Book
Life and Death in Psychoanalysis
Vie et mort en psychanalyse
Laplanche's first major theoretical book, published by Flammarion in 1970 and translated with an introduction by Jeffrey Mehlman as Life and Death in Psychoanalysis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). It grew out of the research for the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse and sets out to 'put Freud to work', reading his texts as psychoanalysis reads its material, for their latent and partly unconscious history. Many critics had resolved the contradictions in Freud by imposing a unified system, even at the cost of discarding metapsychological concepts such as the death drive. Laplanche argues instead that a series of crucial Freudian terms each carries two concepts belonging to rival conceptual schemes, so that the work becomes a structured polemical field. Rather than choosing between the variants, he interprets them together, as the elements of a dream are interpreted, and follows how Freud's most radical discoveries keep escaping him and being rediscovered. The first chapter makes leaning-on (Anlehnung, étayage) the model of how the sexual drive arises: it leans on a vital function such as feeding and then turns away from it.
Main ideas
- Freud's texts are read psychoanalytically, for their latent and partly unconscious history, in order to put Freud to work.
- Key Freudian terms each carry two concepts from rival conceptual schemes, making the work a structured polemical field.
- Contradictions are to be interpreted rather than resolved by choice: as in a dream, the either/or is retranslated into an 'and'.
- The sexual drive arises by leaning on a vital function such as feeding and then turning away from it.
- Against critics who discard it to obtain a unified system, concepts such as the death drive are kept and interpreted within Freud's conflicting schemes.
What it shows
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.
- 1970
Jean Laplanche developed Leaning-on
The Vocabulaire (1967) translated Freud's Anlehnung as étayage and brought the term back from obscurity. In the first chapter of Vie et mort en psychanalyse (1970), Laplanche makes it the model of how the sexual drive arises: it leans on a vital function such as feeding and then turns away from it. He later judged leaning-on insufficient without the adult's seduction.
Gallery
Cover of Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, Johns Hopkins University Press paperback, 1985