Every 2 years, the World Association of Psychoanalysis brings together its members and all those interested in psychoanalysis, in a Congress. It is an opportunity to bring together, across borders and languages, all those who wish to contribute to the analytic cause in the Lacanian orientation..
Since 1994, the WAP members have been meeting every two years, first in the form of assemblies (in 1994 and 1996) and since 1998, in congresses. The WAP congresses are dedicated to treating a theme in order to contribute to the advancement of the discipline. It is the occasion of an updating of the doctrine and of the psychoanalytic practice in order to take into account the context of its offer in the world. By exposing their current practice, during the clinical sequences of the congress, psychoanalysts put the results of their experience to the test, and have them recognised by the audience. By submitting their everyday practice to a precise orientation, it is a question of learning to speak even better about their practice.
Each congress is thus a unique occasion for the School One to make contact with itself, a strong moment not devoid of joy. The desire to be One with the multiple from which this World Association was born, is reinvigorated every time.
The Congresses
Lacan advances: “everyone is mad” and he adds: “that is to say, delusional”. What kind of delusion is he talking about? And what does “everyone” imply? You will discover here that this sentence was not a provocation, but rather an anticipation of what the fall of the father would open up. A formidable movement of reading the world, and a clinic that gives singularity its place.
“Woman does not exist”: by pronouncing these words in Italy, Lacan caused a scandal. Today, this aphorism has lost none of its subversion. But what was Lacan trying to say? If Woman does not exist, women indeed exist, one by one. It is essential to be able to transmit what is at stake in this not-all feminine. Not-all taken in the phallic dimension. This will be of interest to men too!
More than 120 years after the Traumdeutung, what can we still say about dreams? Do analysts continue to take this royal road to the unconscious? And do patients spontaneously recount their dreams? Should they be invited to do so? And how to interpret them? Freud did not hesitate to put his two-penny worth in, going so far as to say that the signifiers that emerge from the narration of the dream are an integral part tothe dream. Although this Congress could not take place due to the pandemic, here you will find texts, interviews, and interventions to wake you up.
The consequences of the fall of the father have brought about new apparatuses and solutions for psychotic subjects who do not pass through the Oedipal Name-of-the-Father. For these “unclassifiables” of the clinic, Jacques-Alain Miller proposed the name of ordinary psychosis. Only an analyst, in his listening, in his act, can become a partner in the discoveries and inventions of these subjects. Analysts testify to this in this Congress from the perspective of everyday psychosis.
Lacan’s last teaching gives rise to a new name for the subject of the unconscious: the parlêtre. It is a question of including the body in the operation. Psychoanalysis, with its exploration of the unconscious, is inconceivable without the body. This Congress explores the consequences of this knotting.
What is the real? Is it specific to each century? Does it have to do with the so-called reality or does its impact create a reality on bodies specific to each one? How can we read the real, in so far as it escapes meaning, saying and the law? This congress opens a breach in what is most political about psychoanalysis.
The symbolic order is not what it used to be. Lacan predicted the fall of the father and the rise to the zenith of the object a. What are the consequences? Can we still speak about an “order” in the age of the internet? Is it not rather the reign of cacophony or polyphony? What are the consequences for democracy? For speech itself? For interpretation and the act of the analyst?
From the moment we speak, we are condemned to the semblant. Our being depends on the speech that supports it, a being made of appearances. The semblants are pluralised and from this plurality, the singularity of the symptom can be heard. It is through the dimension of the sinthome that the new semblant can come to light, extracted from the psychoanalytic experience itself. This Congress is both an opportunity to take stock and to open a perspective for reading: practice, theory, but also civilization and its discontents.
This congress traces a path from the Name of the Father, the theme of the previous congress, to the Lacanian objects proper, the objects a. The Lacanian father is the one who humanises desire in line with the paths laid out by the law. This presupposes that he ceases to ignore what causes his desire: it is the function of that properly Lacanian object, the object a.
The title refers to the unique “Name of the Father” which comes from tradition. The subtitle indicates the limits of the paternal myth and the Oedipus complex and emphasises its plural dimension. The Name of the Father is not a unique figure, but a function: he has as many names as it has supports. Its function is to link the law to desire. It is indeed the operativity of the Name of the Father in clinical practice that will be explored in this congress.
The fourth Congress of WAP Members was held in Brazil – Bahia on the isle of Comandatuba from 3 to 6 August 2004.
Jacques-Alain Miller delivered the lecture, subsequently published under the title “A Fantasy”.
The third Congress of WAP members was held in Brussels from 16 to 18 July 2002, followed by the XIIth International Encounter of the Freudian Field entitled: “The Clinic of Sexuation, Impossible and Biases”.
The second Congress of WAP members was held on 13 and 14 July 2000 at the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires. The first day was devoted to the reports of the schools and the work presented at the College of The Pass. On 14 July, the General Assembly and the Great Conversation were held. The School One was founded on that day. The XIth International Encounter of the Freudian Field followed the Members’ Congress, from 15 to 17 July 2000, under the title “The Analytic Session” and the subtitle “Logics of the Treatment and Unforeseen Event”.
The first Congress of WAP Members was held on 21 and 22 July 1998 at the Palacio de Congresos in Barcelona.