Teaching
Azeen A. Khan, Psychoanalyst
In order to participate in the clinical or reading seminars, you may inquire about details by writing to: azeen.khan@gmail.com
Clinical Seminar Series 2023-24
Desire of the Analyst
Azeen A. Khan
This clinical seminar explores and interrogates the function, desire, and act of the psychoanalyst from the perspective of the Lacanian orientation, as established by Jacques Lacan and developed by Jacques-Alain Miller and members of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP). Each seminar meeting will be organized around a reading of selected texts on a key concept pertinent to clinical practice—symptom, object a, fantasy, transference, interpretation—as well as published clinical cases that illuminate the concept. While reading each case, we will attempt to delineate the position of the analyst—both as it pertains to the construction of the case and the direction of the treatment—and identify what, above and beyond that, could be specified as the act of the analyst.
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Reading Seminar Series 2022
The Hypothesis of the Unconscious
Azeen A. Khan
How can we understand the hypothesis of the unconscious, the unconscious as hypothesis? What are the formations of the unconscious? And, to what can we attribute psychical causality for the unconscious? Pursuing questions such as these, this semester-long seminar will be organized around Jacques Lacan’s Seminar V: Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958). Over the course of our reading, we will focus on the following: the formalization of the three moments of the Oedipus complex; the construction and interpretation of “The Graph of Desire”; and, the dialectic of demand and desire in the clinical study and treatment of the neuroses, in particular, obsessional neurosis. Alongside our reading of the Seminar, we will also refer to several of Freud’s metapsychological papers, including, “The Unconscious” and “Repression.” By the end of the seminar, we will begin to differentiate between the transferential unconscious and the real unconscious, as presented in Lacan’s late teaching, and as developed by Jacques-Alain Miller.
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Reading Seminar Series 2022
The Object Relation
Azeen A. Khan
This semester-long reading seminar will be organized around Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV: The Object Relation (1956-1957). Over the course of our reading, we will focus on the following: the notion of the object in psychoanalysis; the differentiation between frustration, castration, and privation as operations leading to psychical structure; the articulation between the phallus and the so-called perversions; the construction of phobia; and, the formalization of the Oedipus complex. In addition, we will begin to consider the extension and revision of the Freudian Oedipus in response to contemporary sexualities and emergent clinical phenomena. Alongside our reading of Lacan’s seminar, we will also refer to several of Freud’s texts—including “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year Old Boy” (1909), “A Child is Being Beaten” (1919), and “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman” (1920)—and to Jacques-Alain Miller’s comments on Seminar IV.
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Reading Seminar Series 2021
On Feminine Sexuality
Azeen A. Khan
This year-long reading seminar will be organized around Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973. To support our reading of the seminar, we will also make reference to Sigmund Freud’s essays on sexual difference—including his papers on “The Infantile Genital Organization,” “The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex,” and “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes”—as well as other writings of Lacan, including “L’Étourdit,” and certain commentaries by Lacanian psychoanalysts on the modes of feminine jouissance. During the course of the reading year, we will focus on Lacan’s theorization of feminine jouissance; the body; the letter; and, the sexual
non-rapport.
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Reading Seminar Series 2021
The Super-Ego after Freud
Azeen A. Khan
This year-long reading seminar will be organized around psychoanalytic writings on the super-ego, from its conceptualization in Sigmund Freud’s work to the way it is taken up in the teachings of Jacques Lacan and the commentaries of post-Freudian analysts. In particular, we will focus on Freud’s essays—“Mourning and Melancholia,” “A Child is Being Beaten,” “The Ego and the Id,” “The Economic Problem of Masochism,”and “Civilization and its Discontents”—alongside Lacan’s comments on the superego in Seminar I, VII, “Kant with Sade,” and “Television.” In the course of our readings, we will isolate four aspects of the theorization of the super-ego: the link to prohibition and jouissance; the object-voice; the status of the super-ego in differential diagnosis,
specifically in the clinics of obsessionality, paranoia, and melancholia; and, the concept of ravage in its relation to feminine jouissance.
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Reading Seminar Series 2020
Clinic of Foreclosures
Azeen A. Khan
This year long reading seminar will be organized around two texts by Jacques Lacan: Seminar III on "The Psychoses" (1955-56) and Seminar XXIII on "The Sinthome" (1975-76). To support our reading of the seminars, we will make reference to Sigmund Freud's clinical cases, including the case of "Schreber" ("Psycho-analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia", 1911) and the case of the "Wolf Man" ("From the History of a Case of Infantile Neurosis," 1918). Additional reading from Lacan's Écrits will also be important reference points for our work this year.
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Reading Seminar Series 2020
Metapsychology and its Limits
Azeen A. Khan
This year long reading seminar will be organized around two volumes of the standard edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIV: On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Meta-psychology and Other Works (1914–1916) and Vol. XIX: The Ego and the Id and Other Works (1923–1925). During the course of the year, we will read some of Freud's key essays on metapsychology--including his papers "On Narcissism: An Introduction," "The Unconscious," "Instincts and their Vicissitudes," and "Ego and Id"--to come to terms with what Freud perceived to be the merits of positing a metapsychology as well as its inherent limits, specifically the limitation posed on psychoanalytic thought by the difficulties of clinical praxis.
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Reading Seminar Series 2019
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
Azeen A. Khan