Three punctuations on the EOL Pass

1 – In every change there is a new wager…

Fabián A. Naparstek

In my opinion, the wager was the signifier that marked our work and I think I share this with my colleagues in the College of the Pass.

In fact, it became clear that within the College a wager was made linked to the conjuncture of the pass in the WAP and more specifically in the EOL. When there is an impasse in the functioning of the device, we advance with a new wager. It is a reasoned wager, that will be tested and will not be definitive. With regard to the specificity of the EOL, the crisis of the pass in 2005, which led to the suspension of the pass for some time, was very present in our debate. We highlighted the specific nature of that crisis in its difference from the situation is 2023. Each moment supposes different coordinates and different wagers as well. On this occasion, the major wager for the regulation followed Jacques-Alain Miller’s proposal of the one-time pass. But, in what is specific to the EOL, we have also produced a change in what was the secretariat. We went from a secretariat – of three members – to a secretary. “A secretary who agrees to take the risk on his own account” (J.-A. Miller in the presentation of The Birth of the Freudian Field). Finally, there was also the change of the procedure as “an island surrounded by a sea of silence” – so stated when it was set up at the EOL – in order to disturb its isolation and involve the School in the Pass itself. In short, in every change there is a new wager.

2 – What is an analyst?…

Flory Kruger

1. What did it mean for you to be elected to the EOL General Assembly, to be part of the cartel of the pass?

It was a very moving experience for me! There were several colleagues who put themselves forward and who would certainly have had an equal chance of being voted by the EOL members. However, I had no hesitation in applying. At the moment I decided to do so, I was reassured that I had done the right thing, as I felt it was an unfinished business in my relationship with the School. Although the outcome is always uncertain in this kind of procedure, I also had the impression that I could be chosen. If I hadn’t been, I would have felt a certain pain, a certain emptiness, but at least I had expressed my desire to occupy the position I really wanted to be in.

2. What prompted you to put your name forward?

Since the foundation of the School in 1992, I had occupied various positions: Admissions Commission, Guarantee Commission, Director and then President of the EOL Council, President of FAPOL. I was Director of the organisation of several of the International Meetings of the Freudian Field and also of the Congresses of the WAP, but I had never been linked to the procedure of the pass and that was a place I have always wanted to occupy because it has to do with the clinic, with psychoanalysis in intention, with the question around which Lacan’s School was founded, about what is an analyst? That’s why I decided to apply for it.

3. How do you see the perspective of this work that you are going to do for the first time?

With great joy because I will be able to listen and understand how an analyst comes out of his own analysis. With a lot of enthusiasm and with the desire to go through this experience in order to learn from it.

3 – Wager…to make the transmission of the passer resonate… in an unprecedented way…

Eugenia Serrano

On both 10 June and 25 June 2023, Jacques-Alain Miller makes brief but forceful references to the function of the passer in the device of the pass. In both cases, he refers directly to the participation of the passer in the decision of nomination. On the other hand, on 4 July of the same year, in an interview circulated by AMP Uqbar News, in response to the question of whether it would be possible for the former passer who had become AS to be invited to speak about his experience as a passer, Jacques-Alain Miller states: “The passer testifies before the jury, the AS before the School (…) One question remains open: should we also give the floor to passers who have not been appointed AS? So far, this has not been done anywhere. But this is only a custom, not an article in the regulations”.(Miller J-A «Réponses à trois questions provenants du Brésil», La Cause du désir, nª114, juin 2023, p.124/5)

The new pass regulations of the EOL – voted by the Extraordinary Assembly on 31 October 2023 – aims to renew the system, taking the pass “out of its extraterritoriality” and involving the whole School. The new composition of the cartel – which includes a self-proposed member voted by the Assembly – makes a hole in the device: “Out of its island, the pass is immersed in the School through the intermediary of the cartel itself”. As for the place of the passers, it seems to me that the aforementioned hole is a strong wager that can make its transmission – that of the passer to the cartel – resonate in an unprecedented way.