That final word, courtesy of Dan Collins, is key. Like the original French coinage on which it’s based—l’une-bévue, meaning “a blunder”—the unbewoops of Seminar XXIV points us to a striking phonetic overlap. When spoken with an English inflection, Freud’s German term for the unconscious, Unbewusste, sounds a lot like unbewoops; and when spoken with a French inflection, it sounds a lot like Lacan’s original coinage: l’une-bévue.

This trilingual pun is more than mere wordplay. By translating sound-for-sound rather than sense-for-sense, l’une-bévue and unbewoops challenge the familiar depth-psychological image of the unconscious as a hidden, subterranean reservoir of repressed content. In its place, the puns at play in Seminar XXIV invite us to redefine the unconscious as an act, stumble, or structural blunder in language—one in which the subject inadvertently says more than they intend. Where romanticized repressed interiors were, momentary slips of the tongue become.

Unbewoops galore!

Schedule of Events:

In addition to sharing recorded lectures on Seminar XXIV with all registered participants, I’ll be hosting six online discussions throughout this fall series. Here’s our meeting schedule, followed by a link to Seminar XXIV:

11 September: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 1-2.

25 September: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 3-4.

9 October: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 5-6.

23 October: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 7-8.

6 November: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 9-10.

20 November: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops (SXXIV), Chapters 11-12.

ACCESS SEMINAR XXIV HERE

Registration Costs:

Registration for the complete series operates on a sliding scale. All registration tiers include full access to all recorded lectures and online discussions.

• Students / Trainees: $100

• Professionals: $200

• Supporting: $400

• Institutional: $800 (includes registration for up to 5 attendees)

• Fellowship Sponsor: $1,500+ (includes registration for you and your sponsored fellow)

The Impact of Your Support:

• Sustaining the Series: The Supporting and Institutional tiers sustain Lectures on Lacan, ensuring we can continue offering reduced-cost access to those who need it.

• Sponsoring Scholars: The Fellowship tier directly funds an emerging scholar or clinician for the full series. You may designate a recipient or fund an open fellowship (which will be named in your honor). Your generosity will also be acknowledged in all promotional materials.

Exclusive Benefit for Sustaining Tiers:

Registrants at the Supporting, Institutional, and Fellowship levels will receive free, advance access to the first volume in our new book series: Origins of Desire & Ethics of the Drive in Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

No one will be turned away for financial reasons. Please reach out to request reduced-cost registration.

To register via Venmo, scan the QR code below or use @smlmccrmck.

To donate via PayPal, click here.

About Prof. Dr. McCormick:

Samuel McCormick, Ph.D., is an award-winning teacher and scholar. He lectures widely on Lacanian psychoanalysis, is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University, and was previously appointed as EURIAS & Marie-Curie Research Fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark. His latest book, Origins of Desire & Ethics of the Drive in Lacanian Psychoanalysis, inaugurates the Routledge Guides to Lacan series. Learn more about Lectures on Lacan and Prof. Dr. McCormick HERE.

In the next few months, I will be launching Routledge Guides to Lacan, a new book series based on our continued work at Lectures on Lacan and designed to offer an accessible, reader-friendly path into the clinical and conceptual world of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The book series will begin much as our learning community did: with a deep dive into The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar XI). And if you’re wondering which, if any, of these fundamental concepts takes the prize in volume one, look no further than the book’s cover, the latest draft of which just arrived:

The book won’t be out until November, but you can access the full description, a detailed table of contents, and even three critics’ reviews here: Origins of Desire & Ethics of the Drive in Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Stay tuned for more news soon, including the launch of a new podcast series on The Sinthome (SXXIII) and an invitation to join our autumn lecture series on Lacan’s wonderfully titled twenty-fourth seminar: Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops. 😳

We discussed the work we do here at Lectures on Lacan and what it means to read Lacan seriously without trafficking in empty jargon. The conversation also flowed into the everyday realities of professorships and parenthood, how uncertainty and impossibility factor into clinical work, and what actually happens when an analysis ends. We even tackled the tangible meaning of the fee in treatment, the role of the body in tele-analysis, and considered what it means to bring psychoanalysis out of the clinic and into the streets.

