iPSA, the “institute for psychoanalytic studies of architecture,” devotes itself to “the Freudian–Lacanian field.” Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud developed ideas that have survived to constitute a stark contrast with the mainstream disciplines of psychology and psychiatry. Lacan realized the value of Freud’s key achievements: the unconscious, the concept of the Other, the drives, and (especially) the controversial death drive. Lacan’s annual seminars, essays, conference lectures and public appearances contributed to his reputation as opaque and unreadable. But, thanks to new translations and the work of groups such as Écrits, LACK, the LacanSalon, Lacan Toronto, the Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workgroups, FLi (Freud/Lacan Institute), Das Unbehagen, and others, dynamic new scholarship is coming into view, with a invigorating exchanges between theory and practice.
Architecture’s interest in psychoanalysis has been sporadic and uneven. Addiction to cognitive psychology and phenomenology has contaminated representations of the unconscious and cemented opposition to concepts such as the death drive. iPSA aims to change these conditions through specific collaborative projects: (1) zoom seminars that reverse the accepted practice of presentations first, discussion (if any) second to start off with informal discussions with diverse voices; (2) “shadow” discussions of upcoming or past conferences, to restore conviviality and debate; and (3) development of reverse-zoom discussions into special-topics issues of Psyche Extended, iPSA’s on-line journal.
Anyone with an interest to join or a proposal for collaboration should contact any member or send a note of inquiry to architecture.lacan.ipsa@gmail.com. Don Kunze is the Recording Secretary of iPSA and designer/manager of the website.
Book Project, Stage Two
The manuscripts and graphics for Lacan+Architecture have been submitted to the publisher for editorial review. This latest addition to the Palgrave Lacan series, edited by Derek Hook and Calum Neill, promises to show how Lacan has and can benefit architecture theory and, in return, how architecture might benefit Lacan. Peruse the eleven chapters of this work-under-review to get a preview of coming attractions, as iPSA authors continue their work revitalized by this project of self-reflection.
Lalangue ┼ the Tiny House Project
Using the iPSA protocol of zoom first, publish later, Lacan’s revisionary interest in the relation of discourse to jouissance in the 1970s led to an adventurous engagement with language’s non-phonemic bits and pieces: sighs, moans, gestures, silences, thought bubbles … everything left over after specific meanings were subtracted. This, too, had structure, Lacan advised, and where there is structure there is the Real and also Topology. The Lalangue Project is set to span 14 months, terminating in the first special topics issue of Psyche Extended. As a part of this adventure, co-iPSArians connect lalangue to its architectural counterpart, the Tiny House, the popular return to the theme of the cabin that Le Corbusier promoted in the 1950s — a domestic condensation of the theme of the tempietto, the “perfect miniature.” Even if less isn’t more, smaller is certainly bigger.
Incel Culture
In response to Lorens Holm’s call for a look at Incel Culture (Wikipedia: “an online subculture of people (mostly white, male, and heterosexual) who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one), Tim Martin has written: “… [T]he typical male has an obsessional structure and the incel is a subcategory of this neurosis. It is anal and phallic. It is ambivalent about women first caring too little and then caring too much. It is phallic with an emphasis on phallic enjoyment which is typically obsessional. it is anal in that the original ambivalent conflict is over the anal object. It is typically obsessional in its overall life strategy which is to play the game of reproduction against the horizon of death. it feels greatly soothed by The Name of the Father but as [Lorens says] it can’t achieve that voice itself … the most recent manifestation of male neurosis and a fine companion to the many recent female neuroses.” Shall we sch(mooz)? Stay tuned for news of reverse zoom (discussion leading to formal presentation).
Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan: Shadowing the Public Realm
Lorens Holm
Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan: Shadowing the Public Realm methodically outlines key concepts in psychoanalytic discourse by reading them against key modern and post-modern architects. It begins with what is, arguably, the central concept for each discipline by putting the unconscious in a dialectic relation to space. Each subsequent chapter begins with a detail in architectural discourse, a kind of provocation that anchors each excursion into the thought of Freud and Lacan. The text is cyclical, episodic, and cloud-like rather than expository; the intention is not simply to explain the concept of the unconscious but, to different degrees, perform it in the text. The book offers powerful critiques of current planning practice, which has no tools to address our attachment to places. It concludes with powerful critiques of our incapacity to change the environmentally damaging ways we live our lives, which is an effect of our incapacity to recognize the presence of the death drive in our nature. The text is an extended thesis – spanning the chapters – that the field of the Other is the common grammar that organizes subjects into civilizations, which has consequences for how we treat the public realm in architecture, politics, and the city. The field of the Other is a slightly different slice through the urban social world. It shadows – but does not correspond exactly to – more familiar categories like private/public, inside/outside, figure/ground, or piazza/boulevard.
Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan will be an essential resource to anyone interested in how the environment we build is a reflection of our desire. Psychoanalysis is one of the great humanist discourses of the 20th century and this book will be a valuable reference to the humanist in architects, planners, and social scientists, whether they are students, professionals, or amateurs. It will appeal to historians of the 20th century, and to psychoanalysts and architects who are interested in how their respective discourses interdigitate with each other and with other discourses.