The prestigious ceremonial hall of the University of Athens was packed on Saturday May 18, for the opening of the XIth Congress of the NLS. More than 400 participants worked during two days on the theme of « the psychotic subject in the geek era », in a friendly and studious atmosphere. More than sixty papers were in the program. Without much respite, participants, speakers, chairpersons and discussants brought to life, during this weekend, the results of the research on psychosis carried out throughout the year within the New Lacanian School, following Eric Laurent’s invitation last year in Tel Aviv.
Should we mourn because the modern subject relates increasingly to technological gadgets which he enjoys in an autistic mode? Neither bio-catastrophic nor techno-prophet, as noted by François Ansermet, the orientation of the papers rather showed how psychoanalysis allows the subject to reinvent his subjective position before the real of the non-relation. The information flooding us from the internet does not deliver the solution to the sexual equation. On the contrary, it is by progressively sifting the mode of jouissance of the symptom in art, in a way of life or, for us, in the analytic experience, that a way out emerges to « go beyond the solitude of the One » -as shown particularly by the beautiful session of the AS chaired by Anne Lysy and Miquel Bassols, with Bruno de Halleux and Marie-Hèlène Blancard.
In the NLS, perhaps more than in other Schools of the WAP, the dynamics of the Congress are inseparable from the construction of the School as such. We have seen to what degree a School of psychoanalysis is equivalent to the sum of the analyses of its members, and how it is thus built in a constant work-in-progress. Moreover, the members of the NLS gathered on Friday afternoon to hold their first Conversation of the School, chaired by Jacques-Alain Miller. From a careful reading of the preparatory report, J-A Miller closed down some illusory doors and opened up some promising ones! The question of the guarantee in the School, the clinical debate in the form of a Conversation for a greater rigor in the construction of the cases, the place of the instances nominated by the WAP, or even the question of the pass, the cartels and the formation of the psychoanalyst, were debated in a clarifying atmosphere where the issue of trust was central.
The climax was reached on Sunday afternoon when, chaired by Alexandre Stevens, and following the remarkable intervention of Yves Vanderveken -vice-president of the NLS-, Jacques-Alain Miller took the floor to give impetus to the next Congress under the title: the Other without Other. Based on the imminent publication of Book VI of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan « Desire and its interpretation », he revealed, before a captivated audience, the great secret of psychoanalysis, opening multiple pathways for our next Congress in Ghent on 17th and 18th May 2014. We are already working on the transcription.
The Congress committee, under the guidance of Epaminondas Theodoridis in Greece, and the involvement of the Executive Committee of the NLS, worked hard to make this congress a great success for psychoanalysis. I extend my warmest greetings and thanks to them and to all the participants who, each in their own way, gave the best of themselves to produce the-formation-effect -always aside-, implied by the analytic experience.
At the end of this Athenian weekend, appointment was given on 6 & 7 July in Brussels, for the PIPOL Congress of the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis!
Dominique Holvoet, President of the NLS