It was a fantastic discussion — one which touched on many of the themes we often explore together at Lectures on Lacan. You can listen to the full episode and check out the show notes here:

Speaking Body

Interview with Samuel McCormick, Ph.D

Hello folks…

Listen now

2 months ago · 1 like · Neil Gorman

Since then, some comrades and I have been hard at work on a new project for Lectures on Lacan, the first installment of which is headed your way soon. I can’t share all the details yet, so the title and TOC below will have suffice — at least for now.

Stay tuned for more news soon, along with the start of our next podcast series! 🤘🏼

Origins of Desire & Ethics of the Drive in Lacanian Psychoanalysis:

A Reading Companion to Seminar XI

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Subject’s Cause

Chapter 1: A Science of Openings: Lack, Causality, and the Subject in Seminar XI

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Contested Scientificity of Psychoanalysis

  • 1.1 The Epistemological Break: Seeking versus Finding

  • 1.2 The Ontological Distinction: Objectivity and Objectality

  • 1.3 A Science of Structural Causality

• Part II: The Differential Logic of Lack and Desire

  • 2.1 Desire as the Metonymy of Lack

  • 2.2 The Constituted Lack: Absence versus Experience

  • 2.3 The Differential Structure of Being: Lacan’s Saussure

  • 2.4 From Two to Three: The Emergence of Objet a

• Part III: The Genetic Logic of the Subject and the Object

  • 3.1 The Primordial Prohibition: Castration and the Name-of-the-Father

  • 3.2 Alienation and the Split Subject ($)

  • 3.3 The Algebraic Formulation of Lack: (-φ) and (a)

  • 3.4 The Oedipal Drama as Structural Logic

• Part IV: Beyond Interpretation: Hermeneutics, History, and the Real

  • 4.1 Psychoanalysis: A Hermeneutics of Faith or a Science of the Letter?

  • 4.2 “Wo es war, soll Ich werden”: From Past to History

  • 4.3 The Limits of Interpretation: The Sinthome and the Real

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Chapter 2: The Repetition of the Cut: Trauma, Representation, and the Split Subject

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Architecture of the Split Subject

  • 1.1 The Retroactive Constitution of a Lost Origin

  • 1.2 The “No” of the Father and the Production of “No-Things”

  • 1.3 The Set of Castration: { -φ, a }

• Part II: The Logic of Repetition: Tuché and Automaton

  • 2.1 Repression and the Return of the Repressed: The Logic of Retroaction

  • 2.2 An Encounter with the Real (Tuché)

  • 2.3 The Insistence of the Signifier (Automaton)

• Part III: The Three-Tiered Structure of Repetition and Representation

  • 3.1 Case Study I: The Fort-Da Game

  • 3.2 Case Study II: “Father, Can’t You See I’m Burning?”

  • 3.3 The Retroactive Logic of the Real

• Part IV: The Scopic Field: The Gaze as Objet a

  • 4.1 The Split Between the Eye and the Gaze

  • 4.2 The Stain and the Annihilation of the Subject

  • 4.3 Love and the Deception of the Eye

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Chapter 3: The Signifier of the Says-No: Meontology, Transference, and the Primordial Cut

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Primordial Signifier and Its Effects

  • 1.1 The Quadrilateral of the Subject

  • 1.2 Identifying The Signifier: The Unary Trait

  • 1.3 The “One” of the Split

• Part II: A Science of Non-Being: The Meontology of Psychoanalysis

  • 2.1 The “Says-No” as Primordial Utterance

  • 2.2 From Ontology to Meontology

  • 2.3 Human Existence as a Subtracted State

  • 2.4 The Death Drive and the Fantasy of Oneness

• Part III: The Clinic of the Orifice: A New Theory of Transference

  • 3.1 The Hoop Net and the Temporal Pulsations of the Unconscious

  • 3.2 Transference as Closure

  • 3.3 The Objet a as Obturator

  • 3.4 The Analyst’s Strategy

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Chapter 4: The Lamella and the Lost Cause of Life: A New Theory of the Drive

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Sexed Organism and the Real Lack

  • 1.1 The Interface of Organism and Subject

  • 1.2 The Symbolic Imposition of Sexual Bipolarity

  • 1.3 The Lost Cause of Life: Redefining Libido

  • 1.4 The Lamella: An Organ without a Body

• Part II: The Overlapping of the Two Lacks

  • 2.1 A Network of Loss

  • 2.2 The Symbolic Veiling the Real

  • 2.3 Sex, Death, and the Species

• Part III: The Grammar and Topology of the Drive

  • 3.1 Deconstructing the Drive: The Four-Part Montage

  • 3.2 The Topology of the Circuit

  • 3.3 The Three Voices of the Drive

• Part IV: The Ethics of the Drive: Traversing the Fantasy

  • 4.1 Beyond the Pleasure Principle

  • 4.2 Traversing the Fundamental Fantasy

  • 4.3 Living Out the Drive

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Chapter 5: The Libidinal Economy: Sublimation, Desublimation, and the Object of the Drive

