Article

EXIGENCY AND GOING ASTRAY 1

Jean Laplanche
University of Paris (VII)
Correspondence: Professor Jean Laplanche, 55 rue de Varenne, Paris France

A b s t ra c t
In this piece, Laplanche returns to and develops the insights of the earlier Interpreting essay. He goes on to give a striking re-elaboration of the idea of exigency in terms of his own reformulation of Freudian drive theory, arguing that evolution of Freuds thought is constrained and driven (pousse) to re-enact the evolution of the object it thinks: the narcissistic closure of the human psyche. In this connection Laplanche also introduces the related notion of theoretical goings astray (fourvoiements) the extensive coverings-over of the radical Copernican essence of Freuds own discovery, which the exigency of his thought has brought about. As such, this second piece sets out two concepts which, for Laplanche, define the major discursive axes of Freuds oeuvre and thus orient the critical exposition of Freud which is so crucial to Laplanches own theoretical work.

Ke y wo rds
Freud; hermeneutics; interpretation; the other Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2006) 11, 185189. doi:10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100078

his year I want to set the parameters of my course with the title Goings-astray [fourvoiements] in Freudianism, or Goings-astray in Freudian thought. What I mean by this is that it is not only the Freudians that I am calling into question, but Freud himself: goings astray of Freud, and after Freud. I have recently been described as a revisionist by two voices usually quite heterogeneous, but at one on this occasion. This term, with its old whiff of Stalinism, made me smile. I wont mention any names. I do not accept this

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stigmatization, for what I am trying to do is something other than revision. One can revise ones own work, one can revise a text; but revising Freud is not my concern. It has been said that I was endangering the balance of Freudian thought, which immediately raises the question of the kind of balance at stake of any thought in general, but of Freuds in particular. Are we dealing with an edifice, a perfectly constructed edifice, from which one cannot remove a single wing, a single brick? Must one, then, accept it in its totality or risk becoming a deviationist just as Aristotelian thought was accepted for centuries, and as continues to be necessary in certain circles with regard to sacred texts? Is it a question of being a Talmudist? Is Freudian thought a perfectly constructed edifice? Must one accept it in its totality or must one be selective? Of course, neither one nor the other. I would say, one must understand it in its totality, but one must equally be capable, precisely by knowing that ensemble, of detecting in it the spurious or unstable equilibria, the patchings-over, and of trying to prize open the cracks in its surface. Freud himself accused his deviationists, such as Jung and Adler his two great demons, hardly worthy the honour or the indignity of that name of stressing one or the other aspect of his thought in a unilateral fashion. In short, to choose one aspect of Freud to the detriment of the other, without taking into account what is signified by both in the totality of his work, is doubtless to take a thoroughly insufficient view. So what is it to Interpret Freud with Freud, to take up the title of one of my articles? It is certainly not to do a hermeneutics of Freud that is, to transpose Freud into another system which might be considered better than his own: an attempt made by Jung and a number of others; perhaps even, in a certain way, by Lacan. This would be to forget Freuds mistrust vis-a-vis any kind of system. ` To interpret Freud with Freud is also not to do a psychoanalysis of Freud, even as it is understood by those who have risked it more or less successfully:2 it seems to me that a psychoanalysis of Freud would not lead where I want to go. I think there exists a certain level of interpretation which allows us to follow the trail of something in Freuds work which I have for a long time called its exigency [exigence]. The exigency is something that is dictated by the object [objet] neither by Freud the man, nor by logic. In a certain way it is, as in the psychoanalytic method, the unconscious object which orients the very evolution of the thought. To interpret Freud with Freud, at the level of this exigency, is to break things down, to adapt mutatis mutandis Freuds rules of dissolution, in order to see the parts perhaps recompose themselves otherwise before our eyes, precisely in accordance with the exigency of the object. It is to reveal, as in a psychoanalysis, the subterranean movements governing the rearrangements above-ground; it is to detect, at certain moments, a crypto-Freud covered over by the official Freud. I have mentioned more than once how Freud,
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in writing his own history, was very good at covering and embellishing his tracks.3 What does it mean, to return to sources? A crypto-Freud is certainly not a proto-Freud. It is not, as with seeking a first Marx or a first Hegel, a question of going for a first Freud who would be truer than the second. If it could be said that this first Freud is at certain moments closer to the exigency, why would he not coincide with the second at other moments? We are not, then, talking about a return to temporal sources. Holderlin says that it is in going towards its mouth that the river approaches its source a dialectical notion thoroughly marked by his familiarity with Hegel. Well, this is, in part, the issue; we are not concerned with exhuming the sources, an illusory first, but of uncovering what it is which constitutes the source [source] and which gets ceaselessly covered over, like a stream [source] that is suddenly diverted, or drops below ground only to resurface further on after a subterranean journey. This is what is at stake: the source of inspiration is nothing other than the object of the search. I have introduced the idea of going astray, which supposes that the research of one who goes astray is nonetheless guided by an aim which recurs or insists [un but qui insiste]. Those who would reach the summit of Everest and who go astray, suddenly finding themselves at the edge of a cliff, are obviously guided by Everest, driven on [pousse] by the notion they have of the summit. This supposes, then, the exigency of arriving somewhere. This supposes, in very concrete terms, the forked paths, the possibilities of choice, and sometimes the dead-end routes that present themselves and are taken. And, of course, in the context of an intellectual journey it is not sufficient to go into reverse, as one would go back to a crossroads in order to take the right direction, the royal road. For when it comes to a thinker like Freud the impasse is never purely impassable, since the adventurer continues to be guided by his major object; that is to say to stick with the image of the mountaineer when he arrives at an impassable cliff, he comes to find other paths without necessarily going back to the fork in the road, always magnetized by the exigency of the summit. Moreover, it is not a matter of claiming that there is nothing new in Freudian thought. New discoveries are made with the progress of experience and method, and these come to complicate the whole. From the moment that a body of thought, while remaining directed by the exigency of its sourceobject [objetsource], is nonetheless engaged in something resembling a major going astray (perhaps an initial going astray even though I might be wary about the idea of anything initial in a temporal sense), these patchings-over, intended to integrate new facts while refinding the direction of the summit, often take the form of ad hoc hypotheses, which is to say hypotheses invented for the needs of the cause, in order to try to make the facts accord with a theory which is not necessarily able to accommodate them.4 To demonstrate a going astray is most certainly to highlight the error, the wrong path; but it is also to try to expose the causes, and it is here that things get
Exigency and Going Astray

