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B
Hello, My name is Miriam Sauer and I'm a host at the New Books Network. Today I'm welcoming Professor Helene Tessier to the Psychoanalysis section of the New Books Network. Tessier is professor and writer of psychoanalysis at the St. Paul University of Ottawa. She first trained as a lawyer and later pursued additional education as a psychoanalyst. She is a member of the Scientific Council of the International Federation of Catholic Universities, vice President of the Front Desieur La Planche based in Paris, member of the Societ Canadien Dipsicanalys ipa, and vice president of the Societie Psi Analytique du Montreal. She has published widely on the work of Jean Laplanche and is a crucial part of the Laplange movement. Today she's here to discuss a remarkable work that just came out with Le Vocabulare de la Planche. She's the editor of this Vocabulary of Laplange and the author of several of its entries. I first met Helene at an event at the ICI Berlin in which she discussed Laplanche's work with several of his key intel art kissers such as Joseph Ludin, Udo Haggard, and Ilca Quindo the vocabulary offers incisive and well written entries of key Laplacian concepts, enabling the reader to delve into Laplacian thinking and discover its nuances and riches. Helene, welcome. I'm so happy to get the opportunity to discuss your newest publication with you. It is such a stunning text which greatly contributes to our understanding of Laploche and obnoxious work. I'm very happy that you're here.
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A
Thank you. Thank you very much, Miriam. It's a real honor for me to do this webcast with you, and I hope we will be able to explain a little bit more what's in this vocabulary. And what also, what's the importance of Laplanche's work in contemporary psychoanalysis?
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B
Yes, let's go. Let's dive right in. So before we look at Laplange's idea, I'd be curious to learn a bit more about this book and the process of editing. So very basic. What sparked your interest in editing this volume? Why do we need a vocabular de La Planche?
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A
I think there are two main reasons. I will start with the historical one, or maybe you know, and that La Planche was what made La Planche very famous in psychoanalysis, his Vocabulare de l' abiscanalis in English, the language of psychoanalysis that he wrote under the direction of Daniel Lagash, but with Montalis and of course being at the Fontation Jean La Planche, which is a fondation which La Planche instituted to pursue his work, as he says in French, in the spirit of its foundation founder, which is Jean Laple Gemsel. So it was of course, one of. It was like something that made it natural, I would say, or to pursue his work in the same type of rigorous scientific requirements for psychoanalytic discussion. But at the same time we had this idea because Laplange theory is not very well known. La Planche is a very well known author, probably, maybe not mainly, but for the vocabulary language of psychoanalysis, and also because of some words that are picked up, like enigmatic signifier. But sometimes he's not very well known for the theory that he developed on his, which is his own and original theory, the general theory of seduction. And in this theory there is many concepts which needs definition. The issue is, our goal was not to impose an interpretation of Laplanche, but to be the more accurate as possible in describing the historical roots of the A concept. What if they stayed in La Planche thoughts for his whole theorizing period? Or did he drop some? So we would. But this being said the purpose was to be able to build the foundation of a real scientific debate. It's very possible and legitimate to disagree with Laplace position, but we have to discuss on the same basis. So the idea of the vocabulary was to propose a common ground by defining the concepts of Laplanche in order to pursue the debate and maybe also to raise questions or contradiction or further developments in the theory.
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B
Okay, I see. Yes, great. Yeah. And that's really amazing. And I think that's very much in the spirit of Laplanch's own work, who always insisted that. That psychoanalysis is academic or has a scientific basis and there needs to be discussion between different schools. You already mentioned Laplanche and Pontelies vocabular de la Psych Analyse, which I think is to a certain degree the template or the basis for your work, if that's fair to say. Before we look at the book itself, there's two more things I'm curious about. So the first part is you have kind of hinted at this, but what is your own relationship to Jean Laplanche? Did you know him.
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A
Personally? I got to know La Planche when I was preparing my thesis. I was in Montreal, where you may know Dominique Scarfoni, who introduced very much the work of La Planche in Quebec, in Montreal and in the United States. And my thesis, my supervisor was Jacques Hendry, which you may know, is a French psychoanalyst who was at such a certain time very close to Laplanche. So he supervised my thesis. And Jacques Andre at Dominique Scarfone encouraged me to ask La Planche to be part of the journey genre. La Planche, which was an event that we La Planche upon invitation, La Planche was gathering a few collaborators, people knowledgeable in his work, to discuss some issue, and he was there and debating with us. So since I was La Planche, I sent La Planche some of my things. And I have to say, which was a real honor to me, that he wrote to Dominique Scarfoni that he was very impressed by my text. So this was nice to know from, even if it was not direct, the compliment. And then I went to the Journey regularly, every two weeks, and when it was the time to defend my thesis, because La Planche was a big. A huge reference in my thesis. My thesis was about intersubjectivity, the intersubjective school in psychoanalysis, the American. And I was discussing this school critically, using a lot of Laplanche concept. So he accepted him to be a member of my committee. So he was an examiner of my defense thesis. And after this. But I didn't have very close personal at that time. La Planche was already getting old. And I was not one of his young pupil. When he was younger, we had. He knew me. And I think we had the pleasure in this. By not only pleasure, but it was always very interesting to discuss with La Planche. But our relations were mainly scientific. And when I was in Paris, sometimes I joined a seminar. I see that this was relation with Laplanche.
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B
Right. There's a lot in there. I think we're going to unpack some of it in later. Before we begin with that, just very quickly, the editing process itself. Could you tell us a bit more about how it went and what kind of team you assembled?
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A
Yes. You know, you mentioned in your introduction La Fondation Jean Laplanche. And I have said a few words. So La Planche, before he died, used a part of his estate to establish a Fondation Jean La Planche Nouveau Fondement Pont. And he named people, he gathered a scientific council, which was. And he wanted to be international. So there were a few. Two people from France, three and his translators, among which are Udoak, who was his translator in German. And he asked me to join the Scientific Council. And I was. So the Scientific Council decided as a team to do this vocabulary, the entree. We decided on 47 entrees, which to me, which upon discussion appeared to us a reasonable number also. This was some things we had in mind. We could maybe have done a little bit more entry, but that were the main concepts of Laplanche. So we're not defining like Freudian concept that were used by Laplanche in mostly the same way as Freud. But when we pick. What we found was very needed definition.
