Seminar XII: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis

Registrations are open!

Lacan Circle of Australia Seminar

Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XII:
Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis

Presented by Russell Grigg

26 July – 11 October
Ten Saturdays 10:00am – 12:00pm
Melbourne time AEST UTC + 10
The Lacan Circle Rooms, Brunswick.

In person, on Zoom & recorded.
Register below to participate.

Seminar XII, Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis, 1964-1965, begins a new phase in Lacan’s teaching. The previous year’s seminar, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, concludes a phase of commentary on Freud’s work in what has been described as a final synthetic overview of that first phase.

Seminar XII is the beginning of a new phase, one in which Lacan’s own original contributions to psychoanalysis will take centre stage. The Seminar’s guiding thread is, it has been said, the “being of the subject”, explored from a number of different angles. What emerges is that there is no single approach to the question, and so Lacan proceeds by approximations, coming at the question of this divided subject from different angles – hence, an engagement with Chomsky, Russell, Frege and Mill on proper names; topological figures including the Möbius strip and Klein bottle; the objet a and the subject supposed to know. Nothing here that gives “substance” to the divided subject, only a series of formulations that approach it but don’t define it.

This Seminar offers a fascinating way into the specifically Lacanian metapsychology of his mature years. We see here, emerging for the first time, a “new beginning” of Lacan’s teaching, more than a decade after his “return to Freud”.

A note on the text. The French version of this seminar was published in February this year. Since its release, I have been working on the English translation which will be published by Polity Press in 2027.

If you are enrolled in the seminar, you will receive drafts of my translation as we go. It’s an exciting seminar and to my knowledge this will be the first time it is to be taught in English.

Russell Grigg PhD studied and lectured in the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII. He is a member of the Lacan Circle of Australia, the École de la Cause freudienne, the New Lacanian School, and the World Association of Psychoanalysis. Russell is the translator of Lacan’s Seminar III, V, XVII, and XII.

Location

Melbourne: The Lacan Circle Rooms
Unit 4 / Nine Wilson Avenue, Brunswick.
(Entry via rear alley, off Black St)
3 hour free parking @ Barkly Square Carpark

Online: All sessions are streamed live on Zoom, recorded, and will be available for the duration of the semester.
Zoom info will be available after registration. Supplementary readings will be made available in the seminar’s Google drive & Discord server.

Attendees in Melbourne are encouraged to attend in person.