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In an early encyclopaedia article on the family (1938) [[Lacan ]] adopted a fairly orthodox Freudian understanding of the Oedipus complex, and it was not until the 1950s and through the influence of Lévi-Strauss (see Chapter 2) that Lacan began to develop his own distinctive 'structural' model of the [[complex]]. For [[Lacan]], the [[Oedipus complex ]] is primarily a symbolic structure. When two people live together or get married they do so forvery personal and intimate reasons, but at the same time there is a wider social or symbolic aspect to this relationship. A relationship or marriage concerns not just the two people involved but also a whole social network of friends, relations and institutions. Thus, personal relationships situate men and women in a symbolic circuit of social meanings. According to [[Lacan]], therefore, we must distinguish between the real people involved and the symbolic structures that organize relationships between men and women. In our society the primary structure that defines our symbolic and unconscious relations is the Oedipus complex. More precisely the [[Oedipus complex ]] represents a triangular structure that breaks the binary relationship established between the [[mother ]] and [[child ]] in the imaginary, although, as we will see, the imaginary is never simply a dual structure - there is always a third element involved. The infant's earliest experiences are characterized by absolute dependence upon the mother as she fulfils the child's needs of feeding, caring and nurturing. At the same time the child is faced with the enigma around the (m)other's desire - What am I in the Other's desire? The answers the child comes up with will be crucial to its resolution of the [[Oedipus complex]].

The [[Oedipus complex ]] marks the transition from the [[imaginary ]] to the [[symbolic]]. Through the intervention of a third term, the [[Name-of-the-Father]], that closed circuit of mutual desire between the [[mother ]] and [[child ]] is broken and a space is created, within which the [[child ]] can begin to identify itself as a separate being from the [[mother]]. [[Lacan ]] calls this third term the [[Name-of-the-Father]], because it does not have to be the real father, or even a male figure, but is a symbolic position that the child perceives to be the location of the object of the [[mother]]'s [[desire]]. It is also, as we will see, a position of authority and the [[symbolic ]] [[law ]] that intervenes to prohibit the [[child]]'s [[desire]]. For [[Lacan]], the key signifier that this whole process turns upon is the [[phallus]].