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B
Right? Right.
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A
So it was a collective decision. The 47 entree for the writing. The first we offered every member of the Scientific Council to choose. They wanted to read, to write. So as I happen to be university professor, we have more time in for writing. But also I was very interested. So I picked up nine entries. And Alberto Lucchetti, who's the Italian translator, who's very knowledgeable in terms of the Laplanche work. He picked up also nine entree. Other members wrote one or two. And then we asked people that were the participant at the B. Bi yearly. I mean, the. The. Which happened every two years. So we know that these people were new Laplanche, sometimes personally, and also knew his work. And so those who accepted wrote an entry or sometimes. Yes, like Theresa Paulo di Carvalho. They wrote a few entries, they were Brazilian to laborate. They studied with Laplanche and they wrote a few entries and. But they are regular participants at the Jean Jean Laplanche, which continued after La Planche's death, but organized by the Scientific Council of the Fontation. We still do this every two years. The last one was in Britain. This year was in Bourgogne, because it was the hundredth anniversary of La Planche's birth.
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B
That's right, that's right. His centenary. And that. And this centenary was also the occasion for a celebration of his work in Berlin. This is where I met you. This is where I also met Udo Hag. And I think that during your presentation at this event in Berlin, you described to us that at the time in the States, and I think also in Canada, there was a strong emphasis on object relations and on the significance of splitting, the splitting of the object and so forth. And that from what I understood, you also were trained in the school, but as you also just mentioned, the work of l' Enflage led to you criticizing or critiquing and analyzing the intersubjectivist school. And could you just very briefly give us a sense of how La Planche, what he offers us, what is this primacy of the other, the premises of the sexual and his emphasis on translation and how this helped you become your own thinker, analyst?
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A
Yes, as you said, I was trained in an English speaking institute where object relation was very, very well taught and very interestingly taught also. But I was sort of torn because I was not very open to the classical French psychoanalysis, which to me at that time you mentioned I was a lawyer, but struck me as very, very fellow centric and very behind its time in terms of gender roles and family organization. So I could not. To me, it was like a dead end to pursue the definition of sexuality in this, like more Latinian, but not only Lacanian, classically inspired difference of the sexes. And at the same. So I was. The intersubjectivists were really rejecting this orientation, and rightly so, I think, which made me very interested in their school, school and orientation. But at the same time, the problem for me with the object relational, maybe less the Kleinian, but with the intersubjectivist, it was the issue of the center of psychoanalysis for me was not existing anymore. Sexuality. Yes, but sexuality as something which resists, something which makes a Freud statement. The ego is not the master in its own house. So that people, even if they know better, still do things that they shouldn't do, or they are felt compelled by forces which they don't control. Which was the inspiration for the discovery of the sexual unconscious. I didn't recognize it in relational school because it was more. Closer to. More an existential therapy though. So this I found in La Planche a very strong criticism of classical French psychoanalysis and of the phylocentricism of the psychoanalysis of the 20th century, but still. And also a definition of infantile sexuality which was totally outside family roles and parental organization, which was mainly to say it in a few words, sadomasochism and. Or La Planche infantile sexuality. It is a perverse sexuality, like Freud described. It's essentially sadomasochistic, first masochistic and then sadistic. And it doesn't come like this from biology or from primary fantasies which would be transmitted. We don't know how. It comes from the sexual synthesis of the parents, which are unconscious to not only the parents, I shouldn't say to. Of adults which take care of the child. Adults are older children. So to me it was a sort of liberation from a way of thinking about infantile sexuality with a definite family organization in mind and family roles. And also it's very. I think. And I. The talk in Berlin was Psychoanalysis for changing times. And I think it's very much. But Laplanche definition of the formation of infant, the sexual unconscious is so factually very scarce. I mean, it's the only fact that a baby, an infant is always in contact from the day since the first second with older persons, persons older than. And the baby at that time has no unconscious, but is in contact with adults, older children who, sorry for the expression, have one and they. These people. That's the hypothesis of psychoanalysis. Of course you can question the fact that. But if you are in. We take this for granted that adults have a sexual unconscious. So these. This unconscious sorts of compromises the conscious fantasies that the parents have dealing like we all have, like all person have, doing everything. Even when I speak to you, I don't know. But I have unconscious fantasies. And this brings the primary repression and the rest. I will not get into the metapsychological aspect, but. But this is mainly why Laplanche helped me reunite, I would say, my interest and my conviction that psychoanalysis focusing on this part of the soul that is not studied by other disciplines. Psychology studies many things which are highly useful. Sociology also philosophy. But psychoanalysis, it is this resisting part that makes human repeat behaviors decisions that are harmful for them and make them suffer and are conflictual and brings them very huge conflicts very unpleasant to say the least. And still they so and it's the issue of anxiety, of course, which is mixed with this.
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B
Right?
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A
And these forces resist education and goodwill. Even if someone wants to get rid of this, which is you can be helped by other therapies. But it's very hard to I think psychoanalysis as a model offer a way to reopen this process of translation, as Laplanche writes, and maybe we don't never know anything, but to me it was a very appealing anthropological conception of transformation. Tonight, turn down the noise of the day and focus on the rest with agz, the nightly drink for winding down and resting up. New from AG1. AGZ supports your body's natural sleep cycle with clinically studied key herbs, adaptogens and minerals in amounts supported by research. And no melatonin, helping you wake feeling rested, wind down, rest up with Agz. Learn more@drinkagz.com Martha listens to her favorite.
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B
Band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much she got her seat close enough to actually see and hear them. Zordon, you were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are at all protected. Right, Right, exactly. And you so in this answer, you've already opened up so many questions and I think I would like to begin by looking at one concept very specifically that you've also written the entry on, which is the concept of the message. And you've already mentioned that the child, which doesn't have an. Or the baby at least doesn't have an unconscious yet receives these enigmatic messages from the adult. From the adult that it doesn't know how to decipher. And so the message is a kind of vehicle, I think you write of seduction as. As well can be a vehicle of seduction. What. What does that mean? And how can we. What does that mean?
