Concept
General theory of seduction
Laplanche's recasting of Freud's seduction theory as an account of how every human psyche is formed, not only the neurotic one. In the ordinary care of the infant the adult transmits messages compromised by the adult's own unconscious sexuality. The infant tries to translate them, and what resists translation is repressed and becomes the unconscious and the source of the drive. Seduction thus moves from a pathological accident to the founding situation of the human being, and the other takes priority over the subject in its formation.
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- Enigmatic message
- Introduced by
- Jean Laplanche
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- Seduction theory
introduced by
- Jean Laplanche 1987 Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse (1987) draws together the Problématiques seminars and sets out the general theory of seduction systematically for the first time. It remained the core of all of Laplanche's later writing, collected in La révolution copernicienne inachevée (1992) and Sexual (2007).
derives from
- Seduction theory 1987 The general theory grows out of Freud's seduction theory of the 1890s. Freud's version explained a particular pathology by actual sexual trauma; Laplanche's makes the adult's unconsciously compromised messages a universal condition of the child's development.