NLS Knottings Seminar—London

Please Note: This event will take place via Zoom. Joining instructions will be sent to you 24 hours before the Event and again at 12 pm on the Day.

Description: On the afternoon of Saturday, the 6th of March 2021, the London Society will be hosting its annual Knottings Seminar as part of its preparations for this year’s NLS Congress, which will take place on 22-23 May on the theme of The Bodily Effects of Language. It is a theme that invites us to consider the importance of the body in psychoanalysis as a practice of speech that derives its efficiency from the fact that the symptom is bound up with the effects of language on the body.

There are many different ways in which one could take up such a theme, from Lacan’s early proposition that “The symptom is language from which speech must be delivered”, to his later conception of the symptom as a body event bound up with the impact of the signifier on the body. It thus takes us from the moment that Lacan came to distinguish the real, symbolic and the imaginary, in the early part of his teaching, to the moment, in its final period, where he comes to define the symptom, as distinct from the unconscious, as the essential fourth term with which to knot these three registers together (and with it the subject’s relation to his or her body) in an invention that is proper to each.

It is from this conception of symptom at the end of Lacan’s teaching that the NLS Knottings Seminar was first proposed as a device, an invention, proper to the NLS as such, designed to knot the geographically distant elements of the School together by linking them together in a day of work conducted around a common theme. The knot is formed by linking together a series of presentations from: at least one member of the host society or group; a guest from at least one of the other societies or groups that make up the NLS; and a member of the School’s executive committee, whose role is to provide the orientation for the work.

This year, we will be joined online by Els Van Compernolle, Secretary of the NLS, and a member of the Kring Voor Psychoanalyse (Belgium), who will give a theoretical presentation on this year’s theme. We will also be joined by Marina Frangiadaki, who is an AMS and member of the Borromean Knot Society of the NLS (Greece), who will help develop the theme from a clinical perspective by presenting a case linked to the theme. This clinical approach will be further developed by an additional case presentation by Colin Wright, member of the London Society.

For further information about this year’s Congress visit the NLS Congress Website, which contains multiple resources on the theme, along with the opportunity to register for the Congress and a link to the Argument for the Congress by NLS President Alexandre Stevens.

Although we are not able to hold this event in person this year—with our bodies fully present in the encounter—we will nevertheless endeavour to realise a viable knotting, in the spirit of invention in which this device was initially created, and even hope to reach out beyond our own community to members of the School at large.