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REPORT ON ‘SCHOOL TIME’ EVENT IN TEL-AVIV WITH YVES

VANDERVEKEN, PRESIDENT OF THE NLS

On June 27, 2015, ‘School Time’ event with our guest – Yves Vanderveken, the president of the

NLS, was held in Tel-Aviv.

Yves Vanderveken presented his interpretation of Jacques-Alain Miller’s book “Politique

Lacanienne”. He titled his intervention: “LACANIAN POLITICS AND ACTION”.

Later on Perla Miglin, Amir Klugman, Orit Weiss and Malka Shein presented their texts on

“PARADOXES OF THE SCHOOL”. Sharon Zvili was the moderator of this discussion.

After a break, a second panel was held, in which Samuel Nemirovsky, Rostik Bershadsky, Shlomo

Lieber and Vered Noti presented their texts on “CARTELS AND THEIR VICISSITUDES”.

Zully Flumenbaum was the moderator of this discussion.

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In his interpretation of Jacques-Alain Miller’s book, YVES VANDERVEKEN listed three political

dimensions that Miller extracts from Lacan’s teaching: (a) general politics; politics of the world we

live in, the discourses of this world, and the ways in which psychoanalysis interpret them; Yves

mentioned that this can give one meaning to Lacan’s saying that the unconscious is politics (b)

politics within psychoanalysis, which includes the politics of the psychoanalytical school, and (c)

the last dimension, which is actually primary in its importance, is determined by Lacan’s idea

regarding the leading vision and goal of the treatment and the effects analysis produces. This

dimension refers to the pass, and Yves’ hypothesis is that the entire Lacanian politics is marked by

the question of what does psychoanalysis try to achieve? This, according to Yves, lead Lacan to put

the question of the pass in the center of his school, at the heart of its politics.

Yves noted that in “The Direction of the treatment” Lacan isolated threefold relationship: The

tactic of the direction of the treatment, where he placed – Interpretation; The issue of transference,

which he placed on the side of the strategy of the treatment, and; the political dimension of the

treatment, which Lacan placed on the side of the goal of psychoanalysis, and its ending. This last

dimension includes the analysis and training of the psychoanalyst himself.

Through his teaching, Lacan generated an entire revolution in the psychoanalytical field of training

psychoanalysts, by bringing to the foreground the idea of the ‘being’ of a psychoanalyst, and Miller

in this book notes that this theme – the being of the psychoanalyst – was not raised before Lacan;

and the moment that Lacan brings this ‘being’ to the foreground, he extracts the function of the

psychoanalyst from the series of possible occupations, namely, occupation that a person can qualify

himself for. Hence the idea that the being of a psychoanalyst is defined based on your experience as

analysand rather than on the fact that you are practicing psychoanalysis as a practitioner.

Being a psychoanalyst is being someone that carries desire; a unique and defined desire that cannot

be grasped ‘as is’. Desire which is the outcome of one’s analysis, so, on one hand the analyst is

defined within the dimension of what he is, his being, but at the same time, and this is the paradox,

there is no ‘being’ of the psychoanalyst as such. To put it in other words, there is no ‘The essence

of a psychoanalyst’; There is no THE Psychoanalyst. Yves said that “One might even go as far as

to say that THE Psychoanalyst does not exist”. Nevertheless, there are psychoanalytical effects that

enable one to say, and always retroactively, that something from a psychoanalyst appeared,

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something from psychoanalysis; and the school, not as the entity that sets out standards and criteria,

or issues diplomas, but as a place in which this question – what is a psychoanalyst, as one that does

not exists – will be raised again and again.

Perla Miglin titled her work; “AT THE HEART OF THE SCHOOL – TRANSFERENCE”. Perla

noted that in “Remark on crossing the transference”, J-A Miller shared with us the following

reflection:

“There is no crossing of the transference in the sense that there is what we call crossing the

fantasm (...), however, crossing the fantasm leads to the resolution of the transference.”

