Seminars of the School
Foundations of Psychoanalysis_
Wednesdays 7.30pm – 9.00pm
Commencing Wednesday 26th February and running for 20 weeks, the Foundations of Psychoanalysis seminar returns in 2026 to provide participants with a rigorous working of the fundamental concepts underpinning Freudian and Lacanian theory and clinical practice. It forms an important component of the theoretical aspect of the training of analysts and the ongoing work of the analysts of the school.
The Seminar is also open to students, scholars and colleagues in related clinical fields, in recognition of the importance to psychoanalysis of its extension beyond the clinic.
Convenor: Julian Browne
P: 0407 299 145
The Seminar of the School_
First Saturday of the Month
12.00pm to 1.30pm
The Seminar of the School is held monthly and open to members of The Freudian School of Melbourne. Those from outside the School wishing to participate in the theoretical interrogation of Lacanian psychoanalysis are welcome to enquire about the School's Foundations of Psychoanalysis Seminar.
Convenor: Julian Browne
P: 0407 299 145
Psychoanalysis, Philosophy & Theology 2026
FROM THE MISTAKES OF HISTORY TOWARDS A PRACTICE OF EROTOLOGY
Online and in-person.
1st Saturday of the month
(except January & September)
10:30am-12:00pm.
“I am not developing a psychology, a discourse about this
unreal reality, but a praxis which deserves a name: erotology.”
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it.”
Foucault in his History of Sexuality, a text which explicitly works the relation between history
and sexuality, reminded us that for the ancients the ethical substance of life was accorded the term aphrodisia. Invoking aphrodisia allowed the possibility of an inquiry into the status of an ethical action when it was not encumbered by the moral prescriptions and proscriptions which have abounded in religious teaching and its propagation of the “good” as founding the logic of existence.
This pursuit of the “good” finds clear and prevalent expression in the clinic today in the form of the modern religion of “therapy” as it dispenses therapeutic goods in the name of a “good” whose status as an act is governed by a therapeutic goods act. Where is psychoanalysis to be situated in this regard?
In 2026 the seminar will take up the question of the place of sexuality in relation to the experience of analysis. Through an examination of Wilhelm Reich’s Sex Pol and its attempt to situate the historical subject in light of an intersection/inter-sexion of Marxism and psychoanalysis, we will come to work Lacan’s proposition that psychoanalysis is an erotology as an assertion that the act in psychoanalysis runs surplus to the value of both the exchange of goods and goodness itself, as an ethical imperative. Reich’s mistaken attempt to situate sexuality in light of a Marxist materialism will be explored with a view to distinguishing it from sexuality understood as a trembling mystery which subverts the possibility of a self-evidentiary mastery promised by the “good” with respect to history.
Expressions of interest and detailed reading list contact:
David Pereira
Tel: 03 9690 3515
Mob: +61 419 362 457
Reading Seminar
The Lacan Reading Seminar: Seminar VI - Desire and its Interpretation
This Seminar involves a close reading of foundational texts of Freud and Lacan with discussion of related clinical and theoretical topics.
Convenor: Linda Clifton, Analyst of the School
Ph. (+61) 0421 979 496
Last Saturday of the month
2.00pm – 4.00 pm
A Study of Lacan’s Seminar One - Freud’s Papers on Technique
Third Saturday of every month
15:00 to 16:30 commencing on February 21st 2026
The seminar will take place in person in South Melbourne
“He who interrogates me, also knows how to read me.” Jacques Lacan
A study seminar of Jacques Lacan's 1953-54 Seminar One - Freud's Papers on Technique will be undertaken in 2026. Commencing with Seminar One, it presents the opportunity for a sequential and chronological reading and study of Lacan's seminars.
This method traces the development of Lacan's theoretical insights, innovations and inventions. Such a systematic approach may appeal to those who have recently encountered psychoanalysis and wish to read and study Lacan's seminars, in collaboration with others.
Methodology
Specific sections of Lacan's seminar and other relevant texts i.e. Freud will be read in advance in preparation for each seminar. Discussions and further targeted readings will take place during the seminars.
Study Program
The seminar will commence on the 21st of February 2026. Meetings will be held in person at 15:00 to 16:30 on the third Saturday of the month in South Melbourne.
Lacan's Seminar One in 22 sections:
• February: Overture to Seminar; Lessons I & lI
• March: Lessons III & IV
• April: Lessons V & VI
• May: Lessons VII; VIII & IX
• June: Lessons X; XI & XII
• August: Lessons XIII; XIV & XV
• September: Lessons XVI; XVII & XVIII
• October: Lessons XIX; XX & XXI
• November: Lesson XXII; Appendix & overview of the Seminar
Enquiries
Harry Constantinou
0434 922 143
✉ email enquiry
Reading and Clinical Seminar
The adolescent, the image and transference
The seminar will take place in Middle Park on the second Saturday of the month, from 2-4 pm, commencing on Saturday August 8.
Francoise Dolto, in her book Dominique:The case of an Adolescent, considered that adolescence is caused by a crisis that demands a mourning of the death of childhood. Freud also saw the period of puberty from a crisis that irrupts with changes in the body and a restructuring of the libido from the organisation in infantile sexuality in a push towards forming a sexual object choice with a partner. The adolescent has to subjectivise this new form of sexual jouissance in a social bond beyond the bond with the parental Other. Jean Allouch considers that this new form of sexual identity has implications for the ties of love, erotics and friendship as these were initially formed from the organisation of the image of the I in the mirror stage. To consider the transference love at play for an adolescent we will then revisit Lacan’s paper The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I throughout the seminar. Further to this, we will consider what is the place of the parents and their transference in the transference love that the adolescent subject brings to an analysis from this new form of sexual identity.
In the seminar we will take up a discussion of these considerations of the transference in an analysis with an adolescent both in their theoretical and clinic implications. The seminar will interchange between two parts:
A theoretical part with a close reading and discussion of central texts of Freud’s such as Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Part III. The Transformations of Puberty, On Narcissism. An Introduction and Mourning and Melancholia, together with Lacan’s The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I, Intervention on Transference, and Two Notes on the Child. Further, we will also read some parts of Allouch’s The Mirror Stage Revisited - An Essay and possibly other related texts.
A clinical part which involves a case presentation; either from an example of Freud’s cases and Dolto’s case of Dominique, or from material in the clinic presented by participants in the seminar.
Convenor: Tine Nørregaard, Analyst Member of the School
Ph. 0419150658 | ✉ email enquiry