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A
Yes, I think a few. You asked me to talk about the message. One thing which is very important is to situate the message in Laplanche theory as something which is not the same thing or does not mean the message. In communication theories, it's not a vehicle of transmitting information. It is, of course, but for Laplanche, the main focus is on the address. A message is something, is a proof that the other is there. It's the way you apprehend that you know for a fact that there is another without really understanding about what the. The other is telling you. So this has a strong dance of philosophical background. But Laplanche got. That's why he called this theory the primacy of the other, so that the humans were infantized. Sexuality gravitates around the other. So the message is the vehicle of seduction. Insofar as the address is the proof that the other makes a sign to you. It addresses a sign. And what. So it's not really the content. The content matters. But for La Planche, then, okay, these enigmatic messages are translated eventually, but the translation cannot lead you to the original message. There is a. Which is not in the vocabulary. And this I regret highly. We didn't think about this one. But I'd like to do. If I had to do an addendum, I would add it. It's the concept of metabolization. So the message translated and everything is metabolized as much as a carrot. Eat. Doesn't look like a carrot. When you finish your digest, it's the same. So you cannot really. It's metabolism in the. It's a metaphor. So the content is important, of course, but the address is also. Is the way you know the world. And that's where La Planche kept this anthropological idea of the human. As someone who interprets for La Planche, there are no events in life for human. We don't live events as events. Even a snowstorm that's in Montreal, which is something very usual in winter, would say, oh, it happens the day I had a meeting. It makes me. Why does it happen to me? We know we always interpret things like as if it were something was happening to us as a sign. Okay, we're not paranoid. We as adult, we have other tools too. But that's it. It's. It's. And for him, humans see the world or experience the world as messages. And this freed Laplanche for many from many epistemological problems. Because he was. I wrote in another work, something about La Planche. Rationalism is. For La Planche, it was of utmost importance not to be in a magical conception of how the unconscious gets constituted. It has to rely on a historical perspective. So see, if you have sexual unconscious, it's because you were in contact with people who already had one. It's not. And. And how is it by the message? It's sort of implanted. The address is a sign. So it's received by what Laplanche called a psychophysiological derm. It's not at. At the same time, it's a content and A sign. Both aspects are. So it also solved the problem of psyche soma dichotomy. You're as somatic. Message is as somatic as psychic. You don't get messages which does not are not addressed to you.
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B
Right, right, right. And so you keep mentioning here the notion of the sign. And one thing I've been wondering is how does this concept relate to that of the signifier? Which of course Laplanche also uses, but then which is also different from Lacan, I think. Can you give us.
- [26:39]
A
Yes, was trained with Lacan. So I think if you read the first, the earlier work of Laplanche, like Life and Death in psychoanalysis, you will see a more Lacanian trend in his way of using the word signifier. But when he start after 1987, after the new foundation, he rejected this use. It's not for him, as he does not use it in a linguistic way. Signifier and maybe I should say in French, signifien, it means it has meaning. And le singifier means there is a meaning. It's about the meaning. But singing. It's impossible to address someone without meaning, wanting to sing something or to convey something which is not necessarily linguistic. So signifier became, in Laplanche theory, a synonym for message. Many. If you read I wrote this entry, you can see many passage where he uses the word signifier as this. He said a massage comma, a signifier. So he used them more and more. At the beginning it was. You're right. And he was not. Since the beginning he objected to this linguistic turn in psychoanalysis. For him, messages language is not primary. It is important as a symbolic form. Of course it is, but not more than myths or not more than it. And this is very much in the line of Ernst Cassire and is more into, I would say, the semiotics than linguistics. The messages are not only verbal silence, an attitude, the mimic anything, a gesture or the non gesture. Everything can be a message.
- [28:38]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:40]
A
Like for practicing. Yes.
- [28:42]
B
No, please continue.
- [28:44]
A
No, no. But like for any adult. I mean, if we look at ourselves practically, we interpret all the time. Oh, she didn't look at me very nicely. It's not. Some people do not have to talk to you, so you interpret their intention. Sometimes just seeing the way someone sits in front of you makes you think that this person is unfriendly, maybe wrong. You may be right too. I don't know. This is the enigmatic aspect. And not only because a message is plural, vocal, but also because it's always compromised. Of course, a message is emitted if we can say this in English by someone who has a sexual unconscious, so doesn't know what is sending. We know what we think we send, but how often is it that we tell people, I don't feel like doing this? And the interpretation is very different from what we thought we conveyed.
- [29:43]
B
And from what I understand, Laplanche distinguishes between two types of unconscious. There's the repressed one and the enclaved one.
- [29:53]
A
Yes, this is a later addition to La Planche theory. I think you can find it in papers from 2007 in joined sexual. It was brought because many of the collaborators and people who worked in this seminar were, among which Christophe de Joan, they were very much interested in psychosis and psychosomatics and the issue of translation and meaning. And Laplanche also, at a certain time in his. He introduces the two different way of receiving a message. Implantation, implantation, intromission. Intromission being like the more violent version of implantation. And he always struggled with how can we fit psychosis in the model of the translational model of repression. And in this paper he said, he agreed that there should be one model that could explain the same. And for him, he was saying that some messages, because of their inner structure or for all, are untranslatable and they get stuck somewhere and they don't contributed to the formation of the ego. So this is. But it's not the sexual unconscious, Right?
- [31:20]
B
Right. And so what I'm curious about, I was recently talking to Jan Abram Winnicottian and we were both kind of wondering, we were talking a bit of Laplange and we were really curious. How does Laplanche shake out in the clinic? How. How do you use la? I mean, it's an extremely impressive metapsychology and we will. We will hear more about it. But how does la make an impact clinically?
