Symbolic Father Research Articles

The Recesses of the Unconscious in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, four members of the Tyrone family make some choices about their careers and family life. It is apparent that the adverse outcomes of Tyrones’ respective decisions that they have reached hold sway and torment the rest of their lives. Although James Tyrone, the head of the family, announces his credo as keeping his family together and healthy, his two sons Jamie and Edmund and his wife Mary suffer from different types of addiction, from not being able to position themselves in a respectable environment and to develop healthy relationships. The play takes place on a single day, starting from 8.30 in the morning to midnight, which is quite parallel with the descending mood of the characters and events. Each of these characters’ tragedies can be traced not only in their seemingly conscious choices but in their collective unconscious which can be anatomized with some Lacanian conceptual backcloths. This paper forms its basis on discovering the ulterior motives of the characters’ actions and the way they speak language by scrutinizing their unconscious, which reveals itself in a structure of language in Lacanian outlook. Thus, this study aims to create a hermeneutical frame by laying the underlying reasons for why the Tyrone family suffer, which can be traced in how these family members fail to identify themselves with the symbolic father which is a functional metaphor for rules and regulations in the society and by highlighting what kind of master signifiers the Tyrone family keep using to substitute the Name-of-the-Father.

Psychobiography of the Leader: Lenin in Stories for Children by Mikhail Zoshchenko

Zoshchenko has done a lot of analytical work, having studied many biographies of historical figures of the past. In other people’s biographies, the writer tried to find psychological complexes similar to his own. In the cycle “Stories about Lenin”, the title character appears as the embodiment of the “I am the ideal” Zoshchenko. Lenin easily coping with the phobias from which the writer suffered throughout his life. The leader has been turned into a mirror double of the author. To achieve this kind of mirroring, the writer corrects some facts from Lenin’s biography – outwardly almost imperceptibly, but in fact very significantly. Zoshchenko interprets Lenin’s revolutionary activity in a Freudian way – as a revolt against his father’s world. At the same time, Lenin in the Zoshchenko cycle appears as the antipode of the oedipal fathers. He goes from rebelling against the father’s world to the functional replacement of the father. After the victory of the revolution, Lenin, as shown in the story “About how Lenin was given a fish”, becomes a symbolic Father to all the children of the country.

A big, big house(hold): John 14:1–7 as a response to Roman imperial violence

In antiquity, the entire Roman Empire itself was imagined as a household, with its inhabitants obedient children to their symbolic father, the emperor. The language and the literary context of John 14:1–7 suggest significant interplay with this way of conceptualizing the empire. The Fourth Gospel imitates imperial structures with its household imagery, in which God takes the place of “Father” and believers as “children.” The community of believers is thus imagined as an alternative household to Caesar’s empire, one with its own unique values and priorities. In this article, I suggest that Johannine believers are engaged in imperial negotiation by imagining themselves as an alternative household living under threat of imperial violence. Whereas traditional interpretations of John 14 that equate “my Father’s house” with “heaven” suggest an escapist strategy, in which believers will one day be whisked safely out of their imperial context, this interpretation suggests a more nuanced strategy of negotiating imperial power from within. The divine response to the threat of imperial violence is to establish a beloved household of God.

“You have two bullets and then what?”: Fallible Paternity in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

This article seeks to critically examine the representation of the father-child bond in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) in order to elucidate the complex portrayal of fatherhood conjured in the text. In particular, I am interested in analyzing the evolution of the ethical stance taken by the father, as opposed to that of his son and his late wife. By commenting on character building, but also formal and stylistic choices such focalization, I aim to assess the potential of the text to narrate the collapse of the dominant fiction. I contend that The Road includes elements that can be read as challenging towards the father-patriarchy conflation, especially the fallible, embodied father. Still, despite its individualization of the paternal function, The Road fails to articulate a solid alternative to traditional fatherhood as it concludes with the re-creation of the Symbolic father.

Review: The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media and the Radical Imagination, by Greg A. Burris

Review: The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media and the Radical Imagination, by Greg A. Burris

Sosok dan Peran Ayah dalam Persepsi Anak Yatim

This study aims to reveal the perceptions of orphans in Cirebon towards the figureand role of the father, both as a typical / symbolic father and as an individual /personal father. The subjects in this study were 9 students of an elementary school inCirebon, consisting of 5 grade 5 children and 4 grade 6 children (aged 10-12 years)who come from single mother families. Information was collected using the centerbunch dialog / focus group discussion method. Information analysis was carried outusing qualitative content analysis (AIK) methods, using a deductive approach, namelydirected content analysis. In this study, it was found that orphans still have perceptionsabout their personal father, even though they do not live with the father. Theperception of the father's figure tends to be negative, while the perception of thefather's role tends to be positive

The Balkans Geo-psychoanalysis

In the 1990s, Julija Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek developed a unique discourse within psychoanalysis - the psychoanalysis of the Balkans. Their cultural and political analysis represented the Balkans as a pathological region of nations suffering from the syndrome of an “archaic mother.” They propose in their different ways that the subject (nation) must radically separate from oedipal attachment to the attachment to nationalism as unemancipated Oedipus and subordinate to the authority of the symbolic father, that is, to the West. At the heart of such an approach is a conservative policy of labeling the Balkans as primitive behind Kristeva and Žižek loom self-orientalization and geopolitical de-identification with the Balkans as a precondition for their cosmopolitan and universalist identity.

