FLASH 1

 

The first FLASH that we share is part of the axis "Identity, segregation and paradoxes" and includes the work proposal of Dyhalma N. Ávila López, AMS of the Puerto Rico Forum.

 

Mixture as a paradoxical identity: between denied segregations and affirmed singularities

 

The organization that promotes Puerto Rico, a country colonized by both the Spanish and the American white man, as a tourist destination, includes in its web page an offer of identity: “From the interweaving of the Taíno, African, and Spanish traditions emerged the Puerto Rican, a new identity composed of traits from all three groups", "a well-blended melting pot".

 

The offered identity contains a paradox: it conceals the underlying violent segregation (the jouissance in the exploitative bonds that produced the mixture), and the persistent segregations; but it moderates the aggressiveness of the other as Other, allowing less extreme segregations and greater fraternity.

 

I propose to think about this paradox from three references. Freud: the Other as the object of aggressive drives that culture must limit to make coexistence possible. Lacan: only the Other situates the misdirection of our jouissance, but in so far as we are separated from it; hence some fantasies, unprecedented when we didn't mix. Colette Soler: the picturesque as positive treatment of segregative difference.

 

FLASH 2

 

This FLASH that we share is part of the axis "Segregation and social bond" and gathers two work proposals:

 

The first proposal is by Maria Helena Martinho, from the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Rio de Janeiro - EPFCL-Brazil and the second proposal is by Carlos Gómez Camarena from the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Mexico.

 

Los efectos de la segregación en el discurso de nuestra época - Maria Helena Martinho

 

This paper will make a very brief summary of the term "Segregation" in all of Lacan's work (written and This paper promotes a reflection on the effects of segregation in the discourse of our time. He observes that the subjects are still "leveraged" by the capitalist discourse that suppresses differences and promotes economic globalization, reducing the diversity of religions, languages, customs and peoples; he proves that segregation is a violence against differences, because it reduces the individual to the same uniform mass, isolates him, creating walls to veil the differences; underlines that in Brazil, during the last four years, segregation - of the poor in the favelas, of street dwellers, of women, of blacks, of LGBTQIA+ people and of native peoples - has been exacerbated by the anti-democratic political projects of the extreme right and by the discourses of hatred and violence. Today the world is witnessing the genocide of the Yanomami people - malnutrition, malaria and mercury contamination - a true return of segregation in its most barbaric form that humanity has produced in its worst moments throughout our history, the concentration camps.

 

What Lacan said about segregation: its current importance - Carlos Gómez Camarena

 

This paper will make a very brief summary on the term "Segregation" throughout Lacan's work (written and oral), to underline problematic points such as segregation as something structural of subjectivity, mass psychology, the relation between science and segregation (a theme inherited from Heidegger and the Frankfurt School) and a point little explored such as the difference between segregation and "extermination camp" in Lacan. In a second moment, some solutions invented by Lacan will be presented, such as the "lateral" identification and how this leads him to the invention of the School (as a base of operations against the Malaise). Finally, I will bring this panorama and this problematization to important current issues in the social and in the clinic, especially in the so-called "identity politics" as well as the (non) relation between neoliberalism and the extreme right. My central argument in this last part is that we increasingly receive more and more analysands in the midst of these socio-political coordinates. The crucial question would be: how to extract the analytic part of these issues considering how Lacan approached segregation throughout his work? The aim of the paper is to briefly show the panorama of the term "segregation" throughout Lacan's work and to point out some problematic points and raise its relevance for social and clinical issues today.

 

FLASH 3

 

This FLASH is part of the axis "Segregation and social bond" and gathers two work proposals:

 

The first proposal is by Beatriz Maya, AME from the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Medellín and Pereira, and the second proposal is of Sonia Alberti AME from the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Rio de Janeiro - EPFCL-Brazil

 

“Odd loose ones” and discrete fraternity - Beatriz Maya Restrepo

 

In the Preface Lacan says: "because on this occasion there is no all, but only loose mixed ones." He refers to what is produced by the hystorization of analysis. Odd alludes to the product of singularities recognized parting from from experience. Singularity of an irreducible jouissance, impossibility of the end which introduces the question for the link to the other, there where each one defends their parcel. "Discrete fraternity" is the expression Lacan uses to refer to what psychoanalysis could propose to those who come with broken ties. There is a sort of paradox given that it seems that analysis can produce a certain cynical remainder which could impede links. I attempt to answer this question: How to think ethics that would conciliate the singularity of jouissance and the collective of links?