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complicated: no going astray is innocent, and none is without cause; but how does one get ones bearings when it is and continues to be the object itself which is the major cause of the going astray: not only of the true exigency, but also of the deviations and impasses on the road to truth? There is a covering-over of the unconscious and of sexuality in Freuds own oeuvre, which traces and reproduces the covering-over of the unconscious and sexuality in the human being itself. This is something that I have tried to express in a formula which parodies Haeckels law (ontogenesis reproduces phylogenesis), by stating that theoreticogenesis, which is to say the very evolution of the theory with all its avatars, tends to reproduce ontogenesis, which is to say the fate of sexuality and the unconscious in the human being. To this progress of the Freudian oeuvre, and in order to complicate things, I am compelled to append my own way of proceeding, which I often describe as a spiral, meaning that I constantly come back to the same points, but according to a curve which tries as much as possible to go forward, which is to say to go back to the source of Freudianism while displacing and moving on from my older formulations (notably, I think, those of Life and Death in Psychoanalysis (1976)). One could also imagine these spirals in terms of genetic spirals coiling upward, the one around the other, but I shant enter into such speculations. What I have proposed to call going astray (there are several interconnected goings astray some major, some minor) is born of an almost inevitable recoiling, which is not to be held against Freud, before the consequences of the priority of the other in the constitution of what? of the subject? of the individual? of the person? why not, but each of these terms is heavily marked by philosophy. Let us say: of the sexual human being. Each of the major goings astray can be clearly defined by that which ensues from it, by its post-Freudian lineage: The first going astray, which I will try to designate more precisely,5 and which is connected with the biologism of sexuality, finds its direct lineage in Melanie Klein and her disciples. The second going astray, of which I have already partly spoken with the Copernican revolution,6 is the autocentrist or ipsocentrist reconstruction of the human being, which has completely overrun a psychology that claims more or less to have its roots in psychoanalysis. Finally, the third going astray consists in situating the structural at the heart of the unconscious, the lineage of which will be recognized in the structuralism of Lacan. There are other goings astray, more or less subordinate to those above phylogenesis, the notion of the primordial id but all this division is quite artificial; it is principally a way of setting things out.
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A b o u t t he a ut h o r
Jean Laplanche is Professor Emeritus of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris (VII), and a member of the Association Psychanalytique de France. Among his best-known works are The Language of Psychoanalysis (co-authored with J B Pontalis) and Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. His most recent major works to be translated into English are Essays on Otherness and The Unconscious and the Id. Professor Laplanche is also scientific director of the ongoing project to translate Freuds Oeuvres Completes. `

Notes
1 Translated from Le fourvoiement biologisant de la sexualite chez Freud, Paris: Synthelabo, 1993 by Vincent Ladmiral and Nicholas Ray (with thanks to John Fletcher of the University of Warwick for his invaluable comments on the translation). 2 Cf. for example the remarkable works by Anzieu (1986). 3 One example of our way of proceeding towards a crypto-Freud not an esoteric Freud but the Freud of a subterranean current who gets ceaselessly covered over can be found in Jacques Andre (2002 2003). 4 This sense of the term ad hoc auxiliary hypothesis is to be found particularly in Popper. A theory, contradicted by certain facts, can easily be complicated by new hypotheses, instead of being replaced by one simpler and more inclusive hypothesis. One finds such ad hoc hypotheses in Freuds more tangled texts. Perhaps the death drive would qualify as an ad hoc hypothesis? Leaving aside its inventiveness and its openness to new facts, there is also in Freuds genius the refusal to call into question a certain fundamental going-astray. 5 The detailed exposition of this biologism is what will preoccupy Laplanche for the remainder of Le fourvoiement biologisanty Translators note. 6 See Laplanche (1999).

Re fe r e n c es
Andre, J. (20022003). Feminine Sexuality: A Return to Sources. New Formations 48, pp. ` 77112 (Orig. La sexualite feminine, retour aux sources, in Psychanalyse a lUniversite, 1991). Anzieu, D. (1986). Freuds Self-Analysis, trans. Peter Graham. London: The Hogarth Press (Orig. LAuto-analyse: son role dans la decouverte de la psychanalyse par Freud, sa fonction en psychanalyse, 1959). Laplanche, J. (1976). Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press (Orig. Vie et mort en psychanalyse, 1970). Laplanche, J. (1999). The Unfinished Copernican Revolution. In John Fletcher (ed.) Essays on Otherness. London and New York: Routledge. (Orig. La revolution copernicienne inachevee: in La revolution copernicienne inachevee: travaut 19671992, Paris: Aubier, 1992).

Exigency and Going Astray