EBP Escola Brasileira de Psicanálise: Let’s talk about policy of youth1

Angelina Harari: Good morning, EBP!

What is the contribution of young people to the School today?

There is in the School a certain ageing of its members. What can be done to give the School a touch of youth? There is certainly a difference between the analyst who is young in age, and the analyst who is ‘young’ [i.e. ‘green’] in the sense that they are starting out in analytic practice and studies, not necessarily young in age!

In the preface to the book Lacan Redivivus, Christiane Alberti states, with reference to Lacan[2], that the language of psychoanalysis is always a current language. So how can we get rid of the impression that psychoanalysis is outdated and has problems in including young people? Since the Schools of the WAP are ageing, welcoming the young analyst would be a way of rejuvenating them.

When the EBP was founded, J-A Miller stressed the idea of duration: a School is made to last. The pact of speech with young people, to which the youth project refers, is a bet on the possibility of the School lasting even longer.

In this sense, young people embody the very survival of psychoanalysis, considering, above all, that psychoanalysis is not another form of therapy, of treatment of symptoms. In Lacan’s conception, psychoanalysis is a mode of discourse, it exists as a social bond. Therefore, the presence of the young among us is fundamental, our own future as discourse depends upon it. To this end, it is essential that young people who approach the School and psychoanalysis invest in it and put something into their analytical training.

What is the current interest in young people?

Lacan turned his attention to the young people of his School when he saw that a caste of doctors was forming around him who considered themselves the possessors of analytical knowledge.

One difference between the university and Lacan’s School: in the university, knowledge lies with the professors, it is established, it is universal; in Lacan’s School, unlike the university and the IPA, where knowledge is restricted to the so-called ‘training analysts’ of the institution, we bet that the presence of young people in the EBP would make the knowledge located in certain groups waver, for example, by making use of the structure of the cartel, which favours a discussion and does not establish, a priori, a hierarchy between those who know and those who do not know.

Having said this, there is a tendency for this hierarchy to be reproduced in a School of Lacan too, because we often cultivate the idea of the experienced analyst, one who throughout their analytical practice, has accumulated experience. But Lacan does not think of the analyst from this accumulation of experience. For him, the analyst results from his own experience of analysis. Therefore, the School cannot function either as a church or as a group of experts. It must transmit, within itself, the experience of analysis, its model must be the experience of analysis.

How can we avoid targeting the young “wholesale”?

Jacques-Alain Miller emphasises that analytic discourse, governed by the not-all, implies sustaining the one-by-one, as opposed to the discourse of the master, which considers individuals on a “wholesale” basis and imposes a universal.

The new policy addressed to young people aims to constitute a School that would be not all-young and not all-old, in which the young can temper the old and vice-versa, by shaking up the knowledge of the so-called cognoscenti. Decompleting the analytic group is important and young people will certainly be an agent in this process.

For this, there is something that concerns the School itself and what it offers as a formation – it must be capable of offering themes more connected to the contemporary world. The school will attract the interest of young people if it itself undergoes a process of change in its way of functioning and acting.

It is not a matter, therefore, of seeking a younger language, but of making use of current language in order to reach young people, a language capable of touching the symptoms of the contemporary malaise, in other words, reaching those young persons who certainly bring a question about these symptoms.

In short, we are facing something to be invented!

The One and the Multiple: Identity Drifts of the Multiple[3]

The Brazilian School of Psychoanalysis is multiple and has a difficulty of its own: a balance has to be struck between the One and the multiple. The EBP was the first School founded by the WAP. At that time, Jacques-Alain Miller stressed that the One of the School is fragile and that everything that strengthens it will be welcome, provided that the multiple accepts it willingly.

And today, how is this balance?

The question posed by J.-A. Miller is almost an orientation for us to think how to operate in EBP, composed as it is out of the association of its various sections in various states, by virtue of the continental dimension of the country. The fact is that in Brazil there was not a single pole from which psychoanalysis irradiated, there are various centres from which it is disseminated. The EBP’s structure was conceived when the possibility of exchanges was uncertain and contacts difficult to establish. It was then up to each section to find a way to survive and to advance psychoanalysis.

There is no consensus that the question of the One and the multiple is due to the continental dimension of the country, there is a factor that is both structural and particular: its size and the fact that Brazil is a Federative Republic, therefore, a country in which the multiple exists almost spontaneously in institutional initiatives of all kinds.

Issues relating to the time of its foundation remain: some regional mutualism, a certain reduction of conversations to the space of the Sections. A tension exists in relation to the One of the School: though the Sections have no doubt that their existence depends on the School, the EBP, as One, functions again and again as an extime and not as One in relation to the reality of these Sections.

It can be said that there is no One without a multiple and no multiple without One; it is a dialectical relationship. In the distance between the One and the multiple, the risk of identitarianism – one of the master signifier of our times – arises from a prevalence of the multiple, as absolute, in which the One of the School loses its soul, its identity, its authority, etc.

