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V. Ab. Jean Laplanche Jean Laplanche’s positions on infantile sexuality and drive life have evolved over time as a function of the evolution of his thinking. This evolution is complex, and only the most essential points will be presented here. Laplanche (1970) first centers his elaboration of drive on Freud´s theory of Anlehnung/anaclisis . The sexual drive leans on the drive of self-preservation. In this Laplanche follows Freud in Three Essays on Sexuality – but gradually he attempts to free psychoanalysis from what he called its “wrongheaded biologizing” ( Fourvoiement biologisant ) – and focuses on the primordial relation to the object, within what he calls the “fundamental anthropological situation” (the human condition) (Laplanche, 1987). For the mother, her breast is marked by its place in her adult sexuality. It is thus filled with sexually tinged “enigmatic signifiers”. These signifiers (of the breast and its equivalents) are not intelligible to the baby as they relate to sensations and representations accessible and understandable only with puberty. The baby is thus “seduced” by the first breastfeeding and the whole of the “fundamental anthropological situation”. This is how sexuality is implanted in the baby’s psyche: the baby incorporates the enigmatic signifiers carried by the breast. The message (implanted in primary care, transmitted unconsciously) compromises the child´s development and colors its relation to drive life. The question of drive cannot be approached therefore independently from the primordial seduction through which the child´s world becomes colored by the enigmatic signs of parental sexuality. Laplanche’s (2004) position on life and death drives is relevant. According to Laplanche, the death drive – what he calls death of the sexual drive – is an integral part of the Freudian conception of sexuality. It is a vicissitude of the unbound id, a reflection of primary repression. Life drive is the binding force whereas death drive reflects the unbinding processes. V. Ac. André Green The fundamental opposition between binding and unbinding processes are at the center of André Green’s conceptions. Here, again, only the most essential points will be presented. For Green (1999), the fundamental drive conflict is the one between Eros and destructiveness. The conflict is internal. Destruction (which originally has an internal object) is linked to the feeling of helplessness. Opposed to this there is a life force which pushes the human subject to deflect destructiveness to the outside, to external objects. Green describes an “objectalising,” ( objectalisante ), “object-creating”, function that seeks to invest or even create objects to get out of the first dead ends, and a disobjectalising (désobjectalisante),” object- abolishing” function that expresses the fight against the dependence on objects. Seen from this perspective the human subject needs the object to break the impasse of original impotence; to find oneself, to deflect (outwards) internal impasses. But the need of the object creates a dependence that generates another form of helplessness. This new helplessness mobilizes a counter movement to disqualify the object. In order to mitigate the dependence, the object is no longer seen as unique. The attempt might even be to eliminate it. This is the
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