As long as one makes use of him

The Winter Seminar on love that recently took place seems to have enthused a good number of the 350 participants, which for the first time those attending in person surpassed those on the screen.

There are certainly various reasons for that: the theme, which usually resists rigorous analysis, the unfolding of different fields -the child, the family, the mystique, the madness, the sex, among others; the contribution of colleagues from different generations and always concerned with the application to clinical work; the engagement of the moderators in truly opening up debates ; and finally the confirmation that less than three months after the death of Charles Melman, the work at the ALI was continuing on course and in the wake of its founder.

Will this momentum lose force? The last Seminar doesn’t give this impression, and neither do the exchanges that I recently had with numerous colleagues. Anyway, Charles Melman did what he could for the work to continue at the ALI after him. He alerted us often of the vicissitudes in the history of psychoanalysis, of the dangers that follow the death of a founder, of the very probable possibility of foolishness and cowardice... He also created a Directoire and a Doyennat to support the Bureau in its chore and to allow a more collective governance of our Association. But he has most of all left us a wealth of teaching not matched since Lacan.

Certainly, to paraphrase a famous quote of Lacan, numerous colleagues that were his students will from now on carry out the task, each one in its own way, to continue without Melman as long as one makes use of him… and that is what became evident in our Winter Seminar in a very encouraging way. In an editorial from September 2021, he wrote: “Bloody Lacan! We have never dialogued so much with him as we have since his death and rendered him more eloquent than he was when he was sitting in his armchair”. One more time, he had it right, et not only concerning Lacan. The opportunities to verify the relevance of such dialogues will not be lacking in the years to come.

Happy new year to all and to our Association.