First Fall 2018 Seminar: Constructing Oedipus in a Logic of Narcissism

The seminar is open to anyone and requires no previous background in Lacanian analysis or mathematics-logic. To register contact the secretary beforehand at: PLACE@topoi.net If you will be attending by Skype, please let us know beforehand. Beginning Date and Time: Saturday, 10:00am-12:30pm, Sept. 29. 2018 Frequency: meets twice per month on the second and last week of every month. See the PLACE calendar at: www.topoi.net Place: 1037 Euclid, Santa Monica, CA Materials: A Pre-print will be distributed during the semester Reading: Lacan's Logic of Sexuation, See the Encore Seminar and Scilicet; Quine's Methods of Logic and the Logic of Set Theory; Frankel's Foundations of Set Theory. Instructor: Robert Groome ...................................................................................................................................................... Descriptive: The Constructing Oedipus seminar has sought to problematize the past and present vulgarizations of the Oedipus Complex by situating its aporias. The seminar has, therefore, necessarily proceeded in a zig-zag manner through the examination of different schools, theories, and critiques. Generally, we isolated what has been called the St.Christopher’s Dilemma and showed how this dilemma splits the pre-Lacanian  psychoanalytic field into two opposed schools, most often referred to by the epitaphs of Ego psychology and Object Relations. Our goal has been to show how this dilemma, far from being sociological or a question of schools, was resolved constructively by Lacan through: 1) an Optics Model, 2) Logic, 3) Topology, and 4) Set Theory. If Freud left us with an Oedipal Myth, Lacan leaves us with an Oedipal Logic. We ended the 2018 Spring Semester by setting up a Theory of Identity in predicate logic: the goal being to show how not to represent and speak about the Oedipus Complex in a metalanguage/commentary of Mama, Papa, and Baby, but to show how to disengage an object-language and introduce a name and identity into a language in a more necessary and presentational way.  Think Picasso and Kandinsky, not Velasquez and Rembrandt. In the 2018 Summer Immersion we began by showing how to set up a domain for a predicate logic in set and class theory. We ended with a preliminary introduction on how two fundamental paradoxes, Russell's and Cantor's, provide a means to read Lacan's Theory of Sexuation in a non-illustrative manner (this will be clarified further in the Fall semester).We also showed how to translate between three different languages, propositional logic, predicate logic, and set theory. Our position being all along, there is no Lacanian Topology or Logic (there is, however, a lot of mimicry and copying), but only Topology and Logic and how Lacan opened up problems of psychoanalysis within them. We begin this Fall 2018 by turning to the translations between Set Theory, Topology, and Logic, while showing how this field opens up a return to Freud in the manner of Lacan. We will begin with a simple logical problem of narcissism that has been published on Medium . You are invited to review this exercise as introduction to the construction of a logic of identification adequate to the formalization of the Oedipus Complex.