ABSTRACT
The game of 'fort-da' is testament to the fashion in which symbolisation becomes rooted in the body. Sigmund Freud's grandson used several non-verbal substitutes to represent the departure and return of the mother. The symbolisation requires the presence of a third person between mother and child, the 'father'. The child becomes capable of passing from the Imagination to the Symbolic, a path that every therapeutic process will have to retrace. Individuation is a therapeutic effect of symbolisation, rendering possible the attachment to that which is missing to a representation. Symbolising the missing object ultimately corresponds to symbolising oneself for the child. Through the game of 'fort-da', it 'calls' the mother through the 'name of the father'. The latter appears as the symbolic third on the basis of which the triangle father-mother-child is established, putting an end to symbiosis with the 'mother' which is a joyous yet deadening experience insofar as it leads to psychosis.
