Seductions & Enigmas: Laplanche, Theory, Culture ed. by John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray (review)

The edited volume, Seductions & Enigmas, presents in a concisely summarized form the theory of primal seduction proposed by Jean Laplanche. The introduction by John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray sets forth a history of Laplanche's career and work and is followed by translations of three important papers covering his major concepts. These ideas are developed in ten chapters, mostly reprinted or translated, that are grouped under three headings: Seduction, Sexuality, and Gender; Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts; and Seduction and Effraction in the Visual and Aural Fields. The authors apply the Laplanchian principles of "the primacy of the other" and "primal seduction" to reinterpret the origins of gender and to explore the meaning of a number of artistic and literary works. The accent falls on the "fundamental anthropological situation" of the extreme vulnerability and helplessness of the human infant, faced with a sexually mature parent (essentially the mother in these papers), who conveys a surplus of untranslatable enigmatic messages through her ministrations.

Laplanche was a brilliant scholar (agrégation en philosophie) who chose to pursue medical training at the behest of his psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, with whom he remained for about ten years. As an academic, he authored searching studies of Freud's thinking and commented widely on the psychoanalytic literature. After breaking with Lacan (following his expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association), Laplanche became a founding member of the new Association Française de Psychanalyse (APF) in which he remained a prominent member. He may be best known for his monumental Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis in 1967), translated into English as The Language of Psychoanalysis (1973), and Vie et mort en psychanalyse in 1970, translated as Life and Death in Psychoanalysis (1976). His other books and articles in French were translated much later, but have gradually gained an international audience and been the subject of numerous colloquia. Fletcher and Ray stand as major interpreters and advocates of Laplanche's theories, with many publications of their own, including in psychoanalytic journals. They are Professors of English in the United Kingdom (not identified as analysts, like many of the contributors). None of the chapters deals with clinical psychoanalysis, nor, for that matter, with anthropology or infant research, but focus on Laplanchian interpretations of works of art, with the exception of Jacques André's presentation of his theory of primary femininity and Judith Butler's discussion of gender formation.

What is primal seduction? As is well known, Freud initially attributed the psychoneuroses to the effects of sexual seduction by an active adult, usually a relative. Over time, however, he advanced his theory of infantile sexual fantasy as the principal pathogenic element, with actual experience with caretakers (except in cases of gross abuse) serving mainly to provide a vehicle for phylogenetic traces. Maternal caresses, for example, awaken an inborn sexuality that becomes inseparable from the survival instincts. This intermixture of biology and culture or nature and nurture, with its inherent contradictions and confusions, was studied and comprehensively treated by Laplanche in several texts. Freud's ideas about sexuality were complex and not always consistent. From his early view of a sexually naive child who only comprehends the meaning of a sexual assault at a later period of sexual maturation (the concept of Nachträglichkeit) to a theory of infantile sexuality (Freud, 1905) based on the pleasure seeking impulses of the infant in its lengthy phase of total dependency on maternal care, Freud left many problems to be disentangled by his successors. The Freudian infant is helpless, at the mercy of parents or servants, yet also narcissistic and grandiose (his majesty the baby). It (a generic male in most cases) seeks pleasure from its orifices throughout a preordained succession of stages that culminate in genitality, but also constructs its sexuality through the vicissitudes of the oedipus conflict. Neurosis, Freud hypothesized, derives from repressed pregenital drives that become the focus of sexuality in the face of unresolvable oedipal wishes and present a constant pressure...