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This article by Nicholas Ray is republished by kind permission of Radical Philosophy [1]
Jean Laplanche, one of Europe’s most eminent and original psychoanalytic thinkers, died on 6 May, 2012, at the age of 87. His death brings to an end a remarkable intellectual career dedicated to the meticulous analysis and rigorous critical expansion of the Freudian discovery.
Laplanche was born on 21 June 1924 to a family of wine producers who owned the prestigious Château de Pommard in Burgundy. In 1940, at the age of 16, he moved from Burgundy to Paris in order to study at the Lycée Henri IV with the aim of eventually reading philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. It was at the Lycée that he first met his future collaborator Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. After completing his secondary education Laplanche spent 1943 and part of 1944 working with the French Resistance before enrolling at the ENS in the 1944–45 academic year. At the ENS, he was taught by some of the foremost philosophers of the day: Ferdinand Alquié, Gaston Bachelard, Jean Hyppolite and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It was thanks in particular to Hyppolite and Alquié that Laplanche became interested in psychoanalysis. His interest intensified when in 1946–47 he won a scholarship to Harvard University. There, he studied at the progressive Department of Social Relations, coming into contact with professional psychoanalysts as well as cultural anthropologists working with psychoanalytic ideas. Having returned to Paris, at Alquié’s auspicious recommendation Laplanche entered into an analysis with Jacques Lacan which would continue until 1963. By 1951, after taking the agrégation de philosophie, he decided to become an analyst himself.
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The Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research recently held the second of their annual conferences dedicated to the theme of the relation between characteristic styles of British and Lacanian clinical practice. The Conference was entitled "Lacan and the British Tradition II", and was held in the University of London Union on 29th November, 1997. The theme that is being developed in this series of conferences is intriguing as well as enlightening: a cross comparison of clinical orientation sheds much light on the nature of psychoanalytical work. This year, the focus of the meeting was on the concept of cure in psychoanalysis, and in particular the notions of the direction and the end of the treatment.
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The psychoanalytic discourse is a very powerful tool as it may be used to deconstruct other discourses, analyse its formulations and to revise social categories and its political implications. It can also provide the framework to explain the genesis and structure of human subjectivity. But far from being a unified field, the theoretical body discovered by Freud has developed into different schools with their own views and particular conceptualizations. Most of the psychoanalytical approaches might be useful to analyse other theories and social categories, as they seem to share a similar logic of thought. Also, they enable us to find alternatives to explanations based on a unilateral point of view. However when considering their views on human subjectivity and the way it is structured, they might differ significantly or even be contradictory which can lead to erroneous conceptualisations. Throughout the history of the feminist movement many intellectuals have tried to analyse the issue of "being a woman", its essence and the specificity of her desire taking into account the development of psychoanalytical ideas from different traditions and readings of Freud. I will try to summarise some of them and point out their implications, and finally will try to outline some concepts - more specifically Lacan's theorisation - that may give a tentative answer to the question: what is the essence of woman?
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Mary Lynne Ellis and Noreen O’Connor
This extract from our book Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice (Karnac 2010) contextualises the relevance of 20th and 21st century European philosophy to clinical work with individuals from a diversity of race, class, and cultural backgrounds, genders, and sexualities. Our book is principally concerned with questions of identity which arise consciously and unconsciously in the analytical relationship.
Read more: Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice
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"On Addiction"
by Claudio Rosso
The Cocaine Papers
Civilizations and its Discontents
3.INTOXICATION AND TOXICOMANIA
4.ADDICTION AND THE ACTUAL NEUROSES
5.CAUSES OF ADDICTION
Freud's ideas on Pain
Cancellation of Pain
The Pharmakon
Administration of Enjoyment
6.TOXICOMANIA AND THE CLINICAL STRUCTURES
7.THE MARRIAGE WITH THE PHALLUS
8. CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY