CSD17 BLOG

Juan Felipe Arango, AP, MS, DEA Psychoanalysis, Paris 8, is a member of the WAP, NLS, NEL, and LC. He is a member of the council of the LC and its current president. He is also a member of the Board and Faculty of the Center for Research and Development of Psychoanalysis in Florida as well as LOCUS. He has held various positions, such as Treasurer of the Executive Committee and Member of the Council of the NEL and was also Director of the NEL-Miami site. He is the author of various articles and works as a psychoanalyst in his private practice in Miami.

Ignorance: Lack of Knowledge of a Hidden Cause

Ignorance is the most fundamental passion of the three Lacanian passions. Since its beginnings,

psychoanalysis has been a practice that goes against the not wanting to know. Since Freud, ignorance has been a passion to fight against. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge of the hidden cause that lies behind each formation of the unconscious. For Freud, the first name for what was ignored was repression. Therefore, the purpose of psychoanalysis since the beginning has been to go in the opposite direction of ignorance.

In Freud, there is a clear opposition between affect and representation. Lacan proposes something different: a knotting relationship. Lacan used the term passion to show that there is no representation without the presence of an affect. That’s why an analysis is not a simple intellectual adventure of advancing self-knowledge. At the heart of the psychoanalytic experience, there is a knowledge with consequences on the body, an affectation of the living being by working on representations. We are far away from proposing a phlegmatic experience.

Hence, to any manifestation of the unconscious, there corresponds a production of a trace, a remainder, a residue, the so-called object a. Thus, it’s about a saying that has consequences on the body; it is a work that goes in the opposite direction to the passion of ignorance. Affections are ephemeral, passions are long-lasting.

It is to be expected then that the passions are present in the transference as well. From the installation of the subject supposed to know as the support of transference, the germ of ignorance is installed. So, what is a driving force for analytic work is at the same time its deception. It funds the relationship to the analyst, who operates in opposition to what sustains him. One loves or hates the analyst in order to sustain one’s own not wanting to know, to remain in the realm of ignorance.

For Lacan, passions are referred to the passions of being and, therefore, related to the Other. Where the “lack of being” is a suffering due to the operation of the signifier, the belay that remains is the lack of knowledge of that lack through the fiction of the Other. That is why this subtracted object is incessantly attributed to the big Other. Thus, the neurotic suffers from the lack of being.

What is it that the neurotic does not want to know? When Freud describes unconscious processes, he establishes that judgments of value (attribution) precede the judgments of existence, which means that whatever is threatening to the self or is not pleasurable to it, it’s then denied. The tendency of the psychic apparatus is to ignore what it does not like.

Recently Marie-Hélène Brousse located love between the imaginary and the symbolic as the ignorance about the desire of the object and, therefore, the fuel of transference. She placed hatred between the imaginary and the real hence real hatred is the hatred of the symbolic since it ignores the castration of the Other. And finally, she placed ignorance between the symbolic and the real.

This implies a certain aversion to the power of the symbolic, that is, a certain rejection of the consequences of being speaking beings. The split subject does not want to know about the opposition between the symbolic and the real. The neurotic doesn’t want to pay the price of a choice that led him to consent to the symbolic. So, the neurotic always presents himself as suffering from a contradiction between the subject and his jouissance.

It seems to me that all the passions are forms of ignorance about the real at stake. Love and hate are passions that serve as a resource for not wanting to know about the real of the sexual non rapport, or in a positivizing way, is a way of ignoring the subject’s most intimate jouissance.

We can say that the analytic discourse goes against the passion of ignorance because it allows the subject to accede to the separation of the master signifiers that determined him and specify the jouissance that the subject is unaware of.

At the end of analysis, it is no longer about making bonds from the unsatisfactory unawareness of ignorance as a passion. It is about moving forward over our own not wanting to know and, also, the not wanting to know of psychoanalysis as a discourse, which invites us to make a careful reading of each era.

In this sense I ask myself: how can we sustain the awakening to which the analytic discourse invites us? What is this new love that Lacan proposes, the one that does not invite us to sleep but to wake up?

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Maria Cristina Aguirre, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, with a practice in New York. She is an Analyst Member of the School (AMS) of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP), New Lacanian School (NLS), Nueva Escuela Lacaniana (NEL), and Lacanian Compass (LC). She is the Secretary of Admissions of the Lacanian Compass and an Assistant Professor of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

CSD17-Scientific Committee (SC):  How does the question of love come up in psychoanalytic sessions today?

