This paper is concerned with the background to Lacan’s Seminar I, chapter xx on Augustine’s De magistro, its manuscript sources, editions and structure. The discussion of Augustine’s treatise was suggested to Lacan by Louis Beirnaert but he seems not to have known the text. We argue that there are reasons to think the suggestion came from his Jesuit confrere Paul Henry, the learned co-editor of the Enneads, who was helping to organise an international congress in Paris that year on Augustine. (...) Although the history of the discussion of ‘signs’ goes back to Aristotle, the only attempt to bring signification into a theory of language, prior to Augustine, is found in a passage in Plotinus which Henry had discussed some years earlier. The Latin text of De magistro they used was, unfortunately, badly corrupted and this contributed to a mistaken understanding of its structure. Nevertheless, Lacan found some important parallels between Augustine’s view on teaching and the complexity of understanding and his own teaching and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

This paper gives the wider background to the references in Lacan’s work to the life of Angelus Silesius, the pseudonym of Johann Scheffler [1624-1677], and his principle mystical text, the Cherubinische Wandersmann. A text almost certainly written between 1651 and 1653, a period of deeply personal transition and transformation which culminated in his reception into the Catholic Church and his decision to become a Jesuit. It includes a summary of the development of Christian mysticism in the West and the immediate (...) context in which Lacan’s interest in the mystical emerged. This latter included a study of Silesius by Jean Baruzi. While Derrida and others have considered Silesius’ work not truly mystical, this paper argues that this is to over subscribe to a view in which the mystical is reduced to subjective, individual experience. A reading that only became common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

In this paper the author considers, by a careful reading of the Regula Benedicti (RB) and its sources, the claim by Michel de Certeau that some of Lacan’s ideas are based on Benedictine monasticism. As well as the four concepts that de Certeau identifies (analyst as monk; master; school; and work-as-speech) the author also considers whether four additional notions (desire; the uniqueness of the subject; nothingness; and empty speech)—the latter two of which may have been mediated to Lacan by Heidegger—which (...) come from the Regula Benedicti. (shrink)

Situating psychoanalysis as the foundation of the therapeutic community and as a spiritual exercise, the author argues that contemporary approaches articulate a form of akēdia – a desire to be elsewhere – both in its focus on expectation and its misunderstanding of the nature ‘place’. This amounts to an avoidance of being-with the subject of psychosis. This leads to a discussion of the formation necessary for therapeutic community practitioners which is in opposition to the notion of training. Such a formation (...) amounts to an inscription into the discourse of the therapeutic community with specific reference to the Law (Oedipus). -/- L’autore intende la psicoanalisi come esercizio spirituale e la colloca come base fondante della Comunità Terapeutica. Egli critica gli approcci contemporanei al trattamento della psicosi, poiché mettono in atto qualcosa di simile al desiderio di essere altrove -akēdia- sia per quanto riguarda le aspettative che l’incomprensione del ‘luogo’ della natura. Questo atteggiamento porta a un evitamento dell’essere-con la psicosi. Tali premesse aprono di fatto la discussione sulla necessaria formazione degli operatori di una comunità terapeutica che non può essere racchiusa nella parola training. La formazione degli operatori è nell’essere, nell’appartenere alla stessa comunità terapeutica e non può che far preciso riferimento ai concetti edipici di confine e di Legge. (shrink)

In the Phaedrus, Plato speaks of various forms of madness having a divine origin, and bestowing virtue on mankind. A similar, though not equivalent elevation of madness over sanity is found in the Pauline epistles, where Christians are described as fools. Diogenes of Sinope and a number of other Cynics, as well as Christian ascetics, adopted a way of life that could reasonably be described as mad. This challenged received ideas about sanity, and in so doing, emphasized its social aspect. (...) The prophet and the poet were seen in antiquity to disclosed truth, in enigmatic sayings and in odd turns of phrase that stretch everyday usage. This overstepping of reason (logos) links both inspired madness and simulated madness to the lexis of mysticism. They are, in other words, a stance, in relation to knowing, that is shared by philosophy. To use Heidegger’s idiom, the latter is nothing other than a rambling path through the forest, one which often leads nowhere. But sometimes comes to a clearing in which Being itself is made manifest as ek-stasis. -/- . (shrink)