Elissavet Avramaki1

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge UK

UDK: 159.964.26 Originalan nauni rad

Charalambos Tsekeris

Department of Psychology, Athens Panteion University, Greece

DOI:10.2298/FID1104183A

THE ROLE OF THE FATHER IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOSIS

Abstract: In psychoanalysis, fathering has not received much analytical attention and only little is known about the actual impact of paternity on the development of certain psychopathology. This paper seeks to carefully examine and critically discuss the impact of fathering on psychotic individuals. It elaborates on the importance of the father in the healthy development of the children, as well as on the consequences that his absence entails for their psyche. Drawing on a Lacanian analytical framework, it is argued that, nowadays, the paternal figure has significantly lost its previous status. The gradual extinction of the paternal function, within the contemporary cultural environment, is mainly because of important social and legal changes in the familial structure, such as the increase of single-parent families and the legalisation of the adoption of children by gay couples. Keywords: psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan, psychosis, mental disorders, Sigmund Freud.

Introduction
The family environment has been the subject of numerous studies with regard to the onset of schizophrenia. Two kinds of theories that incriminate the family as a causal factor for schizophrenia have been formulated so far: Those related to divergent relationship roles and those that focus on domestic impaired communication. More specifically, the role of the family in the development of psychotic disorders traditionally wavered among contrasting theories. When the causes of psychotic disorders were attributed exclusively to biological factors, the family was regarded as the un1 2

E-mail: elis.hpl@hotmail.com E-mail: tsekeris@gmail.com

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fortunate victim of innate biochemical dysfunction and the therapy was based solely on medication. On the contrary, when priority was given to family and social factors, the family was considered to be the main factor responsible for the disorder. In order to be treated, the patient had to be moved away from the dysfunctional environment and be placed into a healthy one. The two perspectives, the organic and the environmental one, coexisted in separate adversary course for decades and it has been only quite recently that researchers have concluded that there is a theoretical need for a holistic, multi-factorial perspective of mental disorders, an analytical perspective that will take into account the biological, psychological, social and cultural influences in order to abolish the aforementioned dualism. In many cases, there is a genetic predisposition, especially in the severe ones, albeit particular circumstances are necessary for the activation of the genes of hereditary vulnerability and for the demonstration of psychotic disorder. Kandel (2000) characteristically maintained that not all conditions that run in families are necessarily genetic wealth, poverty, habits, and values also run in families. Genetic factors seem to be more decisive in the psychotic spectrum than in the neurotic one, where external factors possibly play a more important role. The analytical point where most researchers have agreed upon until today is that, regardless of the primary cause, the onset and the progress of psychosis are influenced directly by external factors, especially by the family environment. A sampling research conducted by Gonzlez-Pinto et al. (2011) confirms that positive family factors can function inhibitory in the development of psychosis. Furthermore, a historical standpoint could possibly help us in the critical reflexive investigation of the role of the family in psychosis, as well as of the role of the father in childrens mental health, as a slightly neglected figure in the relevant research field.

Historical Background
At the end of the nineteenth century, many psychiatrists started to take into consideration the pathogenic relationships as explanatory factors for psychosis despite the dominant biological theory. In the 1860s, Benedict Morel was the first who studied the

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turbulent relationship of a father and his schizophrenic son when the specific father asked Morels advice about his son Antoine, who used to be an exceptional quiet boy, but suddenly, at the age of 14, started to feel resentment towards his father with intense patricide thoughts (Burston 2000). Later, Lasegue and Falret (1877) described the dualistic madness Folie a deux ou folie communique as a contagious disorder, which is characterized by the appearance of common psychotic symptoms among members of the family who live together. These symptoms usually disappear when the members are separated (Lasegue and Falret 1877/1964). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the clinical stressing of the significance of impaired family relationships rapidly increased. In 1911, Eugene Bleuler highlighted particular characteristics in the family of schizophrenic patients, such as extreme inflexibility, incapability of communication, and mutual hostility (Bleuler 1911/1950). Quite earlier, in 1899, Kraepelin had emphasized that the illness was hereditary with specific indications he drew up from the observation of schizophrenic patients relatives (Kraepelin, cited in Leo and Joseph 2002). Of course, there are numerous indications of the explanatory connection of different psychopathologies with family problem situation in Sigmund Freuds pioneering work. Today, even more researchers conclude that most psychological disorders are traced in the family. Brown (1959) observed that psychotic patients who lived with their parents, or their spouses, were more often readmitted than those who lived alone or without relatives. At the same time, his research concerning the expressed emotion clearly demonstrated the role of family attitudes and interactions in the progress of schizophrenia, according to the stressvulnerability model (Brown 1959). Murray Bowen perceptively introduced the Multi-Generational Transmission Process, a model of three generations, where parents project part of their immaturity on their child. The child will possibly appear chronic symptoms if not differentiated from the family model (Bowen, cited in Brown 1999). Furthermore, many psychoanalysts studied and confirmed the relationship of interpersonal communication in the development of neurosis and psychosis. Harry Stack Sullivan (1962) interprets

