In 1997, the Presses Universitaires de France commissioned DominiqueScarfone for another book for their series Psychanalystes d'aujourd'hui. Theresult was Jean Laplanche, now available in Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz'sbrilliantly clear English translation as "Laplanche: an introduction." More thanan overview of Laplanche's career, Scarfone's text presents an unparalleledinsight into the mechanisms, provocations, and spectacular theoreticalachievements of Laplanche's work, which has been increasingly recognizedas integral to Francophone-and more recently, Anglophone-psychoanalyticpractice and theory.This volume brings together Scarfone's book with two representative worksof Laplanche's writing: his introduction to the French translation of Freud'sBeyond the Pleasure Principle, perhaps the last major work completed beforehis death in 2012; and Fantasme Originaire, Fantasmes des Origines, Originesdu Fantasme, the classic 1964 essay written in collaboration with J.-B.Pontalis, in a new translation by Jonathan House. Finally, this volume includesa complete bibliography of Laplanche's work, in English and in French.Jean Laplanche was described by Radical Philosophy as "the most originaland philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day." Studyingphilosophy under Hyppolite, Bachelard, and Merleau-Ponty, he became anactive member of the French Resistance under the Vichy regime. Under theinfluence (and treatment) of Jacques Lacan, Laplanche came to earn adoctorate in medicine and was certified as a psychoanalyst. He eventuallybroke ties with Lacan and began regularly publishing influential contributionsto psychoanalytic theory, his first volume appearing in 1961. In 1967 hepublished, with his colleague J.-B. Pontalis, the celebrated encyclopaedia TheLanguage of Psychoanalysis. Member of the International PsychoanalyticAssociation, co-founder of the Association Psychanalytique de France, emeritus professor and founder of the Center for Psychoanalytic Research atthe Université de Paris VII, and assistant professor at the Sorbonne, he alsooversaw, as scientific director, the translation of Freud's complete oeuvre intoFrench for the Presses Universitaires de France.
