You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The New Orleans Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, held in March 2004, marked a turning point. For the first time since the early sixties, when Lacan left the IPA (or, as his followers prefer to say, was excommunicated from it), a number of Lacanian analysts were invited to one of its major panels. This is no chance event and likely reflects a number of changes that have occurred both within the IPA and within the Lacanian movement itself. After Lacan's death in 1981, this movement has undergone a series of splits, making for a galaxy of groups, circles, societies, and schools. Mind you, except for the severing of official organizational links, this is not unlike the birth of the many “currents” and “schools of thought” that work, rather independently, under the IPA's banner. Hence, the differentiation happening both within the IPA and among Lacanians is probably one reason why at least some representatives of French Lacanianism were considered appropriate interlocutors by the IPA leadership, with personal acquaintance among the people concerned doing the rest. This is also, in my view, a natural extension of the inescapable fact that Lacan's theory has gained a significant audience around the world, including the U.S., where many analysts in “mainstream” organizations such as APsA demonstrate at least some curiosity about this once abhorred brand of Freudianism.
I have suggested a possible parallel between the IPA and the Lacanian movement. But whereas differences in theoretical background