- [31:51]
A
Personally, I find that La Planche is very useful clinically. I mean, it's a way of considering analysis. And what the concept, which to me is the more enlightening from Lance clinically, is his affirmation that the analysant is the hermeneut, the interpreter, not the analyst. So he pushes to the extreme the idea that the analyst must have an attitude of refusement versagum in the Gentleman, which for La Planche means not only refrain from doing the giving advice, or which we don't do consciously, but also having a deep respect for his own unconscious. So by being always convinced that the analyst has an unconscious interpretation given by the analyst should be very careful. Sometimes we have, as Laplanche wrote in Another very important paper clinically, it's a paper called Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy where it says even in a very. If something exists like that orthodox and classical analysis, there are only a few moments which are analytic. Most of it is also psychotherapeutic. So it's an issue of clinical judgment. Sometimes at certain stages or in particular session, with respect to what the analysant is going through. More therapeutic interpretation are necessary. But working in a la. Or more comforting, whatever way interpretation can be, is the tool also of seduction. But in dealing with Laplanche like having this in mind, I think to me it's very helpful to acknowledge the fact that at those moments which are the daily bread and butter of therapeutic work, we are not dealing with unconscious, we're dealing with ego formation and a difference in the auto theorization of the person, which can be very, very useful and sometimes clinically essential. Because analysis for Laplanche is delinking. It's de translating. And it's not at all stages of our life, neither at every moment in our day that we are ready for that or in a position to do this detranslation. But yeah, and this.
- [34:31]
B
No, no, please. I know. I'm really interested in this notion of delinking. Could you say more about that?
- [34:36]
A
Well, delinking and I don't. I struggle because I don't know if it's the proper word. I'm. You choose for me, is it delinking or unbinding? Because I think the translators of La Planche in English use both. So I don't know what to use. In French it's liaison. Des liaison liaison could be linking, but could be binding also. So it means basically it's that for what Laplanche stressed that one of the huge discovery of psychoanalysis, Freudian psychoanalysis, is the fact that representations are mobile to combine affect and representation is not something definite. And the affect in fact is always dependent on a representation. Du Laplanche would object to the use of representation, the word, but let's use it. So we always think about something. If you're angry about someone, you have an idea for why you're angry usually. So even anxiety, which is the most dequalified effect, it's very diffused, but still we're angst of all. You always get. You're anxious, you have a slight idea of what makes this anxiety. So this binding or linking is linking an effect with the representation. And delinking is exactly. So the work of linking is mainly ego work, though there is linking at the unconscious level. In fantasies are always a little Bit linked. It's a total unbinding or total delinking. I don't think it's possible to observe this in life. But you can see moments of extreme delinking or of extreme linking binding, which are both very problematic in terms of what we could call your mental health or your psychic life. So it's really the linking. And if you feel. Sometimes if you. We all experience anxiety, sometimes acute anxiety in daily circumstances of life. And you can see that it crystallizes around an idea. Sometimes it gets obsessional. And you can tell yourself that I don't know why I'm so worried about this thing. Which in fact you. Some friends or people could tell you, hey, you know that this. Not yet still the thought comes back very more convincing than any explanation. This is what. So you're linking an affect of fear or any form of anxiety, which is a little bit. It becomes fear, shame, guilt, whatever, with a representation. Delinking is going more and more with us an impossibility to crystallize this force with the quantitative aspect of the effect, with its qualitative aspect.
- [37:41]
B
And would it be fair.
- [37:43]
A
Sorry?
- [37:43]
B
Would it be fair. Would it be fair to say that delinking belongs to the death drive at its.
- [37:50]
A
The sexual. That drive would say sexual. That drive is the more extreme for the. The delinking is the work of the sexual unconscious. The attack on linking, which I'm not using. This is why I think I should say attack on binding. Not to be confusing with beyond, but it's an attack linking effect and representation. So this attack on binding is the. That's the way the. The unconscious work. It attacks. It attacks the auto theorization that the ego always tries to make. So by delinking, affect and representation, yes, you get the quantitative, the economic part of the affect more and more acute. So you get very agitated, very exciting. Which has for la planche a sexually masochistic part. That's the infantile sexuality. This is why it's sort of very animistic. But the unconscious may not intend, but always work. It's a force. For Laplanche, the human conflict is the conflict between two forces. The forces of linking and of delinking. But extreme of linking is the defense mechanism. It's ego work. But at its extreme it can paralyze someone into not doing much or not thinking much, because you get very rigid. It's a very rigid binding.
- [39:17]
B
Right. So delinking also moves us closer to our affect. Is that fair to say?
- [39:24]
A
And delinking. Laplange defines sublimation in terms of the circulation of part objects. Borrowing the. From Melanie Klein Parts object are partly linked. So it means a linking, but which is not rigidified. And if it can circulate, it can lead to interpretations and translation, which are more encompassing, freer, very rigid ego. Linking does not leave places for transformation.
- [40:00]
B
I think at one.
- [40:01]
A
Yes, sorry, go ahead.
- [40:03]
B
I think at one point, Laplage, he has a paper called Psychoanalysis as anti Hermeneutics where he's. You just mentioned this as well. Only the analysand is the hermeneut, not the analyst. And he mentions a belief that interpretation belongs more to the analyst and then construction more to the analysand. If I understand. Is that right?
