ABSTRACT
Whereas, for Emmanuel Levinas, the demand for asymmetry comes from the call of the other’s face, for Jean Laplanche, asymmetry has its origin in the parent, and, more precisely, in the mother, who proffers enigmatic signifiers to the newborn infant. Laplanche would subsequently prefer to qualify them as compromised signifiers, as messages compromised by the parental unconscious, a sexual unconscious according to him. These signifiers, these messages, are indicators of primal seduction. “The basis of the relation to the primal other,” Laplanche writes, “is primal seduction; and the relationship with the analyst re-actualises this relationship, even taking it to its absolute limit”. Thus, for Laplanche, the very offer of analysis creates its force of impulsion; it incites the transference. Precocious seduction is the seduction Laplanche has in mind when he refers to the bodily ministrations and physical contact that are so important in the relations between children and their parents.
