My thanks to those who answered my recent question:

 

> Please, could someone succinctly - yet convincingly - remind me just why

> Lacan in his psychoanalytical theory emphasised the need for a male

> person to be 'castrated'?  (You may use terms like Imaginary and

> Symbolic, of course, but do try to subordinate jargon to

> intelligibility.  Thank you!)

 

My head went back to the time, years ago, when I made an intensive

reading of Lacan, Juliet Mitchell, et al.  Here now, for what it's

worth, is my answer to my own question.

(I've snuck a look at 'Lacan for Beginners', by Leader & Groves, to

further refresh my memory!)

 

The young child, in its incompleteness (something inherent to having

arrived at the Imaginary stage), wants to be the object of the mother's

desire, the Phallus.

 

(Parenthesis.  I never had any problem with this little matter of the

Phallus, representing, moreover, what Lacan calls the Name of the

Father, once I remembered a crucial dream of Carl Jung's at the Oedipal

age, recounted in 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections': the boy Jung dreamed

of a giant phallus on a throne.  Clearly such an object DOES have great

importance to the child at that age, I allowed ...)

 

But the child's concepts associated with being the Phallus for the

mother must be replaced and rethought at the Symbolic (community)

level.  So a PROHIBITION on those infantile concepts is imposed: this is

the crucial time of the Oedipus complex with its threat of castration by

the father.

 

(Parenthesis again.  Slightly more flippant than the last.  I never had

any problem with accepting that some such thing exists once I read Irish

writer Frank O'Connor's wonderful short story "My Oedipus Complex".)

 

The child must accept its 'castration' by the father in order to begin

'growing up' into the Symbolic realm of the adult.  Access to the Name

of the Father is promised for the future.  This takes place under the

sign of the Phallus.  (I shan't go into the matter of society's exchange

of objects which Lacan, influenced by Marcel Mauss, introduced here to

help explain how socialisation is effected.)

 

Simple!  (But if I've made any big blues, somebody please tell me!)

 

- Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin').

 

----

To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L

in the message.  Problems?  Contact [log in to unmask]