We are at the aftermath of the youth revolt of the year 1968, a historical moment of political and social unrest, a period marked by numerous changes in morals, in particular sexual ones, it is the moment when contraceptives are first introduced, making the first disjunction between sexuality and procreation. A period of revolt and creativity within which institutions, and between them the family, are questioned. ‘Inventions’ are attempted : free marriages, open couples, communes, in what Jacques Lacan defines “community utopias”, but which soon will mark their “failure”, giving to the traditional family a function of “residue”. Understood not as of remainder, or waste, but of what remains.
The conjugal family is composed of two consorts, united by marriage, each starting from their own cause, which will have repercussions on the children through a transmission. It is a double transmission: on the one hand it allows satisfaction of their needs (nourishment, protection and whatever is necessary for their survival and growth), on the other a transmission defined by Lacan as ‘irreducible’. “It is in fact of subjective constitution, and it implies a relation with a desire not anonymous” [1]. While the satisfaction of needs could be attributed to anyone, the other, which passes through the word, is addressed to that particular child by that particular person.
And immediately after he adds : “It is on the premises of this necessity that the functions of the mother and the father are evaluated” [2]. It seems relevant to underline how Lacan specifies that, when we say mother and father, we are referring to functions that as such can be accomplished not necessarily only by the person who gave birth to the child or by biological parent, but by the ones who perform such functions.
“Of the mother insofar as her nurturing reveals the mark of a detailed interest, if only because of her own vulnerabilities. Of the father insofar as his name is agent of the manifestation of the Law in the desire” [3]. In these few quotes Lacan indicates that for psychoanalysis, whoever puts herself in the position of mother is she or he who becomes the spokesperson of her own lack, relating being a mother to being a woman. Lacan affirms that a mother is she who acts as a barrier to the ideal mother : “It is not necessary for the mother to be sufficiently good, Winnicott’s formula, but that she would be sufficiently bad” [4], while the father is the one who, through the word, causes a separation between the jouissance of one, the child, and the jouissance of the other, the mother; this pertains to the Law, it is an incarnation of the Law.
Returning to the point about the child’s need for satisfaction of needs, we can distinguish two types of needs : material or primary needs, as indicated above, and those of another type, that are of the order of the drive and have to do with desire. In this case it is necessary to proceed through the word, better still through the question. Here the maternal function comes into play which, through the word addressed to the child, responds to his crying asking : are you hungry? Do you want the breast? Beyond milk, in fact, the child could want something else : the oral object; just as the anal object arises when a mother is there asking to do a poop and expressing her joy at having obtained it. When these two objects move to the level of desire they will transform into gaze and voice, just as Lacan indicated as object “cause of desire”.
In Lacan’s text, a second part appears that we could define as clinical. “In the theory developed by Jacques Lacan, the child’s symptom is in the position of being able to respond to what is symptomatic in the family structure” [5]. The child’s symptom can represent the truth of the parental couple and Lacan adds : “This is the most complex case, but also the one most open to our interventions” [6]. Why does Lacan define it as more complex? Perhaps because he calls into question at least three people : the child, the mother and the father.
When two parents come to the consultation to talk about their child to complain about his symptoms, the clinic teaches us to give the floor to one and then to the other and listen to how for each one something about their child represents a problem or not, in a singular way. What emerges is of the order of the phantasm of each, or rather the way in which he sees the world and relates to it. Then by giving the floor to the child we listen to him raise a completely different question. Sometimes we can work with the child and an intervention is enough for the symptom to disappear or to attenuate, sometimes one of the two parents can start a treatment, we can say that he distracts himself, thus allowing the child to take his place. Analytical treatment is not always at stake, but often the possibilities for intervention are greater.
“The articulation is greatly reduced when the symptom that is dominant concerns the mother’s subjectivity. In this case, the child is directly affected as a correlative of a phantom” [7], Lacan tells us again, taking up the point where, speaking of maternal care, he defines it as bearers of a mark of a detailed interest, if only because of its own shortcomings. We could find ourselves faced with a child who feels he must fill the maternal lack, thus embodying the object sacrificed to the mother’s desire. If the mother is neurotic, and in particular hysterical, we know that the child’s efforts will be in vain, since the desire for unsatisfied desire will dominate; not differently if it were an obsessive neurosis, where the desire would assume the character of being impossible to realize.
Continuing the reading of the text, Lacan proposes a further point : “The distance between the identification with the ideal of the ego and the part assumed by the desire of the mother, if it has no mediation (that normally ensured by the function of the father) leaves the child exposed to all the phantasmatic captures” [8]. Here Lacan appeals to the metaphor of the Name-of-the-Father [9] which, if it were not operational, would entail the Verwerfung as preclusion, forclusion of the signifier.
Where such mediation fails, we would find ourselves in the most serious situation where the child : “[…] becomes the mother’s “object” and has no other function than to reveal the truth of this object. The child realises […] the object a in the fantasy. By substituting himself for this object he saturates the form of lack in which the desire (of the mother) is formed, whatever its particular structure : neurotic, perverse or psychotic” [10]. The clinic, with J. Lacan, teaches us how to find the singular positions.
J.-A. Miller in the text The Real Unconscious, indicates how the primacy of the symbolic is developed throughout the teaching of J. Lacan and divides it into three different phases to arrive at the “disassembling of the symbolic” [11].
What emerges is that the symbolic, far from representing a refuge for the speaking being, becomes evil itself. Rereading Seminar XXIV he writes : “I quote Lacan, in the sixth lesson of L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue : «In short, the ideal would be to do away with the symbolic». We can say that this is the main movement of this very last teaching, since Lacan immediately translates this idea by closing the sentence : «in other words, to say nothing»” [12].
How then can we question the functioning of the contemporary family, its forms and its current discomforts in the light of this new ideal that can do without the symbolic? From here new questions and inventions concern psychoanalysts starting from their clinical practice.
[1] Lacan, J., “Note sul bambino”, in Altri Scritti, Torino : Einaudi, 2013, p. 367.
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Laurent, E., “Istituzione del fantasma, fantasmi dell’Istituzione”, La Psicoanalisi, n. 59, Roma : Astrolabio, 2016, p. 35.
[5] Ibid
[6] Lacan, J., “Note sul bambino”, in Altri Scritti, Torino : Einaudi 2013, p. 367.
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] Lacan, J., “Ogni possibile trattamento della psicosi”, in Scritti, vol. II, Torino : Einaudi, 1974, p. 553.
[10] Lacan, J., “Note sul bambino”, in Altri Scritti, Torino : Einaudi, 2013, pp. 367-368.
[11] Miller, J.-A., “L’inconscio reale”, La Psicoanalisi n 49, Roma : Astrolabio, 2011, pp. 217-225.
[12] Ibid p. 226
Translation : Giuseppe Covelli
Proofreading : Clelia Leo