Chapter 11 Configurations of Thirdness

Freud considered the Oedipus complex as the nuclear complex of the neuroses. He also described in detail structures that we prefer to call pregenital than pre-Oedipal, but it seems implicit in his thought that they only assumed their full meaning in relation to the crowning of infantile sexuality with the Oedipus complex. After his death, and as a result of various influences, the psychoanalytic community thought it had discovered something important by drawing attention to these pregenital forms which had not been studied sufficiently hitherto. Consequently, triangular Oedipal constellations were relegated to the background while increasing interest was taken in pathological states that were traced back to periods prior to the Oedipus complex. A great deal of reflection was then devoted to the importance of pregenital relations (they were also called pre-Oedipal) characterized by dual relations. The figure of the father was to fade increasingly until it became almost absent from the clinical picture. In the same way, castration anxiety saw its domain shrink in the face of anxieties linked to an exclusive mother-child relationship: anxieties of separation, intrusion, etc., of which I have already spoken earlier. The general idea was that if one managed to understand better the fixations related to the pregenital periods, one would be in a better position to cure patients who presented clinical pictures corresponding to them. Without overlooking the interest of deepening our knowledge of these pregenital phases and their associated pathologies, I think that it was an illusion to suppose that one was dealing, in these cases, with states in which the father could be declared out of play, so to speak, or of negligible importance. It was Lacan’s merit to re-establish the paternal function, not only in neurotic cases with an Oedipal fixation but, in general, in all pathology, each form calling for its own particular theorization from which the place of the father could no