New Foundations for Psychoanalysis

by Jean Laplanche, David Macey (Translator)

In a study of the various foundations that have been proposed for psychoanalysis, French psychoanalyst Laplanche (U. of Paris) demonstrates that it cannot be epistemologically grounded in the background disciplines of biology, phylogenesis, mechanics or linguistics. Returning to the founding moment of psychoanalysis, he reconceptualizes the process and meaning of analysis through the elaboration of a general theory of seduction. Translated from the French edition of 1987. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Theory

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jean Laplanche was a french psychoanalyst.
He studied philosophy under Jean Hyppolite, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Later he began attending lectures and undergoing psychoanalytic treatment under Jacques Lacan.

Reviews

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laplanche works through pa's relationship to its others (biology, linguistics, anthropology) to refound psychoanalytic theory on the basis of his theory of enigmatic signifiers (when we encounter something that we know is meaningful but we do not have the resources to understand what it means). The core of the book is the novel approach to the seduction controversy, which Laplanche recategorizes into a sequence of infantile (pedophilic father) -> precocious (perverse mother) -> primal (passive child). Laplance approaches activity/passivity through an ultimately unsubstantial reference to continental thought, connecting the child's passivity in the face of enigmatic signification to Spinoza's idea (3D2) of an "inability to control something that takes place within us." The text is peppered with witty observations, as in his comment on the Lacanian blindspot concerning containment:

"I must at least give Winnicott and Bion credit for the idea of a 'container'. To take up the tub schema again, I compare the holding environment to a cyclotron in which particles are accelerated by being bombarded with huge amounts of energy. A cyclotron which is not contained becomes an H-bomb. The major failing of Lacan and the Lacanians is perhaps their inability to grasp the notion of 'containing'. Regular sessions of standard length and- a constant environment are important factors in containing, but its most important feature is the attention, or attentions, of the analyst. All analysts sometimes give in to the temptation to open a letter or to answer the telephone, but a
systematic lack of attention destroys the essential element of holding: limits disappear, and the session is dissolved. And the presence of limits is all the more necessary in that we encourage or induce an unbinding discourse."

Unfortunately, Laplanche's theories lose their shine on second thought. Especially disturbing are Laplanche's ideas concerning the existence of a "normal" unconscious and regressions to pre-Freudian ideas about the essence of adulthood. What remains is a theory of the archaic claiming to go beyond Freud without specifying exactly what the archaic is founded on, leading us to the conclusion that we are here once again on Fichtean grounds, with the unconscious as non-consciousness. Nevertheless, the idea of an enigmatic message has had an interesting afterlife in queer theory and I hope to be proven wrong in engaging with Morel's usage of his ideas.

[Micah · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the thicket of psychoanalytic concepts and narratives, what is essential and what can be dispensed with? Is psychoanalysis a developmental psychology, or something more, or in fact less? Laplanche adamantly states that psychoanalysis is about sexuality and the unconscious - which necessarily lead to the "primal," the clash of child and adult worlds, and a logic of untranslatable messages. Influenced, I think, by Lacan, Laplanche argues that the drive is nothing without the signifier: sexuality is only introduced to the child by adults who do not understand it themselves. Starting from the enigma, we elaborate a theory of ourselves.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This call for a renewed emphasis on the pre-verbal instead of a focus on the verbal to its detriment is done much more rigorously in Kristeva. Lacan is often deployed as the foil here, for unclear reasons. As a mere setting of "foundations", the project here is meant to be more preliminary than anything, and often amounts to little more than reading and interpreting Freud, intervening when deemed necessary.