The Language of Psychoanalysis
Not a dictionary so much as an argument about what each Freudian term actually carries.
The first thing the introduction of the notion does is to rule out the summary interpretation which reduces the psycho-analytic view of the subject's history to a linear determinism envisaging nothing but the action of the past upon the present.
Laplanche and Pontalis compiled a critical vocabulary of psychoanalysis rather than a glossary. First published in French in 1967 and issued in Donald Nicholson-Smith's English translation in 1973, it takes each Freudian term and reconstructs how it arose, where Freud's usage shifted, and what precise sense the concept can be held to. Every entry works from Freud's own texts, quoting them as it goes, then argues for a reading instead of settling on a flat gloss. The terms it treats carry real weight: Nachtraglichkeit, or deferred action, phantasy, the drive, cathexis. On deferred action, for instance, the authors rule out any reading of the subject's history as simple forward determinism. For a practising clinician it functions as a reference that takes positions. Reaching for a term mid-formulation returns not a one-line definition but the tensions inside the concept and the textual grounds for using it one way over another.
About the authors
Jean Laplanche
Jean Laplanche (1924 to 2012) was a French psychoanalyst and theorist who reworked Freudian thought. With Jean-Bertrand Pontalis he wrote The Language of Psychoanalysis, a reference dictionary of the field. He was known for his general theory of seduction and for the concept of the enigmatic message, which placed the adult other at the origin of the unconscious. He served as a professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VII, and he directed the scientific committee behind a new French translation of Freud.
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1924 to 2013) was a French psychoanalyst, philosopher, writer and editor. Trained in philosophy under Jean-Paul Sartre, he later underwent analysis with Jacques Lacan and helped found the Association Psychanalytique de France, which he came to lead. With Jean Laplanche he wrote the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (1967), translated as The Language of Psychoanalysis, a reference work systematising Freudian concepts. At Gallimard he directed the collection Connaissance de l'Inconscient. He also founded La Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse and published essays and fiction.
Details
- 1967
- 1973
- Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse
- French
- Donald Nicholson-Smith
- Routledge
- Routledge, 1967
- 528
- 9780946439492