"NOTE TO SELF:

It's Time to Learn Lacan!"

An Introduction to Lacanian Clinical Theory and Practice

Saturday, December 2, 2023

9:00 am-3:00 pm | In person and online via Zoom

Pre-registration is required

4.5 CE Credits

*Registration closes at 4 pm the day before the event. 

General registration $160; Candidates, students, residents and fellows $95

Bruce Fink, PhD, joins NCP to discuss Lacan’s Clinical Theory.

This meeting is designed for analytically oriented therapists interested in learning how Lacan’s ideas translate into clinical practice. Lacan’s clinical theory will be spelled out in detail; attendees need not be pre-acquainted with Lacan’s work. Attendees should come away with a solid grasp of the reasoning behind the Lacanian emphasis on bringing about four specific change-producing clinical events. The goal of this program is to challenge preconceived notions about how therapy works–particularly, the belief that psychic change chiefly results from a conveyance of the analyst’s knowledge about the patient to the patient—typically in the form of interpretations. The program is structured as a dialogue between student (Richard Tuch) and teacher (Bruce Fink).

Lacan emphasized the task of creating a facilitating environment favoring the emergence of sequestered psychic content that comes forth unwittingly when free association reveals to the patient things he barely knew he knew until he heard himself say as much out loud. Lacanians also facilitate a patient’s use of symbolic (meaningful) speech and tolerance of uncertainty and states of unknowing.

A study of Lacan’s clinical theory calls for nothing less than a thoughtful reconsideration of psychoanalysis’ most basic assumptions about how therapy effects change:

• Whether the unconscious can be made conscious.
• Whether improving a patient’s tolerance of uncertainty and the unknown is a clinically vital goal.
• Whether deconstructing (calling into question) a patient’s core assumptions and prevailing beliefs about who he is as a person is as centrally important as Lacanians claim it to be.
• Whether treatment is better served when the analyst is less forthcoming and less clear about his ideas about the patient.
• Whether it is important to conduct treatment in a fashion that emphasizes the patient’s responsibility for his suffering and for the lion’s share of the clinical work.

Presenters:

Bruce Fink, PhD: Highly recognized, published expert in Lacanian psychoanalysis; MA in Philosophy and PhD in Psychoanalysis, University of Paris, VIII; psychoanalytically trained at the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne, Paris, France. Recipient of the 2015 Book Prize for scholarly contributions, awarded by the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis. Board member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center.

Richard Tuch, MD: Training and Supervising Analyst, New Center for Psychoanalysis, and the Psychoanalytic Center of California. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; former Dean, New Center for Psychoanalysis; Head of the Scholarship Section of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education, American Psychoanalytic Association.

Moderator:

Aranye Fradenburg Joy, PhD: Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara; Research Psychoanalyst; Dean of the New Center for Psychoanalysis; PhD in Psychoanalysis.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and the New Center for Psychoanalysis. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 4.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s)* to disclose with ineligible companies* whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

*Financial relationships are relevant if the educational content an individual can control is related to the business lines or products of the ineligible company.

-Updated July 2021-