Skip navigation.

Trans-Mission Statement

 Sharpening the edge of Lacanian analysis through open inquiry, critical dialogue, and community engagement, P.L.A.C.E. integrates topology and psychoanalysis by engaging psychoanalysts, analysands, and students of analysis to innovate and construct a theory and practice.

A specific consultation, work-groups, and seminars in Lacanian psychoanalysis now exist at P.L.A.C.E.. Our objectives are:

•nonmedical – we advocate a psychoanalysis without a psycho-pharmacological support.
 
•purely analytic – we are not an institute  for the production of doctors and patients/clients, but an association for the production of analysis.
 
•ethical – we are an association where not only analysts, but analysands and nonanalysts can become adherents and participate in the organization of P.L.A.C.E. We believe this type of multi-layered involvement  to be one guarantee and testament to the ethics of a psychoanalytic association, as it sets up  a framework that goes beyond academic 'interdisciplinary' studies to include a more diverse population and clinical  structure.
 
•didactic –  training analysis and internships are now available that extend Lacanian analysis beyond the couch without assimilating its didactic to the standard rituals of educational guilds.

Requests for more information or consultation are received by the secretary, then referred to the analysts currently working at P.L.A.C.E. Connected information on seminars, conferences, cartels, training analysis, and internships is also available. You are invited to attend the seminars, events, and continuing workshops on psychoanalysis and topology.  For more  details, contact the secretary by email PLACE@topoi.net or  telephone (323)-913-1650 or (310)-393-1682. Also see the  Common Question section and other references found on this site.

Organizational History: P.L.A.C.E. was founded in January of 1998, when one of its founders brought his Lacanian practice from Paris to Los Angeles. We are a nonprofit 501c3 governed by a board of directors and trustees according to the statutes set by the state of California. . P.L.A.C.E. supports itself on the contributions, grants, and endowments from those individuals and foundations concerned with creating a progress in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

5-year Goals and Aims of P.L.A.C.E:

1) completed the restructuring of its trustees in 2008 and will focus on the long term planning of the association, on funding development, and on the integrity of the structure of the association.

2) seeks to further build its international and national alliances, to engage its peers, and to provide a viable alternative to the trivialization of psychoanalysis into forms of scholarly hermeneutics, social work, marriage family counseling, psychological therapies, and psychiatry.

3) will provide a site for the practice and theory of Lacanian analysis to those in all income brackets. Consequently, our extension programs will seek to work more fully at the margins with the homeless, at risk teens, senior citizens, and low-income families.

4) will continue to define the edge of contemporary Lacanian analysis in the United States by establishing the transmission of knowledge on the basis of its clinic and cartels, while offering a practicum and 2-year certification in Lacanian analysis at the post-graduate level. 

Events:

1) Local General Assembly Meeting - 2:30/ March 29, 2008 - Certification of the Clinic-School

New Articles and Revisions:

In order to make this site easier to navigate we are now listing the new and revised articles here on the
'About' page with their date of entry. New entries are listed monthly.

0) 2-14-08: Large scale update of Common Questions to begin for 2008:

a) first entry:  What is Lacanian Psychoanalysis?*

The epitaph Lacanian Psychoanalysis began in France with the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-81). It is most widely recognized by a  return to Freud and  a linguistic axiom - "the unconscious is structured like a language"; both situating a critique and reconstruction of Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis.

Habitually, contemporary psychoanalysis claims that it goes beyond Freud, that is to say, that today it is possible to read Freud in the tradition of psychoanalysis somewhat as a paleontologist reads a fossil – as a quaint object that belongs to the folklore of the past of psychology and psychotherapy.  It is easy to understand this movement, for in order to modernize psychoanalysis within the tradition, what is most important is bypassed the moment Freud gets a makeover into the human sciences (cognitive theory, neurophysiology, psycholinguistics, etc.) and humanities (hermeneutics, lit-crit theory, philosophy, etc.). continued at: http://topoi.net/place6/questions.html


1)2-6-08 : New article-announcement of Cartel: Govern, Educate, Psychoanalyze

1- Three Untenable Professions

Freud listed three professions as 'untenable', that of the educator, the politician, and the psychoanalyst . Nonetheless, he also noted there are always candidates looking to fill these positions. They are even positions that are reputed to be advantageous; that is not to say, that neither the governor, nor the educator, nor the psychoanalyst would have the slightest idea of what it is to govern, educate, or psychoanalyze.  No doubt, they end up having just a bit of an idea – as the current governor of CA shows – but these 'intuitions' are rarely developed. Here, the 2008 of PLACE cartel aims to ask: What is it to educate? govern ? or psychoanalyze ? Does one have to have a "conception of Man" to educate, govern, or psychoanalyze?  http://topoi.net/place6/interventions.html


3) 8-3-07/ Enlarged Drawing:Robert Berman Gallery- Topology-Art-Analysis - http://topoi.net/place6/interventions.html


4) Aug.2007 - The European Graduate School http://www.egs.edu/ has made available a series of videotaped lectures of Derrida in his Paris seminar "A Critique of Psychoanalysis", a public open lecture focusing on texts from Gilles Deleuze for students of European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies Department Program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, France 2004.  You can download this, among other relevant seminars on Youtube at:

 http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DD498CDE04B51C2D