ICLO-NLS 11th Study Day
University College Cork
29 April 2023
Panic Point
Body Anxiety Desire
The Annual Study-Day of ICLO-NLS takes place in Cork for the first time, hosted at UCC, and aims at bringing together psychoanalysts and psychoanalysts in formation, scholars, artists, practitioners of various disciplines, to interrogate the concepts of anxiety, body and desire from a plurality of perspectives, creating channels of conversation where we might lodge the panic points encountered in our diverse and rapidly changing registers of experience.
Otherwise stated, the object is something outside of him and whose true linguistic nature he can grasp only at the very moment at which he, as a subject, must be effaced, vanish or disappear behind a signifier. At that moment, which is a panic point, so to speak, the subject must grab hold of something, and he grabs hold of the object qua object of desire.[1]
For the path of anxiety is also the path of desire, and “it is in this that anxiety is, in the subject’s affects, the one that does not mislead”, as Lacan expresses it in his interrupted Seminar “The Names of the Father”, when he wants to make us understand the “radical level (…) at which anxiety’s function as a signal is situated.” In fact, in anxiety the subject is not only affected “by the desire of the Other”, but also “by the direct transformation of libido” at the point at which the signifier fails to inscribe it. [2]
In our body, anxiety is situated precisely somewhere other than fear. It is the feeling that arises from this suspicion that comes over us of being reduced to our body.[3]
The signifier ‘panic’ resonates in many different ways. It can mean that a limit has been reached, that the previous order has disintegrated, that chaos is upon us.
In the DSM 5 it is, ironically, inserted into an orderly list of disorders. It evokes the Greek mythological figure of the goat god, Pan, and echoes the ‘all’ and the sudden fright of his shout. We can hear it in the anguished calls from youth, for action, as they wonder if there will be a liveable planet in their future.
Lacan knots together the eruption of anxiety with desire and with the experience of the speaking body. In doing so, he perhaps points us in the direction bringing language to bear on this overwhelming subjective event. Can we make of this shout, a call?
Tom Ryan
for the Organising Committee:
Claire Hawkes - Sabine Kriebel - Florencia Shanahan - Valeria Venditti - Denise Waters
[1] Lacan, J., “Desire and Its Interpretation”, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VI, Edited by J.-A. Miller, transl. B. Fink, Polity Press, 2019,, p. 84. (Translation modified)
[2] Roy, D., Argument for NLS Congress 2023 “Discontent and Anxiety in the Clinic and in Civilization”, transl. P. Dravers, https://nlscongress2023.amp-nls.org/nls-congress/2019/1/4/the-argument-f9m84-j29wf
[3] Lacan J., “The Third”, transl. P. Dravers, The Lacanian Review, Issue 7, 2019, p. 104.
Venue: ORB G27 (CACSSS Seminar Room) in the O'Rahilly Building
Start Time: 11am
End time: 4.30pm
Tea & Coffee + Light lunch included for in person tickets