The One is accepted if the multiple accepts it. Therefore, the engagement of the School’s governing bodies, the Council and the Directorate, in a work that pushes the School towards the EBP as One is paramount. Keeping a fine balance between the One and the multiple is essential.

Therefore, an orientation that aims at the One should be School policy, the Lacanian orientation, whose manifestations are given via the pass, one of the embodiments of this One in the School, our encounters, congresses and national publications give expression to and consolidate this One.

In the multiple EBP, does virtual communication reinforce the One?

The question of whether or not virtual communication reinforces the One goes beyond the School, it covers the clinical practice of each one of us regarding the facilitation brought by virtual communication when faced with the impossibility of the pandemic. But the virtual cannot present itself as One, because it does not guarantee us the developments expected of it.

To treat the institutional question of the analyst’s training and of the functioning of the Schools on the basis of the One and the multiple was no doubt an act of daring on the part of J.-A. Miller, because, at the bottom of this question, we find ourselves faced with the origin of philosophy. It was Parmenides who asked himself about the ontological foundation of being in the One.

The question of the One is addressed to discourses that aim to touch the real. Hence our interest in a politics that reinforces the One, precisely in order to touch a piece of the real concerning the suffering of a subject and symptomatic situations in the social bond. For example, the question of the One supposes the contingent events of the body. And the virtual world brings with it a certain difficulty, for it presents itself as a solution to the problem.

We do not know very well what the effects of the virtual as a technique, as an institutional strategy are. So, it would be little overweening to want to define the virtual, as that which either reinforces the One or weakens the One.

Conversation on the Pass: Towards a College of the Pass[4]

What is the outcome of the conversation on the pass?

The first upshot of the conversation was the fact that it re-established the practice of conversation in the School in relation to the pass, aiming at the College of the Pass, but not only. Besides, Lacan himself made a proposition and not a Diktat on the pass, and this is something that Jacques-Alain Miller constantly reminds us. So, it was not the theory that was in question, but the rules governing the procedure, that is to say, something that can change and that it is advisable to change, because things change according to the times.

Reinforcing the close connection between the pass and debate revealed some dysfunctions. The reports of the cartels of the pass, for example, are not explored enough or not explored in depth, although they are well done. They focus, in each case, on formalising the end of the analysis. The dysfunction thus affects the teaching of the cartel which, being underexplored, overvalues the teaching of the AS provoking a push to autofiction in the testimonies.

Without disregarding the multiple element, it is fundamental having the pass as the One of the orientation on the horizon. How can this be articulated; how can a fruitful tension be produced with regard to this question that might further the pass?

Focussing on certain dysfunctions in the pass device aims to avoid their becoming the subject of gossip for want of a debate about the pass, and even more so about its dysfunctioning.

Trust and reticence

How can one understand this discrepancy? If a device has been continuously in operation since 2006, it is because there is trust. But, at the same time, there is reticence. In the conversation, a certain form of mutualism was indicated in the choice of extime, that is to say, a tendency to choose an extime in order, in some cases, to serve the interests of the group. This aspect was not exactly situated as a symptom of the EBP, but it is nevertheless a problem that we should be alert to.

There is no crisis of the pass at the EBP, but the crisis at ECF has allowed the EBP to reflect on important points, such as the function that the AS has for the School, what the School expects from the AS, the effect of the pass on the collective, the function of the AS in relation to the School collective.

The School expects the AS to be able to interpret the group, which would imply disassociating him- or herself from the master signifier, from a group ideal. In this sense, we also touch upon the question of the reconciliation of each one with his solitude and with his ideal. It is important to remember, and this is indicated in J-A Miller’s text on the “Turin Theory”, that an appointed AS himself has to make do with this collective in which solitude is what connects him to the Other. The College of the Pass can boost this.

To the question posed by J-A Miller in Eight Points On the Crisis of the Pass, the EBP replies that it wishes to keep its pass linked to the WAP. It is a decision of the EBP to maintain this link.

What reason would there be for convening a College of the Pass?

The proposal concerning the College of the Pass is that it should remain active, even if intermittently, in order to promote the conversation about the pass within the School, and not necessarily to deal with a crisis.

In this way, the importance of a College of the Pass is also to guide us so that we can take a position regarding the progress made at the ECF, which goes beyond the dimension of solving a given crisis, by situating the experience of the pass on a higher level. For example, discussing the one-time pass, the modifications that were taking place on the basis of the experience of our pass device in relation to the passers, the choice of the passers, the contact with the Analyst Members of the School (AMS) who indicate the passers, etc..

Is there a College of the Pass in view?

Yes, and it will perhaps be somewhat different in nature to our previous experiences of the College of the Pass.