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some schizophrenic symptoms as defensive responses to a dysfunctional family communication through his interpersonal theory of schizophrenia. In the same line, the existential psychiatrists Ronald Laing and Aaron Esterson conducted a grand research on psychotic families, which is described in their groundbreaking book Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964). According to them, the schizophrenic behavior depicts a specific strategy that an individual invents in order to tolerate an unbearable situation. One of the major representatives of the Anti-psychiatric movement, David Cooper (1972), considered the family as the central mechanism of social control, which aims at the reproduction of conventional normality and conformism. Other institutions like schools, army, hospitals, political parties, and so on, participate in this suffocating encirclement of alienation, where someone can escape only with madness or rebellion. With regard to parental figures and their divergent relationship roles, most of the studies analyzing the behavior pattern focused primarily on the role of the mother. In 1931, Levy refers to the overprotective mother, who was the source and the pattern of childrens problematic behavior. He identified two types of overprotection:
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1. The authoritarian mother, who did not allow any initiative to her child, making it extremely concessive at home but unable to form satisfactory relationships with the outside world. 2. The extremely condescending mother, whose child show ed sufficiency at school and social contacts, but great disobedience and violent behavior at home (Levy, cited in Boszormenyi et al. 1985). In her famous theory on the schizophrenogenic mother, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948) describes the mother as cold, aggressive, authoritarian and rejecting. She argued that a custodial or overprotective mother favors the immobilization or the induction to the oral stage and consequently the development of psychotic symptomatology. In this specific theory, the father appears to be inadequate, passive and indifferent. Reichard and Tillman (1950) also described the schizophrenogenic mother who was covertly or overtly rejecting. Later, they emphasized on the characteristics of the schizophrenogenic father. That is, a sadistic and tyrannical person, yet indifferent and rejecting.

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In the post-war era, studies on schizophrenia flourished and gave a significant boost towards new theoretical directions. The disturbed unit is no longer the individual but the mother-child dyad. What Alanen (1958) discerned in mothers of schizophrenic patients, was an abundance of psychological disorders. Afterwards, emphasis was given on couples relationship, where attention was shifted away from the binary structure to the ternary one. Ruth and Theodore Lidz (1949) paid attention to the type of relationship of the parents of the mentally ill and formed the hypothesis of the marital schism and the marital skew. A few years later, Theodore Lidz and his associates (1956) identified and described three types of schizophrenogenic father. As follows, the attention was displaced to previous generations and special characteristics of the grandparents of schizophrenics. In Hillss study (1955), it seemed that the behavioral pattern of authoritarian mothers was the result of a tyrannical behavior of their own mothers. In the following years, scientists at Palo Alto turned their analytic attention to relationships (rather than to individuals) and the research focused more upon dysfunctional mechanisms of communication, rather upon the psychopathology of specific relatives (Watzlawick 1971). At the same period, different communicational hypotheses attempted to explain the pathogenesis in psychiatry. One of these theories on disturbed communication within the family has as its starting point the case of Gregory Bateson et al. (1956) about the double bind. It was argued that the contradiction of exchanged messages, which characterizes this pathogenic communication, is schizophrenogenic. Wynne et al. (1958) observed that the shapeless and disruptive communication was more common to the parents of the schizophrenic patients and formed the case of pseudo-mutuality. The case of double bind raised great interest and gained ground in the scientific field. In the beginning, the family was considered conclusively as the main cause of all disorders. The first family therapists talked about dysfunctional, or difficult family, and they even confronted it with hostility. The common perception was that the patients should be saved to be free and to be released from the family. Subsequent attempts to confirm these theories did

