Laplanchean Dialogues with Hélène Tessier

Bryan Batista-Thomas: Which parts of Laplanche's theory are lost in translation?

Hélène Tessier: I'm a little bit taken aback by this question. Something is effectively lost in translation, but it would be interesting for Laplanche translators to answer it. I have not read Laplanche in other languages aside from French. Laplanche was very aware of what is always lost in translation. His whole metapsychology revolves around this affirmation. Furthermore, he closely monitored Freud's German-to-French translation, discussed it with the other translators of his team, and wrote about the decisions that had to be taken while translating—decisions that were never entirely satisfactory. For further developments on the translation of Freud by Laplanche, I would refer you to the collective book Translating Freud.

In the translation of Laplanche's works, there are, of course, things that are lost. I will try to identify some of them. As preliminary comments, I would say that the choices made in translation depend partly on who translates. One always translates from one's formation, interpretations, theories, and, eventually, ideologies. There is also the lexicon of a language. For example, the word “indice,” in French, which is essential in Laplanche's description of the sexual unconscious, is translated as “index” in English. It makes a huge difference because the term “index” also exists in French–and is to be also found in Laplanche's theorizing–but means something different than “indice” and can hardly be combined into an expression like “pulsion d'indice” [index drive], which is an earlier formulation of the concept of source-object.

The idea of what is lost in translation is at the basis of Laplanche's theory of the formation of the sexual unconscious. He developed it extensively in a few papers, including “A Brief Treatise on the Unconsc