Syaman Rapongan’s ‘The mythology of Badai Bay’: A symbolic father’s legacy

Syaman Rapongan (1957–present) is a Tao Indigenous author from the Orchid Island (Taiwan) and Badaiwan de shenhua, a collection of his tribe’s myths, was his first publication. In its introduction, he explains how these myths’ intrinsic value system allows him to face the difficulties of our modernized and globalized society, where individuals often lose their sense of belonging and life’s meaning. The Lacanian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati traces this lack of meaning back to a loss of the ‘symbolic father’, who once provided the individual with both the interdicting function of a symbolic law and the recognition – thus, the word – to participate and speak in society. After a few years in Taiwan, where he studied and worked until the 1980s, Syaman Rapongan returned to Orchid Island and rediscovered this sense of belonging by re-appropriating Tao legends, rituals, productive skills, thus receiving his own father and the other tribe members’ recognition. The father figure as the storyteller par excellence passing on that symbolic word is the giver of Badaiwan de shenhua. Moreover, father-like characters and father-related emblematic images (e.g. the house), significantly recur both in these myths and in several subsequent stories. Taking advantage of Recalcati’s reflection, this article integrates an ecocritical approach to Syaman Rapongan’s literature by interpreting its recovery of the Indigenous paradigm as a recovery of the symbolic father. Through the analysis of examples from Badaiwan de shenhua and other stories, it demonstrates how the cosmopolitan value of his narrative does not reside so much in the revival of an ante-litteram ‘ecological’ lifestyle, but in its sine qua non, or the recovery of the ‘symbolic father’.

The Female Version in Daphne Du Maurier�s Rebecca

Rebecca is a novel which is created by Daphne Du Maurier. That novel is retold by Margaret Tarner in 1991. The main character of this novel is the narrator. This study uses A Freudian Psychological Analysis. The purpose of this study is to trace the Electra Complex (the female version of the Oedipus Complex) in Rebecca. So, the steps of this study are identify the symbolic father figure and the symbolic mother figure and trace how the main character tries to displace the symbolic mother figures in that novel. There are two results of this study. The first, Mr. De Winter is the symbolic figure father, while Mrs. Van Hooper, Rebecca, and Mrs. Danvers are the symbolic of mother figures. The second, the main character tries to displace the mother figures. The main character is marrying Mr. De Winter before Mrs. Van Hooper realizes her plan to make Mr. De Winter as the next victim. Then, the main character is trying to displace Rebecca by doing: (1) make social call with Beatrice and Giles, (2) prepare the best appearance for the Ball, and (3) cover her husband as murderer. Then, the main character is trying to displace Mrs. Danvers by convincing Mrs. Danvers to be her friend, but Mrs. Danvers decides to burn Manderley and go away from that place. Therefore, the narrator suffers Electra Complex and becomes the female version of the Oedipus Complex.

The Anguish of Fatherhood

This paper engages with the experience of being both a symbolic and actual father and theorizes the tension between between being “The Father” and “A Father” and describes the resulting dilemmas and the anguish of fatherhood. The story of Oedipus is transposed to focus on Laius, Oedipus’s father and the centrality of not knowing as emblematic of the anguish of fatherhood. A clinical vignette illustrates the manifestation of these struggles within both patient and analyst as the unknowing anguish of fatherhood is transformed into generative connection and effective parenting.

Anxiety (of influence) and (absent) fathers in Sorrentino’s English-language narratives

This article examines the role of damaged or absent fathers – actual, metaphoric and artistic – as represented in Sorrentino’s works that are filmed in English: This Must Be the Place (2011), Youth (2015) and The Young Pope (2016). The (non-biological) father figures that appear in these films and television episodes function sometimes as extensions of a failed father, and at other times as correctives to a failed father. The psychoanalytic thesis of the anal father as developed by Žižek (via Freud and Lacan) as a postmodern response to Lacan’s symbolic father paired with Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of artistic influence serve as my theoretical structure. Any deficiencies, failures or crises depicted by father figures on-screen is countered by the success of Sorrentino himself off-screen, as extradiegetic elements make their way into the diegesis, complicating the relationship between the filmmaker and his creations, but also with his cinematic forebears with whom he is frequently judged.

