lacan, Jacques, The other side of psychoanalysis, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 17, Trans. R.Grigg, Norton, New York, p 78.
|
2-
|
Miller, Jacques-Alain, Perspectives de politique lacanienne, Lettre Mensuelle 273, December 2008, p 5.
|
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário