Name of the Father

The Name - of -the-Father (French Nom- du- Père ) is in the theory of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan a signifier that guarantees the consistency of the laws of the symbolic order. Every law, as Lacan, always already speaks "in the name of the Father" and this owes his authority.

As in the 1950s, the term first appears in Lacan's work (then lowercase), he refers to the prohibitive role of the father who imposed the incest taboo in the Oedipus complex and permeated by the threat of castration. The term nom du père therefore plays with the homophone non du père (French for "No of the Father" ).

In Seminar III: The Psychoses ( 1955-56 ) writes Lacan, the expression for the first time in size and provides it with dashes; precisely the same time and he generalizes it in terms of " Mr. signifiers ". The Name - of -the-Father is now the, gives "fundamental signifier " that meets with respect to the subject's constitutive function identity to him, and enables him to take a firm place in the symbolic order ( the family and society ). The " rejection " of this signifier of the symbolic order of the subject leads, as Lacan, psychosis.

The term " name - of -the-Father " is not to be understood literally. The support of the Oedipal noes and the law does not necessarily have to be the real father, it is rather a question of the paternal function, the symbolic father whose structural place is taken by other persons (mother, siblings, teachers ) or institutions ( teachers, judges, policemen, priests, political and religious leaders, psychoanalyst, God, but also, more generally, social norms, the big Other ). Lacan therefore speaks often of the name - of -the-Father in the majority. To this end, writes Jacques -Alain Miller, "The Father has no proper name. This is not a figure, this is a function. The father has as many names as they [ ie the function, ] has support. "

Also, the famous castration threat that is pronounced in the name of the Father, not to be understood literally as pronounced threat of a father to castrate his child. According to Lacan, it is the child himself, which developed this fantasy to explain the absence of a female penis. Likewise, the incest taboo is no need to explicitly pronounced, but is indirectly apparent from the rejection of the request of the child by the person sought.