The School
The New Lacanian School was founded in 2003. It has its address at 5 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris. Its statutes are included in its Directory.
It is one of the seven Schools of Psychoanalysis of which the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP) is composed. Together with the European Schools of the WAP (France, Spain and Italy), it is a member of the EuroFederation of Psychoanalysis (EFP).
The NLS has a decision-making body, the Executive Committee, which is in charge of its management for the time of its mandate. It is appointed for two years by the President of the WAP. It also has an advisory body, the Council of the NLS. This is composed of the members of the Executive Committee and the current Chairs / Presidents of the Affiliated Societies. A Secretariat for Eastern Europe is in function. Its Chair is also a member of the Council of the NLS.
The NLS has currently nearly 200 members, who are admitted following a highly selective admission policy. After consideration and homologation of their application by the WAP, members are designated by the Admission Commission of the NLS. It comprises the President of the EuroFederation in office and the outgoing President of the NLS.
The list of members and their contact information is included in a Directory which is published every two years. It is public, updated and searchable on the website of the NLS. In addition to the founding texts of the NLS and its orientation, members are included therein as Practising Analysts (AP). They may also be recognised by the School under the title of AME (Analyst Member of the School), insofar as the School guarantees the role they play in the formation that it offers. Members are appointed as such by the WAP-Europe Commission of the Guarantee. Furthermore they may be recognized under the temporary title of AE (Analyst of the School) issued for three years to those who, at the end of the procedure known as “pass”, are judged to be capable of throwing light on crucial problems for psychoanalysis through their testimony during this period. A regulation on the pass is in effect. Members were informed of this.
The two official languages of the NLS are French and English. It is European and international. It covers several countries which in fact gather a multiplicity of languages: Greek, Dutch, Hebrew, Polish, German, Danish, Bulgarian, Russian and others. It is composed by Societies and Groups, of different sizes and specific history. It also has members with no group, in various and sometimes remote locations on the planet.
Beyond its members, the NLS is composed of and recognises Societies affiliated to the NLS, Groups affiliated to the NLS and Groups associated to the NLS.
The Affiliated Societies are the London Society (Great Britain), the ASREEP-NLS (Switzerland), the GIEP-NLS (Israel), the Hellenic Society (Greece) and the Kring voor Psychoanalyse (Dutch speaking circle of Belgium). The Affiliated Groups are the Warsaw Circle (Poland), the Cracow Circle (Poland), ICLO-NLS (Ireland), NLS-Copenhagen (Denmark) and the the Bulgarian Society of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Bulgaria). The Associated Groups are the ACF-Portugal (Portugal), the Lacanian Circle of Melbourne (Australia), the Köln-Paris Group and the NLS-Quebec (Quebec – Canada).
Each Society or Group has its own statutes, which bind it organically, in one way or another, to the NLS. Each Society or Group consists of members. The status of member of a Society or a Group only qualifies them as such and not as members of the NLS. The policy and decisions of admission of members into Societies and Groups are carried out statutorily and according to each country’s specific legislation, in close relationship with the NLS and its instances.
Aims and Action
The NLS aims at producing that psychoanalysis and (something of) the Lacanian psychoanalyst exists in its various locations worldwide. It inscribes and maintains, constantly and firmly, its action and its politics in the analytic orientation opened up by Freud and by Lacan.
The rigour of the Schools of the WAP is recognised in the field of psychoanalysis that they found and well beyond. Their numerous outreach activities, as well as their exchange and teaching events, which meet a response and a following like no other, testify to this.
An exigency is founded in the NLS for a relentless work of research as produced from the experience of the analytic treatment itself, with and by those who supported this experience. This work produces psychoanalysis, therefore, as a discourse differentiated from the ciphering and the protocolisation of the human being, which plunge discontent in current civilisation in the form of scientism. It differs from psychotherapeutic practice, and aims beyond its therapeutic action, warned that there is no normality in the speaking being, that an incurable remains, an ineliminable and non-conforming singularity of the symptom in him, which founds his humanity.
It is in this research work, which is largely public, open to all, that its results are validated. These resonate within numerous other discourses, throughout the world. This work is not without political actions for the defense of psychoanalysis and its ethics. It is its debate with society.
The NLS aims to deepen the Lacanian orientation of psychoanalysis, to demonstrate its therapeutic efficacy and the mainsprings of its action beyond this dimension to which it is not reduced; it aims to intervene in the growing impasses of civilisation without getting lost within it, to support the formation of psychoanalysts and to highlight before the public, its advancements, its foundations and opinions, its titles and guarantees. This is what establishes its unity and its orientation. It is the responsibility of the School, of its directors and members, to produce this work, according to the ethical and epistemological principles on which its praxis is based. It is an exigency.
The NLS organises an annual Congress (alternately in one of its locations), links and organises numerous activities such as conferences, seminars, symposia and congresses, study-days, public interventions, cartel work (of which it keeps a catalogue), etc., among its members and between the various entities that comprise it. The NLS has its own scientific publications and local publications, its website and its mailing lists which encourage epistemic exchange, linkages and promotion of information.
The School and its members thus contribute to the expansion of psychoanalysis and also participate of the activities of the Institute of the Freudian Field, the Clinical Sections and Antennas, as well as of the activities of their specific groups such as the T&A (Toxicomania and Alcoholism) and the Institute of the Child (bringing together the work of the CEREDA, the CIEN and the RI3.
Finally, on November 8th 2009, Jacques-Alain Miller created the Popular University Jacques Lacan (UPJ-L). NLS members are invited to play their part in it.
Yves Vanderveken
2016
Source : The NLS website