Christian Fierens on Identity or Identification: A Technical Problem or a field of Invention

The School of Psychotherapy at SVUH, UCD Psychotherapy Programmes and The Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis invite you to a Public Lecture on Identification as understood from A Reading of the Identification Seminar of Jacques Lacan with Dr. Christian Fierens (Brussels) on Friday 16th June 2023 at 7 pm in the Old lecture Theatre, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4

Our public discourse is awash with reference to Identity. Mental health discourse refers to personality.

What do we understand by these terms - identity, personality? What doe understand, or not understand, about the process of identification?

The psychoanalytic discourse offers an essential  route into our understanding of the process of Identification

Based on his recent book A Reading of the Identification Seminar of Lacan - from the utopia of identity to the motor of invention [Lecture de L'identification de Lacan - De l'utopie d'identité au moteur de l'invention (EME, 2023)] Dr. Fierens will bring to our attention Lacan's proposal regarding identification as

• a      process grounded in the operation of the signifier - the making, or not      making of sense
• the      basis of invention and subjective creativity rather than imprisonment in      an ideal identity

This lecture will be essential listening for anybody working with concepts of identity, personality, self and person in their professional and personal lives.

Dr Christian Fierens practices psychoanalysis in Belgium. He is a psychiatrist and a doctor of psychology;  He has published a number of books including Lecture de l'Étourdit (2002) and  Le discours psychanalytique  [both translated by Cormac Gallagher on www.lacaninireland.com as Reading L’Étourdit and  The Psychoanalytic Discourse respectively]. His L'âme du narcissisme was published in 2016 (and translated by Dr. Michael Plastow as The Soul of Narcissism in 2019) and  his Lecture du sinthome appeared in 2018.