ABSTRACT
The function of ‘thirdness’ is the completion of a triangular structure that marks the human psyche and subjectivity. The mother is next to him, but partially hidden behind the boy, a peripheral figure in this family drama. The photograph is titled ‘A Letter From My Father’. Across the top and along the bottom Michals has written this imaginary letter. In Freudian metapsychology the paternal figure is the third term that intrudes upon the mother–child dyad, initiating the oedipus complex and sexual differentiation. The text reveals the father’s attachment to his son through an analytic discourse that seeks to decipher the little boy’s fantasies and behaviour. The concept of the father in the mother is rejected by Lacan, but its implications are reversed. In Kleinian metapsychology the relative inconclusiveness of the oedipus complex retains the internal object of the mother as a significant effect within both the boy’s ego and super-ego, resulting in the fantasy of the phallic mother.
