The Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand was created in 2010. The Forum is part of the International of Forums - School of the Forums of Psychoanalysis in the Lacanian Field (IF-SFPLF), which was created in 2001 with the objective of offering a new institutional alternative to a model where the identification of an idealized image, incarnated by the person of a chief prevails. The aims of the Forums and the School are inscribed in the foundational act of the School of Jacques Lacan, oriented by the teachings of Sigmund Freud (link to ‘Foundational Texts’).

The main objective of the Forums is to contribute to the presence and maintenance of the psychoanalytic discourse among other discourses in the conjectures of our century. The Forums are not Schools and they do not provide any analytical guarantee in terms of a formal training. Jacques Lacan wrote “I have never spoken about analytic formation. I have spoken about the formations of the unconscious” (link to the text: ‘Address to the Assembly of the Freudian School’). The Forums provide a space for discussion, reflection and research on questions pertaining to the psychoanalytic theory and practice, and to the question of transmission in the psychoanalytic field, which is always to be re-interrogated. The Forums offer a space where plurality and the multiplicity of discourses are welcome.

In the IF, Forums are grouped into six geographical and five linguistic zones: France, Spain, Italy, South America, the Multilingual zone (Poland, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon), and the Anglophone zone (North America, UK, Australia, Israel and Aotearoa New Zealand).

The ANZ Forum offers activities free of charge, activities initiated by its members and based on a transference to the work (link to ‘Activities’). Members of the Forum also have free access to other events organised by the Forums of the same linguistic zone and Forums of other geographical zones.