Since Lacan regards Joyce's father, John Joyce, as a “deficient father”, this paper understands Joyce's writing, especially Finnegans Wake, both in terms of the failure of his father to fulfil his paternal duty and of Joyce's attempt to redeem himself. It is argued, with Lacan, that Joyce had a latent disposition to schizophrenia due to a de facto foreclosure of the “Name of the Father” and that, just as Finnegans Wake is structured like a borromean knot, Joyce's making a name for himself through his work repaired the error in his own subjective knotting and so restored the paternal function which in turn prevented the precipitation of schizophrenia.