Dominique Scarfone, "The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche" (Unconscious in Translation, 2023)

Feb 29, 2024

The Reality of the Message

Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche

Dominique Scarfone and Avgi Saketopoulou

Hosted by Philip Lance

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Summary

The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) compiles papers written by Dominique Scarfone. Each paper is followed by a conversation about the paper between the author and Avgi Saketopoulou.

"I propose we have a conversation after each of your essays as a way to engage your work, to ask for clarifications on the reader's behalf, and to multiply the entry points to your thinking. I imagine that these conversations will work cumulatively, talking the reader deeper into each chapter and also showing your way of thinking not by describing it but by exposing the reader to it 'in vivo.' Part of what your work has offered me personally, which I hope these exchanges will also convey to the reader, is the sheer pleasure of thinking about theory with you -- that it's not a stale or inert process but that, on the contrary, it is an experience in itself." -Avgi Saketopoulou

"While an indisputable fact about human reality is that of communication and its corollary, making sense of what is communicated, only psychoanalysis takes notice of the particular situation created when communication happens between an adult and an infans-literally: the one who does not speak. Nor is it given much attention, even among psychoanalysts, that there is a special 'noise' carried over in the channels of communication between the two, a noise resulting from the difference regarding the unconscious sexual dimension." -Dominique Scarfone