In a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924 - 2012) elaborated a distinctive methodology for the reading of Freud's corpus and evolved, in connection with it, a radical new metapsychology - one that critically recast Freud's early 'seduction' theory of trauma and placed at the heart of psychic life a particular model of 'enigmatic signification'. Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche's thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche's unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research.
Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche's critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic. In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche's theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud's legacy.
Industry Reviews
This superb collection will be essential reading on Jean Laplanche, both for his analysis of Freud on interpretation, and for Laplanche's centrally important idea of seduction as 'the other in me'. New insights emerge in the exploration of its significance for understanding sexuality and gender, and for our experience of cultural works and their impact as 'enigmatic messages'. Elizabeth Cowie, Professor of Film Studies University of Kent This collection of important papers advances the vital project of bringing Laplanche's originality to the attention of Anglophone readers. What Laplanche offers to both clinicians and cultural critics is an account of interpretation that locates alterity and constitutive opacity at the heart of human relations. Happily this book is not opaque but admirably lucid in its exposition of key concepts and their potential for illuminating a range of aesthetic forms and cultural formations. Seductions and Enigmas is an extremely useful book. Tim Dean, Director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, SUNY-Buffalo