- [40:35]
A
And the last part? I don't think so. I think both would be from the analysis analysts, they do interpretation when they act psychotherapeutically. But the interpretation, which is a relinking analytic interpretation would be made by the analysis. But to go back to this paper, this is a very strong anti Heideggerian position for that. It's. It's. It's a way for him, because to. To state that the man is not. It's difficult for me to say this in English because I don't know the word, but it's not like interpreting a situation messages which involve the others. So it's not an hermeneutics of fact, it's an hermeneutic of the message. And as you said, clinically, it's important to keep in mind. I forgot to say this when I said. I referred to the analysis as her menu, that for the analysis. In analysis, the focus for La planche is not what the analyst says, but it's how analysis is received as a message by the analysis. And he says the analyst is always in the position. What does he or she want from me? So this way allows to reopen a process of. This way of thinking doesn't change much. I mean, of course, if you want technique is. I think Laplanche would be. I don't know how he worked, I never saw him. But the way I understand his clinical position and his understanding of the method. It's not a very interventionist way of acting. Of course, La Planche generationally was the years of the ego psychologists, which were known to be very, very neutral. So it may have, as we have seen, the analytic situation, but it's not really what the intervention, what you say or not. It's to have this in mind. And when I said in this paper, it doesn't say the analysis is the hermetic, but it's the infant is the hermetoid. If you think of the anthropological situation, it's the infant that receives messages and that has to deal with them. Of course infant sends messages to the adult, that's for sure. But for Laplanche, he was very respectful of the idea that the analyst has an unconscious and the analyst is not in a psychoanalytic process for him or herself. So he has to be respectful of the fact that the method and the condition for his own analysis are not there. So he has to be. So this is why Laplanche was not very happy about the term countertransference. For example, Deborah had to have surgery. I had hip surgery in November of 2024. Her United Healthcare nurse, Crystal, checked on her. We do a routine call after surgery and I could tell that she was struggling. Deborah needed help. My infection markers were through the roof and Crystal knew what to do. I called the hospital and said she's coming in and got Debra the help she needed. Crystal and United Healthcare saved my life. Hear more stories like Debra's@uhc.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan. Area limitation and exclusions apply. Another switchback.
- [44:09]
B
Wait, this isn't the top.
- [44:12]
A
Where's the summit?
- [44:13]
B
Why am I doing this?
- [44:14]
A
At REI Co op, we believe there are places within ourselves. Almost there. You got this. That we find only outside. Wow, this is worth it. We have the gear, inspiration and advice to help you get there. REI co op visit Rei.com yeah, but.
- [44:39]
B
This is very interesting because right now, I mean in the field it's very popular to emphasize the importance of countertransference, selective disclosure, holding containment. All of these things which really emphasize the analyst, the presence of the analyst. But that seems to be a bit at odds with Laplanche.
- [45:05]
A
It depends. It's not at odd with the psychotherapeutic part of analysis. This is why I referred to. But if we want to think, if such a thing exists as psychoanalysis proper and metapsychology, we could say that by these methods we're doing ego supportive work. We help the analysis, auto theorize, auto historize himself work which is not something to. To neglect, depending on the situation. But there is a point of you where you. I mean, if you can by some moment be able to de. Translate enough like that, you can make. Come up with freer translation. But it's more conducive, let's say to transformation. It's not a rejection. Ali. If we compare, for example Winnicot, which I know, but not that much, not as much, but. And the. The. It's the issue of this sexual. And they work more with someone which is less conflictual. Like that can benefit by education. Good. Why would the the analyst intervention work? That's would be laplace and with very Cartesian in terms of the due to universal dot. Why would it work? If your mother says something, you don't believe it. The only reason it works is because of transference that you put this analyst in a situation of someone who knows like when Laca would have said but it's not so in a way. But which. And I not I don't do this to this unrespectfully for other orientation. Because I think these orientation and psychoanalysis have been highly important for dealing with cases that analysis classical analysis was not able to deal with. So the only difference would be okay, but let's not talk about analysis. Let's talk more about therapy. And also if you want to enter meta psychology, you're more working with the ego. But this to say to be true. I don't think you find the word unconscious sexual in the intersubjectivist. They got rid of the word. For him, sexual unconscious was something about Oedipus or primal sin. And they said this is absolutely useless. And I sort of agree because today the myth of Oedipus is not what it was in Freud's time. People don't have classical education, which they have many other myths which could be very more present this so. So and this is why I I was. I think they were very. They put the finger or something which was very true. But I have the tendency to think that they threw away the baby with the bath water. Like there's a way to think about the sexual unconscious without getting caught in those categories.
- [48:23]
B
Right. And one thing that Laplange also emphasizes and I think this connects to a lot of what you just said is that he emphasizes the importance of psychic reality, which I believe to him has a kind of almost invasive quality.
- [48:41]
A
Yes. It's the subtitle of its collection paper, the one which is called Between Seduction and Inspiration the man and under the subtitle is I did not invent psychic reality. It is invasive. So why is it so important psychic reality for Laplanche it that it allows him. This category for him is closely linked to the message. And it allows him to disconnect with the dichotomy material reality, psychological reality, which was dichotomy in which Freud got entangled. Like in analysis. Are we dealing with fantasies of seduction? Are we dealing with seduction? But if you try to find it out in terms of this parent Dedicated. You're not. You're. First of all, you don't have the tools. This is a distinction which could be important in other forums. But for Laplanche the idea is not there. He said Freud missed the category of the message, which was the one introducing the other into the reality. So psychic reality is like a third order of reality. It's not material reality. It's not purely subjective or psychological reality. Because he said wrote the message is irreducible to the subjectivity of the one who receives it. Because there was an address and the address has a materiality. Whether it is sensory. Because I talk to you. Whether it's. Also there's. So the materiality of the message is something which is unquestionable. And La Planche epistemology is a big part of La Planche to get into. I got interested in Laplanche because I was interested in interdisciplinarity and that epistemological problems are the same in many disciplines. But I found this was very strike of genius because to introduce this idea as a material something which is at the same time material and in the order of so geistlich. And to use it's both material and spiritual in a way. So. And we are not. And this leads La Blanche and us. You were talking about clinical reality. Not to focus on the distinction between fantasy and reality. Not this which is important is what is material in the fantasy.
- [51:26]
B
What's material in the fantasy?
- [51:28]
A
Yes, there is a materiality in the fantasy which is the address. It means the other is there attacking. That's the material aspect. It's that this is why it keeps repeating that the sexual unconscious is as things like. That's the otherness of the unconscious. It's not. It's something that resists meaning. Resist interpretation and act in terms of symptoms. A compromise formation, things like that. So it's not something you will. That's the problem of the residues in La Planche theory. The residues of translation that form the sexual unconscious. It is. They are out. So they attack meaning all the time. The linking that the ego tries to make. The ego being the story itself.
