Book
The Language of Psycho-Analysis
Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse
A dictionary of the concepts of psychoanalysis by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, prepared over eight years at Daniel Lagache's instigation and published by the Presses universitaires de France in 1967, in Lagache's Bibliothèque de psychanalyse. Donald Nicholson-Smith's English translation, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, appeared from the Hogarth Press in 1973. Freud kept revising his theory and never fixed it in a final system, so instead of bare definitions each entry traces how a concept arose and changed in his writings, supports the account with the relevant passages, and sets out its difficulties. The alphabetical entries run from abreaction to working-through and also take in terms of later analysts, such as the mirror stage and the transitional object. Some entries brought neglected Freudian notions back into use, notably après-coup (afterwardsness) and Anlehnung, rendered as étayage (leaning-on). The book has been translated into more than twenty languages and become a standard reference.
Main ideas
- Each concept is traced through the development of Freud's thought, with the passages that ground it, rather than fixed in a single definition.
- Because Freud never systematised his theory, the dictionary reconstructs the underlying logic and evolution of his concepts.
- The entry on après-coup gathered Freud's scattered uses of nachträglich into one concept and made it central to Freudian thought.
- Translating Anlehnung as étayage brought the notion of leaning-on, by which sexuality props itself on self-preservation, back from obscurity.
- The dictionary also covers concepts introduced after Freud, such as the mirror stage and the transitional object.
What it shows
- 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).
- 1967
Jean Laplanche developed Afterwardsness
The Vocabulaire's entry ‘Après-coup’ drew Freud's scattered uses of nachträglich into a single concept and made it central to Freudian thought. Laplanche later proposed the English ‘afterwardsness’ in place of ‘deferred action’ and read the term in the light of the general theory of seduction.
- 1967
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis developed Afterwardsness
As co-author of the Vocabulaire, Pontalis shares in its entry ‘Après-coup’, which first presented Freud's Nachträglichkeit as a concept in its own right.
- 1964
Jean Laplanche developed Primal fantasy
In ‘Fantasme originaire, fantasmes des origines, origines du fantasme’ (1964), Laplanche and Pontalis read Freud's primal fantasies (the primal scene, seduction and castration) as fantasies of origins. Each stages an answer to an enigma of the subject's beginning: the origin of the subject, of sexuality, and of the difference between the sexes.
- 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.
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- 1895
Sigmund Freud introduced Afterwardsness
Freud used nachträglich and Nachträglichkeit from the 1890s, most fully in the 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology, where a memory becomes a trauma only after the event, and in letters to Fliess. Laplanche and Pontalis later gathered these uses into one concept.
- 1915
Sigmund Freud introduced Primal fantasy
Freud named the Urphantasien in ‘A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease’ (1915): the fantasies of observing parental intercourse, of seduction and of castration. In Lecture 23 of the Introductory Lectures (1916–17) he suggested they were a phylogenetic endowment.
- 1900
Sigmund Freud introduced Regression
Freud introduced regression in chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), for the dream's backward movement through the psychical apparatus towards perception; he later spoke also of temporal and formal regression, among them the libido's return to earlier fixation points.
Sigmund Freud introduced Unconscious
The word was in use among philosophers before him, but the psychoanalytic concept, an unconscious formed by repression whose contents reach consciousness only once resistances are overcome, is Freud's; Laplanche and Pontalis call it the single word that sums up his discovery.