Jean Laplanche was one of the most recognized names in psychoanalysis of the twentieth century, his name is mainly associated with the book Vocabular of Psychoanalysis, produced with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis in 1967.
This work has become fundamental to this school of thought and is now a must-see to understand Freud’s work and later developments.
- Jean Laplanche is also known for having developed a work that purported to be true to the main concepts of Freudian thought.
- Although this did not prevent him from expanding several central aspects of his theory.
- In particular the theory of seduction and key elements.
- Psychosexual development theory.
“You can’t go back to Freud without making him suffer (?) A job: work at work and (?) Work that challenges work?. – Jean Laplanche-
One of his main works is Novos Fundamentos para Psicaniental, published in 1987, where he seeks to separate psychoanalysis from the other disciplines to which it was linked, given the multiple interpretations of different authors.
In particular, it separates it from biology, linguistics and anthropology.
Jean Laplanche was born in Paris on June 21, 1924, his father was originally from Burgundy and his mother was born Champagne, his family devoted himself to vine cultivation and wine production, so from a very young age he lived in a rural setting in the town of Beaune.
Already in his youth he became involved in Catholic Action, a left-wing organization that seeks social justice, in 1943, during World War II, he was part of the French resistance, moving from place to place transmitting secret messages. .
With the end of the war, he founded a group called Socialism or Barbarie, with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, the group began to develop a magazine of the same name in which he criticized Stalin and the totalitarian positions of the left.
In fact, he never ceased to be a political activist, and his active participation in the famous Frenchman of May 1968 is also remembered.
In the 1940s, Jean Laplanche graduated from the famous Escola Normale Supérieure in Paris, one of the most prestigious in the world in the field of philosophy, where he had Michel Foucault as a companion. During these years he was a pupil of eminences such as Gaston Bachelard, Jean Hyppolite and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
He graduated in Philosophy in 1950; at that time he contacted Rudolph Lowenstein, who then completed his academic training at Harvard University for a year.
At this stage, his interest in psychoanalysis grew to psychoanalysis with Jacques Lacan on his return to Europe, who advised him to study medicine and Jean Laplanche accepted the suggestion.
Later, he worked as an intern at several psychiatric hospitals in Paris and presented his medical thesis in 1959, entitled Hólderlin and his father’s problem.
He also joined the International Society of Psychoanalysis and, in 1961, began working as a professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Jean Laplanche worked alongside Jacques Lacan during his famous return to Freud, however in 1964 he finally departed from the Lacanian model.
For him, they had begun a return to Freud, but ended up building a unique path for Lacan. Together with other psychoanalysts who identified with his position, he founded the Paris Psychoanalytic Association.
Later, he became director of the Research Center in Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology at the University of Paris VII.
His interest in psychoanalysis did not diminish and, as a result, he founded the journal Psicananalysis at the University; he wanted to stay true to Freud’s concepts, but never gave up his critical position on them. psychoanalysis is overly biological.
Moving away from Lacan but also from Freud, Laplanche proposes his theory of widespread seduction, and on the basis of this theory also proposes a different interpretation of the psychoanalytic and curative process.
Between 1970 and 1994 he held several seminars that were later compiled in the book Problema, translated into several languages.
Jean Laplanche has visited Latin America three times and has left an important mark on the psychoanalysts of this region, this scholarly, disciplined man with an exquisite sense of humor died in 2012 in the city where he lived during his childhood.
Interestingly, he died on May 6, the anniversary of Freud’s birth.