Death 

"Laplanche's work is much more accessible than Jacques Lacan's; is it too much to hope that his brilliant work will help to reconcile American intellectuals to rigorous speculative thought?"-Leo Bersani, Partisan Review Editorial Reviews Review Laplanche's work is much more accessible than Jacques Lacan's; is it too much to hope that his brilliant work will help to reconcile American intellectuals to rigorous speculative thought? (Leo Bersani Partisan Review) About the Author Jean Laplanche (1924 - 2012) was described by the journal 'Radical Philosophy' as "the most original and philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day." Studying philosophy under Hyppolite, Bachelard, and Merleau-Ponty, he became an active member of the French Resistance under the Vichy regime. Under the influence (and treatment) of Jacques Lacan, Laplanche came to earn a doctorate in medicine and was certified as a psychoanalyst. He eventually broke ties with Lacan and began regularly publishing influential contributions to psychoanalytic theory, his first volume appearing in 1961. In 1967 he published, with his colleague J.-B. Pontalis, the celebrated encyclopaedia 'The Language of Psychoanalysis'. A member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, co-founder of the Association Psychanalytique de France, emeritus professor and founder of the Center for Psychoanalytic Research at the Universite de Paris VII, and assistant professor at the Sorbonne, he also oversaw, as scientific director, the translation of Freud's complete oeuvre into French for the Presses Universitaires de France. Jeffrey Mehlman is University Professor at Boston University and the author, most recently, of Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on His Radio Years and Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France.