Laplanche's general theory of seduction

1. Introduction

Version followed: Jean Laplanche's own texts. These are New Foundations for Psychoanalysis (1987; trans. Macey 1989), Problématiques V: Le baquet – transcendance du transfert (1987), Essays on Otherness (ed. Fletcher, 1999), in particular "Transference: its provocation by the analyst" (1992), and the lecture "Aims of the psychoanalytic process" (1997). Fletcher, Scarfone, House and Heenen-Wolff are used only to fill gaps. Where secondary readings differ, the guide says so.

This is mainly a theory, not a manualised therapy. Laplanche wrote a metapsychology (the general theory of seduction) and a theory of the analytic situation. He published no treatment manual, no session protocol and no technique list. Everything below is either (a) the clinical stance and practices he actually describes, cited, or (b) derived applications, marked [synthesis]. [source: Laplanche 1997; Scarfone 2013 abstract]

What it is. Every human being begins in the "fundamental anthropological situation": a helpless infant cared for by an adult who has a sexual unconscious. The adult's care carries enigmatic messages, "compromised" by the adult's unconscious, which the adult does not understand either. The infant must try to translate them. What cannot be translated is repressed (primal repression). These untranslated remainders become the unconscious and the source-objects of the drive. The ego is the sum of the person's self-theories (translations) built to bind these messages. [source: Scarfone 2013 abstract; the-site 2015 p.9; Laplanche 1987]

How change happens. The analytic setting re-opens the original seduction situation. The analyst's "refusal" (no advice, no answers, no claimed knowledge of the patient's truth) offers a hollow in which the old enigma comes alive again (transference). Free association and interpretation de-translate: they loosen the ego's rigid self-theories back toward the enigmatic messages. The analysand, not the analyst, then re-translates, ideally in ways "more inclusive and less rigid than the pre-existing ones". The analysis can end when the opened, "hollowed-out" transference can be carried outside the cure, into life, creativity and culture. [source: Scarfone 2013 abstract; Laplanche 1997; Laplanche 1999 via the-site 2015 p.11]

2. Framework

Laplanche defines no phases, session counts or transition criteria. He explicitly subordinates technique to the process ("the cure should precede metapsychology"). He also refuses aims set from outside the process, such as family, institutions, symptom targets or restitutio ad integrum. [source: Laplanche 1997] The sequence below is a working map built from his description of the process. The stage structure itself is [synthesis].

Stage	Goal	What the analyst does	Sign the stage is under way
A. Offer and set up the baquet (tub)	Build the bounded space in which transference can unfold	Fix the external wall (rhythm, duration, fee, position). Install the internal wall: the patient free-associates, the analyst interprets and refuses to answer, advise or instruct. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014, summarising Laplanche 1987]	Patient keeps to the frame. The initial demand (symptom relief) starts to fade into the process. [source: Laplanche 1997]
B. Filled-in transference unfolds	Let the patient's established self-theories and imagos be repeated toward the analyst	Benevolent neutrality, evenly suspended attention, no responding to the transference	Recognisable repetitions of past relationships appear in the room. [source: IPA Encyclopedic Dictionary; the-site 2015 p.10]
C. Detranslation / hollowing-out	Loosen the binding constructions. Re-open the relation to the enigma	Interpretation as unbinding, guarding the enigma, sending the patient "back onto the path of analysis" [source: Laplanche 1997]	Puzzlement, new associations, dreams. Earlier certainty about "what it all means" gives way. Resistance clusters at the point where translation fails. [source: the-site 2015 p.10–11]
D. Retranslation by the analysand	The patient makes new, less exclusionary translations of their own	Refrain from supplying the translation. Support reconstruction, not construction. [source: Laplanche 1997; Heenen-Wolff 2013 abstract]	Self-accounts become more inclusive and flexible, and are clearly the patient's own.
E. Ending: transference of the transference	The opened transference finds sites outside the cure	Accept that the transference is carried outside, distrust "lateral" transference, and point to continuing self-analysis [source: Laplanche 1997; Laplanche 1987 per publisher description]	Creative, cultural or relational investments addressed to an open, future other. Less need of the analyst as the one who knows.

