“The Unconscious in Translation” (Jonathan House general editor)

The ‘Unconscious in Translation’ (UIT), the new book series expertly guided by general editor Jonathan House, fills several significant lacunas within Anglophone psychoanalytic literature. It was initially created to make available English translations of Jean Laplanche's writings. Since Laplanche (who studied with Lacan but distanced himself from him) is a major figure of Francophone psychoanalysis, UIT's commitment to the translation of his works is an important and most welcome undertaking. Written with great rigor and clarity, Laplanche's contribution indeed stands out as one of the most original Francophone contributions ‘after Lacan.’ UIT, however, is not limited to the translation of Laplanche's writings, but also includes the translation of “other important psychoanalytic thinkers whose work remains mostly untranslated into English.” Because of this twin mission, UIT is a crucial initiative, making available to an Anglophone audience a wide array of Francophone psychoanalytical thought.

UIT should be commended for fostering the translation of Laplanche's writings – and for having done so with great judiciousness in terms of the chosen texts, all of which represent major theoretical developments. In addition, it offers a remarkable presentation of Laplanche's theory in Dominique Scarfone's Laplanche: An Introduction. As Scarfone rightfully insists, Laplanche (who had a thorough and deep knowledge of Freud's corpus) meticulously follows the lines (both convergent and divergent) of Freud's texts in order to question and extend Freud's thinking in a way that reopens psychoanalytic investigation and reinstates its specificity. Scarfone shows that Laplanche keeps returning to and criticizing the leaning‐on theory of sexuality that he reads in Freud's Three Essays, since that theory risked positing the vital order (i.e., the vital processes linked to self‐preservation and adaptation) as the ‘sou