The Mother's Father

We are indebted to Little Hans for having erected the figure of his mother as the central character of the complex nature of the identifications between a child and his biological parents; but there is another specific bond, often passed over in silence, that also secretly organises a work of identification, namely, the mother's father and the configuration to which he is subjected once the woman has become a mother. As a central element with barely identifiable contours, this representation operates in silence.

A man called to speak about his grandson whom he liked a lot and about whom he was rather concerned; aged eight, the grandson had little interest in school, even though he had a sharp and curious mind. This caring man said, almost reluctantly, that this child reminded him of his daughter's difficulties: even though she was brilliant, she had had to make do with a job that, according to him, was well beneath her university qualifications. He felt she had failed to make the best of her capacities and then, sharing a second secret, he added, “As I did during my schooling.” The analyst was all the more astonished in that neither he nor his daughter had a modest professional situation but it was undoubtedly a matter of the intimate perception that this man had of a trajectory that he felt was common to all three of them: he, his daughter and his grandson had all failed in the same domain of intellectual performance; there was something invisible uniting them. It was the case, moreover, that all three lived under the tutelary shadow of the grandson's somewhat overwhelming great-grandfather, a man who had been famous for playing a pioneering role in his discipline.

A little later, the analyst saw the child who presented a form of phobia of the written trace that stood in contrast with his bright and questioning mind, inventive even, as the analyst was gradually to discover. But, before this could happen, a specific phobia had to be overcome which prevented him from s