The Study Of Hysteria: The Paternal Metaphor

The study of hysteria: the paternal metaphor

What is in the paternal metaphor? Properly, it is what has become a primary symbolization between the child and the mother, put the father, as a symbol or significant, instead of the mother. We will see what this means instead that it constitutes the central point, the motor nerve, the essentials of the progress constituted by the Oedipus complex.

The father, in this case it is real. But let’s not forget that it is only real as the institutions that confer it, your father’s name.

The important thing is not that people perfectly accept that a woman cannot give birth except when she has done a intercourse, but that she sanctions in a signifier that he has practiced the intercourse is the father.

The position of the father’s name, the father’s qualification as a procreator, is an issue that is at the symbolic level. It can be done according to the various cultural forms, but in itself it does not depend on the cultural form, this is a need for the significant chain.

The child depends on the mother’s desire, on the first symbolization of the mother, and on any other thing. Through this symbolization, the child gives off his effective dependence on the desire of the mother of the pure and simple experience of said dependence, and something that is subjective at a primary or primitive level is instituted. This subjectivation simply consists in establishing the mother as that primordial being that may or may not be.

In his desire, his, this being is essential. What do the subject want? It is not simply about the request for care, contact, not even the presence of the mother, but about the request for her desire.

From this first symbolization in which the child’s desire is affirmed, all the subsequent complications of symbolization are outlined, since his desire is a desire for the mother’s desire.

The child’s relationship with the phallus is established because the phallus is the object of the mother’s desire.

It is very clear that the father cannot castrate the mother of something she does not have. To establish that you do not have it, that must already be projected in the symbolic plane as a symbol. But it is, anyway, a deprivation, because all real deprivation requires symbolization. It is, therefore, in the plane of the deprivation of the mother where at any given time of the evolution of the Oedipus, it is raised for the subject to accept, to register, to symbolize himself, to become significant, that deprivation of thethat the mother is object, as proven. This deprivation, the child subject assumes it or does not assume it, accept or reject it. This point is essential. They will meet this at all crossroads, every time their experience takes them to a certain point that we will now try to define as nodal in the Oedipus.

There is a previous moment, when the father comes in function as the mother’s deprivation, that is, he is emerging behind the mother’s relationship with the object of his desire like the one who castrates, so to call him, because what is castrated, in this case, it is not the subject, but is the mother.

If the child does not open that nodal point, that is, he does not accept the deprivation of the phallus in the mother operated by the father, keeping a certain form of identification with the object of the mother.

At this level, the question that arises is – to be or not to be the phallus. In the imaginary plane, for the subject it is about being or not being the phallus. The phase to be crossed puts the subject in the position of choosing.

You perceive perfectly that a considerable step to understand the difference between this alternative and the one that is at stake at another time and that it is also necessary to find, to have or not to have, to have or not to have. In other words, having or not having the penis, is not the same. In the middle, let’s not forget, the castration complex. We know, however, that these two facts depend on him – on the one hand, that the boy becomes a man, on the other hand, that the girl becomes a woman. In both cases, the question of having or not being solved through the castration complex. Which means that, to have it, there must have been a time when I did not have it. To have it, it must first have established that it cannot be had, and consequently the possibility of being castrated is essential in the assumption of having the phallus.

This is a step that has to be taken and in which it must intervene at some point, effectively, really, indeed, the father.

The subject is who accepts or does not accept, and to the extent that he does not accept, that takes him, man or woman, to be the phallus. But now, for the next step, it is essential. From now on, when it comes to having it or not, we are forced to take it into account. In the first place, it is necessary, I insist on this, that it is, outside the subject, constituted as a symbol. Well, if it is not, no one can really intervene as a covered with that symbol. How will effectively intervene in the next stage, it is in relation to the real character.