ABSTRACT
Ever since Plato, Western thought has imposed some form of binary thinking in which two elements are opposed to one another: soma versus psyche, matter versus form, nature versus culture, semiotic versus symbolic, primary oedipal versus secondary oedipal, sex versus gender, masculine versus feminine. The psyche mirrors the body and must therefore be identical with this body. But in relation to the grounding term, this identity implies a reduction: the subject is constructed according to the image of God, albeit in a lesser form; the child is the image of the father, albeit in a lesser form; and so on. It seems as if woman stands for nature, drive, body, semiotic, and so on, and man for culture, symbolic, psyche, and so forth. Clinical practice testifies to the fact that the only phallus that counts is the mother's phallus — in other words, the missing phallus.
