Wednesday, October 23, 2013 (7:00 pm to 8:30 pm)
READING SEMINAR
NEW 2013-2014 PROJECT
WRITING AND PSYCHOSIS: LACAN/SCHREBER
“The month of November, 1895, marks an important time in the history of my life and in particular in my own ideas of the possible shaping of my future. … During that time the signs of a transformation into a woman became so marked on my body, that I could no longer ignore the imminent goal at which the whole development was aiming. In the immediately preceding nights my male sexual organ might actually have been retracted had I not resolutely set my will against it, still following the shirring of my sense of manly honor; so near completion was the miracle.” (from Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. New York: New York Review of Books, p. 163)
We will start from Lacan’s reinterpretation of the famous case of Judge Daniel Paul Schreber. Lacan’s reading of the case is unortodox—he replaced Freud’s interpretation of Schreber’s case as being determined by the patient’s “rejection of homosexuality” (for Freud, Schreber had to imagine that he was turning into a woman in order to accept the idea that he was going to have sex with a man or with a male father figure). Lacan stressed transsexual jouissance. In Schreber’s delusion of being transformed into a woman, Lacan found the lineaments for a new theory of sexual identity. Lacan’s original theory of madness will lead us to a broader consideration of writing and psychosis.
In this reading group we engage in a close reading of the texts followed by a discussion. The seminar is open to everyone interested.
Main Reading for 10/23/13:
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III The Psychoses 1955-1956
W. W. Norton, 1993. Chapters I to III, pp. 3-43.
Additional reading: Memoirs of my nervous illness, Daniel Paul Schreber, (The New York Review of Books, 2000.)
Kelly Writers House, Room 202, 38th and Locust Streets, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Curated by Patricia Gherovici.
Questions? Email contact@lacangroup.org.