The Paternal Function in Anorexia Nervosa

The role of the father, both flesh-and-blood and symbolic, is explored in a subset of families of patients with anorexia nervosa. In these families the mother's narcissistic investment in her child makes separation-individuation difficult. A factor potentially influencing whether the child goes on to develop anorexia nervosa is the strength of the paternal function, which optimally helps the child learn how to appropriately deploy his aggression in the service of separation-individuation and as a means of developing "the experience of agency": the phenomenological experience of oneself as having an intentional impact. The role of the paternal function in developing the experience of agency is illuminated by the metaphor of rough-and-tumble play, which encapsulates the kind of experience with early objects that facilitates or forecloses the child's capacity for experiencing agency. In the families of these patients, the father is frequently described as passive or absent and the paternal function as compromised, which arguably leads the anorexic-to-be to relegate his experience of agency to his body, which he subjugates through omnipotent control.

THE FATHER AND THE PATERNAL FUNCTION IN THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL PROCESS: THEORETICAL AND CLINICAL ISSUES

The author addresses the essential aspects regarding the definition of the paternal function in metapsychological terms: how it forms and develops in the mental world, which functions it serves, or could come to serve, in the dynamic of mental functioning, and lastly, the consequent clinical implications, in particular the formation and development of symbolic capacity. In the second part, using two clinical vignettes and a clinical case, the author attempts to discuss its link to the theme of masculinity, suggesting a brief reflection on the challenges presented to the specificities of the analytical clinic.

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 elusiveness of masculinity: primordial vulnerability, lack, and the challenges of male development

Reaching beyond the Oedipus prototype to address the unrepresentable vulnerability founded on the boy's infantile helplessness in contact with the mother's body, the author aims to identify the inherent tensions and enigmas of being male. He proposes that both the repudiation of femininity and the overvaluation of phallicity are unconsciously constructed to withstand the fundamental deficiency grounded in the asymmetry of the boy's prephallic relation with his primary object. This bodily based primordial vulnerability, marked by absence and lack, remains elusive-an unsymbolizable experience that provides the archaic matrix for adaptive and defensive phallicism, the oedipal complex, and genital progression. A clinical vignette is presented to illustrate these concepts.

The paternal function in Winnicott: the psychoanalytical frame

My first aim has been to identify the implicit assumptions underlying Winnicott's detailed notes on a fragment of an analysis dating from 1955 and published after his death. The importance given by Winnicott to the father figure as early as 1955 is one of my discoveries; another is the deep Freudian roots of his thinking. In this essay I propose a new way of linking together the concepts of 'paternal function' and the 'psychoanalytical frame'. Developing my hypothesis, I compare my reading of Winnicott and my way of reading José Bleger's study on the frame. Like Winnicott, I explore in detail a process of discovery, focusing on what the analyst and the patient are nor fully aware of …'as yet'. I am not proposing to unify Winnicott's and Bleger's thinking. My aim is to avoid the pitfall of eclecticism and, in so doing, to recognize both the related depths they sound in their thinking and their otherness. I want to share with the readers their 'meeting' in my mind.

The "as-yet situation" in winnicott's "fragment of an analysis": your father "never did you the honor of"… yet

The author proposes a new hypothesis in relation to Winnicott's "Fragment of an Analysis": that as early as 1955, in the case described in this text, Winnicott is creating the paternal function in his patient's psychic functioning by implicitly linking his interpretations regarding the father to the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit. The author introduces an original clinical concept, the as-yet situation, which she has observed in her own clinical work, as well as in Winnicott's analysis of the patient described in "Fragment of an Analysis" (1955).