Activities Associated with the Forum

Ngā Mahi a te Hui Wānanaga

Trans-Tasman Seminar 2025

From the Other Side: The Place of Feminine Jouissance in the Lacanian Clinic

What is this other jouissance to which women, the Other sex, and some men, have access? What are its clinical consequences? The work that Chantal Degril, Esther Faye, and Susan Schwartz will present in this year's Trans-Tasman Seminar arises from a cartel formed in response to Colette Soler's recent writing on the place of woman in Lacan's work: Une clinique d' exception (A clinic of exception) of 2022, and Lacan et l'être femme (Lacan and the woman being), published this year. As neither of these texts is translated into English, we would like to speak with you about some of the concepts that have particularly engaged our interest.

The Other side? We are referring to Lacan's logicised Table of Sexuation in Seminar XX, Encore (1972-1973), with the masculine (tout/all phallic) on the left and feminine (pastout/not-all phallic) on the right. The fact that some men are also on the feminine side of the table makes clear that the other jouissance has nothing to do with gender in any anatomical or identificatory sense. As a speaking being, woman is within the universal of phallic logic, the logic of language, and she experiences the phallic jouissance of the fantasy, drives and symptoms that belong to the language unconscious, and attempt to make the sexual relation exist. However, those on the Other side of the table of sexuation also have access to a supplementary, non-phallic jouissance, that cannot be spoken about as it is outside language. This is the position of the pastoute, the feminine not-all which is the focus of our research. It is a position occupied in relation to a particular jouissance, a jouissance that does not pertain to the phallic One, but is taken one by one.

The format of this year's Trans-Tasman Seminar varies from those prior: one Seminar on Saturday, October 10th with three papers, each exploring an aspect of the topic.

The image we have chosen to accompany our theme is 'Untitled 2013' by Elizabeth Newman. She was an Australian artist and Lacanian psychoanalyst who died this year. She explored ways of representing the unrepresentable in her art. In her book More than what there is, Newman said: "My practice consisted in making a cut in the material. I think of this cutting as a writing… and therefore as an articulation of a lack that doesn 't exist until after it is articulated. … Art of this sort seems to have a relation to time and to silence " (2013, 3-Ply, Melbourne). What can be spoken and what cannot.

Please see the Events Page for further details

The Trans-Tasman Seminar

The Trans-Tasman seminar is the result of a collaboration between members of the Forum of Melbourne, Esther Faye and Susan Schwartz, and of the Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand, Chantal Degril, within the frame of the International of the Forums of the School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field (IF-SPFLF). Its aim is to contribute to Lacanian discourse in our region and beyond by applying theoretical concepts to particular clinical cases. In 2024, Esther Faye and Susan Schwartz became members of the Forum of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Vincent Hawkins, Montype print

In response to the IF-SPFLF’s theme for 2025-2026, ‘The ethics of psychoanalysis and the others’, this Colloquium – a group of 10 forum members – is focusing on the ethics of psychoanalysis in relation to the psychoanalytic act, the latter being a key invention of Lacan’s.

It is a space for discussion and the sharing of questions and ideas among colleagues arising from their reading of Seminar XV: The Psychoanalytic Act, and their own research on the topic.

The Colloquium will continue to meet until a new theme is chosen at the Rendezvous in July 2026, in São Paulo.

Reading Groups

Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent (1973-1974)

Currently there is a group of us reading Jacques Lacan, Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent (1973-1974).

• Chantal Degril

• Crispin Balfour

• Tony Carusi

Beginning the Week with Freud

There is an International Group of us (including forum members) reading the entire Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. We meet on Zoom every Monday morning at 7:10 am (New Zealand Time) and read aloud a page at a time (including footnotes) for fifty minutes according to a weekly roster. We then have ten to fifteen minutes to discuss the day’s reading. We began in May 2021 and expect to be reading for about another five to seven years. If you are interested in joining please contact Crispin Balfour.

Cartels 2024-2026

On the Concept of Lalangue

Cartel of the Pastoute

A Note On Cartels

A cartel is a way of working invented by Lacan in 1964, both on a collective and individual basis. 

Cartels are small groups composed of at least three people, five at the most, plus-one in charge of the selection, discussion and ensuring the regularity of the work. A common theme is initially agreed upon and each member selects a question he or she wants to research individually. Participants take turns at presenting their work.

Cartels are dissolved after two years of existence, so as to avoid as much as possible an effect of ‘glue’ and of imaginary relations among its participants. A permutation takes place at the end of that period and new cartels are created as a result.

If any member wishes to propose a new activity, please contact the forum.