Article
Forming new knots: Jean Laplanche, 1924–2012
Nicholas Ray's obituary of Jean Laplanche in Radical Philosophy 174 (2012) combines a biography with an account of Laplanche's thought. It follows his life from his birth in 1924 into the family that owned the Château de Pommard in Burgundy. It covers the Lycée Henri IV, where he met Jean-Bertrand Pontalis; the Resistance; the École normale supérieure, where his teachers included Alquié, Bachelard, Hyppolite and Merleau-Ponty; a year at Harvard; his analysis with Lacan until 1963; and his medical thesis on Hölderlin. Ray describes the split of 1963, Laplanche's presidency of the Association psychanalytique de France, his chair at Paris VII from 1970, the journal Psychanalyse à l'Université, the seminars published as Problématiques, and his direction of the French complete works of Freud from 1988. On the work, Ray presents the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (1967) as a historical dictionary of Freud's concepts and Vie et mort en psychanalyse (1970) as the start of a project to 'put Freud to work'. He presents the general theory of seduction, first set out in Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse (1987), as a move of seduction from the origin of a pathology to the foundation of every psyche, owing nothing to the therapies of recovered memory. Ray reads Laplanche's whole project as a lifelong analysis of Freud in the service of Freud's own Copernican demand. He ends with analysis as an unweaving, like Penelope's, that allows new knots to form.
Main ideas
- Laplanche's path ran from philosophy at the École normale supérieure, through analysis with Lacan and medical training, to the 1963 break with Lacan and leadership of the Association psychanalytique de France.
- He built psychoanalysis into the university, at Paris VII and in the journal Psychanalyse à l'Université, and from 1988 directed a unified French edition of Freud's complete works.
- The Vocabulaire and Vie et mort en psychanalyse read Freud historically and against himself, to put his concepts to work.
- The general theory of seduction moves seduction from the origin of a pathology to the foundation of every psyche, and has nothing to do with recovered-memory therapy.
- Laplanche's work as a whole is a lifelong analysis of Freud in the service of Freud's own Copernican demand; analysis is an unweaving that lets new knots form.
What it shows
Jacques Lacan analysed Jean Laplanche
Laplanche began his analysis with Lacan after returning from a year at Harvard (1946–47) and continued it until 1963. It was later counted as his training analysis, and on Lacan's advice he studied medicine to become an analyst.
- 1963
Jean Laplanche broke with Jacques Lacan
When the Société Française de Psychanalyse split in 1963 over the IPA's condition that Lacan be removed as a training analyst, Laplanche sided with the majority and helped found the Association Psychanalytique de France. He had already set out metapsychological differences with Lacan in 1960 and remained opposed to his short sessions.
- 1963
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis broke with Jacques Lacan
Pontalis left Lacan in the 1963 split of the Société Française de Psychanalyse, together with Laplanche, Anzieu and Widlöcher, and joined the Association Psychanalytique de France.
- 1967
Jean Laplanche collaborated with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
Schoolfellows at the Lycée Henri IV, they co-wrote the essay on primal fantasy (1964) and, over eight years of work prompted by Daniel Lagache, the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (1967).
Sigmund Freud influenced Jean Laplanche
Laplanche's work is a sustained reading of Freud: he interpreted Freud's texts as Freud interpreted his patients, to recover concepts Freud had marginalised or abandoned, and from 1988 he directed the French translation of Freud's complete works.
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- 1987
Jean Laplanche introduced General theory of seduction
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).
- 1987
Jean Laplanche introduced Enigmatic message
In Nouveaux fondements Laplanche speaks of the adult's enigmatic signifiers, compromised by the adult's unconscious, as what the child must try to master and translate; in later essays he prefers to speak of enigmatic messages.
- 1987
Jean Laplanche reworked Seduction theory
Laplanche held that Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1897 was a going-astray. He took the theory up again but detached it from actual abuse and from pathology, so that seduction by the adult's messages becomes the ordinary origin of every psyche.
- 1987
General theory of seduction derives from Seduction theory
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.
- 1896
Sigmund Freud introduced Seduction theory
Freud set out the seduction theory in his papers of 1896 on the aetiology of hysteria and on the neuro-psychoses of defence, and told Fliess in September 1897 that he no longer believed in it.
- 1992
Jean Laplanche reworked Unconscious
For Laplanche the unconscious is neither inborn nor the expression of an instinctual id. It is formed from the untranslated remainders of the adult other's messages, an alien within the subject. He calls Freud's discovery an unfinished Copernican revolution: Freud decentred the subject toward the other but repeatedly fell back on endogenous and phylogenetic explanations.