Facets of the other

I would like to focus on the constitution of the unconscious in the primal scene of seduction. For both Laplanche and Lacan, the primacy of the other is central to their thinking. However, they differ greatly in how they conceptualize the notion of the other. For Lacan the other is an abstract category where he distinguishes between the “big Other” (A) and the little other (italicized a). The big Other (A) holds the position of radical alterity, which belongs to the symbolic order. While it is possible for it to be held by different persons, Lacan primarily equates it with the order of language. The little other (a) is inscribed in the imaginary order: as imaginary mirror-reflection it is an illusory other.

Lacan asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: The analyst must be “thoroughly imbued” with the difference between A and a (Écrits, 140), so that s/he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not the other (Écrits, 454). (Dylan, 2006, p. 135)

While Laplanche followed Lacan with regard to the great importance of the Other, he fundamentally changed the meaning of the other. In general, I would say that Laplanche turns Lacan upside down, in a way that is similar to Marx's interpretation of Hegel. He brings him down to earth. We may compare Lacan's thinking to the philosophy of German Idealism, especially Hegel, from whom he adopted crucial concepts, such as “intersubjectivity” and “the Other.” To fully understand Laplanche's theory, it may be helpful to know that he was a winegrower. He was raised in a chateau in Burgundy and was not simply a French intellectual living in Paris. His notion of the other is much more “earthy”; it is a materialistic category not an idealistic one.

In his “General Seduction Theory” (Laplanche, 2011), Laplanche conceives of the Other as a real person, an adult in relationship with an infant, who has a central function in the constitution of the infant's unconscious and the sexual at its core.