ABSTRACT
This section develops the concept of maternal investment by exploring how nomination is linked to what Freud called ‘a forced choice’. It makes a distinction between psychic reality and the social realities of the world to go deeper into the ways a subject is named ‘a boy’ or ‘a girl’ by the mother. It also links nomination to the speech of the mother. This section draws upon earlier sections focused on developing a psychoanalytical lexicon by separating common terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from their social and historical connotations and meanings. It shows that maternal investment has to do with a transmission of structure and is not something that can be explained by parental roles.
