PSYchology

Freud’s most fundamental discovery is not the fear of castration or envy of the penis, but the ability to heal with the word — and its scientific justification. The importance of the effect of the word on the patient in Freud’s method cannot be overestimated. But how does Freud’s own word work?

Freud’s most fundamental discovery is not the fear of castration or penis envy, but the ability to heal with the word — and its scientific justification. The importance of the effect of the word on the patient in Freud’s method cannot be overestimated. But how does Freud’s own word work?

Undoubtedly, when creating his works, he treated the choice of words with special care, which is characteristic of not even every writer. Not a single change in the term is accidental — it contains information about the development of the author’s approach in a condensed form. Therefore, we have every reason to analyze each of them and ponder over the slightest shades of meaning.

Jean Laplanche devoted most of his scientific activity to this. Known to the Russian reader mainly for his «Dictionary of Psychoanalysis» (Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 2010), in France he is the author of 12 works on the theory of psychoanalysis. The British journal Radical Philosophy called him «the most original and philosophically informed theorist of psychoanalysis».

Reflections on the works of Freud (read in the original, in German) and an analysis of the evolution of his views lead Laplanche to his own discoveries and conclusions. Including the fact that the destructive drive is not an antagonist of the life drive: “The death drive has no energy of its own. His energy is libido.»

VLADIMIR DAL, 376 p.

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