The School
The School of psychoanalysis is a specific form of link among analysts. It was invented by J. Lacan as a response to the impasses of the associative form that were founded by Freud himself. The School is also, as Lacan recalls in 1964, a shelter against the discontents of civilization. It is not of psychoanalysts, it is of psychoanalysis for it’s aim is to guarantee that there be chances for the analytic act, that there be analyst!
The School of the Forums of the Lacanian Field is governed by the text of “Principles for a School oriented by the teachings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan”. The Forums are oriented to the School that gives them its sense, since it is the School that is dedicated to cultivate the analytic discourse. Thus, the School is denominated School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field (SPFLF).
Experience proves that this discourse is always threatened by repression, by the tendency of getting lost and diluted in common discourse. Even though the psychoanalyst “is only authorized by himself”, this authorization in act cannot be sustained without some others, in a set animated by a transference of work and oriented by the analytic cause.
By way of the cures, the control analysis, the personal work on the texts, the common elaboration in small groups called cartels, by the test of transmission of the pass, the School makes an effort to put in circulation and submit to control the knowledge (savoir) that is deposited from the experience and without which there is no analytic act. For this central place given to the elaboration of knowledge is called a School, but no less than for its reference to an ethics in accord with psychoanalytic discourse.
The Cartel
Jacques Lacan proposed the cartel as the School’s basic approach to work on psychoanalysis. A basic and vital work for an analyst. It is a small group of four people (sometimes three or five). There is then the “plus one,” another chosen by the four, who is responsible for supporting the working effort and watching to its results.
The experience of working in a cartel is limited to two years, after which the cartel is disolved. This is of import at the level of avoiding imaginary group effects. The Cartel remains the one tool we have to counter the pensée unique.
The aim of the cartel is double. On the one hand it encourages each member to participate actively in thinking about psychoanalysis, its theory and practice, so as not to remain in the position of consumer of texts and various teachings. Certainly, these are integral to his or her training, but not enough. And on the other, it allows everyone’s thinking, “open as it is to all kinds of wanderings in isolation, to encounter work in common, with others, and in a sufficiently small number, such that each one can feel he is working in his own name, with the possibility of a genuine “work transference.””
Cartel Meetings
Cartel Meetings
The Colorado Analytic Forum organizes Cartel meetings often, which frequently includes work of colleagues of other Forums in the zone or in the Americas. These meetings among working cartels allow the exchange between different cartels working in the same theme, and also share the different aspects of work taking on in different latitudes of our diverse community, which more often than not open new paths. These Cartel meetings are an opportunity where the larger community of the School gets to hear about the work carried on in these smaller groups and also, a chance to debate and question the work with a lager number of people than those in the cartel.
“In this sense, in the SPFLF, the cartel is a cartel of the School and has no meaning unless connected to the larger community, without which it would be indistinguishable from the random small groups that multiply everywhere.
Information on these meetings appears on the various sites of the various zones of the IF-EPFCL.”
The Pass and the AS
In his text, “Proposition on the Psychoanalyst of the School” (1967), Jacques Lacan put forth the dispositif of the pass to the community of his School. He proposed to submit to examination the particular point of an analytic trajectory, often after the end of analysis, the point at which there is a passing from analysand to analyst, with the emergence of desire of the analyst.
This dispositif is a way to respond to the impasses encountered in the IPA, where the connection between the analysis of candidate and their own praxis was missing.
Most importantly his proposition “is related to the fundamental thesis: that in his act “the analyst can only authorize himself”, and from that “to call someone an analyst-no one can do that”. It is precisely this which makes a control necessary, for the “”thesis did not imply at all that anyone is an analyst.””
The dispositif is designed on the model of the witticism. An analysand, called a “passant” (one who is passing), believes he has come to the end of his question as analysand and offers to testify to this. His testimony is offered to two “”passeurs””, designated as such by their analysts, and without their consent. The passers -because of where they are in their own analyses- have been judged by their analyst, in our School an AMS, capable of understanding what is being attested to by the one passing from analysand to analyst.
The two passers transmit what they have grasped from the testimony of the “”passant”” before a jury, which eventually authenticates the testimony by granting the title of A.S., Analyst of the School.
In the School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field, the function of the jury is assumed by cartels, which are called the cartels of the pass. These cartels, composed of members from within the International College of the Guarantee (ICG), are multinational, multilingual and of brief duration, conformed and disolved for each pass.
The Guarantee
The EPFCL adheres to the two titles of guarantee defined by Lacan in his “October 9 proposal on the psychoanalyst of the School.”
- The Title of Analyst of the School (A.S.)
This title is granted to those who, having completed the process of the pass and given testimony regarding the progression of their own analyses, are judged capable of making a contribution to the advancement of crucial problems in psychoanalysis. - The Title of Analyst Member of the School (A.M.S.)
The title of “A.M.S.” (Analyst Member of the School) is extended to analysts who have proven themselves as practitioners. This title signifies the confidence given to practitioners who have proven their qualifications sufficiently for the School to guarantee them to external entities. - INTERNATIONAL ACCREDITATION COMMITTEE OF THE AMS
The second year of its mandate, the ICG composes from among its members those who will be responsible for the task of the International Accreditation Committee.