Ecritique Volume 8

Litura

Michael Plastow

The word litura does not appear in all Latin dictionaries and only merits a brief mention in others. The entry of Francis Valpy , for instance, in his etymological dictionary, consists only of the meaning “the blotting out a letter or word”.

The Unkindest Cut

Rodney Kleiman

“A cigar is just a cigar”, says Freud or so the story goes, implying that for him at least, the phallic symbolisation is elsewhere – that he’s not chewing on it. But why are we so keen to believe him? How would he know the truth about his cigar, given the nature of the unconscious?

The Landscape of Gerald Murnane: The Fictions of Everyday Life

David Pereira

"When I prepare to read a piece of fiction I look forward to reading something that is true in a way that no piece of scientific writing or philosophical writing or biographical writing or even autobiographical writing can be true"...

Mother Nature

Michael Plastow

In January this year, immediately following the Haiti earthquake, on the radio I heard an eyewitness refer to this disaster in the following way: “It’s Mother Nature speaking”. Perhaps Hillary Clinton heard the same sound-byte on the radio...

The Presentation of Patients and the Question of Structure

Michael Plastow

The Presentation of Patients is an activity that was initiated by Jacques Lacan at the Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris. Thus the specificity of the Presentation of Patients is that it provides an encounter between psychoanalysis and institutional psychiatry.

Voices Off: Enter the Freudian School

Peter Gunn

“I’ve been an inconvenience since being conceived”. These are words which, when written down, and with a slight grammatical adjustment to memorialise the ‘I’, might serve as an inscription on a gravestone. Perhaps it is for that reason that, in hearing these words spoken, though only once, I was inclined to hear them as determinative.

The Presentation of Patients

Erik Porge

By isolating as a special category, the Witz, that “is directed not at a person or institution but at the certainty of our knowledge itself” (If you say you are going to Cracow, you want me to believe you are going to Lemberg...), Freud poses the question:

La Présentation de Malades

Erik Porge

En isolant comme catégorie spéciale les Wítz qui « s’attaquent non à une personne ou une institution mais à la certitude de notre connaissance elle-même » (Tu dis que tu vas à Cracovie pour que je croie que tu vas à Lemberg…), Freud pose la question :

Schooling: Between Knowledge and Truth

Nazir Hamad

The paper we publish here in this form appears as Chapter 12 of Nazir Hamad’s book Adoption et parenté: questions actuelles (Adoption and parenthood: current questions). It is translated and republished in écritique with the kind permission of Nazir Hamad and Éditions Érès.

La Scolarité Entre Savoir et Vérité

Nazir Hamad

The paper we publish here in this form appears as Chapter 12 of Nazir Hamad’s book Adoption et parenté: questions actuelles (Adoption and parenthood: current questions). It is translated and republished in écritique with the kind permission of Nazir Hamad and Éditions Érès.

What does Transitivism Consist of?

Jean Bergès and Gabriel Balbo

As noted by these authors, the term transitivism was introduced by Lacan at various points in his work. Bergès and Balbo note that they initially took up this notion and elaborated upon it in their work L’enfant et la psychoanalyse (The child and psychoanalysis), published by Masson, Paris, in 1994 and as a second edition in 1996.

En Quoi Consiste le Transitivisme?

Jean Bergès and Gabriel Balbo

As noted by these authors, the term transitivism was introduced by Lacan at various points in his work. Bergès and Balbo note that they initially took up this notion and elaborated upon it in their work L’enfant et la psychoanalyse (The child and psychoanalysis), published by Masson, Paris, in 1994 and as a second edition in 1996.

Transitivism or the I

Debbie Plastow

Jonathan was almost eleven when his mother brought him to the clinic at the suggestion of his teacher. She explained, “Jonathan repetitively talks about the same thing, like the neighbours. It goes round and round in his head. They’ve threatened to call the police. We have to keep him locked inside. He gets rough at home; he kicks in the door and pushes his Dad.”

Bé-voir? (english)

Guy Le Gaufey

The title Bé-voir, to the English speaking reader, might seem to be yet another French term, one perhaps brought to prominence in psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan. To the French speaker, however, this word might resonate even more strangely than it does in English.

Bé-voir? (french)

Guy Le Gaufey

The title Bé-voir, to the English speaking reader, might seem to be yet another French term, one perhaps brought to prominence in psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan. To the French speaker, however, this word might resonate even more strangely than it does in English.

The Drug: What Object for Psychoanalysis?

Jean-Louis Chassaing

Jean-Louis Chassaing has submitted this paper in anticipation of the release this year of his book entitled Drogue et langage – ducorps et de lalangue (The drug and language – thebody and lalangue). It will be published by Érès in the collection ‘Humus, subjectivité et lien social’, directed by Jean-Pierre Lebrun. In regard to the translating of this paper, Jean-Louis Chassaing was insistent regarding the retention of ‘the drug’ in the singular, as, beyond the concept of ‘drugs’, it is the drug as singular object that he endeavours to investigate in this paper.

la Drogue : Quel Bbjet pour la Psychanalyse ?

Jean-Louis Chassaing

Lorsque Otto Fenichel, dont Lacan ne dit pas vraiment du bien en général, donne en 1945 un chapitre sur les Toxicomanies sans drogues, il est clair que pour l’analyste la notion de drogue comme objet commun ne coïncide pas forcément avec la notion de toxicomanie, de manie du toxique, manie du toxikon.

Our Dark Side: A History of Perversion (2009) by Elisabeth Roudinesco.

George Habib

In this book, the French historian and psychoanalyst Elizabeth Roudinesco, turns her pen to an examination of the history of perversion. The book followed a lecture in 2004 at the Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies in Belo Horizonte (Brazil) on the many faces of perversion and her addressing a similar theme during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Robert Lévy: L’infantile en Psychanalyse (The Infantile in Psychoanalysis). Ramonville Saint-Agne: Érès (Collection Arcanès), 2008.

Michael Plastow and Tine Norregaard Arroyo

In this book published in France in September 2008, Robert Lévy endeavours to reformulate the concept of the infantile in psychoanalysis. In doing so he gives a new value and status to this concept in the clinic of psychoanalysis with children and their families. He situates the infantile as a specific position in childhood in which the demarcation of the unconscious for the child, through the function of repression, is incomplete.