Maria Cristina Aguirre: The question of love comes up in many ways. It comes up in the form of a lack. Love as a lack, as what is missing, as what is requested, demanded, and/or desired. It appears as the unfruitful failed encounters with the other, despite all the possibilities that social media and dating apps put at the disposal of the modern subject. It can also appear as an apathy, the feeling of being incapable of loving or of being loved. It also shows up as a void, something missing, but because it has always been missing, since the beginning. A lack of love from parents, or family, can also push a subject to find substitutes for it in other fields, such as friends, sports, business, drugs, or other form of addictions.

The dating encounters multiply; it is easy to encounter someone, but rarely the One, leaving the subject devastated. Sex then becomes the substitute for the love that is not there. The dating apps became sex apps, a means to find someone for quick sexual encounters. But perhaps where there is an increase in sexual encounters, there is a decrease in the possibility of encountering love. Using Greek mythology, we could say that it is not only that Eros is blind, but that he has lost his aim, the arrows miss their target, and the subject wanders about in the desert of love.

CSD17-SC: In popular culture, do you think there is a tv series, work of literature, or film that offers a persuasive representation of the way in which love is experienced today? If yes, please comment?

Maria Cristina Aguirre: In popular culture, we have some different tendencies today. There are the romantic comedies, which are sweet and nice, and in which there is usually a missed encounter at the beginning of the story. For example, there is the aspect of the wrong partner, either because it is not your choice or it was imposed on you, or sometimes it takes the form of the unattractive friend or the annoying neighbor. This is on the side of contingency and, little by little, certain feelings and emotions begin to emerge and then we have our happy endings.

On the other hand, we have the stories that speak about the erosion of love by the demands of modern, active life, where careers, children, financial and social obligations, get in the way, and often provoke a deterioration of the relationship, which can end in a toxic partnership where hate replaces the original love.

And, we also have the classical love stories from Romeo and Juliet to Dr. Zhivago or Out of Africa, just to name a few in which love is tragic but idealized. In some of the action films, love is also present, but it is frequently betrayed by the enemy which is then sought out to be annihilated or destroyed to the very limit. The heroes win, but love is often forgotten, made into a subplot, or left to the background. Furthermore, we have the highly eroticized films, where it is not so much about love but about jouissance pursued to its last consequences.

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Brian Kloppenberg, MFA, LP, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He has presented his clinical work at Lacanian Compass Clinical Study Days (2022, 2023 and 2024) and the New Lacanian School (2023). His publications have appeared in the  Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Psychology, and The Undecidable Unconscious. He is a member of the JAPA Editorial Board.

The Art of Love

For painters in the great tradition of European figurative art, the temptation to depict love in its manifold forms has proven to be irresistible. In this selection of nine paintings and one etching about love, works that stretch from the Renaissance to our contemporary moment, each artist mobilizes the plasticity of three-dimensional figuration on a two-dimensional picture plane in an effort to capture love as an animating force that draws human beings together—albeit with often unruly passions that resist even the most masterful attempts at pictorial synthesis. 

In what follows, you will see love in all sorts of moods: desperate, ironic, courtly, obsessive, triumphant and enigmatic, to name but a few. Most of these works can be found in museums or private collections in New York City. Those attending the Lacanian Compass Clinical Study Days 17: Is this love? in Brooklyn, NY, March 1-2, 2025, will be able to encounter most of these depictions of love firsthand. 

With each of these images, ask yourself: Is this love? And if so, what kind of love?

Venus and Adonis by Titian, Oil on canvas, 42 x 52 1/2 inches, 1550s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 608, New York

No matter how desperately Venus clings to her beloved Adonis, he will not be deterred from his pursuit of the hunt. Cupid is of no help at all, resting nearby with his bow and arrow hung up on a tree branch. Titian’s elegant interlocking of two twisting figures evokes both the urgency of her clinging and the inevitability of his breaking away—to his imminent demise.

Mars and Venus United by Love by Veronese, Oil on canvas, 81 x 63 3/8 inches, 1570s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 608, New York

There is no rest for the two cupids in this mythic take on love’s civilizing effects. In the lefthand foreground of the painting, one little love god knots together the legs of Venus and Mars, while over on the right the other does his best to keep a war horse at bay. Meanwhile, Venus seems to be more involved with her own fecundity than her partner Mars, as he seems to be more invested in keeping her veiled than in the possibility of any kind of conquest. Veronese’s vibrant use of color creates a kind of vortex that appears to strengthen the union of woman and man, but what can we make of the huge stone satyr, looming in the background?

