Laplanche: an Introduction by Dominique Scarfone

In 1997, the Presses Universitaires de France commissioned Dominique Scarfone for another book for their series Psychanalystes d’aujourd’hui. The result was Jean Laplanche, now available in Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz’s brilliantly clear English translation as “ an introduction.” More than an overview of Laplanche’s career, Scarfone’s text presents an unparalleled insight into the mechanisms, provocations, and spectacular theoretical achievements of Laplanche’s work, which has been increasingly recognized as integral to Francophone—and more recently, Anglophone—psychoanalytic practice and theory. This volume brings together Scarfone’s book with two representative works of Laplanche’s his introduction to the French translation of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, perhaps the last major work completed before his death in 2012; and Fantasme Originaire, Fantasmes des Origines, Origines du Fantasme , the classic 1964 essay written in collaboration with J.-B. Pontalis, in a new translation by Jonathan House. Finally, this volume includes a complete bibliography of Laplanche’s work, in English and in French. "If we are to take Laplanche seriously, we gain a much deeper and more nuanced picture of the development of the unconscious during a healthy childhood. Those interested in learning more about his ideas would do well to consult Scarfone's remarkable essay." –Jonathan Foiles LCSW, Psychology Today