Extracts from an interview with Jean Laplanche, interviewed by Alberto Luchetti

Laplanche in this interview covers some of his basic and often controversial ideas, such as the “normative” seduction of infants by their parents’ (infantile) sexuality. Note that Laplanche was considered one of Lacan’s promising students. Yet, Laplanche is able to stay much closer to clinical work in a non-ambiguous, non-teasing, and more comprehensible manner than his teacher.  This gives us hope that our discipline can pursue ideas that are more fruitful despite our tendencies to carry on too slavishly the
ideas of former teachers: the fault lies not in our stars, but in our
training method.  We thank Jonathan House, who wrote to us on his way
to Pomerol for Laplanche’s funeral.

N. Szajnberg, MD, Managing Editor.

Extracts from an interview with Jean Laplanche[1]

Interviewer: Alberto Luchetti

Alberto Luchetti: Why is it that over the last few years – though not only the last few years – you have insisted upon the scientificity of psychoanalysis, given that many people prefer a more “flexible” view?

 

Jean Laplanche: It is certainly an old preoccupation of mine but one which has only strengthened when faced with the “wooliness” of most psychoanalytic thought – its wooliness and its lack of direction. By which I mean that one can say almost anything, in whatever language, with little regard for whether or not one is understood. We are severely criticised in most intellectual circles, and in scientific circles in particular, where it is thought that a dialogue with psychoanalysis is impossible. However, I think we must re-establish the possibility of dialogue, and that we can only do so on the basis of what I call scientificity: a minimum agreement about what is and is not rational, what is and is not admissible, and what is and is not refutable.

 

A.L.: But the problem of scientificity entails that of possible truth, of being able to grasp the truth of the theories, hypotheses and models of psychoanalysis.

 

J.L.: I believe that the idea of truth has always, and for everyone, remained outside the direct grasp of the intellect. The greatest epistemologists think that we can have only an approximation to it, but that does not preclude truth from remaining an ideal. We need not suppose that truth can be held like a thing; we cannot hold it at all: we propose models which seek to approximate to truth as closely as possible, but these models are eminently deciduous, refutable, which is to say that some day or other they will be replaced by others which are more adequate.

 

A.L.: You frequently make reference to the work of Popper, who in fact seems to put psychoanalysis in a corner distinct from science.

 

J.L.: Yes. There are two Poppers. There’s the Popper who criticised psychoanalysis, and I think that unfortunately he was practically ignorant of the whole of psychoanalysis. He recognised only its most wayward aspects – for example, Adler – or its most metaphysical aspects. He knew nothing of Freudian psychoanalysis. He knew psychoanalysis essentially through its Adlerian branch. He never really discussed Freud on the basis of Freud’s own concepts.

 

A.L.: And the other Popper?

 

J.L.: The other Popper, in contrast, is utterly fascinating, and it is he who ultimately said (I’m taking up a formula which I have known a long time, though it may not be his): “Nature never says yes; it always says no”. In other words, nature never affirms a truth but is always at our disposal to refute a false assertion. This is something which obviously seems purely negative, but it is actually very positive, for it opens up the possibility of an entire creative imagining of models. Man is a creator of models. Models which try to adapt themselves optimally to the reality he studies. But these models then become subject to “refutation”. They are not, however, subject to “verification”, which is why one does not seek to show that “this or that is successful ‘x’ number of times”, but looks for the point at which this or that could be proved false. At that point, of course, everything is up in the air. It is clear that Popperism as I describe it is a little radical. Popperism since Popper has been greatly toned down. These days, Popper would no longer say – and Popperians now do not say – that an entire system of thought could collapse on the strength of a single negative experiment. There are experiments which only touch a peripheral part of the system, while the centre proves much more durable and robustly capable of withstanding negative experiments.

 

A.L.: Do you think that Freud was himself Popperian ante litteram?

 

J.L.: Yes, I think that Freud was frequently Popperian avant la lettre. For example, he wrote an article which he called “A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease” (1915). Well, this description of a negative case is typically Popperian. Even if this description of a negative case ends up as case that isn’t all that negative, because Freud obviously did not greatly enjoy finding cases which were truly negative… Nevertheless, he explored it in order to show that it was not as negative a case as it initially seemed to be. The issue at stake was the homosexual basis of paranoia.