Format. Laplanche's frame is classical psychoanalysis: couch, fixed sessions and fee, open-ended. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014] The sources give no session frequency [uncertain]. For a psychotherapist the model can be applied 1–3×/week face-to-face, keeping the frame's constancy and the analyst's refusal. That is weaker than Laplanche's standard, and Laplanche himself distinguishes the psychotherapeutic (binding, synthesis) from the analytic (unbinding) dimension. [synthesis]
Duration. Open-ended. No termination criteria are given beyond stage E. [source: Laplanche 1997]
Moving between stages. These are not sequential gates. They recur and overlap, sometimes within one session. The guiding question is whether the patient is currently binding (translating) or unbinding (de-translating), and which one the process needs. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section unless noted: Laplanche 1997; Laplanche 1999 via the-site 2015; Scarfone 2013 abstract; Garcia & Radosh 2014]

Priority of the other (the "unfinished Copernican revolution"). The unconscious originates in the other's messages, not in endogenous instinct. → Listen for what was addressed to the patient by others, not only for what the patient "wants".
General seduction is universal, not pathological. Every infant is seduced by the adult's compromised messages. It is not a special trauma or abuse. → Do not search for a literal seduction event behind every symptom. Primal seduction is "existential", not factual. [source: the-site 2015 p.9]
Asymmetry. The adult (and the analyst) has an unconscious the infant (patient) lacks access to. → Treat your own position as structurally seductive and handle it with restraint.
The message is enigmatic to its sender too. → Do not assume you know what you are communicating. Your interventions also carry your unconscious.
Translation and repression. The ego is a set of translations, and the unconscious is what failed to be translated. → Treat the patient's self-explanations as earlier translations to be loosened, not as truths to correct or confirm.
Analysis = detranslation ("anti-hermeneutics"). Laplanche says psychoanalysis "essentially remains an 'anti-hermeneutics'". [source: Laplanche 1997] → Your job is unbinding, not supplying meanings.
The analysand is the translator. The analyst "must not himself propose outlines for retranslation", except where spontaneous synthesis clearly fails. [source: Laplanche 1997] → Leave the new story to the patient.
Reconstruction, not construction. The analyst helps dismantle and reconstruct old translations. The construction of a new self-account is the patient's. [source: Heenen-Wolff 2013 abstract] → Point to the pieces. Do not assemble them.
The analyst's refusal. No answering questions, advising or instructing, and no claim to know the patient's truth. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014; Laplanche 1997] → Decline the role of knower while staying warmly present.
Benevolent neutrality and evenly suspended attention. These mean equal investment in all contents, favourable a priori to any manifestation of the unconscious. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014] → Do not privilege the "important" topic. Follow the slips, details and marginal material.
Three functions of the analyst. The analyst is guarantor of constancy, director of the method and companion of the primary process, and the one who guards the enigma and provokes the transference. [source: Laplanche 1999:227 via the-site 2015 p.11] → Keep the frame steady, keep the method going, and keep the enigma open.
Transference is provoked by the analyst's offer, not only brought by the patient. [source: Laplanche 1999 via the-site 2015 p.7; Scarfone 2013] → Expect the setting itself to stir the enigma. Do not treat transference as merely the patient's distortion.
Filled-in vs hollowed-out transference. Filled-in (en plein) transference repeats fixed imagos and past relationships. Hollowed-out (en creux) transference re-opens the relation to the enigma itself, "a transference not to be filled by any cumbersome and immovable imago". [source: Laplanche 1997] → Use the filled-in repetitions as the way into the hollow, not as the end point.
Interpret to loosen, not to resolve. A transferential movement is interpreted "not to attack it as a defence, nor to resolve it" but so that it evolves. Laplanche reads Freud's Lösung as "loosening". [source: Laplanche 1999:217 via the-site 2015 p.11] → Measure an interpretation by the associations it opens, not by the patient's agreement.
The analyst's internal otherness. Countertransference is reframed as the analyst's relation to their own unconscious, to be respected at a distance, not integrated or acted on. [source: Laplanche 1997] → Notice your own enigma in the room and keep it from filling the hollow.
Answer for, not to, the transference. Responding to transference demands (love, hate, need) reproduces the original seduction and is an abuse of power. [source: Michon 2020 abstract, after Laplanche 1994 "Responsabilité et réponse"] → Take responsibility for what happens in the session. Do not gratify or retaliate.
Intrinsic aims only. Mistrust adaptation and synthesis. The analyst wants the patient's good but does not fix it to a target, and should not favour the ego's reparative "constraint to synthesis". [source: Laplanche 1997] → Hold symptom goals lightly. Keep sending the patient "back onto the path of analysis".
Après-coup (afterwardsness). Meaning is constituted retroactively, as a later translation of an earlier message from the other. Laplanche's model runs in both directions: from the other's message forward, and from later translation backward. [source: Laplanche 1999 "Notes on afterwardsness"; Andrejew thesis abstract] [uncertain: chapter] → Listen to how the present re-translates the past, not just how the past causes the present.
Transcendence of the transference. The baquet has two openings: an external one onto everyday adaptive life, and an internal one through which transference is to be transferred outside the cure. [source: Laplanche 1987 per Italian publisher description] → Plan from the outset that the transference is not meant to be kept or resolved inside the room.

