Commentary on Laplanche

Abstract

What has once come to life clings tenaciously to its existence. One feels inclined to doubt sometimes whether the dragons of primaeval days are really extinct. -Sigmund Freud (1937, p. 229) The devil made me do it! -Flip WilSon T o begin with, I would register a disagreement about the beginning, that is, about the English translation of the title of Laplanche's paper, "Faut-il brûler Melanie Klein?" My literal rendering of his language into English would be "Must One Burn Melanie Klein?" or "Does One Have to . . . ?" or "Is It Necessary/Required to . . . ?" It might be considered a small shift in meaning and nuance but is not an insignificant one at all, to my ear. 1 "Should we" implies a consideration, a prospective choice based on some principle. "Must we" implies a desire to avoid or at least to reconsider a choice or an action.The transposition in meaning indicates for me the alteration from a proposition to eliminate a peril to one rather of considering the prevention of such an elimination. In either case, Laplanche is playing with us; and the dialectic that he insists on our acknowledging throughout is already at work in his titular invocation. I shall return to this later in considering the immensely important position he articulates against mechanistic theoretical and clinical notions.But for now it must simply be conceded that we, all of us, are possessed by things we cannot know and yet cannot dispel. Freud (1923),