 

A.L.: All the same, if Freud adopts and chooses the scientific worldview, you have also said that he does not refute other conceptions of the world. Is there, then, a place for them?

 

J.L.: I think there’s hardly any place for such conceptions. Freud wasn’t as tolerant as you describe. He was very negative vis-à-vis the religious view especially. He criticised it very sharply. I think Freud was a relatively hard scientist. These days we would certainly be much more tolerant than he.

 

A.L.: Does the same go for the philosophical worldview?

 

J.L.: Yes, absolutely. For Freud, philosophy was something which posed real problems but more or less imaginary solutions.

 

A.L.: With regard to the scientificity of psychoanalysis, do you think that your “general theory of seduction” can redirect psychoanalysis towards its scientific vocation?

 

J.L.: I remain very rationalist and very Freudian, and even if I am perhaps a little more tolerant than was Freud of other worldviews, my personal aim is certainly scientific: I think that any assertion which is not open to being refuted within a debate is without value. This includes debate between people, not just between ideas.

 

A.L.: In this regard, are the propositions of the general theory of seduction subject to this work of falsification, of testing?

 

J.L.: Yes, but we must be very careful because many elements of the general theory of seduction are difficult to falsify. Indeed, they are not elements of the experimental type. They are not even elements of observation in the classical sense of the term. They are encountered in the course of the psychoanalytic treatment, which is something very unusual compared with the situation of observation when it comes to the world of external objects.

 

A.L.: On this subject you have emphasised three concepts which underlie not only the general theory of seduction but psychoanalysis itself: the conception of infantile sexuality as drive sexuality; the unconscious, which is by definition a sexual unconscious; and repression. Is this the kernel of psychoanalysis? Its object? Does it entail consequences for psychoanalytic method?

 

J.L.: I would say that these are the principle theses of the general theory of seduction. In fact, I see them a little differently. They are encountered within what I call the “fundamental anthropological situation”: that is, the confrontation of an adult and an infans. In other words, of a very young child who as yet has no unconscious and an adult who is himself equipped with a sexual unconscious, comprising infantile sexuality. Between these two protagonists, the three elements are present from the start and throughout a dialogue which takes place not on the level of sexuality (since on one side there is as yet no sexuality), but on the level of what we call attachment. However, the register of attachment is quickly “compromised”, that is, infiltrated by sexual elements coming from the adult side. It is this which activates a process, in the adult first of all and then in the child, who, in short, becomes disorientated by messages which he can no longer understand as he first understood them i.e. as being simply messages of love and attachment. At this point there occurs a deficit of translation, a deficit of understanding, which results in the messages being stored for a certain time – preserved, shall we say – before the subject attempts to translate them in his own way. He must, of course, have the means to do this: the majority of these means are supplied to him by the external environment: that is, by everything conveyed by his universe in terms of ideas, myths, and the most diverse schemas for understanding.

 

A.L.: Narratives too, stories which might be culturally derived or peculiar to a family… You have a conception of the unconscious which seems to me to be very meaningful: “the unconscious forever reminds us that we do not gravitate around ourselves, nor even around an instinctual id that is genetic in nature” (Laplanche 2006: 262). You fight against the idea that the unconscious emerges solely from biological organisation.

 

J.L. Yes, absolutely. It is not, however, that I deny the importance of the biological on other levels which I call “instinctual” and which must be distinguished from the level of the “drives”. One must understand the “instinctual” here to mean the self-preservative, with all its biological circuitry. Similarly, we can say that adult sexuality, which must at the time of puberty take up its place alongside infantile sexuality, also has an instinctual basis and not just a basis in the drives.

 

A.L.: As to the “fundamental anthropological situation”, you have said that it places the child in a situation of having to translate something, but that it also exposes the adult to his own infantile sexuality.

 

J.L.: Yes, of course. The adult himself knows nothing of the infantile sexuality he carries. At least in minor cases, in normal or neurotic cases. I’m not talking about psychotic or perverse cases where the adult’s infantile sexuality explodes into his behaviour, which is a different thing altogether.

 

A.L.: On this subject, there is another contemporary concern which finds a place in your writings: that of sexual crime and incest. You have said that from the moment one maintains that infantile sexuality is not innate but emerges, like fantasy, within a child-adult dialogue in which the sexual initiative comes from the adult, one is led to re-examine completely one’s perspective on sexual crime.