4. Intervention inventory

Laplanche describes a stance and a method, not a repertoire of exercises. The items below are the clinical operations his texts actually name (frame, fundamental rule, neutrality, refusal, interpretation as unbinding, guarding the enigma, non-response to transference, transference of transference). Step-by-step breakdowns, example wording and watch-for criteria are operationalisations of them and are [synthesis] unless a source is tagged. All example language is illustrative and was not written by Laplanche. There are no worksheets, homework or structured exercises in this model. Adding them would contradict the refusal of guidance. [source: Laplanche 1997; Garcia & Radosh 2014]

4.1 Setting up the baquet (the tub): external wall

Purpose / when. Builds the bounded space without which transference cannot unfold. Do this at the start, then hold it throughout. In Le baquet the analytic space is bounded by three things: the frame, the type of discourse, and the analyst's position of refusal. The external wall is a relatively fixed ritual of formal rules: rhythm, duration, payment, lying position. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014, summarising Laplanche 1987] The image of the tub (baquet) is usually linked to Mesmer's magnetic tub. The Italian edition's publisher describes it as drawn from Freud's Interpretation of Dreams [uncertain: origin of the image].
Steps. (1) Agree fixed days, times, session length, fee and the policy for missed sessions before starting the work. (2) Decide position (couch in Laplanche's practice; chair is the psychotherapy adaptation [synthesis]). (3) State the arrangements once, plainly, and keep them unchanged. (4) Treat every later pressure on the frame (lateness, fee, extra contact) as material within the tub, not as an administrative matter to fix silently. [steps 1, 3 and 4: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "We'll meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10, for fifty minutes. The time is yours whether or not you come, and it's paid for either way. Those arrangements stay fixed so we can look at whatever happens inside them."
Watch for. The frame is working when the patient can bring feelings about the frame (resentment, relief, testing) into speech instead of acting them out. The constancy is also for the analyst: Garcia & Radosh cite Laplanche (1987:52) on the frame as the analyst's possibility of surviving as a human being. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014]

4.2 Offering the method: the fundamental rule (free association / "free dissociation")

Purpose / when. The method that de-translates. It loosens the ego's self-theories by suspending its usual ordering of discourse. Laplanche notes free association "could also be called free-dissociation". [source: Laplanche 1997] Introduce it at the start and return to it whenever discourse becomes closed or explanatory.
Steps. (1) Invite the patient to say what comes to mind without selecting for relevance, logic or politeness. (2) Do not set topics or agendas. (3) When the patient stops to explain or summarise, note the move without correcting it. (4) Treat breaks, omissions and "irrelevant" thoughts as the method succeeding, not failing. [steps: synthesis on the classical rule]
Example language (illustrative). "Try to say whatever comes, including what seems beside the point or embarrassing. The parts you'd normally edit out are often the useful ones." Later: "You moved quickly to explaining that. What came just before the explanation?"
Watch for. Working: surprising links, dream material, details the patient did not plan to say. Not working: monologues that are already finished translations, such as polished life narratives or borrowed psychological jargon. These are the existing ego-theories, the material to be loosened. [synthesis]

