Ordinary Unhappiness UNLOCKED: 133: Laplanche Part Two: The Primal Situation feat. Danielle Drori
Apr 25, 2026
Danielle Drory, scholar at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, brings sharp reading of Jean Laplanche. They probe Laplanche’s recasting of Freud’s seduction idea. Short, vivid takes on the primal situation: adult–infant dynamics, enigmatic signifiers, transmission of norms, and how origins reappear in memory and therapy.
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Primal Situation Makes Oedipus Contingent
- Laplanche defines the primal situation as the newborn's confrontation with the adult world, making the Oedipus complex contingent rather than universal.
- He draws on Margaret Mead and Merleau-Ponty to show anthropology plus phenomenology grounds a general, not culture-bound, structure of dependence.
Infant As Porous Biopsychic Organism
- Laplanche calls the infant a biopsychic individual open to the world with regulative operations, emphasizing organic permeability and nascent communication.
- He reverses Winnicott: the infant's default is porous openness, not defensive separation, like a membrane letting experience in.
Helplessness Is The Infant's Defining State
- Laplanche uses Hilflosigkeit to capture infant helplessness as an objective state: distress, abandonment, and the need for foreign aid.
- He notes infants lack fear schemas, exemplified by the baby-over-abyss vs. bird experiment.