- [52:23]
B
I feel that psychoanalysis often promise. I mean it always makes promises that can be ever stronger. Ego become yourself. Is it fair to say that Laplacian analysis promises a kind of discovery of a new way of translating what had been untranslatable before that to find a new code.
- [52:52]
A
It is. Yes. It wouldn't be a bad way to say it, but I would insist more on a re. A different equilibrium between the forces of linking and delinking. It's not because it's. La Planche has no harsh judgment. We can say so about the sexual unconscious and the opposite. It's a motor of transformation. And the ego is necessary, but also ultimately it's not our best. So what's important is to reorganize the internal conflict so that it's not keep as devastating. And this is his idea of transformation. And to go back to your formulation it would be to come to translations which are more encompassing, more liberating in a way freer translation not so much stick to. He has a very beautiful way of saying it in a paper which is not clinical, which is more philosophical, which is called responsibility and response, which is that analysis. I mean the. I would say the human anthropological view of Laplanche is that a human which always answers to someone and you don't answer for your action. You always want to justify yourself. Like if you break something in you would say oh my. Oh I. But I didn't make it on purpose. Or it was different. And so the transfer. The passage which is difficult for a human is to passage the passage from answering to. We're always answering to the internal other and which is very accusatory to a human which can be able to be responsible for his action. But this responsible for. Is not in the realm of psycho. Then you go to moral philosophy or then that's the way out of analysis. It's not our role as psychoanalysis. But it's interesting to see. I mean it's a continuum between sciences which deals with the human lablanche. Psychoanalysis is not biology. But of course you need a human being functioning biologically which is not dead, which is excitable. All those things are the work of biology to study. But it's not psychoanalytic observation or work or theorizing is about when this person is alive and what. How come that. And psychology deals about perception. But psychoanalysis brings another example so to. And it finishes very close to. I would say emancipation. Which I think for Laplanche would not be a word usable in psychoanalysis. But it's something which can be dealt with in moral philosophy. Let's say in a Kantian term. What's the Kantian question is about how do. Can we be. Stop to be minors and become like. Stop thinking that all people are responsible. Others are responsible for our action.
- [56:12]
B
Correct? Right, right, right. I mean. I think that's where I mean Laplanche also. So he emphasizes the sensuality of the other as. As we talked about. And he. He distinguishes between Ptolemaic and a Copernican view. And that, to me is where he also is at odds with one of psychoanalysis central, almost obsessions, which is narcissism. And what is narcissism to Laplange? And how does it relate to questions of auto conservation and this other?
- [56:51]
A
I think on this point, Laplanche takes a distance with Freud and very much the ego psychologist. For him, narcissism is secondary, it's not originary. Second, narcissism is sort of linked sexuality, infantile sexuality, which we talked about, this attacking sexual unconscious. This is one part of infantile sexuality. The other one is, I would say, associated with the ego from the start. The external other as a whole is present, and the internal other as a whole is also present. So the linking work is the ego work, but not only mainly. And this narcissism is this the preservation of this auto theorization, which is life preserving also. But it's not directly connected to self preservation. The ego takes in a story also, like in a fantasy, also the function of self preservation. Narcissism is about, yes, self preservation, but sexualized, sexualized in a binding form at the same times, and for it represent the action of the two major. Like Freud talked about this death drive, life drive, but for Lacanche is both sexual life drive and sexual death drive. The sexual death drive, using the energy of delinking to the ultimate possible form of attack and delinking of meaning. And the sexual life drive, trying to auto theorize, reorganizing, is a narcissistic force. But the narcissistic way of binding or linking have to be careful, because it tends to be very rigid and it leads to the formation of defense mechanism, right?
- [58:56]
B
So it seems to me that throughout this conversation, linking and delinking, or binding unbinding. But in any case, let's call it linking and delinking. That seems to be a really central reference in La Planche's work. And it feels to me that we can also glimpse a theory of culture almost as it also connects to sublimation and symbolization and how a culture works.
- [59:26]
A
The theory of Laplanche does not lead to an integration, let's say, of culture theory in general, within psychoanalysis. But by how would the ego translate? It uses the cultural tools that are at his disposition. So of course we cannot imagine, like, let's say, if you would think of a slave in the Middle Ages working at the field, they didn't have the same end, like a leftist student in Paris today, they don't have the same binding tools we were talking about. That's what he was fighting about. The idea that psychoanalysis could think about universal, cross cultural and cross historical ways of linking. It's not that so called. It leads to a theory of culture. Yes, in the way that. What are our tools for linking and also our tools of delinking, you know, psychosis in the 50s. I don't know here when we were trained, it was most example. I'm not from the. I was born in the late 50s, but I'm not. I was not trained that in 1950s. But the example our psychoanalysis we're giving of delirious thinking was mainly linked to religion. Why God would appear and tell them today, I don't know. I don't deal very much with psychosis myself. But it's very. Delirium is linked with many other things. Because culturally depending where you are and what kind of family you have. So for Laplanche, it's very important to make a difference with culture in general. And the socius like a closer family. Because you can live in a very free society and have a very rigid family. So you. The people, things from the culture does not get to you. Non mediated by a closer families setting. But. Yes, but I. I have to. I think it's important to underline that it gets very different from wide cultural analysis. It's always the way. Why how is becomes the ego itself? Because there was some. The ego for La Planche is a mise enrici, which means storytelling about yourself.
- [61:48]
B
Right. A narrativization.
- [61:51]
A
Narrativization, I think would be the best. Yes, it's narrativization. And how you narrativize yourself historically is so it cannot be distanced from culture.
- [62:02]
B
And that's where mythosymbolism becomes really important as well.
- [62:05]
A
Symbolism? Yes, symbolism. The freedom, symbolization. It's not a symbolism like Lacan would use or Freud, because La Planche very much argue against the symbolic or the idea that there will be like standard symbolization. Like if you dream of an umbrella, you dream of a penis. This is for him. It's not. Psychoanalysis has to deal with the personal association of the analysis. But symbolization is about something else. It's linking the affect and representation and the richer possibility of symbolization you have, the more linking possibilities you have. But it's sad to say, but it joins the. Depends on the analysis. Background analysis was never a very. I would say, egalitarian process. Of course, people come to analysis better equipped. And I'm not saying in terms of Money necessarily. But also possibility of associating and symbolizing and linking things a little. But it can happen in every. It's not something sociologically so marked, but yes, you need but symbolization for La Planche. And I think it's very linked with linking. It's the possibility to delink and relink. Because symbolization creates meaning.