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not flourish (see Wynne 1981). During the last 25 years, an extensive research activity has aimed at the family in order to determine the particular factors influencing the outcome of the disease, rather than its primary cause. As shown from the historical background, the analytical emphasis has sequentially expanded to the functional role of the mother in the life and development of the child. In the relevant literature, the father is reluctantly presented after the first three years of the childs life and he is considered to be significant in the development of the childs autonomy, in the formation of its sex identity and moral standards. But beyond that, the father has been dealt with as a secondary figure concerning the emotional expression towards the child and its daily needs. The paper proceeds to show the importance of the father in the healthy development of the children, as well as to highlight the consequences that his absence entails for their psyche.

The Fathers Social Role and the Outcome of his Dysfunction

The traditional role of the mother is already known (StewartClarke 1978) and the results of the maternal behavior on children have been thoroughly studied, as seen above. However, the father is slightly neglected concerning his contribution to the development of the child and his role of offering has remained unexplored and unknown. Many theorists of the twentieth century adopted the belief that, since the major part of the childs upbringing has been carried out by the mother, the father does not play an important role in the development and formation of childs personality. From the mid-nineteenth century, the fathers left their hometown and moved to big urban industrial centers to find a job (Cabrera et al. 2000). Thus, they left the responsibility of the childrens upbringing exclusively to mothers. Traditionally, fathers contribution was interpreted in terms of material goods, whereas mothers contribution was perceived on the basis of her physical presence. According to the conventional distribution of work, where the father (man) is at work and the mother (woman) is at home, the subject matter of the paternal role is subdivided in five functions (Canitz 1980):

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a) The role of the father as breeder. b) The role of the father as feeder. c) The role of the father as protector. d) The role of the father as educator and exponent of power. e) The role of the father as an object of identification. Nowadays, it is very difficult to actually determine the role of the father because, from the 1960s, the three roles to which he had been traditionally identified (almost since antiquity) are seriously challenged: 1. The role of the breeder, because of the revolutionary possibilities of biology in contraception and artificial insemination. 2. The role of the father as feeder, since nowadays women are also working. 3. The role of the father as exponent of power because of joint parental authority and the number of divorces. Therefore, the position and the role of the father are mostly vague. The father has difficulty to find his exact position in the family unit, to find his own way of conduct, whereas the role of the mother is clear. Consequently, it is the father who is less secure about his role, less secure about his power, less secure about the stability of the bond that connects him with his children. In particular, what one could say about the role of the father in Greek society is that he is often presented as distant from the upbringing and the emotional maturity of the children (RothchildSallios 1976). There are significant changes which are also observed in the very structure of the urban middle class family: The father works all day and the mother leaves home and enters the production processes of the marketplace. Thus, the rising financial obligations, the divorces, the increase of single-parent families, and the constant reduction of financial dependence of women from men means that fathers may either not be in the picture, or may be in it, but in a less traditional way. The current social circumstances, the changes that have occurred in the formation of the relationship of the parental role model, the acceptance of another role model on behalf of men, as well as research findings that prove the impact of the absence-alienation-indifference and dysfunction of the fathers on the childs development, give rise

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to the need to acknowledge and study the father figure more seriously. But lets focus on the most important of these research findings. The majority of the relevant research efforts, during the last three decades, has emphasized more on the fathers intervention, as well as on the father-son relationship, but only in the case that the father does not live in the same house with the child (umpass et al. 1990). It is also concluded that surveys should be oriented towards the understanding of the influence of the father in the childs life while living under the same roof and interact (Mullan et al. 1998). Henry Biller perceptively maintained that the boys who were taken away from the paternal figure at a very young age demonstrated personality disorders at a higher degree than the children who deprived their father at an older age (Biller, cited in Badinter 1994). Furthermore, Cabrera et al. (2000) showed that the boys who grew up away from their father have greater possibility to develop sexual identity disorders, poor school performance, problematic psychological adjustment, and problems with self-control. In specific, psychological studies have demonstrated that the fathers absence involves the danger of the appearance of pathological disturbances in boys, because the absence of male figure in the childs upbringing renders its personality effeminate (Sebald and Krauth 1990). In other studies, it is indicated that the boys whose father died before they turned four demonstrated more intense feminine features than those whose father died after they were five years old (Biller 1970). Brill and Liston (1966) showed that a large number of people who suffer from neurosis, psychosis, or personality disorder, have lost their father when they were at a very young age. Also, the number of people who have stable personality but were deprived their father at childhood is very limited. In another research conducted by Bowen et al. (1959), focusing upon the role of the father in families with schizophrenic patients, it was found that the most ordinary relationship pattern run in the family was an intense mother-patient relationship, which excludes the father and from which he allows himself to be excluded. In a study upon the personalities of fathers of schizophrenic patients and their roles in the family, Lidz et al. (1956) found that almost no one fulfilled the paternal role usually expected and that many exerted deleterious pathogenic influences upon the family unit

