Lacan Circle Reading Group
Convened by Eugénie Austin
Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
1959 – 1960
“From an analytical point of view, the only thing of which one can be guilty, is of having given ground relative to one’s desire.” Chapter VVIX, The Paradoxes of Ethics
Weekly on Wednesdays at 7:00pm Melbourne time.
This group concluded in December 2025.
The recording of our most recent session was
The Moral Law, pp 74-77
Wednesday 17 December
The recording of our opening session
Introduction to the Seminar, pages 1-4
occurred on Wednesday 13 August.
The themes of Seminar VII
Pleasure and Reality
The Jouissance of Transgression
The Demand for Happiness
Love of One’s Neighbour
Drives and Lures
The Death Drive
Freud’s Das Ding
Sublimation
Moral Law
Courtly Love
The Death of God
On Creation Ex Nihilo
The Function of The Good
The Function of The Beautiful
The Splendour of Antigone
The Moral Goals of Psychoanalysis
The Paradoxes of Ethics
Our text is the English translation of The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII, 1959 – 1960, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by Dennis Porter and published by Norton in 1992. It is available everywhere including from Amazon here
This group met weekly and continuously to read Lacan’s Seminars (in succession) 2020-25.
Painting by Angelo Bronzino, The Descent from the Cross, 1545, detail
Visit our previous Reading Group (Seminar VI, Desire) here
Our home page is here