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Laplanche, J. (1995). Seduction, Persecution, Revelation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 76:663-682.

(1995). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 76:663-682

Seduction, Persecution, Revelation

Jean Laplanche

The author argues that seduction is not primarily a fantasy but a ‘real’ situation, which lies at the heart of the other two allegedly primal major scenarios: castration and the primal scene. This statement is not to be confused with an event-based realism, as, for this to be achieved, a third category of reality must be postulated. This reality, constantly misconstrued by authors as corresponding to material and psychological reality, is that of the message conveyed and, more specifically in the case of analysis, the enigmatic message. To establish his position the author re-examines Freud's presentation of the Schreber case. The sexual other and his intrusion are the essential points of Freud's analysis in the first part of his study. In the second part, however, desexualisation (in the name of love) and a return to the ego, as the centre of the whole process, both being evident in the ‘primary’ sentence from which Freud proposes to derive everything: ‘I (a man) love him (a man)’. This leads us to a consideration of Fichte's concept of Bekanntmachung, the ‘announcement’ by the other and to an argument that the message stemming from the other is irreducible to a projection by the subject, within the three domains of primal seduction, paranoia and religious ‘revelation’.