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and upon the rearing of the children. Extended researches conducted in the United States and in the Scandinavian countries, regarding the causes of behavioral problems in boys, concluded that the fathers presence is necessary for the boys, especially in the first two years of their life (Badinter 1994). Interestingly, Petit (1988) studied the connection between the father figure and drug abuse. For him, the toxic substance comes to function at the very exact point where the father has failed in his role. That is, to interfere as a facilitator in order for the child to be detached from his mother, provided that he respects their relationship without being extremely strict. According to Hendin (1980), the use of hashish has been directly related to the need of compliance and pleasant behavior in order to eliminate the stress caused by inhibitive aggression towards the parent of the other sex, but at the same time in order to punish the parent unconsciously. Other research findings indicate that children with depressed fathers had greater possibilities of demonstrating behavioral and emotional disorders (see Atkinson and Rickel 1984). For some scholars, paternal negativity and pessimism lead to deterioration of the father-child relationship and results in childrens socio-emotional problems, somatic symptoms, and reduced personal prospects and aspirations (see e.g. McLoyd 1989). Bonnie Carlson (1984) also emphasizes that the children whose father participated actively in their upbringing, grow up by having fewer stereotypes and prejudice concerning the roles of genders. In addition, adolescents who felt their fathers were available to them had fewer conflicts with their friends (Lieberman et al. 1999). In Letting Fathers In, Maureen Marks (2002) examines the impact which the fathers absence has on their daughters and states that the consequences are emotionally and mentally destructive. In another research, it was discovered that 66 eating-disordered women had experienced paternal rejection and overprotection (Jones et al. 2006). In general, the research results show that the father plays an important role in the development of the child and influences the child, either positively or negatively, just like mothers do. But what has not been clarified yet is why the father is neglected in the scientific research. To emphasize this omission, Phares and Compas (1992) reviewed clinical child and adolescent

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research in eight clinical journals concerning the period 1984-1991 and discovered that the vast majority of the studies solely involved mothers while only 1% of the studies exclusively involved fathers. What these studies underscored was the tremendous importance of recognizing that fathers contribute to child development in ways that are very similar to those of mothers.

The Father and Psychoanalysis

According to the psychoanalytic line of thought, the study of the paternal contribution in childs development was not raised until the age of four (the Oedipus complex the phallic stage), because of the childs exclusive relationship with the mother, as the childs only feeder and caretaker (Vermorel and Vermorel 1986). The father was completely forgotten by theorists, with the only exception being Freud who revealed the fathers role through the two myths: the myth of Oedipus, which he borrowed from ancient tragedies, and the fathers myth of the primitive horde, which he invented in his work Totem and Taboo (1913). Oedipuss father is the father who forbids the mother to the boy, by threatening him with castration, and turns away the mother from the daughter, by promising phallic re-compensation of the castration. Totem and Taboos father wins effectiveness as a dead father, that is, when he becomes the symbol of a forbidden pleasure to the descendants. The school of Object Relations dealt exclusively with the mother-infant relationship. Only recently it has been proposed that the father can be viewed as a second objet, as someone that could be there for the child when the relationship with the mother confronts some difficulties (Target and Fonagy 2002). Psychoanalytic circles, based on their material from adult analysis along with anthropological and sociological data, turned their attention to the father figure and attempted to answer important questions concerning the fathers role and his participation in childs psychological development, as well as in the construction of its sexual identity. They also examined the psycho-emotional procedures that characterize the passage to fatherhood, like the reactivation of the oedipal conflict and the emergence of an unconscious hostility

