Is Psychoanalysis a Truth-Procedure?

Name: Is Psychoanalysis a Truth-Procedure?
Start: 2026-06-13T18:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-06-13T20:00:00+02:00
Location: Anti

Schedule

Sat Jun 13 2026 at 06:00 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Anti | Malmö, SN

During the spring of 2026 Aning - Association for Philosophy and Psychoanalysis will present 5 lectures loosely knit together with the topic of "Truth and knowledge". We will discuss the clitoris, truth in art, the psychoanalytical ethic of honesty, masochism, truth that disrupts knowledge and much more.
All lectures will be in english are free of charge and will take place at Anti Bookstore (Stora Nygatan 18, Malmö) between 18.00 and 20.00. To guarantee a seat you will have to be there some time before it starts.
If you have any questions you can send an email to [email protected] or [email protected]. The events are made possible in cooporation with Psykoterapicentrum, Folkuniversitetet, Folkuniversitetsföreningen and Bertil Wennborgs Stiftelse.
8/2 - Clitoris' Saga - Rise, Triumph, and Decline of the Clitoris (Sergio Benvenuto)
12/3 - Truth and Psychoanalysis - The Poetry, Art and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion’s O
(Annie Reiner)
26/4 - Truth or Knowledge - A psychoanalytic point of view
(Judith Mitrani)
24/5 - The psychoanalyic ethic of honesty - Implications for self-defeating patients
(Nancy McWilliams)
13/6 - Is Psychoanalysis a Truth-Procedure?
(Lorenzo Chiesa)
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Abstract for 13/6:
According to Alain Badiou, there are no pre-established truths. Instead, there are truth procedures, initiated by an event that disrupts the order of knowledge. The subject originates from a nomination of and fidelity to an event. It becomes a finite fragment of an infinite truth-procedure. Truth-procedures can be political, scientific, artistic, and amorous. Philosophy is not a truth-procedure, and its aim is rather to think the circulation among these truth-procedures. With respect to Lacanian psychoanalysis, Badiou’s position proves inconsistent, or at best ambivalent. On the one hand, he relegates it to the marginal role of a theory of the truth-procedure of the subject in love. On the other hand, he more convincingly postulates that it might be, theoretically and practically, a nascent and independent truth-procedure, yet it is “too young, extraordinarily recent”. My wager in this paper and my current project in general is that the legacy of the late Lacan revolves precisely around constructing a distinctly psychoanalytic truth-procedure. The notorious “dissolution” of his School and the concomitant delineation of a psychoanalytic “field” that opposes any “group” should be situated in such context. First and foremost, this involves thinking the passage from the end of individual, terminable analysis, as treatment, or, approximatively, what Lacan calls the discourse of the analyst, to the commencement of a wider, interminable discourse of psychoanalysis.
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Lorenzo Chiesa is a philosopher who was educated in Canada (International Baccalaureate, UWC Lester B. Pearson College, Victoria, British Columbia), Italy (MA-BA, University of Trieste), and the UK (PhD, University of Warwick). He was previously Professor of Modern European Thought at the University of Kent, where he founded and directed the Centre for Critical Thought. Chiesa has held visiting positions at multiple institutions in Europe, the US, and Asia. He is presently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University (UK), where he is also serving as co-convenor of the Faculty Research Group in Critical Theory and Practice. Chiesa has published and taught extensively on psychoanalysis, philosophy of religion, French and Italian theory, biopolitics, and Marxism.