4.3 Benevolent neutrality and evenly suspended attention

Purpose / when. This is the analyst's half of the method, and it runs all the time. Neutrality is benevolent and tolerant, favourable a priori to any manifestation of the unconscious. Floating attention invests all contents equally, without judging them. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014, summarising Laplanche 1987] The analyst's role is "companion of the primary process". [source: Laplanche 1999:227 via the-site 2015 p.11]
Steps. (1) Hold back from ranking material by importance as you listen. (2) Register repetitions of words, odd phrasings, slips and the form of address to you. (3) Hold off theory-driven hypotheses about "what it means". Let elements stay unlinked longer than is comfortable. (4) Speak less than you think. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). Often silence, or minimal: "Go on." "'Lost' again." "You said 'she always knew' and then laughed."
Watch for. Your own pull to make the material coherent is the ego's "constraint to synthesis" operating in you. [source: Laplanche 1997] If sessions feel neatly explained, attention has probably stopped floating. [synthesis]

4.4 The refusal: not answering, advising or instructing

Purpose / when. This is the internal wall of the tub and the condition for transference. The analyst refuses to answer questions, give advice or issue instructions. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014] The analyst also mistrusts any concrete adaptive aims, his own included. [source: Laplanche 1997] Apply it whenever the patient asks the analyst to fill the place of the one who knows.
Steps. (1) When asked a direct question (personal, diagnostic, "what should I do"), do not answer immediately. (2) Acknowledge the question as real and important. (3) Turn attention to the question itself: what is being asked, of whom, and what answer is imagined. (4) Keep the refusal warm and non-punitive. It is a refusal of the position of knowledge, not of the person. Laplanche distinguishes his "refusal" from frustration or abstinence for its own sake [uncertain: wording of this distinction]. (5) Make reasoned exceptions for safety and practical frame matters (see 5.6). [steps 1–4: synthesis; 5: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "I could give you an opinion, but I think it would close something we should keep open. What do you imagine I'd say?" / "You'd like me to know what's wrong with you. Let's look at the 'me' you're asking."
Watch for. Working: the question turns into associations, fantasies about the analyst, or memories of other people who did or did not answer. Not working: the refusal is felt as cold withholding and the patient disengages or escalates. Then name the frustration and keep warmth explicit (see 5.4). [synthesis]

4.5 Not responding to the transference; answering for it

Purpose / when. Prevents the analyst from re-enacting the original seduction. Responding to transference is described as an abuse of power. The ethical demand is to answer for what is happening and what is interpretable. [source: Michon 2020 abstract, after Laplanche 1994] This matters most in erotic, idealising, hateful or dependent transference.
Steps. (1) Recognise a transference demand: love, wish for reparenting, wish for punishment, contempt. (2) Do not gratify it, by reassuring, reciprocating, befriending or self-disclosing to soothe. Do not retaliate. (3) Take responsibility for the situation ("this is happening here, with me") without becoming the object the demand needs. (4) Keep it in speech and in the room. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "You'd like me to say I feel the same. I'm not going to answer that way, not because your feeling doesn't count, but because it matters too much to close with my reply. Let's stay with it."
Watch for. The transference deepens and diversifies instead of hardening into a stand-off. Any wish in yourself to answer "just this once" is a signal of your own enigma at work (4.8). [synthesis] Sexual or exploitative involvement is an absolute boundary violation in every professional code. [synthesis; standard ethics]

