Something happened during the recent Study Days of the ECF. A new spirit is in the air, a secular Paraclete spirit. Individual enunciation has appeared.

We can no longer come together, manifest our being together, our mitsein, in the same way. Having enunciated the importance of the project of the Popular University of Psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, a World Association of Psychoanalysis cannot consider that its activities should be reserved solely for its members. There is a time for everything, and this is the time when walls come falling down.

In order to rise to the occasion, the WAP must open the doors of its Congress to all those who are interested in the destiny of psychoanalysis throughout the world, to all those who have heard echoes of the "Paris Event" and wish to be informed of and debate upon its impact, scope and continuity. What is the new pact with enunciation that comes with the public space of the psychoanalytic discourse? Even the title of the Congress reverberates differently. Until now, the title "Semblants and sinthome" made a series with the two preceding Congresses and followed of necessity from them. After having considered whether the semblants of the Name-of-the-Father were contingent or necessary, we have examined how the object a manifests itself in the psychoanalytical experience.

At this particular point, the distribution of the Names-of-the-Father in the symbolic dimension and that of the objects a in the dimension of the real receded in the development of Lacan’s teaching. The choice of the title for 2010 by Jacques-Alain Miller displaces these distributions. It is the object a itself which becomes semblant, the semblant of jouissance, in the development of Lacan’s teaching. Its status changes in relation to the dimension of the sinthome, now finding itself in the non-negativised residue, outside any form and beyond any in-form. It is through the dimension of the sinthome that the new semblant may be revealed, extracted from the psychoanalytical experience itself.

The surprise, after the "Paris Event", is that at the dawn of the XXIst Century, the usual semblants of the analyst are falling away. They need to be reinvented in order to face up to the new demands of civilisation. The stake for the "Semblants and sinthome" Congress will be to identify the new semblant that we are in the process of inventing, in the same way the end of analysis produces a new signifier, a supplementary signifier, the product of the unconscious of the subject.

Hence the complete renovation of the Congress and its proceedings.

The first three days are open to non-members of the WAP for the exceptional tariff of 70 Euros, allowing access to the television rooms.

The first day of the Congress is consecrated to a reflection on the recent Paris Event and its transmission. Jacques-Alain Miller will organise the morning session and close it with an intervention. In the afternoon, we will listen to the reverberations of the Event which have traversed throughout the diverse assemblage of the WAP. This session will be organised by Luis Solano, who will also close it.

The second day will start with a morning of the Analysts of the School (AE), allowing all new AEs nominated during the recent period to be heard. The session of the AE‘s testimonies will be followed by a debate between AEs themselves upon the post-event epoch.

The afternoon is consecrated to the first development of the theme of the Congress. Three sessions will each include three presentations:
1. The truth of the phallus-semblant in psychoanalysis: Marie-Hélène Blancard, Romulo Ferreira da Silva, Silvia Tendlarz.
2. The real of the phallus-semblant in psychoanalysis: Miquel Bassols, Rose-Paule Vinciguerra, Ana-Lydia Santiago.
3. The new semblant and the Sinthome: Leonardo Gorostiza, Anne Lysy-Stevens, Pierre-Gilles Guéguen.

The third day is dedicated to clinical work.

The fourth day, for WAP members only, will start with the second development of the theme of the Congress. The morning session will be closed by my own exposition on the theme of the next Congress, which will be diffused on the 15th of April. The afternoon will consist in a brain-storming session, which I myself will organise and preside over.

The fifth day is dedicated to the Assembly, the discourses of the newly elected and outgoing Presidents, a presentation of the next Council, and the election of the President by the Council.