The Musicians by Caravaggio, Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 inches, 1597, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 620, New York

Although you have to go to Berlin to see Caravaggio’s stupendously disturbing Love Victorious, this perhaps more subtly unsettling paean to music and the physicality of adolescent boys can be found at The MET. The off-kilter interweaving of figures, fabrics, and instruments in this painting creates a visual allegory of music, with its polyphonic richness and power to enthrall. Perhaps The Musicians also allegorizes the contingencies of falling in love.

The Interrupted Sleep by Boucher, Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 29 5/8 inches, 1750, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 631, New York

The Lover Crowned from The Progress of Love by Fragonard, Oil on canvas, 10.4 feet x 95.6 inches, 1771-1773, The Frick Collection, New York

Unfortunately, Fragonard’s expansively idealistic narrative in painting, The Progress of Love, will not be available for viewing until April, 2025, when The Frick Collection plans to reopen after a long renovation. However, no selection of art works about love can exclude this singular achievement. If Fragonard’s four large canvases seem to suggest that love may indeed conquer all, Boucher’s more intimate masterpiece organizes a number of diagonals around the most delicate representation of a hole (made by the lover’s hand) and a charged gap between lover and beloved. 

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) and Marie Anne Lavoisier (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze 1758-1836) by David, Oil on canvas, 102 1/4 x 76 5/8 inches, 1788, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 633, New York

David’s portrait of husband and wife also mobilizes the power of diagonals to create a bravura display of phallic having and being. Note the continuous vector of her very long right arm and his very long right leg against the dominating tilt of her torso as she leans over her partner. Note as well how his commitment to his scientific study of chemistry, beautifully represented by various glass-enclosed volumes, yields to his adoration of the beautiful and brilliant woman to whom he is married. What might her knowing look, directed beyond the picture plane, tell us about the limits of his epistemology? 

Woman with a Parrot by Courbet, Oil on canvas, 51 x 77 inches, 1866, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 811, New York

The parrot in this painting indexes to the mythical figure of Zeus, poised to ravage the expectant woman. If the narrative frame of this painting is somewhat traditional, what is unprecedented here is Courbet’s capacity to paint the flesh of a woman with an uncanny opalescence, achieved through a unique combination of simplification and plasticity. If the woman of this painting is an object of desire for the Zeus-parrot, she is even more so the love object of Courbet himself.

Departure by Beckmann, Oil on canvas, Side panels 7 feet 3/4 inches x 39 feet 3/4 inches, Center panel 7 feet 3/4 inches x 45 feet 3/8 inches, 1932-1935, The Museum of Modern Art, Floor Five, Gallery 522, New York

Beckmann’s great triptych, painted on the precipice of the Second World War, juxtaposes a central vision of noble love with scenes of horrific violence. In doing so, Beckman marks both the peacefulness made possible by the love for the symbolic father as well as the decline of this father in the 20th Century. 

Old Greek Sculptor with Model, Vase with Three Anemones, and Sculpted Self-Portrait from the Vollard Suite by Picasso, Etching, plate: 7 5/8 x 10 9/16 inches, sheet: 13 3/8 x 17 3/8 inches, 1933, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

If you go to MOMA to see Beckman’s Departure, you will most likely encounter Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon from 1907, a painting which is not about love, and which has contributed to the controversy about Picasso’s depictions of women. When looking at Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, keep in mind his etching of the old artist with his young model, which is currently not on display. Through his repeated use of overlap in this work, Picasso delicately creates an illusion of three-dimensionality that brings forth an unexpected, if momentary, rapport between two bodies. Note the significance of the sculpted self-portrait as well as the vase with three anemones in this lovely etching.

Love by Patrick Webb, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 2010, Collection of the artist

Cupid’s efforts find a contemporary reset in the workout gym of Patrick Webb’s Punchinello painting, Love. Referencing Veronese’s Mars and Venus United by Love, Webb’s composition features two intertwining masculine subjects, one human and one not quite human. Note the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the two figures that comprise this couple, as they enjoy a brief repose from the exertions of the others nearby. What does love make possible in this moment when two subjects undertake the risk of encountering one another? In conjunction with Clinical Study Days 17, this painting will be on view at Webb’s Brooklyn studio, not far from the conference venue.

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Renata Teixeira is a psychoanalyst practicing in Miami, Florida, under a license of Mental Health Counselor. She is a member of Lacanian Compass, New Lacanian School, and the World Association of Psychoanalysis. She works with children, adolescents, and adults, and has a particular interest in child and adolescent clinics and their contemporary issues related to hypermodernity and capitalism. 

Clinical Study Days 17-Scientific Committee (SC): What would you say to the teenagers of today about love? In your practice, how does love appear in the clinic of children and adolescents?

