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==Dictionary==
Originally used by [[Lacan]] to describe the [[castration|castrating]] [[father]] of the [[Oedipus complex]] who personifies the [[taboo]] on [[incest]], the expression is at once a semi-humorous religious allusion (''In nomine patris'') and a play on the near-homonyms ''non'' and ''nom'': the name-of-the-father (''nom-du-père'') is also the [[father]]'s 'no' (''non-du-père'') to the [[child]]'s [[incest]]uous [[desire]] for the [[mother]].
In [[Lacan]]'s 1955-6 [[seminar]], [[The Psychoses]], the [[name-of-the-father]] is described as the fundamental [[signifier]] that both confers [[identity]] on [[human]] [[subject]]s by situating them in a lineage and the [[symbolic]] [[order]], and reiterates the [[prohibition]] on [[incest]].
The [[foreclosure]] of the [[name-of-the-father]], or its expulsion from the [[subject]]'s [[symbolic]] universe, is said by [[Lacan]] to be the mechanism that triggers [[psychosis]].
==Definition==
Jacques Lacan introduced the notion of the "Name-of-the-Father." By it he meant that every signifier, by its connection, not to an object, but rather to another signifier (Ferdinand de Saussure), symbolizes the lack that it introduces into being. As the particular symbolizer produces this effect while at the same time transforming it, the Name-of-the-Father enables human beings to tolerate and maintain desire. Without it, lack is experienced as a devouring force (cf. the case of Little Hans, Freud, 1909b) or a sucking force, the representation of a wound in the maternal body that is the source of a debt that can never be repaid.
