Changes
The LinkTitles extension automatically added links to existing pages (https://github.com/bovender/LinkTitles).
According to Freud, Sophocles' play, Oedipus Rex, illustrates a formative [[stage]] in each [[individual]]'s [[psychosexual]] development, when the young child transfers his [[Love Object|love object ]] from the [[breast]] (the [[oral]] [[phase]]) to the mother.
At this time, the child desires the mother and resents (even secretly desires the [[murder]]) of the father.
([[The Oedipus Complex|The Oedipus complex ]] is closely connected to the [[castration complex]].)
Such [[primal]] desires are, of course, quickly [[repressed]] but, even among the mentally sane, they will arise again in [[dreams]] or in [[literature]].
It initially refers to the boy's [[perception]] of his [[mother]] as a sexual [[object]] and of his [[father]] as a [[rivalry|rival]].
The [[Oedipus complex]] (''[[complexe]] d'Oedipe'') was defined by [[Freud]] as an [[unconscious]] set of loving and hostile [[desire]]s which the [[subject]] experiences in relation to its [[parents]]; [[The Subject|the subject ]] desires one parent, and thus enters into [[rivalry]] with the [[other]] parent.
In the 'positive' [[form]] of the [[Oedipus complex]], the desired parent is the parent of the opposite sex to the subject, and the parent of the same sex is the rival.
is no [[sexual object]] as such, but they achieve satisfaction through the manipulation of [[erotogenic]] zones.
An [[Erotogenic Zone|erotogenic zone ]] is any area or [[organ]] of the [[body]] that is assigned sexual [[significance]] by the infant, such as the oral and [[anal]] orifices as well as the sexual organs.
For example, thumb-sucking is an auto-[[erotic]] [[activity]] in the [[sense]] that it involves the stimulation of a [[particular]] area of the body and the infant derives [[pleasure]] from it.
What changes through the [[phallic phase]] is that the genitals become the focus of sexual stimulation.
For Lacan, the importance of Freud's insight into [[Infantile Sexuality|infantile sexuality ]] was not whether or not girls have a penis and boys [[fear]] that theirs will be cut off, but the function of the phallus as a signifier of lack and [[Sexual Difference|sexual difference]].
The phallus in [[Lacanian]] theory should not be confused with the male genital organ, although it clearly carries these connotations.
The phallus is first and foremost a signifier and in Lacan's [[system]] a particularly privileged signifier.
The phallus operates in all three of Lacan's [[registers]] - [[the imaginary]], [[The Symbolic|the symbolic ]] and [[The Real|the real ]] - and as his system develops it becomes the one single indivisible signifier that anchors the [[chain]] of [[signification]].
Indeed, it is a particularly privileged signifier, as we will see, because it inaugurates the process of signification itself.
In this chapter we will focus on [[The Imaginary|the imaginary ]] and symbolic aspects of the phallus and how these relate through the paternal [[metaphor]] to the [[Name]]-of-the-Father.
We will [[return]] to the question of the phallus, [[jouissance]] and the real in subsequent chapters.
Lacan argues that, prior to the invention of the father there is never a purely [[Dual Relation|dual relation ]] between the mother and the child but always a third term, the phallus, an imaginary object which the mother desires beyond the child himself.<
ref>S4, 240-1</ref>
It is through the intervention of the [[Name-of-the-Father]] that the [[imaginary]] unity between [[child]] and [[mother]] is broken.
The [[father]] is assumed to possess something that the child lacks and it is this that the mother desires.
It is important here though not to confuse the [[Name-of-the-father|Name-of-the-Father ]] with the actual father.
The Name-of-the-Father is a symbolic function that intrudes itno the [[illusory]] [[world]] of the child and breaks the imaginary dyad of the mother and child.
The phallus provides the vital link between desire and signification.
It is desire that [[drives]] the process of symbolization.
The phallus is the ultimate [[Object of Desire|object of desire ]] that we have lost and alwayss [[search]] for but never had in the first place.
The phallus is the 'original' [[Lost Object|lost object]], but only insofar as no one possessed it in the first place.
The phallus, therefore, is not like any other signifier, it is the signifier of absence and does not '[[exist]]' in its own right as a thing, an object or a bodily organ.
Lacan equates the process of giving up the imaginary phallus with Freud's account of [[Castration Anxiety|castration anxiety]], but he argues that the process of castration in Freud is more complicated than people generally think.
Castration involves not just an anxiety about losing one's penis but simultaneously the recognition of lack or absence.
The child is concerned about losing its own penis and simultaneously recognizes that the mother does not have a penis.
The Lacanian Name-of-the-Father, therefore, is associated with the prohibition of incest and the instigation of symbolic law.
The symbolic order and the process of signification, according to Lacan, is ‘phalluc’ and governed by the [[paternal metaphor]] and the imposition of paternal law.
The father is seen to embody the socio-symbolic law and the fucntion of the [[Paternal Metaphor|paternal metaphor ]] is to [[substitute]] the desire for the mother with the [[law of the father]].
This is also the founding moment of the unconscious for Lacan and the point at which the phallus is installed as the central organizing signifier of the unconscious.
The [[internalization]] of the paternal metaphor also creates something else, though, that Freud designates as the ‘’superego’’.
Lacan has developed the [[notion]] of the [[SuperEgo|superego ]] in a very specfic and important way.
===More===
THE [[Law of the Father|LAW OF THE FATHER ]] AND THE SUPEREGO
The intervention of the [[Name-of-the-Father]] marks the point at which the [[child]] (leaves the imaginary world of infantile plenitude and) enters the symbolic universe of lack.
Second, there is the primal father of ‘’Totem and Taboo’’, who is perceived to be [[outside]] the law.
In Freud’s [[Myth of Origins|myth of origins ]] the primal father is a figure of [[Absolute Power|absolute power]]; the father who aggregates to himself the owmen and wealth of the primal ahorde by expelling his sons and rivals.
What distinguishes this tyrannical figure from the Oedipal father is that he is not himself subordinated to the law – the law that prohibits his son’s access to the omwn of the [[horde]].
This other father, therefore – the cruel and licentious one – is the reverse side of the law.
