International Psychoanalytic Conference
On Love
Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workshops (APW)
March 28- 30, 2008
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
The “malady of being two” [mal d’être deux] from which . . . patients suffer hardly frees them from Narcissus’ problem. It is a mortal passion that ends up taking its own life.
-Lacan, Le Minotaure
What are psychoanalysts talking about when they speak of love? If the aim of the cure is to restore the analysand’s ability to work and love, is it, in the terms of Freud’s famous opposition, anaclitic-type or narcissistic-type object love that must be recovered? Is it fixation on a lost object, of whichever variety, that must be overcome? Or is it that love and desire have diverged-“where they love they do not desire and where they desire they cannot love”-and must be encouraged to fuse? Is it romantic love that psychoanalysis enables, by inciting the analysand’s passion for the analyst?
Lacan’s contributions to the study of love span the half-century of his published work, and include-just to scratch the surface-discussions of the imaginary passion of jealousy in Family Complexes; narcissistic love arising from the mirror stage; love as giving what you don’t have in Écrits; courtly love and the relations between love, beauty, and the Thing in the Ethics seminar; love as a “comical feeling,” the miracle of love, and the “metaphor of love” in his reading of Plato’s Symposium; the “uranian love” of André Gide; and the suggestion of a possible subject-to-subject love beyond desire in Seminar XX.
The speakers at the conference will take up topics related to love as a pivotal force in analytic treatment and in life more generally, and outline some of the features of Lacan’s theory of love-indeed, perhaps of his multiple theories of love.
Friday March 28- Sunday March, 30 2008,
University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 .
Keynote speaker COLETTE SOLER
Speakers: Doron Almagor, Mario Beira, Olga Cox Cameron, Dan Collins, Katerina Daniel, Bruce Fink, Rolf Flor, Judith Feher Gurewich, Dominiek Hoens, Adrian Johnston, Sigi Jottkandt, Gustavo Klurfan, Cristina Laurita, Maria Lopez, Deborah A. Luepnitz, Kareen Malone, Dany Nobus, Barry O’Donnell, Ray O’Neill, Carol Owens, Lili Sieh, Mark Stafford, Stephanie Swales, Clive Thomson, Paul Verhaeghe, Eve Watson.
Organized by Patricia Gherovici
Please visit http://www.apwonline.org for further conference information
Conference sessions will be held on Friday 3/28 from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM,
Saturday 3/29 from 10:00 to 7:00, and Sunday 3/30, 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.
Patricia Gherovici
420 S. 17th Street
Philadelphia PA 19146-1555
tel/fax 215-985-0556