Father

Freud’s discovery of the ‘paternal complex’ in the nucleus of neurosis made the *Oedipus complex the paradigmatic structure that accounts for the generation of symptoms, as well as for the construction of the masculine and feminine positions. The place of the father in the Oedipal triangle is in the prohibition of the *mother as a sexual object. The person in the place of the father needs to have the libidinal attention of the mother, and to use their position to introduce a ‘no’ into the child’s claims to the continuation of the primary love bonds to the mother.

For Lacan too,  the father is the central figure in his account of the formation of *subjectivity. Lacan distinguishes between several father figures, all of them to be clearly distinguished from the actual father of the child’s everyday life. Freud’s notion of the Oedipal father (a figure to be conceived within the Oedipal triangle, and within its relation to the castration complex) has been elaborated further by Lacan as the symbolic father, namely, the *name- of-the-father. Freud’s notion of the primal father of the primal tribe has been re-conceptualised by Lacan as the real father, the father of *jouissance.