Interviews of actuality of the Schools
Mondō: Good morning, SLP. We are here with the president of the SLP CF (Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis), Laura Storti and the advisor of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, Carlo De Panfilis. First question: what aggiornamento for the SLP, who wants to start?
Regarding the aggiornamento, it is necessary to understand how the three instances can be articulated: the Institutes, the headquarters of the School and the secretariats.
Our School is the only one among the seven schools of the WAP that, in recent years, not only has there been no increase in requests for accreditation, but in recent years there has been a decrease in requests for membership. In relation to young people, it is a question of sustaining the demand, the number of young people in the SLP is very low, so we have to define the terms that sustain the demand for admission.
Among the participants we have some young people, while among the members we do not. There are, up to the moment the entrance in the SLP, two times, first the demand to be a participant and then, successively, the demand to be a member. So we will try to undo this automatism. To make the request for membership does not necessarily imply a prior request to become a participant. What is at stake is supporting, as far as young people are concerned, the demand for membership.
Regarding the question of our premises, the SLP has a headquarters in Milan which are rented premises, where for the most part administrative management functions are carried out. We believe that the time has come to acquire premises that can be a meeting point for the whole community. The School has been alive and present for 20 years and, with its growth, its complexity is also increasing.
There is an idea to increase the number of members of the advisory board, precisely in order to establish a more constant dialogue on the needs and growth of our School. On this point there is controversy, or rather a reflection on whether the council should continue to represent each of the most representative secretariats of the school. It is often possible to rely on the principle of permutation to regulate the localist logic, the logic of the cities. Localist logic means that some people even ask to join the secretariat of other cities, not the one in which they live. The reason is that sometimes they do not feel comfortable in the city with the work that has been done, and so they ask to take part in another secretariat. There is something here that the aggiornamento can do to bring about changes in these local difficulties.
Translation by Philip Dravers
…the NYP breaks an automatism….
Mondō: Good morning, we are here with the AMS of the SLP and the WAP, Domenico Cosenza, a young participant, Manuele Cicuti and Sebastiano Vinci, advisor of the SLP. The question: where do young people in Italy come from and who wants to start?
Domenico Cosenza: Most of the SLP members come from the training institutes of the Freudian Field, the Freudian Institute based in Milan and Rome, the IPOL based in Turin and the Higher Institute of Freudian Studies based in Catania and Naples. Many of our future members come from there.
For the entry of young people, what are the fundamental, foundational aspects that cannot be renounced? These elements are analysis and, definitely, supervision. Other aspects that were taken into consideration: cartels and participation in congresses with the presentation of clinical cases. We think that these are pillars that can sustain a demand to become a member of the School. The SLP has a particularity, which is that of its ‘participants’. This particularity has carried over through the years from the first GISEP, the Italian Group of the European School of Psychoanalysis, was constituted.
The New Youth Policy breaks an automatism where the first demand was that of becoming a ‘participant’ and then of becoming a member. What happened is that many participants stopped at this first level of presence. It breaks the automatism and poses the following question to the School and the young person: what is a member and, if this place of participant is maintained, what does a participant do? What is the difference between the two?
It is perceived that the school is taking a gamble on this point and I think that this will have an effect on several young people who are at a point in their analysis that allows them to make this passage. There is a strong desire to give a place to young people. The question “Where do the young people come from?” is not enough, if this determined desire is found in the members of the WAP, we have to raise the question “How can we make psychoanalysis interesting for the young people who will eventually enter the Freudian Field?
Manuele Cicuti: I started in psychoanalysis on the basis of a theoretical interest, as an educator, regarding all psychoanalysis applied to institutions and then this intertwined with my symptom and I looked for an analyst to ask for an analysis.
Translation by Philip Dravers
…the Lacan virus….
Mondō: Good morning Antonio, good morning Mary. We are here, the AMS of the SLP and the WAP, Antonio Di Ciaccia, and the coordinator of the laboratories on the trans issue, Mary Nicotra. An initial question: What does One do for the SLP? Who wants to start?
Antonio Di Ciaccia: The role of the SLP is to pass on the Lacan virus to everyone it meets. If it were a Lacan pandemic, I would be happy. I think that this virus, this One, is not transmitted from the position of the subject supposed to know. The subject supposed to know is too vast and too evanescent. In fact, when Lacan points out his One, he points out the real presence of the analyst, which is something else. I think that our work in the School is to bring out, little by little, in the training that we owe to the young, the importance of the subject supposed to know and its transience, to then move on to the other aspect which is the object position of the analyst which is the truth of that which Lacan pointed out with the desire of the analyst. It is the supervision that makes One, supervision is unthinkable without the School. This One can be declined on at least two levels, one that has to do with the One School, which is the importance of the relation to the analytic discourse beyond the question of groups, the other side is the fact that Lacan relates the position of the beginning of the analytic experience to the One insofar as it is the analyst that is it.
Mary Nicotra: What makes the One of the SLP is the proposal of non-uniformity by the One School, letting singularity prevail. This produces a desire to be with others.
Translation by Philip Dravers