"the
name of the father" is one of Lacan's central concepts. According to
Lacan's Psychoanalytic theory the force which drives us is desire. Desire is
always directed at what Lacan call the Big Other or the symbolic order. The
big other or symbolic order forms when we exchange objects for words and lose their
real presence. This process of symbolization of reality is what allows for
communication between people. But language is an outside order which precedes
us and therefore, according to Lacan, is always somewhat alien to us. The term
"desire" refers to the essential sense of absence which emerges upon
entering the symbolic order. The individual can never fully explain himself, he
can never be fully understood and his needs fully fulfilled, he can never be in
full harmony with the symbolic order and shake away the feeling on constant
absence.
According
to Lacan desire is directed at many objects during one's life, starting from
the mother which is the initial Big Other, moving to the father which is the
central figure in the process of entering the symbolic order. Later on in life
the role of the Big Other will be assumed by various types of authority and
social institutions (Althusser elaborated on this point).
Lacan
accepts Freud basic scheme of the Oedipus Complex. But unlike Freud, who thought
fear of castration to be driving force in repressing the complex, Lacan argues that
the fantasy of the mother in the Oedipal phase is a fantasy about complete
pleasure. These fantasies are symbolically castrated upon entering the symbolic
order, with castration being the separation from the mother and complete
pleasure through the prohibition on incest. Giving up these two fundamental fantasies
is crucial for entering the realm of language. The repression of these
fantasies is made in order to receive a cental signifier, termed by Lacan as
"the name of the father". The name of the father signifies absence
and repression, the lack which is the result of repressing the fantasy about
the mother.
Lacan's
"name of the father" is a symbolic father (which can also be a woman)
which is identified with the prohibiting function. This is one of Lacan most important
innovations in subject theory, the idea that the subject not only
becomes a subject only upon acquiring language and entering the symbolic order,
but that he himself is also constructed as language. Under "the name of
the father" Lacan imagines the subject's psyche as functioning the same
manner language does, for example through metonyms and metaphors.
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