 

J.L. First of all one is, quite simply, led to reverse one’s perspective on the Oedipus complex: to recognise that its root, the origin of the sexual action, is not on the side of the child, as Freud claims, but is in fact on the side of the parent who seduces the child. From this perspective, the Oedipus complex as Freud describes it is merely a defensive and self-accusatory reversal, a kind of identification with the aggressor, to take up Ferenczi’s term. The child identifies himself with the sexual aggressor by declaring that he is the author of the sexual crime…

 

A.L.: What’s at stake here is not just your theory, but your diagnosis of the contemporary cultural and social situation, particularly with respect to the evolution of the family, of sexuality and of methods of conception.

 

J.L: Of course. Here we have something that is in the process of profound change. For a relatively limited historical period, there was a strict framework in place; but this framework is becoming increasingly obsolete. Nevertheless, the question is knowing how infantile sexuality will be differently framed and organised. It cannot remain anarchic, for without some kind of organisation it leads, quite simply, to death. What I call the “death drive” is infantile sexuality functioning in a purely anarchic way.

 

A.L.: You have said, apropos of the Oedipus, that it is a narrative which serves to frame and organise this drive sexuality and its unbinding effects. But this narrative seems to be increasingly weak and unstable…

 

J.L.: Yes, but we mustn’t exaggerate. The Oedipus still has a formidable significance. It is still the most important aspect of the majority of psychoanalytic sessions. We must therefore be very cautious when it comes to future possibilities. The Oedipus will become an increasingly inefficient structure, but only in the long term.

 

A.L.: And yet, you say that today, as the “law” of the Oedipus complex disintegrates or rigidifies, sexual crime leaks out. Do you think there has been an increase in such crimes, or that their features have become more “unbound”?

 

J.L.: It is difficult to make a quantitative judgment about a phenomenon which was not quantified in the past. A century ago, sexual crime was not quantified; the extent of its occurrence was impossible to determine. It is therefore extremely difficult, even impossible, to say whether sexual crime has increased. It has, nonetheless, taken centre stage for some time and indeed has taken on a different potentiality and a different toxicity. I think that sexual crime is essentially crime committed by an adult against a child. But I enlarge the idea of sexual crime by saying that it is possible to ask whether all crime does not have a sexual element at its root. This is a most profound metapsychological question: it may be asked whether within the action of every criminal – even, say, the most banal thief, as well as the obvious example of the murderer – there is not some element of the sexual at work, something profoundly unconscious but nevertheless present.

 

A.L.: Do you think the same is true for crimes which are not committed by individuals but by a group or by the state? A few years ago you mentioned the crimes in Yugoslavia and Cambodia…

 

J.L.: The crimes of the concentration camps – whether these be the camps of the right or the left – are undeniably marked by a strong sexual connotation. This argument was hidden, but at bottom obvious. Now, concerning collective crime, let’s say Mafia crime or organized white-collar crime, the sexual aspect is much more hidden. In my opinion, there is an important homosexual aspect which should be underlined.

 

A.L.: And on which psychoanalysis therefore has something to say…

 

J.L.: … On which psychoanalysis has something to say…

 

A.L.: … Starting out from a very rigorous conception of its object, because this is your theoretical preoccupation, precision in the definition of concepts, terms, and the relation between them.

 

J.L.: An object which is, in essence, sexuality.

 

A.L.: You have also said (Laplanche 2006c), apropos of sexual crime, that its gain in importance will go hand in hand with a fading away of incest and the significance of incest. What do you mean by this? Sexual crime will acquire greater importance, yet incest will nonetheless lose its significance?

 

J.L.: Incest is already losing its significance, owing to the fact that family categories are losing their significance and that, in respect of sexual crime, we often see priority given to the adult-child relationship rather than the parent-child relationship. So already, from this point of view, incest is coming undone at the same time that kinship categories are coming undone. They are weakening to the point of being almost unsustainable. With the advent of fully “blended” families, what will become of actual incest?

 

A.L.: In this connection, however, you have (Laplanche 2003: 144ff.) spoken of societies in which there is neither father nor husband – the Mosuo of China, for example – saying that it is possible to envisage an organization, a way of binding and framing sexuality, without necessarily having to use existing categories. Moreover, many people speak of a fading away of the father or of the paternal function, a function which you yourself would also put in quotation marks.

