A Reading of The Psychoanalytic Act 1 (1967-1968)

Our chronological working-through of Jacques Lacan's seminars brought us this year to his 'meditation' on the psychoanalytic act - a meditation which was interrupted by the strikes and street violence in Paris in May 1968. Interrupted to such an extent that Lacan tells us that we have heard less than half of what he had planned to say.[1] The seminar then came to a premature end and with only fifteen recorded sessions is the shortest to date in the Lacanian canon.…