What is a Cartel?
Lacan invented this device as part of his response to “group effects” and aiming at a way of grouping and working in groups that would not be structured according to the logic of the army or the church as described by Freud in his “Group Psychology“: all members of the group putting the same object in the place of the Ego Ideal, narcissistically identified among themselves and following one. The notion of a leader is incompatible with the logic of a Cartel.
Anyone with an interest in Lacanian Psychoanalysis may get involved in Cartel work. There are no requirements (i.e memberships, qualifications, clinical practice) other than wanting to inscribe one’s singular relationship to Psychoanalysis within the framework of the structure described above, that is, to find, interrogate and follow one’s own trait in the reading of the texts.
The Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation (ICLO)
Further Reading on Cartels
- Lacan’s Founding Act from 1964, which demonstrates the centrality and importance of cartels in his vision of a school of psychoanalysis.
- Five Variations on the Theme of “Provoked Elaboration”, by Jacques-Alain Miller
- The Cartel in the World, by Jacques-Alain Miller
- The Cartel’s Whirlwind. Affinities Between the Cartel and Lacanian Psychoanalysis, by Frank Rollier
- Some Points and Ideas Drawn from Frank Rollier’s "Le Cartel. A l’Envers de la Segregation", by Rik Loose
- The Trait and the Ones, by Florencia F.C. Shanahan
- The Cartel in Lacan’s School, by Philippe Lacadée
- Presentation at the SLP Congress in Milan, by Dominique Holvoet
