The theory of seduction and the problem of the other

The author offers a survey of his general theory of seduction, elaborated in order to give an account of the origin of the psychic apparatus and the drives, starting from the adult-infant relation. This theory supposes that, in the sexual domain, such a relation is asymmetrical, the sexual message originating in the adult other. The author develops here the consequences of such an originary primacy of the other, especially for the notion of sublimation and the process of the analytic treatment. The analytic situation and method, as invented by Freud, implies a radical change of perspective in the philosophical and anthropological conception of the human being, in forcing us to move from a self-centred, 'Ptolemaic' vision, belonging to the old philosophy of the subject, to an other-centred, 'Copernican' vision.