Max Ernst, Fish Fight, 1917
workshop
Lacan, Pearl King, and the IPA: Clinical and Political Implications
A Workshop with Nicolas Guérin and Manuel Hernández
Saturday, March 22, 2025
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM (ET)
10 AM: Clinical and Political Effects of Object a : Lacan’s Reading of a Case of Pearl King’s — Nicolas Guérin
Lacan’s commentaries on Pearl King’s 1963 paper “On a Patient’s Unconscious Need to Have ‘Bad Parents’” (1963-74) have been little read in English or French psychoanalytic circles. Yet what Lacan says about the clinical effect of the object a in the treatment of psychosis changes and corrects what we usually find on this subject in contemporary Lacanian analytic literature. His thoughts on the object are in turn indissociable from the stakes of Lacan’s severance from the International Psychoanalytic Association and the reconfiguring of his teaching from the 1960s on.
1:30 PM: Pearl King and the IPA: Lacan and Tavistock — Manuel Hernández
In 1956 Lacan said that “The secret history of the IPA has not yet been written nor should it be.” How could the secret history of the very association Freud founded not be relevant? Are we not still symbolically implicated in that silenced history? The IPA investigation of the Société Française de Psychanalyse in the early ‘60s was marked by a history that only in 2012 was declassified from English and American government archives. We will trace some of its key elements, including the roles Pearl King, Pierre Turquet, and John R. Rees played in it, and examine the subtle and tense relationship Lacan had with the Tavistock group. Lacan criticized part of its “cultural” project with exquisite irony in his text “La psychiatrie anglaise et la guerre.” We will address the crucial clinical implications of this debate.
Suggested readings: Rees, John R.: “The Shaping of Psychiatry by War” ( https://bit.ly/4fbCFq3 ). Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World (1932). King, Pearl: “Activities of British psychoanalysts during the Second World War and the influence of their inter-disciplinary collaboration on the development of psychoanalysis in Great Britain,” International Review of Psychoanalysis, 16:15, 1989. Lacan: “La psychiatrie anglaise et la guerre” (1947), Autres écrits . Guérin, Nicolas, Marie Lenormand, Sylvain Mauburn: Jacques Lacan et le cas de Pearl King (érès, Toulouse 2024).
Location: In-person in NYC and online via Zoom. Fee: $50; For students with ID: $20. Registration details to follow.
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Nicolas Guérin practices psychoanalysis in France, where he is a member of the associations Le pari de Lacan and L’instance lacanienne. A university professor, he also serves on the editorial board of the psychoanalytic review essaim . His most recent books include Logique et poétique de l’interprétation psychanalytique. Essai sur le sens blanc (érès, 2019) and Jacques Lacan et le cas de Pearl King. La possibilité d’une psychanalyse (érès, 2023).
Manuel Hernández practices psychoanalysis in Mexico City and is a member of L’école lacanienne de psychanalyse. He has published five books: El sueño de la inyección a “Irma"; Lacan en México, México en Lacan, Miller y el mundo; Localización del analista. La formación analítica de Freud a Lacan; El análisis de Lacan; Lacan y el diario de su análisis. He directed Litoral editores and the magazine litoral and is currently active in the publishing world with two new projects, Púrpura ediciones and Triskel.