The Enigmatic Other: Laplanchian Seduction, Moral Injury, and the Diseased Cultural Unconscious

Introduction: From Confusion of Tongues to Enigmatic Signifiers

In psychoanalysis, the Other is never merely a bystander. Rather, the Other actively shapes our psychic formation, often through messages that we cannot fully decipher. This notion of an “enigmatic Other” draws on two primary sources:

• Sándor Ferenczi’s “Confusion of Tongues,” which describes how adults’ unconscious intentions (sexualized, aggressive, or otherwise) can overwhelm a child’s simpler “tongue of tenderness,” or language of tenderness.

  
  

• Jean Laplanche’s concept of seduction via “enigmatic signifiers,” highlighting how the caregiver or broader cultural environment injects meanings—unconscious or half-formed—that the subject is compelled to interpret.

  
  

When the Other is itself “diseased”—i.e., entangled in systemic racism, national denial, or other collective pathologies—its enigmatic communications become contaminated. Over time, such transmissions can fuel what we might call moral injury in individuals, particularly if they internalize or act upon the contradictory directives that spring from a toxic cultural unconscious.

Laplanche and the Seduction of Enigmatic Signifiers

Jean Laplanche reframed Freud’s seduction theory to argue that adults inevitably transmit unconscious signifiers—desires, biases, or moral imperatives—to children. Because these messages are “enigmatic,” the subject must grapple with them without clear guidance. The result is an internal work of translation: the child tries to find meaning in disjointed gestures, words, and affective signals. This process persists across the lifespan in various relational contexts.

• Enigmatic signifiers are not just sexual or intimate; they can be cultural directives like “You must love your country unconditionally,” or “Our group is superior to others,” hidden within a thousand micro-communications across daily life.

• Because these signifiers come from the Other’s unconscious, they arrive charged with the Other’s own unresolved contradictions—what we might call the “diseased cultural unconscious.”

Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues: A Prelude to Cultural Disease

While Ferenczi focused on the mismatch between a child’s affectionate signals/langauge/"tongue" and an adult’s sexual/aggressive/neurotic signals/language/"tongue" (and framing), his notion of “confusion of tongues” remains relevant to the broader social domain. Just as a child can be bewildered by an adult’s seduction/aggression/neurosis, so too can an individual be bewildered by a society’s contradictory moral signals.

• Society says one thing—for instance, “Our country is a beacon of freedom.”

  
  

• But it enacts another—for example, systemic racism or militarized violence that denies freedom to others (e.g., Vietnam War).

  
  

• This generates a confusion in the subject, who must reconcile the “tongue of moral ideals” with the “tongue of oppressive realities.”

Moral Injury as a Result of Enigmatic Seduction

Moral injury occurs when a person’s conscience or deeply held values are betrayed by either their own actions or the actions of a trusted authority. If we situate this betrayal within Laplanchian seduction theory, it becomes clear how moral injury emerges:

1. The subject internalizes cultural narratives about duty, patriotism, or virtue—messages that are “enigmatic” because they often carry unspoken contradictions, biases, or illusions, for example.

   
   

2. A crisis arises when real-world events (e.g., witnessing civilian casualties, participating in racially motivated violence) contradict these narratives.

   
   

3. The subject experiences moral injury because they feel compelled to carry out or justify harmful acts that clash with their internalized moral code.

Here, the Other’s unconscious—the diseased cultural unconscious—acts as a seducer, planting illusions that lead the individual astray. Only after the moment of betrayal do the contradictions become glaringly obvious, prompting profound ethical dissonance.

(See my undergraduate course, American Wars and Moral Injury.)

The Diseased Cultural Unconscious

When the collective Other (society, nation, culture) operates under systemic delusions—racism, nationalism, misogyny, militarism, "we don't torture," or "we are not a country based on systemic racism"—it transmits these pathologies through everyday signs. These might be:

• Patriotic rituals that ignore or whitewash historical atrocities (not seeing "Critical Race Theory" as just basic history that does not deny that the US is a nation founded on slavery).

  
  

• Media portrayals that demonize certain groups while exalting others.

  
  

• Institutional policies that enforce discrimination while claiming to uphold equality.

In such a context, individuals are seduced by enigmatic signifiers that appear moral or necessary but are laced with prejudice or disavowed violence. The subject, upon recognizing the real nature of these messages, may suffer moral injury because their core values have been twisted by the seductive force of a culture in denial.

Implications for Psychoanalysis and Ethics of Care

Taking a Laplanchian approach to moral injury refines the psychoanalytic task: it’s not merely about investigating a patient’s personal history but also uncovering how the broader cultural framework has injected contradictory or oppressive signifiers into the subject’s psyche (how the patient has been "seduced" by a diseased culture).

Clinical Insight

• Therapeutic work must address not just the individual’s internal conflicts, but the “foreign body” of cultural illusions that have infiltrated their moral compass.

  
  

• Ethics of care means recognizing that healing requires "deconstruction" or analysis of the contradictory messages society has "seduced" the subject as it had a hand in forming the subject's unconscious foundation.

Societal Transformation

• Policy makers and educators should acknowledge that moral injuries are not isolated psychological failings but the byproduct of a sickened collective environment.

  
  

• Communities might strive for more transparent, honest messaging—less “enigma” and more dialogue—around their core values to reduce confusion of tongues at the cultural level.

The Enigmatic Other Revisited

Recasting the Enigmatic Other as a seductive force rooted in collective illusions reframes “the other’s trauma” as secondary. Instead, the primary issue is how the subject becomes constituted through ambiguous, contradictory signals from the Other. Where once we might have seen a direct exchange of pain or suffering, Laplanche encourages us to ask how the subject’s very identity is formed via a barrage of moral-laden signifiers that carry the unconscious diseases of the broader culture.