 

Some theoretical basis for a clinic of singularity - Sonia Alberti

 

Abstract: I will start with a quick review of the logical distinction made by Hegel between universal, particular and singular through Lacan's formulas of sexuation, and then move on to articulate the particular, the singular, and the non-all with the symptom. The objective is to try to establish the differences between both concepts and try to grasp what contributions does the second one adds to the current clinic. I ask: does Hegel's universal go lost in the second? what would Lacan's "for all x" be? If the not-all is contemporary of the formulae, would it (the not-all) be the, reemerging later in the nodes in a new form, but still there as not-all R, S, I du to the fact that one pierces the other? How to articulate it with the symptom? Questions of fundamental, because with it we are already trying to use new parameters. Would we be, with this, trying to answer Lacan's proposal, when in the Ouverture de la Section Clinique he establishes that the psychoanalytic clinic consists in reinterrogating Freud about everything he said?

 

FLASH 4

 

This fourth FLASH we share is part of the axis "Segregation and social bond" and collects 3 work proposals. The first proposal is by Sheila Abramovitch, from EPFCL-Brazil, FCL Rio de Janeiro, the second proposal is by Katarina Aragāo, from EPFCL-Brazil, FCL Aracajú, and the third proposal is by Gabriela Zorzutti, AME from the Lacanian Field Forum of Colorado.

 

The subversion of Science - Sheila Abramovitch

 

Call attention to the use of science for the purpose of segregation. Highlight how science has been replaced by pseudoscientific conspiracy theories, such as the Flat Earth, or Creationism, during Bolsonaro's fascist Brazilian government. Bring examples of the manipulation of scientific data, which culminated in the denial of the COVID vaccine, with the imposition of false medical treatments. There were almost 700,000 deaths. Studies point out that 75% could be avoided (Butantã, 2022). Psychoanalysis, in turn, an ally of science, could not remain indifferent to the segregationist ideologies that lead to the Worst, and comes to denounce all forms of authoritarianisms, which disregard the singularity of the subject and prevent the circulation of social ties in the polis (Quinet, 2021). From the rational Cartesian subject inaugurated by Descartes, we arrive at the subject of the unconscious, which Lacan (1966) approximates to the subject of science, and Freud (1915) articulated it to psychoanalysis: Behold the subject of unconscious thought.

 

Segregation in analyst training, a position? - Katarina Aragão

 

I intend to work on the issue of psychoanalyst training by discussing structural and political alienation as a clinical position, starting from the premise that it is only possible to offer a singular listening place if the analyst seeks a plural, ethical and political training, in order to work in diversity in his/her practice. I will articulate through a clinical case clip that the true place of speech is on the couch, the only place that should not admit segregation. And I question, is an ethical couch possible without a plural training?

 

Alienation<>Separation, today a politically heretical praxis - Gabriela Zorzutti

 

Aim: To highlight the ethical importance of the operation of alienation in analysis. It is common to find, especially in the US, separation being confused with an attitude that the clinician holds towards a pseudo-separation of the individual in the mantra of the self-made-man, which then renders any object relation  ‘transactionally’. This alienating view of alienation has had devastating effects. Alienation also implies the unforgettable vital bond of the speaker. 

 

Lacan postulates the emergence of the subject through the two operations of alienation and separation. The subject must first alienate to the signifiers of the Other, it must see itself represented in a failed way by the signifiers of this place, the Other, and then separate from them, that is find its place. This forced inaugural choice then implies that the subject identifies with these signifiers. In our clinic, we are witness of a work of libidinal detachment, to use a Freudian term, from these identifications during the cure. A time when the task is to get to know the dissidence, the conflict in which the subject reappears with these alienating signifiers.

