Seminar I

CLINICAL SEMINAR: On the Therapeutic Act

Network of Stoppages

Marcel Duchamp

1914

Lacan Salon presents a Clinical Seminar

“On the Therapeutic Act”

The practice of psychotherapy calls for a necessary and ongoing reflection on the means, aims and conduction of the therapeutic process. The manner in which therapists approach their act involves an ethical responsibility and depends on the theoretical assumptions they hold as valid, useful and truthful.

This Seminar offers an introductory frame that addresses psychodynamic as well as ethical and practical issues in the conduction of a psychotherapeutic act. We will approach such topics from a psychoanalytic perspective based on the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who in the span of 50 years, called a “return to Freud” and developed one of the most influential contemporary schools of thought within the field of psychoanalysis.

Throughout the Seminar we will engage with the “Five W and one H” questions (What, Who, When, Where, Why and How) and each session we will discuss a clinical case presented by a guest practitioner. It is expected that this seminar will orientate clinicians in their practices with regards to the nature of concepts such as healing (what); the therapeutic relation (who); the concept of time (when) and space (where); as well as ethics (why) and means of intervention (how) in a therapeutic practice.

This Seminar, groundwork of my current research project and product of close to 20 years of clinical practice in both institutional and private settings, will encourage open discussion and non-dogmatic dialogue in the hope of creating a productive space in which to generate clinical inquiry about an essential practice that attends to issues of the human condition, its inherent suffering and countless possibilities.

Hilda Fernandez

Directed to

· Clinical Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Psychoanalysts.

· People interested in the clinical field within a social practice (social workers, outreach workers, health therapists, social research, education, etc.)

Time and Dates

8 sessions from October 17, 2015 - February 13, 2016

Fortnight Saturdays 10:30 a.m to 12:30 p.m.

SFU Woodwards 149 West Hastings St. in Vancouver

Room 2205

Meeting Dates

October 17, 31

November 14, 28

December 12

January 16, 30

February 13

Registration

You are required to attend all 8 sessions. There is no drop-in available, unless previously discussed with the facilitator.

Due to limited capacity, we encourage you to register early.

Please register here. Payment can be made by cash or cheque on the first meeting of the seminar.

Cost

200 dollars at the beginning or 25 dollars each session

30% of the cost will be donated to the Lacan Salon

There are limited bursaries available. If you are interested e-mail presidentlacansalon@gmail.com

Detailed Syllabus Provided Upon Registration

Workload for each session will be about two primary readings (Freud and Lacan) with few optional secondary readings.

October 17 What

In this session we will situate the concept of therapy within a psychoanalytic framework. We will introduce the Lacanian three registers (Imaginary, Symbolic and Real) to map the constitutional elements of the therapeutic act. This will lead us to review concepts of truth and knowledge, but also consciousness/unconsciousness and the nature of reality.

October 31 Who

We will approach the protagonists involved in the therapeutic situation. On the one hand, the divided subject of the unconscious; on the other, the function of the analyst. We will visit concepts such as the therapeutic relation, transference and countertransference, intersubjectivity and dialogue.

November 14 What

Continuing exploring the elements that conforms a therapeutic act, we will introduce the concepts of body and mind, as well as drive and jouissance. We will draw the differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and define what we understand for an act.

November 28 What

Crucial aspects to understand the therapeutic act are Anxiety, Desire, Fantasy and Symptom. We will introduce these concepts to situate the field in which the analyst/therapist intervenes.

December 12 When

Therapeutic interventions involve certain timing. We will review concepts such as logical time, timing of interventions, as well as demand and resistance.

January 16 Where

The therapeutic act occurs in a certain space. We will explore places of intervention within the psychoanalytic dispositive. What is presence/absence and what are the effects on the Real, Symbolic and Imaginary registers.

January 30 How

In this session we will discuss how a therapeutic act is oriented, through aspects such as strategy, tactics, modes of intervention as well as style versus technique.

February 13 Why

In this session we will approach the ethical goals of the treatment and will differentiate them from moral pursues. Also we reflect on the transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge.

Guest Clinican: Dan Collins

The Facilitator

Hilda Fernandez has extensive clinical experience in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Throughout her clinical trajectory, she has worked in the medical and mental health fields alongside a private practice. Currently she has a private practice in downtown Vancouver, and has worked for the past ten years as a psychotherapist at SAFER, part of Vancouver Coastal Health. In Mexico City she worked for eight years in the National Rehabilitation Program within the Central Hospital of the Mexican Red Cross.

She has an MA in Clinical Psychology (UNAM), an MA in Spanish Literature (UBC) and more than 15 years of Lacanian training. She co-founded the Lacan Salon in 2007 and currently serves as its president. To know more check her website www.hildafernandez.com

Acknowledgements

Lacan Salon acknowledges that this Seminar will take place on unceded territories of the Musqueam and Coast Salish peoples.

Lacan Salon thanks SFU Vancity Office of Community Engagement .