Renata Teixeira: As Lacan teaches us in Seminar XXIII, “(man) makes love with his unconscious and nothing more…” (p. 108). My clinical experience with teenagers is that they know that they enjoy with their own bodies. This perspective can be exemplified by their use of the images of their bodies on social media: Tik-Tok videos, selfies, etc. It’s the jouissance of the One all alone, what Lacan refers to as “il y a de l’un”(1)  (there is something of the one) that is not attached to the Other. But, in analysis, when the unconscious dimension is approached, some teenagers experience anxiety in the confrontation with their own desires. 

Some American rap songs, listened to by generation Z, offer lyrics that exclude the dimension of desire and love. Their authors use expressions related to the “rawness” of sexuality, the jouissance of the virile organ, and the denigration of the Other sex, excluding the feminine dimension and its poetic aspect. This maneuver seems to be an attempt to annihilate the fear of confronting castration. Furthermore, we observe teens who try to fill the hole of the sexual non-rapport with excessive use of images on social media platforms and online pornography. Their attempts are usually excessive and lead them to an excess of jouissance that excludes romantic encounters.       

CSD17-SC: In the era of the equality of the sexes, where we have come from mother and father to the category of “parent” and from husband and wife to the category of “partner,” do you think sexual difference still plays a part in the experience of love? 

Renata Teixeira: Working with children, I am aware of the signifier “parent” replacing the duality father-mother. In my singular practice, I notice that sometimes female-parents question their partners’ parental function. Usually, in these cases the mother does not occupy a function of being the object cause of desire for her partner.  My clinical question is thus related to a “père-version,” the singular way in which a parent has his partner as an object cause of his desire. 

The child experiences anxiety reflected by the dysfunction of being the product of parental love. In these cases, symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder and/or Hyperactivity usually are not caused by a neurological dysfunction, but are instead a reflection of the anxiety the child experiences when confronted with the couple’s dysfunction. Jacques Lacan, in his text, “Note on the Child,” refers to the possible outcomes for the child: being the object of the mother’s fantasy in cases of psychosis, or the symptom of the couple in the cases of neurosis. From this, we can infer how the lack of love between parents could impact the symbolic place of the child in the family. Beyond the question of the Name-of-the- Father, the question of love between the parents is intrinsic to the outcomes for a child in life.    

(1) 1- Lacan, J. “Joyce the Symptom” (1975), trans. A.R. Price, The Lacanian Review 5, pp. 13-18.

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Thomas Svolos is a psychoanalyst member of the Lacanian Compass and New Lacanian School.  Practicing in Omaha, Nebraska, Svolos is also Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Dean for Strategy and Accreditation at the Creighton University School of Medicine.

Clinical Study Days 17- Scientific Committee (SC): From the perspective of psychoanalysis, what are your thoughts on contemporary trends in organizing “love” relationships, such as polyamory, ethical non-monogamy, polyfidelity, asexuality, aromanticism, throuples, etc.? 

Tom Svolos: I would like to say something about a different contemporary trend in the organization of “love” relationships.  One trend in the past in the organization of love relationships was the “love letter.”  Indeed, Jacques-Alain Miller even used the phrase “A love letter” as the title of one of the chapters of Lacan’s Seminar 20, based presumably on Lacan’s own references to love letters in a few places in the Seminar.  Well, today, people don’t write so many love letters, but they post plenty of love tweets, photos, and videos, and do a lot of swiping. I suggest that the apps of social media are our contemporary love letters and provide today’s subjects with a path to organize love relationships. I will also add that in as much as the Clinical Study Days 17 have argued that love is that which makes up for a disturbance in the relations between the sexes (the non-rapport sexuel), we might extend this to note that, on a broader social level, love in the form of social media also provides people a means to make up for a more general disturbance of social relations. I hear all the time about how social media makes people feel connected in the sense not only of personal relationships but also, more broadly, in terms of social relations—in contrast to social disconnection, isolation, conflict, and the non-rapport.

CSD17-SC: Lacan isolated three passions in his work: love, hate, and ignorance. Can you tell us about hate and ignorance? How are they linked to love?

Tom Svolos: In a recent talk in New York, Marie Hélène Brousse emphasized not the link of love and hate (and ignorance, which I am putting to the side for now), but rather an unlinking of love and hate. Using Lacan’s notion of the three registers, she noted that love is a linking of the Imaginary and Symbolic, with the exclusion of the Real.  This makes sense, as the Real is the domain of what does not work, what is impossible, and the non-rapport.  This formulation aligns with the CSD17 argument that love covers over the non-rapport, as is sometimes said, or is founded on an exclusion of the Real.  