“What is it in us that oppose to say that there is a crossing of the transference like there is a

crossing of the fantasm? It is because there is beyond the fundamental fantasm, but there is no

beyond transference. Moreover, there is no fundamental transference, since in transference there is

an element which cannot be reduced, which prevents the confusion between the resolution of the

transference and its dissolution, annihilation, its reduction to nothing, to zero. There is no degree

zero in transference. The pass is not a test in which one expects to achieve zero degree of

transference. Only through fundamental unawareness could one get such an idea; unrecognizing

the components that set the threshold for the pass; ignoring its basic condition. But since the pass

addresses, to the Other of the school, a demand for the pass, and the demand for the pass has

necessarily a respondent, which is the Other of the pass, well, this is the most paradoxical thing

about the pass, the status of this Other of the pass.”

The preparation of this text coincided with the publication of Eric Laurent’s article "'The

unconscious is politics, today" in which Laurent begins with a comment made by J-A Miller in

Milan in May 2002 on a line from Lacan’s "The Logic of the Fantasm":

"I am not even saying 'politics is the unconscious', but, quite simply, the unconscious, is politics!"

Eric Laurent draws the consequences of this comment until today. In the intersection between the

two texts Perla contributed the following thought to the debate:

A demand for pass makes the Other of the School (l'Autre de l'Ecole) a body, and not a mind. A

trace of event of each passant’s body. Thus, the transference of work incarnates, for each one, and

for every pronunciation, the: "I am not even saying 'politics is the unconscious', but, quite simply,

the unconscious, is politics!”

It is in the time of resolving the transference that one can come to recognize the constitutive

condition of a demand for the pass… an object of constituent alienation.

AMIR KLUGMAN, presented “ZENO’S BODY”. Amir spoke about reading, side-by-side, one of

the novels of David Grossman (“See Under: ‘Love’” - Grossman, 1986) and Lacan’s opening

sentence of “The Founding Act” (1964). Amir followed the function of the body, or more

specifically – the speaking body, in the life of a group. Amir suggested that the body has a dual role

– allowing the connection, the gathering in a group and, at the same time creating separation,

keeping an individual within the group. This occurs because the body is not just an imaginary body,

but also a symbolic and real body; because its existence always undermines the illusion of

integration. With this conclusion Amir located the body, and its dual function, within Zeno’s

dichotomy paradox, and tried to understand it as a paradox which brings out a well-known tension

in psychoanalysis - the tension between the crowd and the individual.

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ORIT WEISS named her paper -THE SCHOOL AS A SUBJECT THAT IS AWAKE. Orit

referred to Seminar 11 where Lacan mentions the dream of Chuang-Tzu: "He is a butterfly for

nobody. It is when he is awake that he is Chuang Tzu for others, and is caught in their butterfly

net”. Orit asked – coming to think of the School – how would it not be a School for nobody, and

what kind of awakeness is required? Orit pointed out that when Lacan founded the School in June

1964 he said - "I found – alone". Lacan called this ‘foundation act’. The foundation is an act but the

School is a collective formation. What, therefore, lies between the act and the School?

Orit offered Borges's story "The Sect of the Phoenix" to perhaps help illustrate something of this

paradox. For Borges the content of the secret in itself is not important, nor is the knowledge

inherent in it but rather it is the act of the subject that ensures the transmission. The act of the

subject stands in the shadow of something that is missing; of the thing that escapes discourse,

allowing the transmission and continued existence of the discourse. Returning to Chuang-tzu’s

dream, Orit suggested the butterfly net as a metaphor for what the analytic community is. This is

what makes it possible for the School not to be for nobody. Orit ended her intervention with the

question: “can we see the image of Chuang-tzu in his dream as a reflection of Lacan before the

excommunication?”

MALKA SHEIN Reported on moments that constitute the psychoanalytic school. First moment on

April 18, 2015 at the study day "Uses of Control", when a lively debate of the binary brought up by

Susana Huler, regarding the analytical act and the guarantee of a school, Malka told about her

decision not to publish the book she wrote other than in the framework of a publishing house, while

instead of guarantee, she chose the word: consent.

