Report on the Encounter of the Pont Freudien in Montreal The French Version, Messager 3 – 2010/2011, was sent on the 16.11.2010
Report on the Encounter of the Pont Freudien with Patrick Monribot, the 22nd, 23rd and 24th October 2010, in Montreal The 30th Encounter of the Pont Freudien was a great success, even though it opened with a lecture where failing was at the heart of the matter. Patrick Monribot talked indeed about ‘contemporary sexual life’. The public presented numerously for Montreal: about sixty people were present, amongst them many young people. Many of them came for the first time, attracted by the subject and later allowing themselves to ask some questions, notably on the enigma of this feminine jouissance that they were discovering…at least at the intellectual level. Patrick Monribot reminded us that despite the practices that happily satisfy the human species, something of sex gets lost and remains non-representable (irreprésentable) for any subject. In order to talk about contemporary sexuality and question the one forecasted by science in the near future, Patrick Monribot gave us an eighteen centuries old myth, Psyche and Eros, as a clinical case. This vignette introduced us progressively to the theme of the ‘Other Jouissance’ so called feminine, in opposition and supplementary to ‘phallic jouissance.’ Concluding, P. Monribot insisted on this impossible to write the relationship between the sexes, even for science, which leaves the possibility of contingency to theencounter: that which is not expected and which requires our consent… The Seminar of the Freudian Field on obsessional neurosis followed on Saturday the 23rd and Sunday the 24th October before an audience of 26 participants. During the reading and the theoretical sessions Patrick Monribot commented on, in an extremely rigorous and precise way, the case of ‘The Rat Man’ pulling together the threads, on the one hand, of the signifying logic of the obsession (the transferential unconscious) from the breathtaking work Freud transmitted to us, and on the other hand, of the drive jouissance (the real unconscious), locating in the case each of the objects in play. Patrick Monribot demonstrated the implacable strategy of the obsessional concerning his desire: in order not to destroy the desired object the obsessional abstains from desiring. To that end he annuls the desire of the Other, which is the fuel of his own desire. Desire becomes mortified, or, at best, impossible, while demand becomes mortifying. The obsessional subject destroys the Other as desiring, but, by doing this he resuscitates the Other of a mortifying demand which inflates his superego. Patrick Monribot ended his talk referring to the consequences of taking into account the drive jouissance in the direction of the treatment. The Lacanian direction of the treatment, with its short sessions and all sorts of cuts, takes into account this drive jouissance and objects to the consistency of the Other. This direction is the only one to promote an extraction of the object of the drive from/out of the field of the Other: there is no other antidote asradical, against obsessive thinking. The Lacanian treatment is tailored on the obsessional. Answering a question from the audience, Patrick Monribot revealed a point of his own cure where the operation of extraction of the object was at work. It was an enlightening example, on the clinical level, locating a possible exit not only from a psychoanalysis, but also from the obsessive logic. As for the clinical seminar, it allowed two clinicians from Montreal, Maxime-Olivier Moutier and Karen Harutyunyan, to present two cases followed by Patrick Monribot’s commentary. The cases did not prove obsessional neuroses to be evident, butthey provided material for discussing the question of differential diagnosis, an everyday question of contemporary clinical practice. Moreover, Patrick Monribot devoted some privileged time to a small, restricted group of people interested in the study of the formulas of sexuation. His commentary of very valuable rigour and quality, allowed the eight people who were present to push further their understanding of the Lacanian approach to feminine jouissance and to the logic of its formulas. Thus the third encounter of the Montreal ‘Pont Freudien’ was a very instructive opportunity for us who are psychoanalytically isolated with regards to the north-American doxa and geographically far from the psychoanalytic epicentre. The responses we had after this encounter already show the effects it produced; of an event in the automaton-series of our meetings. Bernard Seynhaeye will carry on with the cycle of study of the obsessional neurosis in March 2011, approaching the question of the four concepts (the unconscious, repetition, transference and drive) in the obsessional, from within his treatment. We look forward to and prepare for the next encounter with enthusiasm. Anne Béraud, Montreal 11 November 2010
Nouvelle École Lacanienne de Psychanalyse — New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis
www.amp-nls.org http://www.amp-nls.org
Association Mondiale de Psychanalyse – World Association of Psychoanalysis
www.wapol.org http://www.wapol.org