PÈRE-VERSION: A RELATIVIZAÇÃO DO NOME-DO-PAI

Resumo: O jogo de palavras père-version é utilizado por Lacan para aproximar os conceitos de sinthoma e perversão. Em seus desdobramentos teóricos, ele indica a dimensão real subjacente ao pai simbólico e serve para relativizar quatro diferentes aspectos do Nome-do-Pai: abstração, universalidade, normatividade e efetividade. Essa relativização, que se inicia por ocasião da primeira proposta de pluralização dos Nomes-do-Pai, torna-se passível de ser completada quando, no âmbito da topologia dos nós, o simbólico claramente perde a preeminência em relação aos outros registros.

Parental Crisis in Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mothe r: a Lacanian-Feministic Reading

Reading Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mother in the light of Lacan’s imaginary and symbolic orders, as well as Adrianne Rich’s notions presented in Of Women Born, one can detect that Jessie’s suicide has roots in the complicated bond she shares with her mother, her struggle for separation from her while unconsciously yearning the imaginary fusion with her, as well as failure in understanding the true nature of her relationship with her father and following in his footsteps. This paper will take a close look at the ways patriarchy has invaded the mother-daughter relationship that Jessie's and Thelma share, and their struggles for achieving self-autonomy, as well as the role Jessie’s father plays in the finality of her decision. Terms such as matrophobia, death drive, abjection, imaginary father, and symbolic father will be used in this paper in order to clarify the ways in which Jessie’s parental ties are destructive.

RESISTING SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF WOMANHOOD: A PSYCHOANALYTIC READING OF PORTIA’S GENDER CONSTRUCTION IN ELIZABETH BOWEN’S THE DEATH OF THE HEART

This paper aims to analyze Portia‟s resistance toward social construction of womanhood. Portia's subjectivity is constructed by mother-daughter's unity that stimulates Portia's dependency on her mother's figure. Since she becomes a lacking subject of knowledge and experience toward social life, she is supposed to separate herself from maternal attachment and to shift her life to the symbolic father in order to be an autonomous figure. Meanwhile, the symbolic father sets symbolic language that is the language used by society that constructs feminine identity for the daughter and triggers forbidden pleasure. Thus to resist the social construction of womanhood, sisterhood is needed. Inter-subjective dialogue between women helps them to escape from male‟s dictation or oppression. It does not only provide the experience of nurturance but also ability to control and manage their own identity.

When Fathering Fails: Violence, Narcissism, and the Father Function in Ancient Tales and Clinical Analysis.

Manifestations of failures in both symbolic and actual flesh-and-blood fathering reveal the inescapable role played by the father's unconscious transmissions in the ever present triadic matrix. Perelberg's crucial distinction between the murdered narcissistic father and the dead symbolic father suggests the problematic internalizations that fail to uphold the paternal law required for oedipal resolution. Three father-child narratives derived from classical literature and mythology are presented in order to elucidate significant unconscious paternal fantasies pertaining to lethal rivalry and neglect of the child's otherness. These narratives suggest how the father's insufficient management of rivalrous, envious, and murderously aggressive impulses-as well as narcissistic needs that fail to take into account the child's alterity-combine with the child's intrapsychic propensities to constrict triangular space and restrict development. Consequently, unavoidable father-child rivalries, absences, neglect, and desires often make it vital to recover the "missing" paternal function in analytic space. A clinical example illustrates the impact of this absence on the analyst's countertransference.

The Destruction and Impossible Reconstruction of Family Links in Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips

This article examines questions of kinship and family in Caryl Phillips’s novel Crossing the River from the perspective of the impact of slavery on the family and on gender roles. It explores the problematic status of both the father and the mother in a system in which the Master played the role of the symbolic father and women were “de-maternalized,” in other words deprived of their traditional functions as caring and protective mothers. It furthermore raises the question of gender representations, arguing that in Phillips’s vision of the “Black Atlantic,” women succeed in crossing borders that are emotional and psychological, while men’s voyages are concrete and pragmatic. It also explores the possibility of surrogacy as an answer to the destruction of the family and suggests that in this respect also it is male bonding that dominates Phillips’s vision of the diasporic community.