The immediate effect was the urgency that she felt to deliver a text to the NLS conference in

Geneva. The clinical vignette was the testimony of Roger quoted from a documentary broadcasted

on April 16, 2015, which was the Holocaust Day in Israel.

The text was posted by NLS secretary with a new heading: "Good or bad intention". That new

heading enabled a third moment; to add a new elaboration to the clinical case. Those moments,

Malka said, constitutes and realizes psychoanalytic school, beyond the statute, member fees, norm

and mechanisms.

In the second panel, interventions relating to cartels and their vicissitudes were presented. ZULLY

FLOMENBAUM, the moderator of the panel notes that the participants were invited to discuss the

following topics: The connection between the logic of the school and the logic of the cartel; the

relationship between the cartels and the pass; writing and transmission in the cartel; what is the

cartel's work for you? And, what is the relationship between the hierarchy of the cartel and

knowledge? Each participant was requested to present a question to another member of the panel in

order to discuss different personal experiences in the panel.

ROSTIK BERSHADSKY presented some of his remarks under the title "ON CARTEL AND ITS

WORK". Rostik pointed out that in this phrase, ‘the work of the cartel’, in comparison with other

configurations of producing or transferring knowledge within the psychoanalytic community, such

as seminars, patient interviews, open discussions, conferences, reading groups, correspondences,

etc., in cartels, the work is what is associated with them. Subsequently, Rostik referred to the

etymology of the word ‘Cartel’ and its different meanings in the field of criminology, and

introduced few similarities with regard to the expected products of criminal cartel syndicates.

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Rostik emphasized the anti-authoritarian segment of the cartel, a segment that has a subversive

character, characterized by non-compliance with an agreed sequence of subordination.

As to the work of the cartels formed within the psychoanalytic community, Rostik offered to

describe the work as a reading unit that invents in the zeitgeist in which it operates, and whereas

this reading unit does not assume uniformity of reading. Finally, Rostik concluded that the way in

which a cartel operates related to the working method of each of its members.

VERED ASHBOREN noted that when working in a cartel one needs to dare to walk an extra mile

without stable land beneath them. The Cartel, with the colleagues and the Plus Une, can be a control

on the way to new knowledge. Vered added that this ensures that one does not deviate from the

direction Lacan taught us. A direction which is dictated by the ethics Lacan stressed so much in his

teaching. Thus, working in a cartel is not easy. It can be made possible only in a pleasant

environment, friendly, which is a safe place to come to with one's questions, to be exposed in your

work and deficiencies. Vered concluded saying: “Maybe we do not eat enough pizza together…”

SAMUEL NEMIROVSKY argues that one of the conclusions of the foundations of the Lacanian

School is the concept of Cartels. The cartel was conceived to be the cell and type of work that was

an answer to frontal studies. Representing a ‘No’ to the great scholars; ‘No’ to the great

theoreticians. Preference was given to work in small cells of cartel. Four or five members, no more,

choosing each other, then choosing one that seems to know, one with a low level of charisma, as

Miller describes him, not to inflate but surprise with knowledge, that is able to advance

understandings, break the ghosts of the established ethics, whether Aristotelean or Kantian. This is

the plus one: one who is able to help think anew what we thought was closed and final. The cartel

is presented by Lacan as a table of experimentation that would enable the appearance of new

"revelations"…

SHLOMO LIBER spoke about cartels, analysis and the pass. Shlomo said that sometimes it

happens that these three foundations of the school – cartels, analysis and the pass intersect and

create an unexpected Borromean knot between them. For the most part we can assume they will not

intersect, not at the same time, but only looking back or from the side, as in an anamorphic image,

the intersection could be clearly seen. Shlomo spoke briefly about one such intersection. About its

revelation during the work of one of the cartels; during one of the most difficult parts of his life;

about the onetime expression of Freud "The desire of life", on many of its developments during the

analysis, during an episode of frightful forgetfulness, although there was also a comic aspect during

the time of the testimony itself of the pass.

We thank all the participants for a lively and fruitful day. A lot of work school to be done, to

‘being’ continued… :-)

Report by Netta Nashilevich