Activities of the Forum
Ngā Mahi a te Hui Wānanaga
The Colloquium 2025-2026
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
Angus Craig
Chantal Degril
Crispin Balfour
Tony Carusi
Plus-One: Radu Turcanu (Forum France)
(this cartel is now closed).
Cartel of the Pastoute
Chantal Degril
Esther Faye
Susan Schwartz.
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.