 

To analyze is to find in the discourse of the analyzand the compas of these operative marks. Marks that are rather dancing and, therefore, lend themselves to the swaying of transference in its phases of motor and resistance. In each of these logical folds of analysis, there is a chance to review what is not forced at the origin: the interpretation given to that first inaugural choice. To read in that margin a chance for freedom is a breath of air. It requires a work of libidinal separation from the cruel old trick of trying to answer the question of the subject's identity through identification. To arrive at another position, but in exercise, not another position as static, but to arrive to the position that allows the exercise of choice, separated. In today's world, to sustain a space where the the task of revising these “resons of an assumed position is a heresy, because this has the effect of binding, of returning desire to the Other, to the social link in a world where we are all proletarians….

 

FLASH 5

 

This fifth FLASH that we share is part of axis 2 "IDENTITY, SEGREGATION AND PARADOXES" and gathers three work proposals:

 

The first proposal is by Clara Mesa, AME of the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Medellin and  Bogotá, member of the LIPP; the second proposal is by Stella Casanova, member of the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Panama, member of the LIPP and the third proposal is by Eduardo Valsega, member of the Forum of Psychoanalysis of Puerto Rico.

 

The unfinished project of the relationship pass – society - Clara Cecilia Mesa

 

The crucial problem we have after Lacan is that of articulating this topology of eight interior that he announced at the end of the proposition of the pass of 1967: "... the topology of the projective plane is in the very horizon of psychoanalysis in extension where the interior circle that we trace as the hiancy of psychoanalysis in intension is knotted". 

 

Intension and extension knotted and dependent on each other, in a Moebian way. What is interesting is that Lacan announces this, precisely, at the point where he goes on to describe the functioning of the pass. He pauses in his formulation and refers us to three vanishing points: a symbolic one: the Oedipus; an imaginary one: the hierarchies in the society of psychoanalysis, as directed by an executive of international scale; and the third facticity, real, too real, real enough: segregation.

 

To return to the end by saying: "The end of this document specifies the way under which it could be introduced what only tends, by opening an experience, to finally make true the guarantees sought" the guarantees that he announced at the beginning are those given by the school as A.M.E. and those that a subject can demand AE.

 

Now, this point is particularly important because in our time Colette Soler in her Conference in Poland, but also in the presentation of the last School Meeting in Buenos Aires takes up this problem to remind us that the political incidence of the pass was expected to modify these three facticities: in the sense of beyond Oedipus, of the minimization of the imaginary, of the hierarchies, and of a tempering of the segregative logic. Is this program fulfilled? Who would dare to say so?  "Whether it happens or not, the same facticities are employed and rather worsen. Would this not justify a new political analysis that adjusts to this fact to clarify it, eventually contour it?" Colette Soler. Conference in Poland 2020.

 

The politic of psychoanalysis and the segregation as politic - Stella Casanova 

 

Object of the work: Lacan, in the Proposition of October 9, 1967, links the effects of science to the Nazi concentration camp as an antecedent of the "reordering of social groupings by science and, especially, of the universalization that science introduces into them", and further predicts that "our future of common markets will find its counterweight in the ever harsher expansion of the processes of segregation". 

 

For Lacan, segregation is linked to the domain that the Capitalist model has deposited in the knowledge of science, knowledge that is based on the logic of universalization and quantification, whose correlate is the exclusion of singularity through homogenization, with which it is intended to order the forms of enjoyment, the same practices, the same ideals; where the mathematical signifier is the one that comes to decipher the happening of the subject. 

This scientific knowledge that universalizes, has an answer for everything and everyone, as Lacan mentions in Television when he points out that "the cure is a demand that comes from the voice of the sufferer, from one who suffers from his body or from his thought: The surprising thing is that there are answers, and that, in all ages, medicine has hit the target", goes against psychoanalysis, insofar as the latter conceives the human as a fact of words; it operates with the word of the sufferer, emplacing the most intimate truth of each subject, while science omits the subject involved in the plot of what it says, privileging a supposed objectivity.