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towards the child experienced as the rival brother (Sakellaropoulos 1998: 342-347). However, there was no particular reference to the importance of the father in childs mental development until 1956, when Jacques Lacan introduced a new meaning that concerns the Nameof-the-Father. For childs healthy mental development, the father has not only to be recognized as the natural progenitor, but he must manage to embody the paternal function. Also, the mother should recognize her husbands words as a vehicle of moral law and in order to convey it through her own discourse to her child. Only under these circumstances the child can refer to the Name-of-the-Father and be incorporated in the symbolic level. If the child does not accept the Law of the father or the mother, or does not recognize this particular function to the father, it will remain confined in this dualistic relationship at the imaginary level, without any possible access to the symbolic level. These are the circumstances which, according to Lacan (1966), define psychosis. Below, we attempt to elaborate on them, by presenting some of Lacans ideas, as well as his valuable contribution to the explanation of the psychotic state.

The Three Orders

Lacan uses the key terms Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real at a very early stage to approach Freuds work (see Lacan and Granoff 1956). Since 1953, this tripartite system has been defined as Orders. These three orders, I.S.R. (from now on), mostly concern the psychic function and not psychic powers. Each order refers to a totally different psychic function which is directly related to the other two. Even though these three orders are evidently heterogeneous to each other, every single one is always defined in connection with the others. In 1974, Lacan uses the representation of the Borromeo Knot to show this interconnection. He forms three rings where each one of them represents one of the three orders. These three rings are held with each other in such a way that the disconnection of one order causes automatically the separation of the other two. Thus, it is perceptively emphasized that whatever problem is created in whichever order, the consequences will also be perceived in the other two.

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Imaginary
The Imaginary refers to the image of those similar to us and to the performance of our own body (Vanier 2001). Its meaning can be understood in connection to the mirror stage, where the formation of the ego is done through identification with the reflecting image. The main characteristic of the imaginary field is the predominance of the relationship with the self-image, a relationship which is fundamentally narcissistic narcissism belongs to the imaginary order. The term imaginary includes the meanings of delusion, enchantment, and seduction. The imaginary is what prima facie becomes obvious to us (Lacan 1956). It is the field where emotions are born. It is appeared at the sexual level in the form of rituals in flirts or exhibitionism (Evans 2005). Concerning the expression of the speech, the imaginary is connected with the signified, in other words, the meaning that something has for the subject (Lacan 1956).

Symbolic
The symbolic is actually a linguistic dimension. However, Lacan does not equalize the symbolic order with the language since it includes elements from the real and imaginary order. The Symbolic is highly connected with the symbolic function, as defined by Claude Levi-Strauss, that is, a regulatory function of exchanges within social groups (Vanier 2001). The symbolic is the field of Law that sets desire in the Oedipus complex. It is actually the Other. As a consequence, it is related with triadic relationships as distinct from the imaginary order, which is characterized by dualistic relationships (Evans 2005).

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Real
The real is the order which is the most difficult to be understood because it is characterized by the lack of signifier and signified. It is the inexpressible, the non-communicative. For Lacan (1975), the real is what is found beyond language and remains without access to symbolization. It is the aspect where words fail. It is

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the impossible because it is impossible to imagine it and it is impossible to incorporate it in the symbolic order. The Real, according to Lacans theory, also refers to matter, to the body and, finally, to biology. That is why we will mention below that the real father is the biological father and the real phallus is the male reproductive organ, which differentiates from their imaginary and symbolic meaning (Evans 2005). According to Lacans theory, the real should not be confused with the meaning of reality, that is, of an objective external thing which actually exists regardless of any observant. The real is the non-embodied while reality concurs with subjective representations that result in symbolic and imaginary products.

The Symbiotic Mother-Child Relationship and the Father as a Regulator of Desire

The child, due to the high affinity with its mother, in order to meet its needs, assumes that it is the object of her desire. But desire means deficiency. The mother lacks something in order to desire it. This object, which satisfies the Others need, is what we call phallus in psychoanalysis; the child substitutes the object that it supposes that its mother is missing and becomes its mothers phallus. The phallus is a signifier which has an imaginary hypostasis and creates a triangle between the mother and the child during the pre-oedipal phase. There is hence a dialectic of being, in which the mothers phallus allows the continuation of this symbiotic relationship which is inherent to the mother and the child. Its desire is thoroughly subjugated to the mothers desire. The interference of a third person can disconnect this dualist symbiotic relationship and remove the child from the mothers phallic position. This third person is the father. Lacan wonders: who is actually the person who has been defined as the father? (Lacan 1994) This question leads him to distinguish among the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic Father.

