Name of the Father
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The Name-of-the-Father (French Nom du père) is a concept that Jacques Lacan fully developed starting in his Seminar The Psychoses (1955-1956). The Name-of-the-Father is the fundamental signifier which permits signification to proceed normally. It both confers identity to the subject, positioning the subject within The Symbolic Order and signifies the Oedipical prohibition. If this signifier is foreclosed , that is not included in the Symbolic Order, the result is Psychosis. See Foreclosure.
In On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis in 1957 (Écrits), Lacan represents the Oedipus complex as a metaphor in which one signifier (the Name-of-the-Father) substitutes another (the desire of the mother), meaning that all paternity involves metaphoric substitution. Lacan presents the 'paternal metaphor' in his Seminar La relation d'objet (1956-1957): it is the fundamental metaphor on which all signification depends (all signification is phallic). As previously stated, if the Name-of-the-Father is foreclosed, as in psychosis, there can be no paternal metaphor and hence no phallic signification.
Lacan also develops the concept of the Symbolic Father who is not a real being but a position, a function. This function imposes the law and regulates desire in the Oedipus complex, intervening in the imaginary dual relationship between mother and child to introduce a necessary symbolic distance between them (Dylan Evans). 'The true function of the Father is fundamentally to unite (and not to set in opposition) a desire and the Law' (Écrits). A subject may come to occupy the postion of the symbolic father by virtue of excersizing the paternal function.