 

J.L.: I think that the “function of the father” will necessarily fade away with the dilution of traditional family categories. The father becomes a stepfather or, at best, an adoptive father – which is not the same thing – and the biological father is often increasingly distant or even absent. I believe that the function of the father will actually diminish. We shall therefore have to find other modes of structuration. Human beings have no choice but to find means of framing and organising infantile sexuality, perverse infantile sexuality. Failing to do so is the road to death. As much a collective death as an individual death.

 

A.L.: There is also another risk, but perhaps it is the one of which we are speaking: the fading away of desire. For example, you have underlined the structuring function of drive renunciation – since drives are irreconcilable in themselves – while making clear that drive renunciation is not the elimination of the drive. This seems to me to be linked to the current risk of desire fading away: the multiplication of satisfactions, but without any possibility of desiring.

 

J.L.: I think that desire will be found all the same, chiefly in sublimations. In contemporary society, as in every society, there are many kinds of sublimation. It is in sublimations that desire finds one of its major paths of realisation.

 

A.L.: One should not therefore be pessimistic or alarmed in this connection. Nevertheless, there are some who speak a great deal about the death of desire within an enlarged jouissance.

 

J.L.: Of course. But I don’t see my own position reflected in this idea. I think that the desire we encounter within psychoanalysis is always present. It is extremely intense, even in its most unconventional forms.

 

A.L.: After several years, we have once again come together here at Lanzarote to think about psychoanalysis and about your theorization. Looking back over these years what is your impression? Are there things that make you optimistic?

 

J.L.: Listen, when one has meetings like this, one is necessarily optimistic. Of course, there are only a small number here, but these are people who are convinced and at the same time full of creativity. They are not dogmatists but rather people who, starting out from a certain proposition of mine, prove themselves extremely creative. To this degree, you can hope that there will be an expansion of the theory of seduction into larger circles than the very concentrated group of twenty-nine who have come together here for four days.

 

A.L.: Your book on “afterwardsness” [après coup], Problématiques VI (2006a), has just come out. It engages not only with a metapsychological question but also, one might say, with the subjective experience of time, of the passing of time, and with the possibility of giving it new meanings, of reviving the past in order to treat and enrich it. Will the passage of time enlarge the domain of your theory in the same way?

 

J.L.: I am persuaded that this theory will prove fertile, that immense domains remain to be explored, and that it will be for others to do this work. In particular there are the perversions, the psychoses, and the borderline states, which remain to be explored at once clinically and theoretically

 

A.L.:  In this connection, you have announced the creation of a foundation.[2]

 

J.L.: That will certainly be one of its goals. The expansion of the body of thought titled “New Foundations for Psychoanalysis” seeks to restructure psychoanalysis on new and simper bases. I have laid a great deal of emphasis on the fact that this theory proves much simpler than the theories of classical psychoanalysis – Freudian as well as Lacanian – which get tangled up in the course of their development. Take a text like Freud’s Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]) and you will realise just how convoluted the thinking is. Well, it’s the same with Lacan. It’s the same with Melanie Klein too. I believe that there is a need for simplification, and that if the general theory of seduction were able to provide a basis for simplification – something which is intelligible to everyone and also capable of accounting for the facts – that would already be an important development, a good beginning.

 

A.L.: It would also be a framework permitting the integration of contributions which derive, for example, from the authors that you just cited…

 

J.L.: Absolutely…

 

A.L.: And others too … and likewise the contributions emerging from other disciplines. As you have thus emphasised, to criticise the biologism in Freud, and in other currents of psychoanalytic thought, does not mean…

 

J.L.: … that one is criticising biology or the problematic of biology. The question of the neurosciences is much more complex. We have not yet really found the key to approaching it but I think that there must inevitably be a way.

 

 

 

References

Freud, S. (1915), “A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease”, S.E. vol. 14. 263–272.

Freud, S. (1926 [1925]), Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, S.E. vol. 20, 77–172.

Laplanche, J. (2003), “Le crime sexuel ” in Sexual. La sexualité élargie au sens freudien. 2000–2006. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007, 79–151.

Laplanche, J. (2006a), Problématiques VI: L’après-coup (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).

Laplanche, J. (2006b), “Freud et la philosophie” in Sexual. La sexualité élargie au sens freudien. 2000–2006. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007, 257–263.

Laplanche, J. (2006c), “Inceste et sexualité infantile” in La sexualité élargie au sens freudien. 2000–2006. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007, 275–292.