Real Father
In his seminar Object Relations, Lacan suggests the distinction between the real father and the fathers function in real, imagi-

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nary, and symbolic dimension. In a childs life, these dimensions can be accomplished by different people (Lacan 1994). According to the Lacanian theory, the real father is not only embodied by the childs progenitor, or by the person who lives with its mother (her partner), that is, a father with his own history, characteristics, and psychic structure. The real father, as Lacan argues, is the person who desires the mother and, at the same time, he is the object of her desire, he is the one who is in the position to perform the childs symbolic castration, that is, the resignation from his incestuous desire. Moreover, he is the father who finds pleasure in his wife and does not pursue any incestuous desire from his child. He is the one who manages to make his child resign from the position of the phallus of the mother, but also does not allow the mother to use her child as her phallus (Dor 1989).

Imaginary Father
The Imaginary father is an imago, all these imaginary figures that the subject incorporates in its imagination regarding the father figure. Depending on the cultural representations, the imaginary father appears as tyrannical or extremely kind, repulsive or adorable, terrifying or exciting. Unavoidably, the child dresses his father with one or another disguise and transforms him as good or evil imaginary father. Although the imaginary father can be the source of suffering, especially for the neurotics or masochists, does not appear completely without any beneficial results, since emphasis is given on the symbolic father, who protects the child from the consequences of the powerful archaic mother (Dor 1989).

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Symbolic Father
The Symbolic father includes the two dimensions analyzed above. The symbolic father is not a real person, but a position, or a function to which Lacan refers as the Name-of-the-father and protects the child from psychosis. The symbolic father is the one who enforces the moral law and the arrangement of the desire in Oedipus complex, and intervenes in the imaginary dualistic relationship be-

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tween the mother and the child, by introducing a symbolic distance between them. The symbolic mother plays an important role here, since with her words and actions makes the child communicant of the fathers law (Evans 2005).

The Paternal Metaphor

The paternal intrusion is experienced by the child as disappointment, cancellation, and deprivation. It detracts the mothers attention from the child and forbids the satisfaction of the impulses. The child can perceive the paternal law of forbidding incest to the point that the mother recognizes the fathers law. The father intervenes at the mothers level of desire and only as a giving father he can be the one who distracts the mother from the child. Then, the child will be hesitant: Am I or not my mothers phallus? The child will be placed in this situation after it has accepted some cancellations. The mother is not always there to meet its needs. The child will live the experience of cancellation through the continuous absences and presences of its mother. Freud mentions this cancellation of back-and-forth on behalf of the mother by perceiving her in a symbolic representation, as it appears in the childs game, where it throws the bobbin away and then brings it back the so called Fortda (Freud 1920). The child performs a metaphorical process through this game. The bobbin replaces the mother and the back-and-forth on behalf of the mother is related to the desire for something more beyond the child. Lacan says that the child wonders: Why is going back and forth? What does she want? I would like to be the only thing that she wants but its obvious that I am not and there is something else that preoccupies her. The only thing that she is concerned about is x, the signified. The signified of back-and-forth regarding the mother is the phallus (Lacan 1994). The real father, who represents the moral law, since he supposedly possesses the mothers object of desire, is nominated to symbolic father. This signifying function on behalf of the father, which Lacan called Name-of-the-Father, leads the child to make three admissions:

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(a) I am not my mothers phallus. (b) I do not possess the phallus. (c) My mother does not hold the phallus as well. In other words, it confronts the castration complex. The father will become a signifier: the Name-of-the-Father. The signifier Name-of-the-Father will replace the mothers one, the only object of desire which will complete the Others luck, that is, the phallic object. This transfer of the phallic object to the Name-of-the-Father, the paternal Metaphor, will introduce the child to symbolism. In other words, it will introduce the child to speech. Lets recall the Fort-da: the child replaced the mother with the bobbin by throwing the spool away and, thus, it repeated what the mother did when she was leaving the child. Because of this symbolization, the child had the possibility to bring back, whenever it wanted, the bobbin-mother by pulling her. Therefore, the child gained the control that it could not enforce on its mother by transforming a real object into a symbolic one. This allows the child to be in the position of the subject, which possibly gives some control over what is happening around: If we cannot have the object (the lost object), we kill it by symbolizing it thanks to the speech (Lacan 1966). This possibility of symbolization is what makes us become subjects (and not objects anymore) of the Others desire by introducing us into speech.