- [63:39]
B
Right, Right, right. And in your ICI talk you briefly spoke of a crisis in symbolization.
- [63:47]
A
Yes, and I'm working on this right now, hoping to be able, now that I'm retired, that I can practice a little bit. It's because I'm very scared of. Not scared, but apprehensive of the glorification of what we call. I think wrongly so Internet artificial intelligence. Is it? Well, artificial, yes. But is it intelligence? Not that I'm anti technology that to have it as a tool and something useful. Yes, of course it's a good. I think it's a wonderful research tool. And that's not the issue. It's the issue that we are assisting to a glorification of the like creativity through artificial intelligence. And this is the loss of the importance of interpretation. If you feed a motor with a million impossible interpretation and it picks one, it's not the same as create one. You can always only do what you were fed with. Even if it's invent the bigger figure you can imagine it has to. So it's very conservative. So you always go back to something which is already there. And this and I also there it's linked also with a sort of subjectivization of interpretation. When I think about the experience in museum about immersive exposition exhibition. But the fact is that everyone with the cask you're not sharing something. It's it. You go back to your own subjectivity. So I think this is creating an anthropological type which we maybe will be the dominant one in 50, 60 years. And with this type, if it happens, I don't think Laplanche will be relevant anymore. His whole thing is based on a human which is interpreting.
- [65:50]
B
Right.
- [65:51]
A
I don't know if it's a trend. If the human does not interpret. Yes. You'll have to have a. Will psychoanalysis still be relevant? Maybe, but not La Blanchie.
- [66:04]
B
Right, right, right. One thing this is not quite connected to this, but I mean that we're talking a lot about the friends.
- [66:12]
A
We.
- [66:13]
B
We all love our Klein, we love our beyond. Now Laplange was quite critical of. Of Klein ideas. He has a paper called 14 Melanie Klein. Must we burn Melanie Klein? And what do you. What is. And I think he also argues against Klein's idea that at first we experience. That the baby experiences the adult as a partial object for him. That's the wrong way around, I think. So what exactly what is his take on the Kleinians and I think on Kleinism as well.
- [66:55]
A
I think there's a difference. I think that has to be made between Klein and Kleinism. But I will say that I don't agree with your description. Should we burn Benedict Klein should. Which was the title is maybe not very well chosen. But it was a response to Lacan referred often to Melan Klein as a witch or something. And also as someone who was not very intellectual or something like une tripiere de giny. And Lacan is very. La planche is I think is very respectful of Milan Klein. In many papers he acknowledges that. I think he finds it the more prominent post Freudian. And he thought that Klein had really got this resisting aspect of the unconscious. Attacking devouring and internal objects. So in fact any borrowed concepts. It's part objects of Laplanche is very much. He loves the world. And he said I have I. It's a depth to melanic line. Because this word part object, especially in French object partial. It really looks like missile or something. It's not with this expression comes idea of attack. Part object in French especially. I know. But yes, what he was criticizing is reconstructivism. The fact that we start three things I would say. One is a disagreement epistemological. For Klein, the unconscious and the ego are there from the start. And they start in projection. Projection. It's that ego work. But it starts without explanation. And I stressed on the rationalism of Laplanche. He didn't accept it as a basis. But this is not his main argument. But it has to be said a fear and meta psychology, which does not explain where the Then it has to be biological. If you're born with has to be biological. And Laplanche said it's. No, it's not. It's because the other aspect is more. The other discussion is about constructivism. Because for Klein, if I'm not wrong like part object. It's like a stage. You start with part objects and then you get the possibility to form total object. For Laplace, the total object is there from the start and the attack is there. The total object is there not from the start of life, but after primary repression. It's not the same with all our life. We deal with both. But he appreciated the fact that she called it position. Like the position. But he didn't see why one was, let's say, a development. It would not agree with the fact that one was a developmental achievement. It's there. Maybe. So this would be the main disagreement, the epistemological one, the constructivism and also I think the clinical style. But this he didn't. He wrote a little because Kleinian they were having the reputation of being very active in interpreting and for the analysis. And of course it's. This would be. But I think as a theorist they are very close in seeing this infant as someone which is overwhelmed by internal attacks. And this is very much like Laplange Kleinism. But I think this changed because Kleinism and what it become. Maybe this. You can correct me with Winnicott or American Object Relational. They left a little bit the importance of the internal object of clan. Clan does not deal with external object. She never thought that the parent was there. Projection. They make this internal object something very metabolized from the external one. And declinism became more and more interested in external or let's say interaction with external objects and led to what you described like in technical style of holding and the analyst as the one replacing. Well, this would. This would be getting very far from Laplanche.
- [71:29]
B
Right, right, right. I mean, I think I'm really thankful for the correction there. I mean, of course Laplanche often speaks highly of. Of Klein and he mentions her genius. And I think in the fifth Problematique he also. He introduces this idea of.
- [71:52]
A
Yes. And in his paper that you referred to should we burn Melody Klein. It's a paper which is quite appreciative of Klein.
- [72:03]
B
Right.
- [72:04]
A
I wrote in the vocabulary, the entry part object, total object and axis index. And I remember having worked a lot with this paper because. And seeing much more. This is where I understand how La Planche was indebted to flying.
- [72:23]
B
Correct.
- [72:24]
A
Which I didn't at the beginning. It didn't struck my mind.
- [72:28]
B
Right, right, right. And I think one word that's really important to Laplanche and maybe also deserves almost its own entry is exigence or exigence, which he uses a lot.
