Philadelphia Lacan Study Group

L’Etourdit (1972) is a notoriously difficult text that poses crucial questions for Lacan’s later elaborations. In an essay that foregrounds the dimension of saying and its performative power, Lacan interrogates what he calls the subjective state of dizziness (being étourdi). Tackling all the implications of “saying” in the “talking cure,” he introduces the Unconscious as “half-saying,” a saying that makes one dizzy but also willing to hear through one’s deafness:
“I want to note that here is only a collecting together – ceaselessly fed by the testimony given to me by those whose ears I open – collecting what anyone can get from the mouth of analysands provided at least that they are authorized to assume the place of the analyst.”
Here, the collecting process (recueil) also becomes a welcoming process (accueil). What can we learn about authority, truth, analytic training, sexual difference, and the Real from a reading of L’Etourdit?

The reading seminars are an open forum for the discussion of psychoanalysis. Curated by Patricia Gherovici. Seminars are free and open to all. Questions? Email: contact@lacangroup.org.
WHEN? Wednesday, January 26, 2022. 7-8:30 pm EST via Zoom