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Libidinal Economy: Sublimation vs. Desublimation

  • 1.1 The Direction of Desire: The Sublimatory Path

  • 1.2 The Reversal of the Drive: The Desublimatory Path

  • 1.3 A Hierarchy of Loss

• Part II: An Ontology of the Drive: Having versus Being

  • 2.1 The Imaginary Logic of Having

  • 2.2 The Real Logic of Being

  • 2.3 The Drive as a Portal between Meaning and Being

• Part III: The Object as Opening

  • 3.1 From Object to Objectality

  • 3.2 The Indifference and Constraints of the Object

  • 3.3 The Object as Portal: Revisiting the Hoop Net

• Part IV: The In-Out Logic of the Drive

  • 4.1 The Primacy of the Circuit

  • 4.2 The Respiratory Drive as a Paradigm

  • 4.3 The Incorporeal Organ

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Chapter 6: The Unreal Organ: A Myth of the Drive’s Origin

• Key Concepts

• Introduction

• Part I: The Topology of the Unconscious: The Pulsating Cave

  • 1.1 The “Position” of the Unconscious

  • 1.2 The Cave, the Rim, and the Flow

  • 1.3 The Opening and Closing

• Part II: The Myth of the Egg: A New Origin Story

  • 2.1 From Aristophanes to the Egg

  • 2.2 Humpty Dumpty and the Broken Subject

• Part III: Placenta, Breath, and Cry

  • 3.1 The First Loss: The Placenta as Anatomical Complement

  • 3.2 The First Pulsation: The Respiratory Drive

  • 3.3 The First Demand: The Prohibition of the Cry

• Part IV: The Incorporeal Organ and the Activity of the Drive

  • 4.1 The Ectopic Chain

  • 4.2 Libido as Unreal Organ

  • 4.3 The Activity of the Drive as Recovery

• Conclusion

• Key Takeaways

• Discussion Questions

Conclusion: Love Beyond the Fantasy

• Introduction

• Part I: The Dead End of Desire

  • 1.1 Desire’s Servitude to the Law

  • 1.2 The Jouissance of the Symptom

  • 1.3 Desire as a Defense

• Part II: The Path of Separation

  • 2.1 Alienation and the Subject Supposed to Know

  • 2.2 Separation and the Desire of the Other

  • 2.3 Traversing the Fundamental Fantasy

• Part III: The Interior Eight and the Liberation of the Drive

  • 3.1 The Regressive Loop of Identification

  • 3.2 The Progressive Loop of Separation

  • 3.3 The Fall of the Analyst

• Part IV: The Ethics of the Drive

  • 4.1 The Evil God of Anxiety

  • 4.2 Alcibiades’s Shortcut: The Path of Pure Desire

  • 4.3 The Potential for Limitless Love

• Conclusion

Works Cited

Huge thanks to everyone who made the series soar: Aabir, Abdulla, Alexandra, Andrés Felipe, Asaf, Camden, Chloe, Chris, Cibele, Cody, Deborah, Dennis, Derin, Diana, Douglas, Douglas, Dylan, Eric, Félix, Fernanda, Gabriel, Gabriella, George, Grace, Hanafi, Hannah, Henrik, Holly, Ira, Jack, Jinkang, the Jonathans, Jordan Kelci, Kolya, Lora, Lorimer, Lwam, Maria, the Michaels, Mikael, Nicole, Penny, Pushpajith, Rachel, Ramy, Rishab, the Ryans, Sandy, Santiago, Sean, Shari, Shawn, Shyra, Soraya, Suhrida, Svetlana, Tej, Terence, Teresa, and Tiffi.

Next up for Lectures on Lacan is Seminar XXIV, the title of which I’m still not sure how to translate — though I rather like how Dan Collins’ puts it: Love Is the Failure of the Unbewoops.

Stay tuned for more updates soon — including the launch of a new podcast series! 🤘🏼

Whether you’re a seasoned Lacanian or simply curious about how we in-ex-sist the Symbolic through our own self-fabrications, there is a seat at the table for you.

