In Freud’s time, marriage was the symbolic foundation of the family to come. Its ritualised practice was the norm. It was based on a legal predicate inherited from Roman law: Mater semper certa est [1], Pater est semper incertus. The expression ‘‘getting married to start a family’’ subtly veiled what can only be described as a biological declaration: it was up to the institution of marriage to establish the certainty of the husband, the moment a child is born. For a long time, this semblance drew the distinction between a legitimate child and an illegitimate one. A legal fiction designed to establish the institution of the family. The unfathomable function of the Supreme Being, the One whose name cannot be spoken [2], was placed behind the figure of the father of the family, who was authoritative, without being compelled to live up to the task he was supposed to embody. Of course, scientific progress undermined this structure, constructed as an indisputable principle: no proof could be brought against the predicate, Mater sempre certa est.
Freud was sensitive to this dimension, that came to cover obscure jouissance, which he theorised with the myth of Totem and Taboo [3]. Before taking this decisive step, he pointed out that the father we believe in is the father of the Oedipus myth [4], which suggests that ‘‘[the] couple is no more an all, a whole, than the child is a part of the mother’’. [5]
We owe it to Jacques Lacan to have been able to read in Freud that the père-sonnage of the traditional family theatre can be approached not from the point of view of the Ideal, but from that of the object a, which belongs to the field of the Other. An element that can only be grasped in analysis, and which is the basis on which the family romance is forged. Today, it is no longer the marriage ceremony that forms the foundation of the family, but the child itself. One young woman, for example, says that she wanted children before she got married. ‘‘My partner and I wanted them to be able to attend the ceremony”. The family is complete on the wedding day, and the child is the connecting link. A seven-year-old girl, who was looking forward to her parents’ wedding, was disappointed when preparations were made for the ceremony: her dress would not be white…
What was commonly accepted no longer holds; the variants of possibilities for ‘‘family-making’’ are multiplying. An imaginary is emerging: you can construct your family [6]. It’s a slogan that goes beyond the appeal to identity, which proposes the union of self with self.
If the structural gap between men and women remains and will always remain open, a new symptom becomes exacerbated and generalised: accepting a lack of self-knowledge or the misrecognition of oneself is no longer supportable, nor supported. For a woman, wanting to be a mother or refusing to be one can be an immediate response to this errancy. The ‘‘child comes first” is then hoped for as a dream of unity in the face of the difficulties engendered by the impossible sexual copulation. We believe in marriage, but then…
We can locate the rejection of the unconscious and psychoanalysis in the rovings of individuals who are called on to place their existence in what they might attain as self-knowledge – through the chosen partner and the options envisaged in becoming parents. Many young women say they are waiting to ‘‘find someone who is the right fit”, someone who would make them feel less like a stranger to themselves. It’s a never-ending quest that can only lead to further dissatisfaction and anxiety, reiterating the emergence of something that will never add up – without ever becoming a symptom. The wish for a ‘‘child first” takes the place of the missing signifier to secure a sexuated position. No ‘‘beatific unity” [7], no ‘all’, proposed Lacan, who argued very early on that psychoanalysis opposes any exhaustion of knowledge. The malaise in the family is linked to profound changes that psychoanalysis does not approach on the basis of the ideal. The analytical discourse is sensitive to the fictionalisations of ‘‘l’achose” [8], that never fail to manifest themselves in the ways in which families are formed. [9]
[1] Cf. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVIII: On a Discourse that Might not be a Semblance, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink, Cambridge/Hoboken: Polity, 2025, p. 153.
[2] Cf. Lacan J., Television, ed. J. Copjec, trans. Hollier, Krauss, Michelson, New York/London: Norton, 1990, p. 19.
[3] Cf. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVIII: On a Discourse that Might not be a Semblance, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink, Cambridge/Hoboken: Polity, 2025, pp. 138-139.
[4] Cf. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVIII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. R. Grigg, New York/London: Norton, 1991, p. 99: “The Oedipus complex plays the role of knowledge with a claim to truth”.
[5] Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XV, L’Acte analytique, texte établi par J.-A. Miller, Paris, Seuil, 2024, p. 192.
[6] Cf. Cottet S., « Le roman familial des parents », La Cause freudienne, no. 65, mars 2007, pp. 39-44.
[7] Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XV, L’Acte analytique, op. cit., p. 192.
[8] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVIII: On a Discourse that Might not be a Semblance, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink, Cambridge/Hoboken: Polity, 2025, p. 63.
[9] Cf. Lacan J., Television, op. cit., p. 30.
Translation: Robyn Adler
Proofreading: Polina Agapaki
