Sexuality, Otherness, and the Language of Psychoanalysis: an Introduction to Jean Laplanche (In-Person)

Jean Laplanche was a philosopher by training. But in the wake of the horrors of the Second World War, he turned to psychoanalysis, entering treatment under Jacques Lacan and immersing himself in the writings of Sigmund Freud. He began to craft an original account of psychoanalytic thought, taking aim, specifically, at Freud’s theory of sexuality. Laplanche reassessed Freud’s idea of the Oedipus complex to problematize the relationship between biology and desire. He later drew on ideas from gender and queer theory—notably, Judith Butler’s concept of gender as a series of performative acts—to critique Freud’s focus on the Oedipal drama. Contra Freud, sexuality does not revolve around the child’s desire to possess or eliminate parental figures, but rather the enigmatic messages adults convey to children. Our caregivers, Laplanche suggests, stamp us with their own desires, and we can’t help, as we develop, relating to other people through the prism of what they want for and from us. But what exactly are the implications of Laplanche’s work for Freudian psychoanalytic theory? Why did Laplanche declare Freud’s “Copernican revolution”—that is, its decentering of the conscious mind as the determining factor of psychic life—“unfinished”? Why does Laplanche place “otherness” at the center of mental activity? How can we understand, with Laplanche, the “enigmatic messages” bombarding us continually from the outside?

In this course, we will read selections from Laplanche’s essays on sexuality, the unconscious, language, repression, and otherness, encountering a thinker whose metapsychology offers a radical yet intuitive theory of human relations: child and adult, self and other, patient and analyst. We will ask what attracts contemporary English readers and practitioners of psychoanalysis to Laplanche, an attraction manifested in the publication of a growing number of English translations of Laplanche’s work in the past decade. Is it his rethinking of sexuality through the notion of enigmatic messaging? His co-authoring, with J.-B. Pontalis, of an exhaustive dictionary of psychoanalytic terms, which represents his commitment to a careful reevaluation of metapsychological thought? His approach to psychoanalysis as a branch of philosophy and anthropology? Or perhaps his political activism in 1940s and 1960s France? Embarking on a close reading of Laplanche’s essays in their recent English translation, we will seek to answer these questions together, regardless of prior knowledge of psychoanalysis.

Course Schedule

Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm
November 11 — December 09, 2025
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Tuesday, November 25th.

$335.00

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