Within that same framework, Brousse proposed that hatred is a linkage of the Imaginary and the Real, to the exclusion of the Symbolic (think here of the Symbolic as law, civil discourse, contract, and so forth—some written or unwritten organizing principle). Certainly, this formulation resonates with a simple observation of everyday life: relationships shift from love to hatred when some understanding—be it a marital vow or some unwritten contract on how the relationship will be conducted—is broken between two partners. This is true on a social scale as well: in sports, when a certain set of unwritten rules of hierarchy between the genders in athletics was disturbed a few decades ago in the United States, it led to a famous tennis competition between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs known as the “Battle of the Sexes.”

Indeed, we can extend the notion even more broadly.  In a posthumously published reading of The Illiad, Frederic Jameson notes that the poem must be understood not as an epic, but a staging of agon—the wrath of Achilles or the strife among peoples (certainly a linkage of the Imaginary and the Real, hatred on both a personal and social scale).  This hatred is all set in motion with the first word of the poem—mênis—a cosmic disruption (non-rapport) tied to general social change associated with the fading of the imperial cities of the Mycenean era, Paris’ theft of Helen from Menelaus, and Agamemnon’s theft of Briseis from Achilles. These disturbances in the order, honor, and hierarchy between nations, among national leaders, and between warriors (read: the Symbolic) are the very basis for the eruption of agon (read: hatred, psychologically and socially—a linkage of the Imaginary and the Real), which is ended with the restoration of order at the end of the poem.

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Isolda Alvarez, AP, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Miami. She is an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Miami Dade College. She is also Licensed in Clinical Social Work (LSCW) and has an MA in Philosophy. She is a member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP), the New Lacanian School (NLS), the Nueva Escuela Lacaniana (NEL) and the Lacanian Compass (LC).  Teacher of the Florida Center for Research and Development of Psychoanalysis as well as LOCUS. 

Love: A Crack in Jouissance, An Opening for a Different Desire

During the upcoming CSD17, we will examine clinical cases that highlight diverse ways of functioning and misfunctioning. While we theoretically differentiate between love, desire, and jouissance, the question arises: what can orient us to make such a differentiation from the perspective of the clinic? 

In psychoanalysis, theory and practice are intertwined. I take as my main reference a quotation extracted from the argument of CSD17: “only love allows jouissance to condescend to desire,” (Lacan says this in Seminar X), which puts the three terms—love, desire, jouissance—in relation to one another. You thus have the three fundamental elements in the life of a speaking being. I will focus here on neurosis rather than psychosis, which would require a distinct discussion regarding the status of love, jouissance, and desire.

Love: A Crack in Jouissance

If “only love allows jouissance to condescend to desire,” what are the elements that can help us differentiate these concepts in the flow of an analysand’s speech? This type of love introduces novelty—a break from repetition and the familiar, something escapes from the regular ways of repetition. This newness creates discomfort because it reveals the unknown, a space where strategies and defenses fail. Here, the speaking being confronts its own castration, often experienced as the horror of losing the object of love. In this sense, love exposes the real.

Jouissance: Constantly in the same place

Jouissance is always the same. Despite all attempts to reject it, jouissance remains in the same fixed position, sustained by repetition. The fracture made by the love experience opens a crack in the state of jouissance, making possible certain types of arrangements and thereby allowing jouissance to serve love rather than be its main obstacle.

Desire: Always misplaced Unless Embodied

Desire is another story. It is elaborated differently in different moments of Lacan’s teachings, and it takes many distinct forms. Desire can be impregnated by the imaginary when it is about the desire for recognition. It can be alienated by the symbolic when it is addressed to the big Other in an effort of the subject to find a place from which he/she can relate to the world. In this register, signifiers orient the subject by telling him/her who and/or what they are.

But there is a version of desire that is embodied, and which remained the dominant form of desire throughout Lacan’s teachings: the desire of the analyst. To clarify this idea, we can think of the Spinozist idea of desire, that is, a desire that functions as a cause, that is only achieved in an act, a desire that serves as the motor of the body. That is what I mean when I say embodied. 

Transference and the Analyst’s Desire

During CSD17, focusing on this form of desire—the analyst’s desire, rendered in the maneuvers of transference—will help guide this exploration. Transference offers the clearest evidence of the type of love that allows jouissance to condescend to desire. In order for psychoanalysis to operate, we must keep in mind that, “it is the patient’s desire, yes, but in its meeting with the analyst’s desire.”(1)

(1) Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York: Norton, 1998, p. 254

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