 

The proposal of this paper is to open a space for debate and reflection on the Segregationist Political Identity of science, as opposed to the Political Identity of Psychoanalysis, sustained in the relationship raised by Lacan in the Proposition of October 9, 1967, between psychoanalysis in intension and psychoanalysis in extension, as Fields that make possible the presence of psychoanalysis and its ethics in the present times, where the thrust of science every day narrows the margins of the singular, ignoring any discourse that reveals itself to it, as is the case of psychoanalysis.

 

Segregation and discourse: The capitalist superego and the School of psychoanalysis.  - Eduardo Valsega

 

We will work on the idea that 'each discourse implies a mode of segregation'. The cases of segregation generated by the capitalist discourse and that produced by the analytical discourse will be addressed. The two will be compared, especially insofar as they are two discourses with elements in common. However, the differences will be emphasized, especially the super-egoic dimension of the capitalist discourse with its rejection of singularity and its push for the consumption of supposedly extra enjoyment. It will be proposed that although this discourse generates segregations, it is a disintegrative discourse, since it seeks to undo any possible ensemble. On the other hand, it will be argued that although analytic discourse also pushes to the limit the relations of the subject with the signifier and with the object a, it does so by revealing and pointing to the singularity of the speaking being. This culminates in a separation and a loneliness that, paradoxically, is the common element that allows the existence of the School of psychoanalysis. It will be proposed that this meeting space created between "dispersed disparate" (analysts), although it can be thought of as a voluntary segregation, is shown as an attempt, not of expulsion or privilege, but of creation of a new whole, where singularity is the main element

 

FLASH 6

 

This sixth FLASH that we share is part of axis 2 "IDENTITY, SEGREGATION AND PARADOXES" and gathers three work proposals:

 

The first proposal is by Beatriz Oliveira, AME of the Forum of the Lacanian Field of San Pablo -EPFCL Brazil,; the second proposal is by Ricardo Rojas, AME of the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Medellin and Pereira, member of the CIG; the third proposal is by Maria Claudia Formigoni, member of the Forum of the Lacanian Field of San Pablo -EPFCL Brazil; and the fourth proposal is by Barbara Shuman the Forum of the Lacanian Field of Colorado.

 

Some discrete ones make up a collectivity - Beatriz Oliveira

 

This paper is based on the logic of collectiveness as Lacan develops in his text “Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty.” It also seeks to discuss the proposal in coordination with establishing a universal based on the exception. Therefore, identifying oneself with a “collective,” at this moment, is closer to each individual’s particular assertion regarding one’s existence: fraternal as speaking and castrated. However, this logic is the same that requires separation to become established.

 

Given the theoretical progress made by Lacan in the field of jouissance as of the 1970s, this paper questions whether anything would change in this collective link or if it would be possible to think about a different collective knowledge – one that would not become established through a set based on exception, but based on a paradoxical interlacing, as proposed by Milner. So, I believe that a possible link to be made based on psychoanalysis is that the no recedes given the impossible, the Real, and makes it the cause of its interlacing. I understand that, as of the end of an analysis, the inclusion of others occurs one by one, with whom the possible link is related to the event, the contingency.

 

Therefore, could each speakbeing’s unique form of jouissance make a difference in this type of link, thus introducing that “discrete” trait of a fraternity?

 

Diagnóstico da singularidade e a língua privada das vinhetas clínicas - Ricardo Rojas

 

Diagnosis of singularity would involve analysing how singularity has been understood from the point of view of Jacques Lacan’s teaching, and how this has been applied, when we hear it said that ‘’. We also question whether the very act of diagnosis allows for singularity, given that the origins of both diagnosis and psychoanalysis were in the scientistic-universal model of medicine. We also question whether it is possible—taking into account the Freudian and Lacanian developments in psychoanalytic theory and praxis—to maintain without contradictions a clinic in which diagnosis would occupy a central place. This leads us to think about the relationship between concepts and praxis, as Lacan did in : ‘’.