4.6 Interpretation as unbinding (detranslation)

Purpose / when. The analyst is "above all the artisan of the unbinding". [source: Laplanche 1997] Interpretation dismantles existing translations (self-theories, myths, defensive constructions) back toward the enigmatic messages. It does not install a new meaning. Use it when a translation is rigid, repetitive and blocking associations. Secondary readings add that interpretation is offered as a hypothesis to think about. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014]
Steps. (1) Identify the ready-made translation: the patient's settled explanation of self or others ("I'm like this because my mother was cold"). (2) Point to a seam in it, such as a contradiction, an excess, a detail that doesn't fit, or a word that carries more than its meaning. (3) Phrase the intervention to open rather than to conclude: a juxtaposition, a question, a repetition of the patient's word. (4) Do not then supply the replacement meaning. (5) Judge it by what follows (associations, dreams, affect), not by assent. [synthesis, built on Laplanche 1997]
Example language (illustrative). "You've explained this through your father's temper many times. Today you said 'his silences', not his temper." / "'Cold' keeps coming up, and so does the warm kitchen. They don't quite sit together."
Watch for. Working: the old explanation loses its grip, the patient becomes puzzled or curious, new material arrives. Warning signs: the patient adopts your interpretation as a new formula. That is a filled-in translation imported from you and repeats the seduction (see 4.9). [synthesis]

4.7 Interpreting the transference so as to hollow it out

Purpose / when. Filled-in transference repeats fixed imagos and past relationships. It lends itself to interpretation "but may not reach the core". [source: IPA Encyclopedic Dictionary] The aim is the hollowed-out transference: a renewed relation to the enigma of the other. Interpretation of a transferential movement is "not to attack it as a defence, nor to resolve it" but to let it evolve. [source: Laplanche 1999:217 via the-site 2015 p.11; Laplanche 1997] Use it when the patient experiences the analyst as a known figure ("you're just like my mother").
Steps. (1) Recognise the filled-in content, the imago the analyst is being made into. (2) Acknowledge the repetition without confirming or denying it. (3) Move from "who I am to you" toward "what you don't know about what I want": the enigma of the analyst's position, behind the imago. (4) Leave that question open rather than answering it. (5) Expect that what emerges may never have been experienced in a comprehensible way before. The IPA dictionary links hollow transference to Winnicott's "Fear of breakdown". This link is a secondary reading, not Laplanche's [uncertain]. [steps: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "You're sure I'm judging you, the way your mother did. But you don't actually know what I think, and that not-knowing seems hard to bear." / "What do you imagine I want from you, sitting here?"
Watch for. Working: a shift from certainty ("you're like X") to a question ("what do you want?"). The patient tolerates not knowing what the analyst wants, and associations reach early, puzzling scenes rather than rehearsed grievances. Not working: the patient feels mocked or abandoned. Slow down, re-establish constancy (4.1) and return to 4.6 on smaller material. [synthesis]

4.8 Guarding the enigma: the analyst's relation to their own otherness

Purpose / when. The analyst is "the one who guards the enigma and provokes the transference". [source: Laplanche 1999:227 via the-site 2015 p.11] Countertransference is reframed as the analyst's "very particular relationship" with their own unconscious and otherness, to be met with distance and respect rather than absorbed into the ego. [source: Laplanche 1997] Neutrality means not filling the transference with the analyst's own unconscious messages. [source: Laplanche 1997] This is continuous, and most needed when you feel certain about the patient or pulled to act.
Steps. (1) Notice moments when you feel you know the patient or yourself fully. (2) Notice what you are communicating beyond words: tone, enthusiasm, boredom, preference for some material. (3) Do not disclose or "use" these feelings as interpretations by default. Keep them as signs of your own enigma. (4) Take recurrent pulls to your own analysis, self-analysis or supervision. Laplanche stresses continuing self-analysis for analysts so that "the wound" made by the other stays open. [source: Laplanche 1997; steps 1–3: synthesis]
Example language. None. This is internal work. Avoid statements such as "I feel you're making me into your father" offered as certainty. [synthesis]
Watch for. You find yourself repeatedly steering toward one theme, or the patient begins to speak your vocabulary. Both suggest your messages are filling the hollow. [synthesis]