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The Father and Psychosis

When the clinician attempts to explore the specific character of the circumstances taking place during the occurrence of release of the patients psychosis, she confronts such diversity that it is risky for her to define every time the rationale of the circumstances. What is the common element among millions of psychosocial and environmental factors? At first sight, the motley character of the circumstances that can trigger psychosis seems to discourage any attempt for the revelation of their common element and it is very tempting to consider that these situations can escape any meaning. As a result, the hypotheses based on brain dysfunctions can obviously gain ground. In 1957, however, Lacan strongly believed

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that he discovered decisive data to support the view that the release of the psychosis is due to the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father. According to Lacan, the common factor of the circumstances where the psychosis is released is attributed to the confrontation of the subject towards the fundamental deprivation that determines its structure (Maleval 1999).

Foreclosure
Foreclosure is a term introduced by Lacan to indicate a specific mechanism that constitutes the primal reason of the psychotic phenomenon. It consists of the complete rejection of a fundamental signifier from the symbolic field of the subject. The meaning of foreclosure appears as the expansion of the Freudian thought: It is a specific defense mechanism which differs from repression and in which the ego rejects the incompatible idea together with its affect and behaves as if the idea had never occurred to the ego at all (Freud, cited in Laplance and Pontalis 1986: 68). Foreclosure consists in the non-symbolization of what has to be symbolized (castration). What is consequently foreclosed, according to Lacan, is the Name-of-the-Father, a fundamental signifier. When the Name-ofthe-Father is foreclosed for a specific subject, it leaves a gap in the symbolic order which can never be possibly covered. In this case, we can conclude that the subject has a psychotic structure even if none of the classical symptoms of psychosis has been demonstrated. Sooner or later, when the excluded Name-of-the-Father reappears in the real, the subject is not in the position to assimilate it and the result of this conflict with the non-assimilated signifier constitutes the entrance to psychosis (Evans 2005).

The Name-of-the-Father
The foreclosure, as seen above, concerns the complete rejection of the Name-of-the-Father from the symbolic order. But the foreclosed element is the one that actually stabilizes the symbolic order as a whole. Therefore, the whole symbolic order is affected

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by the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-father and, as it has been observed, language function totally different in psychosis than in neurosis. The Name-of-the-Father is about the father who embodies the paternal function. It concerns the father who manages to protect the child from the mother as desire, as desiring, or as desired. He intervenes between them thwarting the childs endeavor to become one or remain forever one with the mother and forbidding the mother from having certain ways of satisfaction with her child. In brief, the father who enforces the paternal function protects the child by setting himself up as the one who prevents, averts, forbids, and protects at home, or as the one who sets the rules (Fink 2006). This function, which is connected with the Name-of-theFather, is a symbolic function and can be effective even if the father is absent from the family because of divorce or death. This role is fulfilled by other people (e.g. grandfather, uncle) or even through the mothers speech to the point that she mentions father as an authority above her, as an ideal beyond her own demands. The Name-of-the-Father, as the affirmation of the reality of castration, allows the subject to access the universe of language and speech by establishing the social institution. According to Lacan, in psychosis, the individual is placed beyond speech and social institution. He does not certainly imply that the psychotic object cannot talk, but that the psychotic endures the phenomenon of speech in total (Lacan 1981). It is commonly accepted in the psychoanalytic circles that: when psychotics speak they always have some meanings that are too fixed, and some that are far too loose, they have a different relation to language, and a different way of speaking from neurotics (Hill 1997: 113). The outcome of the failure of the paternal function and the subjects rejection of the symbolic castration is psychosis. The subject remains grounded in the imaginary order, with a hole in the symbolic one, and is placed beyond the speech, since the paternal function failed to convey to the child what is forbidden by establishing a link between the language and the meaning (the reality as a social formation), or between the signifier and the signified. For Lacan, this fulfills the prerequisites for a psychotic structure (Fink 2006).

