Book
New Foundations for Psychoanalysis
Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse
Published by the Presses universitaires de France in 1987, and translated into English by David Macey (Blackwell, 1989) and by Jonathan House (The Unconscious in Translation, 2016). Laplanche draws together research going back to Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, to his earlier work with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis and Serge Leclaire, and to the first five volumes of his Problématiques seminars, to show how his positions connect. The book gives the first major statement of the general theory of seduction, which he refined for the rest of his life. Holding Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1897 to have been a going-astray, he generalises seduction from a pathogenic event into the founding situation of every human being. The adult addresses to the child enigmatic signifiers, compromised by the adult's own unconscious, which the child must try to master and translate. Primal repression is the failure of this translation, and its untranslated remainders form the unconscious. On this basis Laplanche extends Freud's translational model of repression into a translational model of après-coup, of trauma and infantile sexuality, and of the constitution of the human subject as a self-narrating, self-theorising creature.
Main ideas
- Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1897 was a going-astray; the theory must be taken up again and generalised.
- Seduction is not a pathological accident but the founding situation of every human being, in which the adult addresses enigmatic messages to the child.
- The adult's messages are enigmatic because they are compromised by the adult's own unconscious sexuality.
- Primal repression is the failure of the child's translation of these messages; the untranslated remainders form the unconscious.
- Translation becomes the model for repression, for après-coup, for trauma and infantile sexuality, and for the constitution of the human subject.
What it shows
- 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.
- 1987
Jean Laplanche reworked Primal repression
Laplanche ties primal repression to the general theory of seduction. The child tries to translate the adult's enigmatic messages, and primal repression is the failure of that translation: what cannot be translated is left behind as the first unconscious contents.
- 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.