4.9 Withholding retranslations and ready-made codes; reconstruction, not construction

Purpose / when. The analyst "must not himself propose outlines for retranslation", including classic psychoanalytic schemas, except where spontaneous synthesis clearly fails. [source: Laplanche 1997] The analyst takes part in reconstruction, not construction, because construction is the patient's own self-construction. [source: Heenen-Wolff 2013 abstract] Laplanche's later idea that Oedipal/castration schemas are culturally supplied translation codes ("mytho-symbolic") rather than the unconscious itself is relevant here. It is not drawn on here [uncertain]. Apply this whenever you are tempted to explain the patient's life to them.
Steps. (1) Reconstruct with the patient how a translation was built, from what messages and when. (2) Stop before writing the new version. (3) When the patient asks "So what does it mean?", return the question. (4) Exception: when the patient's capacity to bind clearly fails (disorganisation, acute crisis, psychotic decompensation), supply binding: structure, plain meaning, reality-anchoring. Laplanche's exception allows this. Label it to yourself as the psychotherapeutic dimension, not analysis. [source for exception: Laplanche 1997; Scarfone 2013 abstract on linking the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic aspects; operationalisation: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "We've traced how 'being good' became your answer to her moods. What you make of that now is yours to find, and it may take time." Crisis exception: "Right now let's put this together simply: you're frightened because the move brought back the hospital months. That's enough for today."
Watch for. Working: the patient's new formulations are idiosyncratic and their own, and more inclusive and less rigid. [source: Scarfone 2013 abstract] Warning: the patient's "insights" sound like your theory.

4.10 Working in afterwardsness (après-coup)

Purpose / when. In Laplanche's reading, après-coup has two directions: the earlier message of the other, and its later retroactive translation. Clinical work follows how present events re-translate old messages, and how old messages prompt present translations. [source: Laplanche 1999 "Notes on afterwardsness"; Andrejew thesis abstract on detranslation in transference and après-coup] [uncertain: primary chapter] Use it when a current event suddenly re-signifies the past, or vice versa.
Steps. (1) Notice when a present event (a loss, sexual experience, becoming a parent) has changed how the patient tells an old story. (2) Bring the two versions side by side. (3) Ask what message from the other, what in the adult's behaviour, the new version is answering. (4) Leave the gap between versions open. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "Since your daughter was born you tell the story of your mother's illness differently. What did you suddenly hear in it?"
Watch for. The patient begins to ask what the parent wanted or meant, not only what happened: the enigma of the other's message. [synthesis]

4.11 Handling the demand and extrinsic aims

Purpose / when. Aims imposed from outside (family, referrers, institutions, the ego's request for adaptation) are distinguished from the intrinsic aims of the process. Once the process starts, the symptom and the stated demand tend to fade, and the analyst should not comply with the demand as stated. [source: Laplanche 1997] Use this at intake and whenever a third party or the patient's request presses for a fixed outcome.
Steps. (1) At assessment, take the stated request seriously and record it. (2) Say honestly that the work does not guarantee that outcome but works on what lies behind requests. (3) If the referral comes with external targets (court, employer, family), discuss whether this method fits. Laplanche cites Freud's cases of externally driven referral as unfavourable to analysis. [source: Laplanche 1997] (4) Revisit the original demand later as material, not as a scorecard. [synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "You came wanting the panic gone, and I hope it eases. What I can offer is a place to find out what the panic is answering. That's a different kind of help."
Watch for. Patients needing a time-limited symptom outcome may be better served by another modality. Say so openly. [synthesis]

