Tony Hughes – Freud's Group, Lacan's Cartel and the Toric Organisation
 
Issue 45 (Autumn 2010)  Pages – 71-85
 
Lacan put the work of the cartels at the core of the transformation of the analyst. His design follows Freud‟s model of hierarchical organisations but modifies it in order to establish it on a rigour and logic which would facilitate each member of the cartel to develop his/her own subjective intuition in pursuit of their own transformation as analysts. This paper follows the trajectory of Freud‟s analysis of groups, to Lacan‟s circular organisation. The author suggests that if Lacan had used a model of the torus as a basis for his invention, that the results might have been more in line with what he aimed to achieve.
 
Introduction: Cormac Gallagher‟s paper The Founding Act, the Cartel and the riddle of the PLUS ONE in Issue 44, Summer 2010 of The Letter points out the failure of the cartels over the last fifty years. He attributes this failure to the „confusion, partly cultivated by Lacan, around the real or imaginary status of [the] plus one and its function in promoting the work of the cartel.‟….