 

The last part of the title highlights that ‘it is believed that from the accounts of what the analysands and the analysts have said it is possible to objectify without further ado what happens in the treatments, which show what is, so that is private in the clinical vignettes, where it is believed that the clinic is a clinic of objectifying statements [], when on the contrary it is the that does not lend itself to the narrative that leads to the real, to the most singular.

 

Why can't I be like this? - Maria Claudia Formigoni

 

At a time when the erasure of differences prevails and segregation emerges as an effect, the particularities of jouissance are seen as deviations to be eliminated. No wonder, in the age of generalized childhood, we see different forms of violence against children. I bring two examples.

 

A boy's mother took him out of analysis to undergo invasive treatments to correct his walking and talking. I wanted to make him more like the other boys, erase his differences. In the last session, he asks: Why can't I be like this?

 

Recently, the program to exterminate the Yanomami came to light in Brazil. The biggest victims were children. Why? Because “the child appears as a symptom that breaks the master's order, insofar as it points to his paradoxical 'out of place'”. Precisely, asserting her position as a subject enhances the violence against her.

 

What can an analyst do in the face of this erasure that also affects childhoods?

 

Can't superimpose the idea of child on that of subject. For this reason, it cannot be guided by the dominant ideals – children as objects of education, progress and development –, under the risk of turning the clinic with children into orthopedics and denying the relationship that a child has with knowledge, failing to consider it a full analyser.

 

Formation of the analyst: The singularity of an act

Clinic of Segregation and singularity : The Singular and the not-all Barbara Shuman

 

Speaking about the formation of the analyst within the context of this symposium, titled, “Segregation and Singularity,” is to speak about a historical trajectory of psychoanalysis. Historical trajectory in the sense of how the formation of the analyst takes place within the praxis, but also in regard to when a formation begins, and when it ends. At the beginning, there were standards of formations: a master and a student, based on a hierarchical position of an-Other who teaches. “The analyst authorizes himself” came with Lacan later, and with this statement, the idea that in his practice as well as in his formation, the analyst shows himself through an act that does not involve a hierarchical order as a training would. What stems from the formation of the analyst is the witnessing of an analytic act, away from any subjective judgement, either from the analyst who controls or self-criticism of the analyst who is directing the cure. Segregation is thus seen as the separation between the subjectivity of the analyst who controls and the peculiarity of a single act that cannot be repeated. In the formation of the analyst, mainly in the dispositif of control, what is being segregated is the subjectivity of the analyst, in the sense that the subjectivity is set aside in order to determine if an act has been produced.“The analyst authorizes himself,” because precisely, they is no longer a subject under the authority of a One. 

 

The analyst authorizes himself in his formation to know of something that is outside of the realm of knowledge and more stemming from a savoir of an operative function that steps away from a master’s discourse to bring a formation that is, as Lacan puts it, not of the analyst himself but of the unconscious. If this is the case, the formation of the analyst can be seen as a peculiar process, the like of which does not exist elsewhere. In that sense, the formation of the analyst has the intent to bring forward an analytical position linking the desire of the analyst who authorizes himself to an unconscious savoir. 

 

A contradiction arises from the dispositif of control: On the one hand, we cannot speak of the formation of the analyst without speaking about another one who listens. The accompaniment that the analyst encounters with the controlling analyst is an extension of the cure he directs, as it involves putting the analyst who controls on the stand. The analyst in formation authorizes himself with the handling of transference, demand and desire, where what is transmissible of the self-authorization is at stake. On the other hand, what remains not transmissible from a demand requires an ethical exigency and a responsibility to continue to control even beyond the moment of self-authorization. In this case, as Lacan says it, “the control imposes itself.”  With the control, the analyst commits himself to an act of wanting to know something about his position as analyst, which brings him back to a truth that is just as peculiar. A knowledge of the unconscious that is not that of the master, as in certain other institutions, but of a knowledge that is of an Other who does not know everything and who nevertheless puts back in place a desire that has been displaced. The control itself is not everything, but it orients towards an ethic where the analyst operates from his own desire, a desire that emerges from his own treatment and that does not yield.