ABSTRACT

Lacan’s introduction of the Name-of-the-Father occurs in the context of an objection to the way the programme of science removes the human dimension. Psychoanalysis resists any attempt at reduction to the purely biological. Lacan introduces a radical difference with the concept of the Name-of-the-Father whereby he disconnects the subject’s link to the father as a signifier from the link to the father as a person. Indeed, the conjunction of the name with the word “father” indicates the irreducible gap between the person of the father and paternity. For Lacan, the paternal function is determining in that it places the bar that negativises jouissance on the side of the mother, and this will have consequences for the child in that she has to give up her enjoyment of her child as object. Lacan’s rethinking of the Name-of-the-Father makes this critique possible in that it puts his own elaborations into question.