4.12 Ending: transference of the transference

Purpose / when. The baquet's internal opening is the "transcendence of transference", whose only destiny is to be transferred outside the cure. [source: Laplanche 1987 per Italian publisher description] Near the end the analyst accepts that the transference carries over outside the setting, still distrusting "lateral transference" (acting the transference out on figures near the analysis). Modest creative acts addressed to an open, future audience may be where the opened transference goes. The analysis stays open through self-analysis. [source: Laplanche 1997] Use this in the late phase, when hollowed-out transference is established and the patient is producing their own retranslations.
Steps. (1) Notice investments outside the room that carry the open, questioning relation to the other: creative work, study, new relationships held with curiosity rather than repetition. (2) Do not pull these back into the room to be interpreted as "really about me". (3) Distinguish them from lateral transference, a displaced repetition onto a substitute analyst figure, and interpret the latter. (4) Discuss ending as the analysis continuing elsewhere, not as cure completed. [steps: synthesis]
Example language (illustrative). "The questions you used to bring here you now seem to take into the writing. Perhaps that's where they belong." / "It sounds as if your new supervisor has become the one who knows. Let's look at that before we finish."
Watch for. Readiness looks like tolerance of the enigma without needing the analyst to hold it, and the patient's own translations stay in motion. Premature ending looks like a flight into a new filled-in certainty (a guru, a doctrine, a partner as oracle). [synthesis]

5. Handling problems

Laplanche addresses only some of these problems directly (resistance as the site of failed translation, unfavourable extrinsic demands, the ego's push to synthesis, lateral transference). Everything else is [synthesis] applying his principles, as tagged.

5.1 Stuck: the same story, the same transference, session after session

Reading. A filled-in transference and a fixed translation are repeating. Filled-in transference functions partly as resistance. [source: the-site 2015 p.10]
Response. (1) Stop interpreting the content of the repetition, which only feeds the translation. Point to its form and its fixedness ("this account doesn't change, whatever happens in your week"). (2) Look for the detail that the stock story excludes (4.6). (3) Check whether you have been supplying the translation (4.8, 4.9). Patients often get stuck inside the analyst's theory. (4) Review the frame. Unannounced drift in the external wall dilutes the tub. [synthesis]

5.2 Resistance

Reading. Resistance arises where translation fails. It is "a sign" pointing the way for the analysis. [source: the-site 2015 p.10, after Laplanche] It is not an enemy to be broken.
Response. Locate where the resistance occurs: which word, which scene, which question about the other's desire. Slow down there, and keep the method rather than pushing content. Interpret resistance to loosen, "not to attack it as a defence". [source: Laplanche 1999:217 via the-site 2015 p.11] [operational steps: synthesis]

5.3 Overwhelm, disorganisation, fragile binding

Reading. Unbinding presupposes an ego able to bind again. The model describes foreclosed or "encysted" messages, intromitted rather than implanted, that cannot be translated and are linked to psychotic structure. [source: the-site 2015 p.9–11] The analyst may offer retranslations where spontaneous synthesis clearly fails. [source: Laplanche 1997]
Response. (1) Shift from unbinding to binding: more face-to-face contact, more structure, plain-language links, focus on the present, less silence. (2) Suspend detranslating interpretations until containment returns. (3) Avoid forceful or intrusive interpretations, which risk repeating intromission. (4) Consider whether analytic work is indicated at all, or whether a supportive or psychiatric frame should lead. [steps: synthesis] [uncertain: Laplanche's own technique with psychotic patients]

5.4 Ruptures: the refusal experienced as coldness or abandonment

Response. (1) Distinguish refusing knowledge from refusing presence. Neutrality is benevolent. [source: Garcia & Radosh 2014] (2) Acknowledge the hurt directly and take responsibility for your part (answer for). [source: Michon 2020, after Laplanche 1994] (3) Explain the reason for the refusal once, in plain terms, without becoming defensive. (4) Then return to what the rupture repeats: who else withheld, and what the patient imagined the withholding meant. That is an enigma of the other's desire. [steps 3–4: synthesis]
Example (illustrative). "When I didn't answer, it felt like I'd shut a door on you. I'm sorry it landed like that. I'm not withholding myself; I'm trying not to put my answer where yours could grow. Who else used to go quiet when you asked?"

