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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 with 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. 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. 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.


Events:

A NEW ORIENTATION - We are pleased to announce that submissions are now being accepted for a Certification of Lacanian Analysis in our fall 2008 and/or winter 2009 semester.

We believe this to be long overdue in the United States: an independent post-graduate school and clinic constructed on a purely Lacanian basis of the cartel. We will be finalizing our certification with the state CA legislature this summer and plan to offer a Lacanian cursus as early as the fall of 2008 or as late as January 2009. Distance learning options are also currently being considered. We have included on this web-site a curriculum and course descriptions that introduce the cartel-school-clinic of PLACE.  As the summer progresses we will update and detail this opening further.

If you have any questions, we look forward to hearing them.
The Directors of PLACE

CERTIFICATION OF LACANIAN ANALYSIS AT PLACE

The Psychoanalytic Post-Graduate Certification at PLACE provides a formation and certification in Lacanian analysis. It is open to anyone possessing a Master’s Degree in a parallel field (psychology, literary critique, philosophy, logic, mathematics, linguistics, neurobiology, history, etc.) and on special circumstances to those who have qualifications that may have been acquired on a nonstandard basis (a personal analysis, life experience, etc.). Final acceptance is only made after an individual interview with the applicant by the directors of the school and clinic.

(continued with curriculum at:http://topoi.net/website/pages/interventions.html)

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.

6-3-08: The Work of Pierre Soury: On Cartels and Speech
Unpublished seminars- 1979; Translation by B.B./The work of P. Soury is little recognized in the anglo-phile accounts of Lacanian analysis.  The following pages begin to form an introduction long overdue. At:
http://topoi.net/website/pages/topology.html
6-3-08: Course Descriptions of PLACE: PSYC 6210/ Orientation in the Lacanian Field                 Today, the difficulty of navigating the field of Lacanian psychoanalysis – and psychoanalysis in general –is daunting enough to have led many to either resignation or improvised forms of social work, teaching, doctoring, and therapeutic counseling that is analytic or Lacanian in name only. This course aims to introduce the Lacanian field in a more rigorous manner, then determine definite strategies of working and studying psychoanalysis within the U.S. system. The topics will include: certification and accreditation, the various trivializations of the analytic act in both the mental health field and standardized educational systems; differentiating the analytic act and the professional being of the analyst; setting up a practice, the transmission of a psychoanalytic discourse, juridical and economic factors, publishing, etc. Needless to say, the latter 'givens' require not merely an evaluation of a sociological situation, but their incorporation into a properly psychoanalytic theory and practice. Continued at:http://topoi.net/website/pages/interventions.html

 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/website/pages/interventions.html


3) 8-3-07/ Enlarged Drawing:Robert Berman Gallery- Topology-Art-Analysis - http://topoi.net/website/pages/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