3-15-11 Freud and Laplanche

Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud explores the pleasure principle and its role in psychological development, where self-preservation is a mechanism of repression when one cannot achieve satisfaction.

Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis

Summary: Laplanche offers a reading of Freud that uses the seeming contradictions of Freud productively and intervenes in the debate surrounding the object (subject?) of psychoanalysis: the ego.

“Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising; but this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego; and—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.” (Laplanche 67)

Here, Laplanche begins by attempting to cohere Freud’s ideas (assumably from Beyond the Pleasure Principle) into a condensed and radicalized version of the original.  Even though  “thesis” is a singular noun, the act of condensing is not an attempt at unification.  To condense means to decrease the volume of many different particles by bringing them closer together.  It is an aggregation, a process where different units come together to form a group.  Laplanche brings three propositions together to form a thesis. 

The other act that Laplanche claims to carry out here is radicalization.  Radicalization is typically used to describe a major change or a departure from what is usual or traditional.  The term “radicalization” is not just a shift or a departure.  It is a different kind of change from one that just moves in a different direction; it’s a return to origins.  The change influences the entire concept all the way back to its roots; it changes what is fundamental about the concept.  It is an all-encompassing change.  Laplanche’s use of “in a sense” seems to be ambivalent—why doesn’t he say just “radicalize”?  This phrase, though, is the opposite of ambivalent, as this phrase emphasizes what follows it.  It is a specification of radicalization.  This placement performs a further specification of the word “radicalize” in that it emphasizes the importance of knowing the meaning of the word radicalize, and it enacts that specification of meaning into the text itself.  Adding “in a sense” is an interpretation, having important implications for Laplanche’s overall project of interpreting Freud.

This sentence acts as a microcosm for Laplanche’s project in that his interpretation is a radicalization of Freud in general.  By returning to the fundamentals of Freud, he radicalizes Freud’s work.  Laplanche changes the direction of the way that Freud has been read by others by returning to its origin.  Presumably, he is responding to the idea that the self and the ego are separate things: “The crucial point, however, which is already indicated by Freud and renders useless and even fallacious a distinction between an “ego” and a “self,” is the observation that the genesis of the ego itself is marked by the indissolubly linked image of self and other” (54).  Here, the stakes of the return lie in distinctions.  Complete and total distinctions distort the origins of psychoanalysis in such a way that requires a radicalization of the misreading of Freud. Yet, Freud and Laplanche make distinctions all the time (the different between fear and fright, for example).  What then becomes important is how these distinctions are made and the process behind differentiation versus unification.  This process, as Laplanche performs through this sentence, is condensation.  It is a balance between discrete units that are completely different from each other and an attempt to unify discrete units into a coherent whole.  The process is somewhere between these two extremes: it’s a recognition of the parts of the whole; it’s cellular.

The idea of parts of the whole is enacted in the structure of this sentence.  Laplanche uses semicolons rather than commas or periods to do this work.  Semicolons indicate that each of the mini sentences in the larger sentences are parts of the whole.  The condition of the use of semicolons, though, require that each piece set off by semicolons is a complete sentence and can exist on its own if it had to, but they’re also closely related more so than if they were just separated by periods.  They’re not quite discrete but they’re not quite unified either.  The pieces set off by semicolons are ambivalent that way.  Also, Laplanche calls each of them “propositions” which are part of the larger thesis that he is condensing.  Yet, he then calls each of them a “thesis” when he’s talking about them at the cellular level, performing the ambivalence of the semicolons in another way.  What’s more, these labels of “thesis” are enclosed with dashes, setting “thesis” off while at the same time emphasizing it.

Additionally, the colon joins the smaller cellular sentences to the larger sentence and to Laplanche’s acts of condensation and radicalization.  The colon requires that each thing that follows it be closely related to what precedes it.  This construction also requires a return to the origin.

Here’s a chart that illustrates how each cell of the sentence looks on its own and how the colon enacts a return:

Narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising.

But this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego.

And—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: Narcissism is a libidinal investment of the self, a love of the self—a thesis which is anything but surprising.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: But this libidinal cathexis of self occurs in man necessarily through a libidinal cathexis of the ego.

Freud’s thesis, if we were to condense and, in a sense, radicalize it, would consist in three propositions: And—the third thesis—this libidinal cathexis of the ego is inseparable from the very constitution of the human ego.

While my purpose behind separating these out was to illustrate how each cell can exist on its own and how the colon requires a return, actually seeing it written this way is strange.  By making each cell discrete from the larger context of the sentence, a few things stand out: the fact that “three propositions” is followed by just one and the fact that the last two cells following the colon start with coordinating conjunctions.  These coordinating conjunctions are unemployed, wandering around without jobs, unable to integrate themselves into the economy of the sentence.  This sentence is constructed as cellular, as a relation of parts to a whole.  It offers a way of reading relationality in psychoanalysis as a relationality of the middle or the gap: the ego and the self aren’t entirely separate but they aren’t entirely unified, either.