Laplanche: an introduction - Dominique Scarfone

\nIn 1997, the Presses Universitaires de France commissioned Dominique\n \nScarfone for another book for their series Psychanalystes d'aujourd'hui. The\n \nresult was Jean Laplanche, now available in Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz's\n \nbrilliantly clear English translation as Laplanche: an introduction. More than\n \nan overview of Laplanche's career, Scarfone's text presents an unparalleled\n \ninsight into the mechanisms, provocations, and spectacular theoretical\n \nachievements of Laplanche's work, which has been increasingly recognized\n \nas integral to Francophone-and more recently, Anglophone-psychoanalytic\n \npractice and theory.\n \n \n\n \nThis volume brings together Scarfone's book with two representative works\n \nof Laplanche's writing: his introduction to the French translation of Freud's\n \nBeyond the Pleasure Principle, perhaps the last major work completed before\n \nhis death in 2012; and Fantasme Originaire, Fantasmes des Origines, Origines\n \ndu Fantasme, the classic 1964 essay written in collaboration with J.-B.\n \nPontalis, in a new translation by Jonathan House. Finally, this volume includes\n \na complete bibliography of Laplanche's work, in English and in French.\n \n \n\n \nJean Laplanche was described by Radical Philosophy as the most original\n \nand philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day. Studying\n \nphilosophy under Hyppolite, Bachelard, and Merleau-Ponty, he became an\n \nactive member of the French Resistance under the Vichy regime. Under the\n \ninfluence (and treatment) of Jacques Lacan, Laplanche came to earn a\n \ndoctorate in medicine and was certified as a psychoanalyst. He eventually\n \nbroke ties with Lacan and began regularly publishing influential contributions\n \nto psychoanalytic theory, his first volume appearing in 1961. In 1967 he\n \npublished, with his colleague J.-B. Pontalis, the celebrated encyclopaedia The\n \nLanguage of Psychoanalysis. Member of the International Psychoanalytic\n \nAssociation, co-founder of the Association Psychanalytique de France, \n \nemeritus professor and founder of the Center for Psychoanalytic Research at\n \nthe Université de Paris VII, and assistant professor at the Sorbonne, he also\n \noversaw, as scientific director, the translation of Freud's complete oeuvre into\n \nFrench for the Presses Universitaires de France.\n