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Viviane Chetrit-Vatine, in her latest work, formulates two original concepts: ‘ethical seduction’ and the ‘matricial space’. She draws upon two significant sources, the first being the philosopher Emanuel Levinas , considered here for his endeavour to ground philosophy in ethics - more specifically, an ethic (the primacy of the ‘Other’) which is ‘older’ than ontology (the primacy of ‘Being’). The second is the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche , included here for the Copernican revolution this author ushered in - turning Freudian solipsism on its head (psychic functioning as understood from the starting point of ‘oneself’), substituting, in its place, the ‘basic anthropological situation’ (psychic functioning as understood from the starting point of seduction by the ‘Other’ - or generalized seduction theory). The rationale behind the juxtaposition of these authors is ‘primacy of the Other’ despite the fact that, though contemporaries, direct dialogue between the two men never took place. Levinas held psychoanalysis at arm's length, on occasion seeking to distinguish his views from it. He attempted to conceive of that which occurs “beyond, or before, consciousness” rather than the “unconscious” which, according to Levinas, retains “the structure of self-knowledge” ever destined to become conscious. Incidentally, on this point the British philosopher Simon Critchley (1998) has provided a helpful and illuminating critique of this Levinassian thorny issue. For his part, Laplanche acknowledged a certain amount of common ground with Levinas, discovering, after the fact, that Levinas had been able to bring about the Copernican revolution in the field of phenomenology that he himself had sought to champion in the field of psychoanalysis. Laplanche was a training philosopher. Doubtless, just like Levinas, he came up against the impasse of a phenomenology centred on the question of the ‘subject’ in the face of its ‘object’; hence the reversal, by which the concept of the ‘Other’ w