And just to give you a sense of what’s on offer, here’s the latest diagram in the series, which shows how a trefoil knot (here drawn in purple) emerges from Lacan’s Borromean links — a trefoil knot that, if it doesn't remain closed, occasions the sinthome.

What’s included when you register for the series:

• Instant Access to Recorded Lectures: Five so far, and who knows how many more? We start with the basics and scaffold from there, approaching Seminar XXIII one toehold at a time.

• Live Interactive Discussions: Join our bi-weekly Zoom sessions where we transform this dense text into practical insights, hearing from established scholars, seasoned clinicians, and learners of every stripe.

• A Guided Journey: We move through Seminar XXIII chapter-by-chapter, ensuring the theory remains grounded and accessible.

Our Upcoming Live Schedule:

Our next session is this Friday, February 27. Here is the path ahead, followed by a link to learn more and join the series.

• February 27: Chapters 3–4

• March 13: Chapters 5–6

• March 27: Chapters 7–8

• April 10: Chapters 9–10

Join our Spring Series on THE SINTHOME!

We’ll begin with a wide review of Lacan’s mid-1970s thought, paying special attention to the talks he gave in the lead-up to Seminar XXIII (truly eye-opening stuff). We’ll then shift to the figure with which Lacan began his work on the sinthome: the human body. What does it mean to have a body? How is this different from the experience of being a body? And where do we find the clinical and conceptual resources to make sense of all this?

Here’s a clue, from the second lecture in our new series on Seminar XXIII:

Link below to learn more and register to join us this spring! Recorded lectures delivered to your inbox, a series of live online discussions, and a chance to study what is arguably the key text in Lacan’s later thought — does it get any better than this?!

In the winter of 1975, Jacques Lacan took the stage with a heavy sigh, a pocketful of multi-colored chalk, and a deceptively simple question: How do we keep from falling apart?

In the “unreadable” work of James Joyce, who apparently had no need for psychoanalysis, Lacan claims to have found an answer. What holds our worlds together, especially when traditional supports fall away, is a unique, irreducible kernel of jouissance — a hand-tied psychic knot of enjoyment that Lacan now calls the sinthome.

Is it a bit of sin? Something from home? A weirdly archaic symptoma that has fallen into the Real and now lies buried beyond analysis (signe-tombe)? Or maybe it’s a masterpiece of self-fabrication (synth-homme) which allows the psyche to bind its inherent divisions (syn-thome)? Much as the singular, self-authored deeds of the holy man (saint-homme) allow them to in-ex-sist the Symbolic?

Yes, and more, we discover in Seminar XXIII!

From impossible symptoms to unanalyzable sinthomes, we’re about to learn the art of psychic knotting in times of great upheaval — a singular, self-made technique for holding worlds together when nothing else can.

Schedule of Events:

In addition to sharing recorded lectures with all registered participants, I’ll be hosting online discussions of Seminar XXIII, with the express goal of making this truly wild text in Lacan’s later thought clear, coherent, and accessible to all. Here’s our meeting schedule, followed by a link to The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII):

13 February: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), Chapters 1-2.

27 February: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), Chapters 3-4.

13 March: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), Chapters 5-6.

27 March: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), Chapters 7-8.

10 April: Zoom Discussion, 10am PST. Readings to be discussed: Lacan, The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), Chapters 9-10.

Access THE SINTHOME (Seminar XXIII) here

Registration Costs:

In an effort to keep Lectures on Lacan accessible to all, this spring series on The Sinthome (Seminar XXIII), lectures and discussions included, is offered on a donation basis.

The suggested donation is $200 for professionals or $100 for students and trainees, but any donation, big or small, will allow you to register for the complete series.

To register or donate via Venmo, scan the QR code below or use @smlmccrmck.

To donate via PayPal, click here.

Thank you for supporting Lectures on Lacan!

About Prof. Dr. McCormick:

Samuel McCormick, Ph.D., is an award-winning teacher and scholar. He lectures widely on Lacanian psychoanalysis, is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University, and was previously appointed as EURIAS & Marie-Curie Research Fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark. His first book, Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals, won the Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression, the James A. Winans - Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, and the Everett Lee Hunt Award. His second book, The Chattering Mind: A Conceptual History of Everyday Talk, was published by the University of Chicago Press and recently translated into Italian.

Learn more about Lectures on Lacan and Prof. Dr. McCormick HERE.