In short, moral injury can be read as the tragic culmination of a long-standing seduction: the subject has been led to believe, act, and feel in ways that quietly betray their own ethical core—only to discover, painfully, that the culture’s call was tainted from the outset.

Conclusion: Toward a More Conscious Translation

If “translation” is the subject’s lifelong task in Laplanche’s scheme, then "deconstructing" or analyzing the diseased cultural unconscious becomes a collective undertaking. By exposing the illusions and biases woven into the “tongue” of our national myths or communal identities, we can lessen the likelihood of moral injuries that arise from malignant seduction.

• Psychoanalysts: may help individuals “retranslate” the messages they’ve received, parsing out genuine ethical impulses from culturally-imposed contradictions.

  
  

• Educators and Institutions: can foster spaces where critical reflection on cultural signifiers is not just encouraged but expected, helping future generations avoid the confusion that leads to moral betrayal.

Ultimately, the Enigmatic Other remains central to identity formation; however, we must be vigilant about what is transmitted under the veneer of shared values, loyalty, or patriotism. In unmasking those hidden ideological threads, we stand a better chance of building communities that engage in more open, ethically coherent communication—thus reducing the destructive impact of the diseased cultural unconscious on vulnerable individuals.

Author’s Note: This revised blog post foregrounds the Laplanchian “enigmatic signifier” model and highlights how “the Enigmatic Other” can shape moral injury through a cultural environment rife with contradictory or harmful messages. By shifting away from the Other’s direct trauma and focusing instead on the unconscious seduction of diseased social narratives, we clarify how confusion of tongues evolves into moral conflict at the level of cultural identity.

Addendum: Related Courses Exploring the Cultural Unconscious

In connection with “The Enigmatic Other: Laplanchian Seduction, Moral Injury, and the Diseased Cultural Unconscious,” the following courses expand on the core themes introduced in this blog post—psychoanalysis, moral injury, silenced voices, and the broader cultural forces that shape (and distort) our collective psyche. Each course—whether at the graduate or undergraduate level—offers its own lens for investigating how narratives, archives, and histories inform our sense of self and other.

Additionally, this post’s focus on cultural wounding and repressed traumas intersects with the question of how technology—particularly AI and digital archives—can either intensify or ameliorate these injuries. The courses “The Authors of Silence” and “AI, Memory, and the Unconscious” address precisely this overlap: each demonstrates how algorithmic biases, digital curation, and virtual spaces shape what is collectively remembered (or forgotten). By probing AI’s role in mediating cultural memory, these courses extend the psychoanalytic framework of ‘The Enigmatic Other’ into the realm of technological ethics, revealing new contours of moral injury and unconscious repression in our interconnected digital age.

1. The Authors of Silence: Digital Humanities, Ethics, and the Craft of Narrative

   • Relevance to Laplanchian Seduction and Moral Injury: This course tackles the idea that silence—often internalized in moments of trauma or marginalization—can become an “enigmatic signifier” in the Laplanchian sense. Students investigate how cultural scripts both repress and reveal these silent “other” narratives, which contribute to moral injury when left unspoken.

   • Digital Humanities and Archives: By weaving together psychoanalytic theory with digital storytelling, the course highlights the tension between technologically curated memory (digital archives) and the silences or gaps those archives inadvertently reproduce.

   • Ethical Commitments: “The Authors of Silence” encourages participants to see how each act of narrative crafting can either perpetuate cultural “disease” or help heal it, depending on how the silenced voices are acknowledged, interpreted, and woven into the broader social fabric.

     
     

2. American Wars and Moral Injury

   • Connecting Moral Injury to Cultural Unconscious: Building on the concept of moral injury from the main blog post, this undergraduate course delves into how wartime experiences—often steeped in acts that violate deeply held moral convictions—resonate across individual psyches and entire cultures.

   • Historical Frameworks: By examining American military engagements, students come to see how national narratives of heroism and sacrifice can conflict with personal experiences of guilt, shame, or betrayal. This tension parallels the “diseased” aspect of the cultural unconscious, where social discourses collude in silencing or distorting the truth about war’s psychological toll.

   • Laplanchian Resonances: Although Laplanche’s seduction theory is not typically foregrounded in discussions of war, the underlying insight—namely, that we are always addressed by an “enigmatic” other (in this case, the ideological apparatus of the state or the military)—helps clarify how moral injury can be internalized and transmitted through generations.

   
   

3. AI, Memory, and the Unconscious: Exploring the Politics of Digital Archiving

   • Intersection with the Diseased Cultural Unconscious: This course takes the psychoanalytic premise that the unconscious—both personal and cultural—is shaped by what is remembered and what is systematically forgotten or repressed. AI-driven archival systems intensify these dynamics by deciding which voices, images, or historical moments persist online.

   • Continuities with Laplanche: Laplanche’s focus on “enigmatic messages” parallels how AI algorithms may deliver content with opaque logic, reframing our sense of self and other without our full awareness. These hidden operations can reinforce collective “diseases” when biased data or unexamined assumptions are built into the digital architecture.

   • Ethical and Political Dimensions: In the same way the main blog post underscores the moral implications of trauma and silence, this course extends that conversation to digital realms. Who curates which memories, and how does that curation shape cultural trauma, moral responsibility, and future public discourse?

Each of these courses, in its own way, demonstrates how the cultural unconscious—when it goes unexamined—can perpetuate suffering and moral dissonance. Whether one is exploring the “enigmatic” dimension of silence, the traumas of war, or the algorithmic biases of AI, the unifying question remains: How do our social and technological structures encode certain moral messages, and how might we reveal—and potentially heal—those silent, wounded spaces?