Laplanche Jean - Essays on Otherness

Essays On Otherness

Jean Laplanche is one of the most trenchant psychoanalytic thinkers of our time. These essays in particular clarify a number of themes that have not yet been adequately introduced to an Englishspeaking audience.

Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley

Essays On Otherness offers the most original, philosophically sophisticated, and far-reaching critical reading of Freuds metapsychology since Lacan. Exegetically scrupulous and rigorously argued, these essays go straight to the heart of the psychoanalytical enterprise.

Peter Osborne, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University

Essays On Otherness presents, for the first time in English, a key selection from the recent work of Jean Laplanche. He is one of the most important theorists of contemporary psychoanalysis. His work takes the decentering of the subject beyond the familiar parameters of post-structuralist theory towards a new understanding of otherness in the formation of human subjectivity.

The central theme of Essays On Otherness is the role of the other in psychic life. Since Freuds newly controversial abandonment of his seduction theory in 1897, psychoanalysis has given priority to the innate development program of the individual over the intersubjective relation to the other person. Laplanche returns to and reformulates Freuds abandoned seduction theory as a general theory of primal seduction: a seduction intrinsic to the everyday relations of childcare and nurturing.

Essays On Otherness reformulates some of the central categories of psychoanalysis leading to a new understanding of the analytic situation, of the role of seduction and transference in cultural production, and a new psychoanalytic theory of human time. Its implications will transform the current controversies over recovered memory and the after-effects of trauma and sexual abuse. The essays gathered together here for the first time are indispensable reading for all those concerned with the implications of contemporary developments in psychoanalysis.

Jean Laplanche is Professor Emeritus of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris, (VII).

Warwick Studies in European Philosophy

Edited by Andrew Benjamin

Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick

This series presents the best and most original work being done within the European philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not merely to reflect what is taking place within European philosophy, but also to contribute to the growth and development of that plural tradition. Work written in the English language as well as translations into English are to be included, engaging the tradition at all levelswhether by introductions that show the contemporary philosophical force of certain works, or by collections that explore an important thinker or topic, or by significant contributions that call for their own critical evaluation.

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Essays On Otherness

Jean Laplanche

First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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1992, 1993, 1995, 1999 Jean Laplanche; edited by John Fletcher; English translation Routledge, 1999.

Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 originally published in French by Aubier in Jean Laplanche, La rvolution copernicienne inacheve, 1992.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 0203981472 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0415131073 (hbk)
ISBN 0415131081 (pbk)

The publication of this book is supported by the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in London.

Acknowledgements

International Journal of Psychoanalysis for the use of Interpretation between Determinism and Hermeneutics: a Restatement of the Problem, International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1992) 73, 42945; Seduction, Persecution, Revelation, International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1995) 75, 66382. Copyright Institute of Psycho-Analysis.

Jean Laplanche for the use of articles from La rvolution copernicienne inacheve, Aubier, 1992, and for the use of A Short Treatise on the Unconscious, La Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, no. 48, Paris: Gallimard, 1993.

Editions Aubier/Flammarion for the use of articles from La rvolution copernicienne inacheve/The Unfinished Copernican Revolution, Aubier, Paris, 1992.

The Institute of Contemporary Arts for the use of Notes on Afterwardsness which is an extensively revised version of a conversation with Martin Stanton which first appeared in John Fletcher and Martin Stanton, eds, Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives: A Dossier, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1992.

Essays 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 were previously published in La rvolution copernicienne inacheve, Paris: Aubier, 1992. Essay 2 first appeared as Court trait de linconscient, Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, no. 48, Autumn, 1993, pp. 6996. Essay 6 first appeared as Sduction, Perscution, Rvlation, in Psychanalyse lUniversit vol. 18, no. 72, 1993, pp. 334.

Essays 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 and 9 were translated by Luke Thurston; Essay 3 was retranslated by Leslie Hill for this volume; Essays 5 and 6 first appeared in English in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and were translated by Philip Slotkin, and revised by Professor Laplanche; Essay 10 is based on a conversation with Martin Stanton that appeared in Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation and the Drives, eds John Fletcher and Martin Stanton, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1992, and has been extensively revised by Professor Laplanche for this volume.