Mark Rothko, No. 3/No. 13, 1949

Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Fact in the Clinic and in Science

André Michels

Saturday, May 8, 2027 • 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

For all their basic differences, clinical facts and scientific facts are remarkably close, and overlap in several areas. Both have a special relation to knowledge, with criteria based on validity rather than truth. As with science, the clinic’s kernel lies in repetition, revealing the real in all its variations. There, knowledge can be unknotted and reknotted differently. Yet, clinical or scientific discovery comes about as a result of an intrinsic logic and not by chance, within a mode of thought that reckons with each subjective position. 

Suggested readings: Canguilhem, Georges: The Normal and the Pathological (1943; Zone Books, 1991). Fleck, Ludwik: Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1934; University of Chicago Press, 1979). Kuhn, Thomas S.: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1972). 

Location: In-person in NYC and online via Zoom.

Fee: $60; for students with ID: $30. Registration details to follow. 

—

André Michels is a psychoanalyst practicing in Luxembourg and Paris, and a member of the Après-Coup faculty (New York), Espace Analytique (Paris), and the Psychoanalytisches Kolleg (Berlin). He was co-editor of the Jahrbuch für klinische Psychoanalyse (1998-2008), editor of Actualité de l’hystérie (2001) and Les limites du corps, le corps comme limite (2005), and is the author of numerous articles on psychoanalysis and cultural sciences. His main areas of research are: the clinic of transmission, psychoanalysis and oral tradition, science and the unconscious, and dissatisfaction in the body.