ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the difference between paternal function and third-party function. Returning to the specifically psychoanalytic sphere, the father, if thought of as exercising the paternal function, accomplishes the objective of separating the child from the mother, of cutting off this relationship centred on thinking of the child as the mother’s phallus, a relation that only the paternal metaphor could cut off. S. Tubert points out a radical asymmetry in occidental thought between maternal and paternal principles: the former is naturalised whereas the latter is elevated to the category of a spiritual principle, as psychoanalysts observe in diverse domains such as philosophy, monotheistic theology and linguistics. M. Tort pointed out that psychoanalysis identifies the psychic device of “law” that ensures the institution of the subject, with the paternal function. He notes that “the Father” is the name of a historical solution that is being displaced.