5.5 Persistent demands for advice, answers, diagnosis or self-disclosure

Response. Keep the refusal (4.4), but separate (a) frame or practical questions (times, fees, confidentiality, emergencies), which you answer simply because they belong to the external wall, from (b) questions asking you to know the patient's truth or life choices, which you explore. If demands escalate, explore the fantasy of what your answer would give. If the patient cannot tolerate this at all, reconsider fit (5.9). [synthesis]

5.6 Risk, suicidality, abuse disclosures, safeguarding

Response. The refusal and neutrality do not extend to safety. When risk appears, step out of the analytic stance. Carry out standard suicide/violence risk assessment and safety planning, follow safeguarding and mandatory-reporting duties, and coordinate with medical or psychiatric care as your jurisdiction requires. Afterwards, explore the step out of the frame as material ("what was it like when I became directive?") once safety is restored. No source in the model addresses this. [synthesis; standard professional practice]

5.7 Erotic, idealising or hostile transference intensifying

Response. Neither gratify nor reject (4.5). Treat intensity as the provoked transference doing its work, not as an anomaly. [source: Laplanche 1999 via the-site 2015 p.7, transference as provoked by the analyst] Keep the frame strictly. Get supervision early if you feel drawn to reciprocate, rescue or retaliate (4.8). Any sexual contact or dual relationship is a boundary violation in every professional code. [synthesis; standard ethics] Responding to the transference is an abuse of power. [source: Michon 2020 abstract]

5.8 Non-adherence to the frame: missed sessions, lateness, unpaid fees, contact between sessions

Response. Keep the external wall consistent: charge as agreed and don't extend sessions. Bring the attack on, or test of, the frame into speech as transference material. Because the frame belongs to the tub, changing it silently to keep the patient is a form of answering to the transference. Renegotiate openly and rarely, for real-life reasons. [synthesis, built on Garcia & Radosh 2014 on the external wall]

5.9 The patient wants a fast symptom fix, or the referral is externally driven

Response. Laplanche regards externally fixed aims as unfavourable to analysis. [source: Laplanche 1997] Be candid at assessment (4.11). Offer a trial period. Refer to a symptom-focused or time-limited modality when that is what is wanted or needed. This is not a failure of the model; it is the model being honest about its aims. [synthesis]

5.10 The patient adopts the analyst's language: "analytic" compliance

Reading. The analyst's translations have been imported as a new filled-in code. This re-enacts the original seduction in which the adult's messages are taken in whole. [synthesis, from Laplanche 1997 on not proposing retranslations]
Response. Point out the borrowed vocabulary gently ("that sounds like something I'd say"). Return to the patient's own idiom. Audit your own interventions for over-interpretation (4.8, 4.9). [synthesis]

5.11 Countertransference certainty or enactment

Response. Treat your conviction about the patient's meaning as information about your own enigma, not about the patient (4.8). Before you act, pause, write it down, and take it to supervision or your own analysis. Do not disclose it as an interpretation. [source: Laplanche 1997 on internal otherness; procedure: synthesis]

5.12 Problems at ending

Interminable dependence. The analyst has stayed the one who knows. Review 4.4 and 4.8 and test whether the transference has been hollowed out at all. [synthesis]
Flight into lateral transference. The patient abruptly installs a new oracle (teacher, guru, partner). Interpret it as a displaced repetition before ending. Laplanche explicitly advises distrust of "lateral transference". [source: Laplanche 1997]
Fear of ending as loss of the enigma. Frame the ending as the transference continuing elsewhere and self-analysis going on, not as closure. [source: Laplanche 1997; framing: synthesis]

5.13 Modality-specific difficulty: applying an analytic theory in once-weekly psychotherapy

Response. Lower frequency weakens the tub, and there is more pressure toward binding and support. Keep the core elements that survive lower intensity: a constant frame, refusal of the knower position, interpretation that opens rather than closes, and attention to the enigma in the transference. Accept a larger psychotherapeutic (binding) component and say to yourself which mode you are in. Laplanche's sources do not specify a minimum frequency [uncertain]. [synthesis]

Sources

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