The XVth Congress of the WAP will be held from 30 April to 3 May 2026 in Paris, in person and via videoconference. Its theme: “There is no sexual relation”.
Direction: Ricardo Seldes.
Arguments
From the Mystery to the Secret of the Sexual
Ricardo Seldes
The challenge facing us in the WAP in the presentation of the upcoming Congress, the title of which is an aphorism, reminds us of the excellent results of the last two. It is a short phrase that is not quite a haiku, but rather a capsule of knowledge created by Lacan, and articulated by him on various occasions. The forthcoming Scilicet will give an account of some twenty of them.
We can consider the possibility of tracing its origins both in the course of Lacan’s teachings as well as in the Freudian constructions that succeed in referring us to the logical consequences derived from the aphorism, there is no sexual relation, so as to ask ourselves how did Lacan affirm, refute and disseminate Freud’s developments, as well as his own, in order to conclude in a precise saying that is always dynamic and put into question.
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“There Is No Sexual Relation”
Christiane Alberti
The title of this Congress, “There is no sexual relation”, calls for an immediate remark: this is the first time the term “sexual” has appeared in the title of a wap congress. We therefore have the opportunity to question what made Freud’s discovery so scandalous, but also so successful, if we consider that Freud contributed to the dissolution of civilized sexual morality, by bringing to light the importance of the sexual in the psychical economy, to the extent of pointing out infantile sexuality. He extended its significance far beyond animal mating and genitality, considering, for example, that in infantile sexuality (referring to the paediatrician Lindner), it is in sucking that we must see the prototype of the sexual drive: a primary, primordial claim to voluptuousness, independent of vital need, a state of the silent body in relation to itself. As he writes, radically, in “‘Civilized’ sexual morality…” the sexual drive behaves in a self-willed manner.
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