- [72:43]
A
He uses a lot. I would translate it as requirement. It's a sort of epistemological statement. It very close to what I the Cartesian way of a universal dot that there's an exigency requirement about the scientific inquiry. This is an exigence. But it was also in Freud, I think. But it's a common word. This is. We should really look at that a little bit. I don't know if it was. We have to also put La Planche in his time. And I think in French philosophy of the time, I would say it has something to do as anti postmodern, because Laplanche very debate with the Lyotard and he was not at all in Derrida mainly, or I don't remember which one, but he said plainly, La Planche is at absolutely an opposite epistemological orientation. And this could be maybe a word which was like, I don't know how you say this in English, but a word that allows you to identify the team. Like he was not on their team. But this I'm really not sure. It's just. If I had to write on this, I would check who were using at Lapland in the 80s in France, in Paris, as there were so much exigence. It may have a martial flavor also. I wouldn't be surprised.
- [74:21]
B
Exchange. Yeah, I mean, I think Laplache's work is its own exigency or exigence to us. It really forces us to think and I think that's why I find it so exciting. And always defend him. One must of course analyze and critique him, but he really. He makes us think. And by way of conclusion, I want to ask you one final question and which really has to do with the future of Laplange studies. And I would like to know from you, what direction should Laplange studies take? What would you like to see more? What should be addressed?
- [75:04]
A
I think you raised it. I think this interpretation should be more addressed. This idea of interpretation in the actual cultural circumstances and the materiality also. But for the trend, I don't know. I think globally it doesn't look like this because I have to admire your familiarity with Laplanche work and I mean your thorough reading of what maybe the dictionary vocabulary. But I would say that it's very less not widely known. And I think the excellence requirement of scientificity that La Planche always pushed forward and it was really the debate we had with Joseph Ludet, very friendly debate, but this was very much made especially in France. Psychoanalysts very reluctant to enter this theory because this is psychoanalysis some and I think it's legitimate. So. But this has to be debate. Metapsychology should not be a science. The unconscious does not work that way. Lapland said, yes, but when we're doing metapsychology, it's like what we're doing mathematics, we still have an unconscious, but we're doing something else than the practice of psychoanalysis, where you leave metapsychology out of the room. But it. It's so I think that for many reason the end people don't have to be interested in Laplanche work. But sometimes the idea of the primacy of the other is very much assimilated to the external other. Like relational definition. The same with message, with communication theory, which is so important now. So what I would see as a duty, let's say for people like us at the foundation, is to make Laplanche work known, which is what we hope to do with this vocabulary. Because to see it's something and don't agree, that's very all right, but please just know what you're talking. I mean, and to understand also. Maybe I'm the one. It's probably my we, my style. But I insist very much on the differences. But maybe some people in the same scientific Council would insist more on the way of putting Laplanche in a discussion with others. Or sometimes I find to me it's important to state the differences and then to decide what we agree on or not.
- [77:49]
B
But I mean, you too put him in dialogue with Cassira.
- [77:53]
A
Cassira, I think. And this is my next word what I'm working on. Because on this it's a slight disappointment I have with Laplanche, but I don't. He's not alive anymore. Would he. I would ask him. He does not quote Cassira. And I came acquainted with Kassira's work through a group I'm working with in semiotics. And then I started reading some and I said God, the message is all. Kassirat does not talk about the message. It talk about the expressivity of the word. And that the human and even animals doesn't really know where it know the external events through the anonymous thought. And that's how MIT for Kasire is primary before language. That all languages are mythical like the fork. Sarto, Dextra, Sinistrom. Ah, many example in different languages to see how myths permit language. Because the being human that's limit us to be human beings for the moment, but has to interpret what's happening. And that either natural events like storms day and night and also sociological events. Why do people sleep in a room and not other. Why do people sit and doze like they tend to see this as something inevitable and myths was created to get to terms with this condition in which the human was living, but that people did not. And this is the main idea of La Planche that the infant gets to know the world through messages and that human all their life see all events as messages. So I would have but this I don't know if Laplanche knew Cassira so well and I possible because he was. He had his degree the econom in philosophy. He was trained by Jean Hippolyte. I knew that he was studied Hegel more but maybe once and I quite know La Planche's work and I see one or two reference but very slight to Cassira so it's not the main author but so either he knew them he knew him and but use it could have quoted if it's the case more or at least acknowledge or it was a coincidence.
- [80:33]
B
Right.
- [80:33]
A
They got to understand in the same way. But anyway. So I don't know but yes there's a big I think I could fit him in the same and his I wouldn't say obsession but Cassie Rail's debate was with phenomenology and to fight the distinction between what's subjective and objective to come up with this category of object. The importance for him was objectify objectification Objectification how do you put in place the condition to share a common reality? And this is the use of the symbolic form you share. When I speak to you we share something that if I couldn't speak, you couldn't share. So. And I think La Planche and this part may be less close to it. But why Yes, I think it's. And the debate with La Planche with phenomenology. You can see it in all this work. That's why his objections to induce objective school and to relational schools. The same with Cassira's objection with structuralism or the beginning of post structuralism and the anti Heideggerian trend that you can so very much in La Planche.
- [81:53]
B
Right. And then we are approaching the end here. And so I would very much like to thank you for this incredible interview. There's. I mean I could ask so much more and there's so much more to be said about your ideas, about lacrosse's ideas. But I do think that this podcast mission has been fulfilled and we have provided the listener with a healthy soup song of the tremendous power of this extraordinary volume. And I think it gives a glimpse into Laplanche's metapsychology. And I really sincerely hope it will whet the listener's appetite who read this book, which I want to really emphasize is written in beautiful, clear and very accessible French in my mind belongs into any. Certainly a reader of Laplange has to have this book. But any psychoanalyst, any psychoanalysis scholar should have this remarkable work in their library. And so thank you so much, Helene, for your work. Thank you so much.
- [83:02]
A
I thank you very much, Miriam, for this very interesting interview and your family, your. The work you put in preparing it, and also knowing Laplanche so well. So thank you. I'm really admirative. Thank you.
- [83:16]
B
You're welcome. My name is Miriam Zawa, and this was a podcast for the New Books Network Psychoanalysis section. Thank you for listening and goodbye.