Rally of Impossible Professions Against False Promises of Security


20 September, 2008,  The Rally of the Impossible Professions, Against the False Promises of Security [1] was staged by the London Society of the New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis. Jacques-Alain Miller came from Paris to preside over the meeting and delivered some closing remarks which were published along with other contributions from the day in the first issue of the international Lacanian journal of psychoanalysis, Hurly-Burly [2].

I got a call last month from Pascale Fari, curator of Lacan Web TV [3], asking if I still had the DVD recording of the event and, to my surprise, it took me less than an hour to put my hands on it. I said to myself : "When the Other calls, the unconscious answers." I had looked for it before without luck.

Like hearing a poem learned long ago, or watching a play you once had a part in, the words in the recording struck chords that I could feel resonating in my body. 

The last words of the talk had a different effect. I had forgotten them. "I ask the London Society of the New Lacanian School, to organise another conference with our friends and our colleagues of other analytical groups just to try to stop this stupid but deadly menace of the 450 guidelines... Why not try to prevail in Great Britain...."

Did we prevail? 

We took part in the creation of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy Against State Regulation, this was crucial in our effort to prevail. I found my niche reporting on regular trips to the Health Professions Council whose offices were a short bike ride from mine. I had learned how to follow the action as a social scientist at Brunel University in the 1990s. I showed up one day each week, and sat in on one of the many meetings then wrote up the results and started publishing a blog [4]. The HPC policy of transparency welcomed the public into many meetings, and also led to some meetings being recorded, transcribed and made available in the public domain: this helped enormously. It eventually led to a book [5].

My aim was to get beyond the rhetoric that was wrapped up in politics. I was animated by the need to situate people's words in a context of actuality, avoid the lures of ideology and to introduce spaces to think in. I wanted to inject some reason, logic and truth into matters. I set about bringing the facts to light, expecting this to be enough to hold the day. Luckily there were also other more astute actors around me who knew that other tactics would need to be brought into play. 

One important step was to initiate a Judicial Review, the effects of which played a crucial role. Putting questions at this level brought our concerns right under the noses of the political class. It was also a matter of timing. The election in May 2010 was decisive, and as soon as power changed hands, the HPC dropped its quest to incorporate our practices into its body, and focussed on absorbing the social workers instead. 

This was the coincidence of events that helped us to prevail at that time.


[1] The London Society of the New Lacanian Society, the event was held at the University of Westminster, London. Video can be found here.

[2] Jacques-Alain Miller: "Closing Remarks at the Rally of the Impossible Professions, Against the False Promises of Security London 20 September 2008," published in Hurly-Burly No 1 May 2009, The International Lacanian Journal of Psychoanalysis, published for The Freudian Field by the New Lacanian School: May 2009.

[3] YouTube Channel 

[4]   HPC Watchdog . Blogspot . Com

[5] Janet Haney, Regulation in Action (London: Karnac 2012)


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