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Concluding Remarks
What emerges here is that the father is above all a mental function. His role is dual. First of all, at a very early age, he initiates the child to separation from the mother and he is the one who takes the child out of the house and introduces it to the wider world of culture, language, institutions, and social reality the Symbolic world. From the very first moment, the father has a significant spiritual (symbolic) role to play. The child learns to symbolize things and situations. It understands that, even if the mother is absent, there is another one who does not simply replace her but he guarantees that when something is missing, it doesnt mean that it has been lost forever. Love, speech, and the Name-of-the-father is the foundation of the primary trust that the child must develop towards the world and its people, in order to be able to exist as a human subject within the wider society. This attitude is important because these are many negative things in the social world (e.g. pain, violence, injustice, lack of meaning), which can carry us away to the total denial of this world, that is, madness (Lipovats 2007). At a later stage in childs upbringing, the father plays another role in its socialization. It is about the discovery of the significance of the difference of sexes and the identification of the child with one of the two parents. In this period, there is necessarily a conflict with the parent of the identification: the child must learn to quit from certain desires, which it cannot or must not satisfy. Especially, the boys develop an ambivalent love-hate relationship with the father, but with whom they need to identify, in order to get an independent personality later on. In this case, the father has to respond correctly: if he is indifferent, irresponsibly allowing the child anything, then the child turns his innate and crude aggression towards other targets indiscreetly. If the father is too good, without daring to say no at the right moment, then the child turns his aggression to itself. In other words, the authority of the fathers word is crucial in order to introduce the child with his speech to the concept of moral law (Lipovats 2007). Relevant studies show that boys who admired and wanted to resemble their fathers scored higher on tests of personal moral judgment, moral values, and rule-following. On the other hand, boys

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who did not identify strongly with their fathers showed reluctance to accept blame or guilt when they misbehaved (Mischel 1961; Hoffman 1975). All the above are being seriously doubted nowadays by the postmodern culture of atomization, as well as by the severe crisis of modern institutions, values and identities. In contrast to the previous historical eras (nineteenth century first half of the twentieth century), where paternal authoritarianism dominated, we now experience the tendency to abolish the moral law and the paternal figure, as well as the essential conflict. The above described father is a persona that we currently encounter less and less. It has been quiet a long time that philosophers, sociologists, social theorists and historians have announced the decline of the paternal figure in Western societies. The social and legal changes in the family structure, like the increase of single-parent families, the fact that more and more women are raising their children alone, the legalisation of the adoption of children by gay couples, along with the fact that fathers decreasingly adopt an attitude of authority towards their children, entail the extinction of the paternal function in the contemporary cultural context. Lacan addresses us a warning: to absorb the role of the father or to undermine his current symbolic function is not something good; the practices that stems from similar rhetorics run the risk to increase the incidents of psychosis (Lacan 1966). Primljeno: 8. decembar 2011. Prihvaeno: 1. januar 2012.

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Elisavet Avramak i Haralambos Cekeris

ELISSAVET AVRAMAKI / CHARALAMBOS TSEKERIS

ULOGA OCA U RAZVITKU PSIHOZE

Rezime Abstract: U psihoanalizi oinstvu nije pridata velika analitika panja i vrlo se malo zna o njegovom aktualnom uticaju na razvitak odreene psihopatologije. Ovaj tekst pokuava da paljivo ispita i kritiki razmotri uticaj oinstva na psihotine individuume. On razrauje vanost oca u zdravom razvitku dece, kao i posledice koje njegovo odsustvo ima za njihovu psihu. Oslanjajui se na lakankovski analitiki okvir, tvrdi se da je danas oinska figura umnogome izgubila status koji je prehodno imala. Postepeno nestajanje oinske funkcije unutar savremenog kulturnog okruenja, uglavnom je uzrok vanih drutvenih i zakonskih promena u porodinoj strukturi, kao to su poveanje broja porodica s jednim roditeljem i zakonodavstvo koje omoguava da gej-parovi usvajaju decu. Kljune rei: psihoanaliza, ak Lakan, psihoza, duevni poremeaji, Simgund Frojd.

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