Otherness and Our Sexuality: Laplanche Clinically

ABSTRACT Laplanche is a serious scholar of Freud’s work and offers challenges and explanatory dissents where he believed Freud went astray. He has presented his theoretical position extensively but never provided clinical examples. I use the limited case material of Mrs. C and extrapolate from Laplanche’s theoretical ideas to clinical work. Laplanche’s emphasis is on infantile sexuality, on the erogenous zones, on the “polymorphousness “of the body. Infantile sexuality emerges from the sexual unconscious of the (m)other. The unconscious features of tender caregiving by the mother have an erotic, seductive quality. This provides enigmatic messages to the infant, and excites and stimulates the infant to make the communication meaningful. Laplanche called this the “fundamental anthropological situation” that occurs in all of us. The analytic situation, in many ways, invites a repetition of the seduction, as the analysand needs to translate the unconscious enigmatic messages of the analyst.