The roots of violence in Brazil: Impasses and possibilities

Nowadays, violence appears in various forms in Brazil. From an agricultural country, Brazil became rapidly industrialized, which resulted in large rural exodus and explosion of population density in major cities. Brazil faces today a great social and economic disparity, added to endemic corruption of government, nepotism and lack of social planning. The roots of such violence can be found in our archaic heritage that has been forming Brazilian identity since its early days. The interest of former colonizers was to extract wealth, without regarding the establishment of a nation. This exploitation has been always done by force and violence, with the slave labor of native Indians and imported black people. As a state Brazil was exposed to the primal father’s law, and to the absence of a symbolic father, who could have provided his people with a more stable identity, only given by the paternal law. Is it possible to reframe archaic heritage, rebuilding the missing father image without resorting to a false savior of the fatherland? Is it possible to construct a more equitable society that could propitiate true conditions of citizenship in order to make every citizen, to the extent possible, the protagonist of his own history?

Agents of Law: Psychoanalytic Perspective on Parenthood Practices as Socially Accepted Violence.

This paper presents a theoretical model of parental authority from the vantage point of parental subjecthood, using a roughly Lacanian formulation of what it means to take a (parental) subject position. For Freud, the parental role involves the acceptance of social rules that may, at times, involve a socially acceptable degree of violence. Nevertheless, psychoanalytic discussions have disregarded the parents' subjective experience as agents of the Law and purveyors of threatening authority. The authors elaborate on Freud's and Lacan's ideas and delineate several prime types of parental identifications as agents of Law. The Lacanian theoretical constructs expanded in this discussion include two basic parental positions of authority, termed the Symbolic Father and the Imaginary Father, and one derivative position, called the Perverse Father, which are demonstrated through the story of Dr. Moritz Schreber. The paper discusses how these theoretical constructs bear upon the philosophical conceptualizations of law, violence, and legitimacy.

Legacies and Memorializations in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychic Life: Psychoanalytic Notes on Some of the Ways in Which Sons Assume Their Father's Mantle.

The intergenerational transmission of psychic life has been difficult to explore psychoanalytically given that a treatment of both parent and child is rarely, if ever, feasible. Here the issue is explored in terms of father-son relationships. Three legendary fathers (Abraham, Laius, Shiva) are discussed as illustrating the filicidal legacy they imposed psychically and corporeally on their sons. Three contemporary case vignettes are then presented, indicating ways in which sons ambivalently memorialize their fathers. This material provides a model as to some of the ways in which sons assume the mantle of the father's conscious and unconscious dynamics in the course of their personal history. Paternal legacies generate "memorializations" that express profound and poignant conflicts animating the son's psychic life. In the context of this investigation, the significance of the distinction between actual fathers or father figures (who are mortal, who possess some sort of gendered qualities, and who may be present or absent, emotionally and physically) and the "symbolic father" (who is the locus of the phallus that organizes the possibility of representational discourse) is discussed. It is suggested that boys and men typically develop in terms of confusions around this distinction. The oedipal conundrum and challenge of the boy's passage into manhood is then formulated as follows: Masculinity involves both the integration of patricidal desire (in response to the paternal legacy) and the mourning of actual fathers or father figures. It also involves the acceptance of the human condition, which is both that of mortality and of our "castratedness" in relation to the "symbolic father" as the locus of the phallus (the only one who knows whereof "He" speaks and acts, and who can neither be mourned nor surpassed).

Play and the Profane

In his performances, artist Samson Kambalu takes over, upturns, and redeploys the signs of power to refashion the self. These self-refashioning acts are particularly marked in Kambalu’s performance titled Holy Balls (2000), which involves kicking footballs which were created by plastering Malawian rag and plastic street soccer balls with pages of the King James Version of the Bible; his quasi-spiritualism of Holyballism, which is a doctrinal syncretic mixture of Gule Wamkulu philosophy of the Chewa, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten’s sun-worshipping monotheism, the creed of Moses the prophet, Jesus Christ, and Nietzsche’s The Gay Science; and the performance-cum-installation (Bookworm) The Fall of Man (2003), featuring a ritual performance in which apples are eaten, surrounded by concrete poetry written on gallery walls. In these artworks, the artist adopts the transgressive performative elements of the Gule Wamkulu masquerade, Duchampian irreverence, and play and the profane to confront his legacy in the form of language, patriarchy, Christianity, and the hegemony of Dr. Kamuzu Banda, founder of the Malawi nation, in processes of subjectification.[1] In this essay, I use Jacques Lacan’s conception of the symbolic father, which constitutes all conventions that bind one to society, Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque subversion of power by the powerless, and Julia Kristeva’s abject and figure of “the deject” as “the one who strays” (as a “deviser of territories, languages, works”) to illuminate how Kambalu takes over and upturns the signs of power, and purges (“exercise and exorcise,” in the artist’s own words) the dark traces of his legacy. In short, with the performances Holy Balls, Holyballism and (Bookworm) The Fall of Man, Kambalu subverts his own religious, cultural, and sociopolitical legacy in order to refashion the self.