Dear Members and possible members of the SFL,

The School of the Freudian Letter was established ‘officially’ on July 5, 2014. It was already up and running in Cyprus many months before that. It is in its origins a Cypriot School, which also means Greek by culture. Civilisation had an interest in its Discontents in the form of Schools of ethics. The Lacanian orientation in so far it finds its roots in Freud’s doctrine continues that interest. Just as war is politics by other means, politics is ethics by other means. I think this point has Aristotelian links. Psychoanalysis adds the death drive and tries to grasp what to do with it. It almost always grasps us before we grasp it. If psychoanalysis is an ethics, then it also must be politics by other means. The SFL will not hesitate to renew psychoanalysis not just at the level of theory and practice but at the level of politics. We’ll do that with its bearings on Lacan’s teaching as Lacan used Freud’s doctrine for his.

Theory and practice constitutes the backbone of psychoanalysis. Lacan reformulated psychoanalysis three times. The first time happened after his encounter in 1949 with the theory of the signifier as Lévi-Strauss was using it. Well before the second time he remarked upon the ambiguity of the word être as something that operates in the field of satisfaction as il se satisfait de l’être, the ambiguity found on p. 60 of S6 (1958-9). Lacan for the third time faced the theory of the sinthome and of the Borromean Knot with il se satisfait de l’être.

‘Making an offer creates demand’ Lacan said somewhere concerning what recruits the subject to his School. The phrase is a make-believe economic principle. ‘Making an offer creates desire’ is the effect it produces.

I myself have found myself at a rather advanced age amongst some rather energetic and inspiring people.

Kick-off will be this September or October.

Richard Klein, President of the SFL

Finsbury Park,

London

08/08/2014.