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The late Jean Laplanche was one of the leading voices of French psychoanalysis. Trained as a philosopher by Merleau-Ponty, Jean Hyppolite, and Gaston Bachelard before attending medical school, analyzed by Lacan (then still within the fold of the IPA), long-time professor at the Sorbonne and author, along with J.-B. Pontalis, of The Language of Psycho-Analysis, Laplanche was best known for his careful reading of Freud, his reflections on language and translation, and his radical theory of the intersubjective origins of infantile sexuality and the individual unconscious.
The current volume, ably translated from the French by John Fletcher, Jonathan House, and Nicholas Ray, is the first in a projected series of books presenting English-language translations of theoretical and literary works connected to psychoanalysis and philosophy of mind. The book offers readers a broad sampling of Laplanche's lectures and essays from 2000 through 2006. These cover a wide range of topics and, while ultimately rewarding, may prove difficult for those not already familiar with Laplanche or conversant with the preoccupations and style of French (non-Lacanian) psychoanalytic writing.
At the heart of Laplanche's thinking, and what I imagine the majority of Anglophone readers will be most curious about, are his concepts of enigmatic messages and their translation, the theory of general seduction (which takes place within what he calls the fundamental anthropological situation), and his expanded understanding of infantile sexuality and its relation to the origins of the individual unconscious.
Given the complexity of Laplanche's thought and the absence of an editorial consciousness that might structure the diverse writings