Seminar II

Lacan Salon presents a Clinical Seminar

“Approaching the Symbolic, Real and Imaginary in Clinical Practices”

Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923) Max Ernst

To sustain a clinical practice, analysts and psychotherapists rely on a theoretical framework that defines their assumptions about human nature. Such theory informs the logic that guides their interventions and therefore impacts the results of such treatment.

From a Lacanian perspective, human subjectivity is understood through three registers: the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary. Roughly speaking, within the Symbolic realm we locate language, culture, discourse and desire. The register of the Real brings about that which is beyond language, the unsayable, the traumatic nature of the sexual/death drive and its compulsion to repeat. And within the Imaginaryregister we find the Ego, conformed by the image a given subject has of himself, his ideals, and the specular relation with others.These simultaneous and necessarily intertwined levels of human experience evidence themselves in the analytic experience primarily through language. Lacan emphasizes this through his central aphorism: “The unconscious is structured like a language”. If the unconscious speaks, a practitioner needs to be able to identify manifestations of the orders of the Real and the Imaginary to guide her responses in such a way that allows a movement in the therapeutic process.

In this Seminar, following the work of the two previous terms, we will address ethical and practical questions related to the ways in which the three registers interweave in the different “clinics” that a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist faces in their practice (trauma, addictions, psychosis). The central question will gravitate around the limits of what is analyzable and the ethics that sustain such limits. Some specific situations that will guide our approach are:

If the imaginary aspect is of a radical predominance in individual narratives and in the Lacanian tradition it occupies an undesirable place of misrecognition due to its concealment of the subject’s unconscious truth, how do we guide our intervention when the image is by itself precarious, such as in the cases of so called psychoses or borderline personality disorders?

If a person seems to be confronting the violent insistence of the Real, unable to find a limit and therefore putting themselves at risk of subjective destitution through acting out/passage à l’acte, or a psychotic breakdown, how does an analyst intervene? (Clinical cases akin to addictions, suicide or psychosis)

We aim to target these questions by interrogating the positionality of the analyst, her way of intervening according to the logical time faced, and her relation to other practices that might involve both private and institutional work.

We will work on the following primary texts, as well as some secondary readings that would be available beforehand. Most of the sessions will have a case discussion presented by the seminar participants.

JACQUES LACAN

Ecrits

• Beyond the “reality principle” (1936)
• The mirror stage as formative of the I function as revealed in psychoanalytic experience (1939)
• Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis (1948)
• The function and the field of speech and language in psychoanalysis (1953)
• The signification of the phallus (1958)
• The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious (1960)
• On the subject who is finally in question (1966)

Excerpts from Seminar IX "Identification" (1961-62)

Discourse to Catholics (1960)

My teachings (1967)

Excerpts from Seminar 23 “The Sinthome” (1975-76)

SIGMUND FREUD

Excerpts of the following extensive texts:

• Interpretation of dreams (1900)
• Psychopathology of the everyday life (1901)
• Jokes and its relations to the unconscious (1905)

Introduction to narcissism (1914)

Beyond pleasure principle (1920)

Directed to

• Clinical Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Psychoanalysts.
• People interested in the clinical field within a social practice (social workers, outreach workers, health therapists, social research, education, etc.)

Time and Dates

The theme of this Seminar will continue until the Summer of 2017.

The first 6 sessions run from April 16 – June 25, 2016

The next 10 sessions run from January 14 to June 17, 2017

Fortnight Saturdays 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

SFU Woodwards 149 West Hastings St. in Vancouver

Room 2205

Meeting Dates 2nd part

January 14 & 28

February 11 & 25

March 11 & 25

April 22

May 20

June 3 & 17

Registration

It is recommended to attend all sessions. Drop-in available only if previously discussed with the facilitator.

Due to limited capacity, we encourage you to register early.

Please register here.

Cost

Its Free and Open to all. Donations are welcome and 100% will be used towards Lacan Salon activities.

The Facilitator

Hilda Fernandez has extensive clinical experience in the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Throughout her clinical trajectory, she has worked in the medical and mental health fields alongside a private practice. Currently she has a private practice in downtown Vancouver, and has worked for the past ten years as a psychotherapist at SAFER, part of Vancouver Coastal Health. In Mexico City she worked for eight years in the National Rehabilitation Program within the Central Hospital of the Mexican Red Cross.

She has an MA in Clinical Psychology (UNAM), an MA in Spanish Literature (UBC) and more than 15 years of Lacanian training. She co-founded the Lacan Salon in 2007 and currently serves as its president. She is an academic associate with the SFU Institute for the Humanitoes and is enrolled in a PhD program at SFU Department of Geography where she is conducting research on discursive spaces of trauma and the mental health institution. To know more check her website www.hildafernandez.com

Acknowledgements

Lacan Salon acknowledges that this Seminar will take place on unceded territories of the Musqueam and Coast Salish peoples.

Lacan Salon thanks SFU Vancity Office of Community Engagement .