The concept of phallus
The term “phallus” appears in psychoanalytic theory primarily in Freud and is later taken up by Lacan. This is a problematic concept, since induces countless mistakes as to what it actually refers to. We can start from question: what is the phallus?
It is known that there is a relationship between the phallus and the penis, without which of this word would not make any sense, however, we are initially warned to be careful, since the phallus is not the penis. We see that in the article entitled “Child sexual organization - a interpolation to the theory of sexuality ”, Freud introduced the primacy of the phallus (1923, p. 158). The text brings this novelty to the theory of sexuality; this is an interpolation with what had already been developed in this regard in the famous article “Three essays on the theory of sexuality”.
According to Freud, the element organizer of sexuality is the phallus. We cannot forget that he did not be confused with the male sexual organ, but rather with the representation that constitutes based on this anatomical part. We still find, in the text “The Child Genital Organization”, advances on the issue of femininity. In this article, when exposing the theory of the primacy of I speak in early childhood, Freud will delimit his elaborations on the female sexuality. For him, even though there is no primacy of the organs genitals as in adults, the interest of children of both sexes in the penis is undeniable and dominant.
"[...] the main characteristic of this infantile genital organization is its difference from final genital organization of the adult. It consists in the fact that, for both sexes, take into account only one genital organ, that is, the male." (Freud, 1923, p. 180).
Here Freud's elaboration that boys and girls share universality of the penis is reformulated and is now called the primacy of the phallus(1).
“What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of Organs genitals, but a primacy of the phallus ”(Ibid).
In describing the main sexual theories formulated by children, Freud states that the first sexual theory developed by children stems from the ignorance of the difference between the sexes. Children assign a penis to everyone, including your mother. When faced with the genitals the boy concludes that the girl's penis is still small since she it is also small, but when it grows, its organ will also be large. Freud clarifies that the idea of the universality of the penis leads to ignorance of the existence of the vagina.
As the vagina has not yet been discovered by both sexes, it does not exist, therefore, the male-female antithesis. Sex is not yet considered female, what exists is the castrated antithesis - not castrated. The boy understands the female sex as lack of penis, because the female anatomy gives nothing to perceive (Freud, 1923, p. 161).
It is important to emphasize that the Freudian formulation on the primacy of the phallus it is essential to understand the feminine, since it allows to understand the phallus of two ways: as presence (in boys) or absence (in girls). Like this, by paying attention to what indicates the difference between the feminine and the masculine, the female would be referred to a foul. It’s not about the lack of an organ, the penis, but of a female symbol.
It is important to keep in mind that Freud's theory of sexuality has no nothing developmentalist, on the contrary, he broke with any prospect of development. The notion of sexuality proposed by him is articulated in the unconscious and therefore is not grounded by biology or instinct, but by drive (Elia, 2004, p. 62).
We consider it important to speak briefly about this concept. The term German Trieb was employed by Freud exactly to avoid implications of mistaken terms like Instinkt (instinct). It is a limit concept between the somatic and the psychic, on which Freud emphasizes his energetic and states that it does not have a specific object. It is clear that he tries to move away any naturalistic approach.
Children's curiosity leads children to discover the difference anatomical structure between the sexes. However, the observation that the boy has something and the girl does not take the child beyond the perceptual reality. The child will to construct your psychic reality in an imaginary way that presupposes that where there’s something missing. The notion of missing an object is, therefore, the result of a psychic elaboration of the child in view of the anatomical difference between the sexes. O I speak, therefore, is the missing object. Lacan's reading makes it clear that the phallus does not designate a phase, but a point of articulation. It is a significant orderer. The phallus is a significant(2) (Lacan, 1958, p, 693). It allows the subject to access a point for which there is no signifier, at which point the sexual as such is represented in the unconscious. It was not for nothing that “Freud called castration, the point at which the phallus itself, as a signifier, affects as a defaulter ”(Elia, 2004, P. 66).
According to Lacan, the unconscious castration complex, in its connection fundamental with the phallus, it has a knot function. This is linked in the structuring symptoms as to what can be analyzed in neuroses, perversions and psychoses, and in regulation that “installs a position in the subject in the unconscious without which he could identify with the ideal type of her sex, nor how to respond to the needs of your partner in sexual intercourse ”(1958, p. 692).
Lacan clarifies this issue precisely because he situates the phallus not as a mere organ of the body, neither as an imaginary object, nor even as an a fantasy, but as a signifier, a symbolic operator that enables the subject to face his desire. “And at the outset, because talking about I speak and not about penis? It’s not a form or an image or a fantasy, but of a signifier, the signifier of desire ”(Lacan, 1958, p. 696).
Therefore, the phallus is clarified by its function. The phallus allows the subject to represent before what has no representation in the unconscious, or that is, sexual difference, sex (Ibid, p. 701). We understand that the subject will be able to position yourself as a man or woman when going through castration and come across the lack of a signifier to define the position of each sex in the unconscious. It is up to the subject to situate himself as to his desire.
The subject's relationship with the phallus is established disregarding the difference anatomical relationship between the sexes and, precisely for that reason, it will present itself especially thorny issue in women (Lacan, 1958, p. 286), as we will see forward.
Lacanian reading does not speak about genres, but about sexuation. Sexuation is refers to the whole of steps, operations and deadlocks that the subject takes and in the end, standing as a man or a woman. It is not understood as possible that these seats are taken a priori, as if it were an innate tendency.
The phallus is the signifier that defines how men and women position themselves in the relationship between the sexes. “The phallic countenance is the master signifier of the relationship to sex ”(Soler, 1998, p. 199). It will organize the difference between men and women, as well as their relationships.
Be the phallus / have the phallus
The phallus is the signifier that organizes the difference of the sexes and the way how the subjects relate. We will now see how this happens. According to Freud, man subjective sex under the mode: “I have the speech” and the woman in the way: “I don't have it”. Lacan reminds us, however, that neither of them actually has it, because man will always be dealing with the fear that they will take yours. That said, these two modes generate positions many different. Since the woman doesn’t have it, the way out for her is to make it look
"Be the phallus" of a man, which would make it possible to complete his spayed partner.
Lacan calls the relationship of the sexes comedy (1958, p. 701) exactly because, in this, we are detained in the scope of the opinion, because neither the a man has a phallus and neither does a woman.
In fact, no one has the phallus. What happens is that man protects himself the lack through “having”, since he has in his body the imaginary support of the phallus. In the case of women, she finds as a means of protection to hide the lack by masked, playing phallus, that is, being what you don’t have.
As paradoxical as this formulation may seem, we say that it is to be the I mean, that is, the signifier of the Other's desire, that the woman will reject a essential part of femininity, namely all its attributes in the masked. It is for what it is not that it intends to be desired at the same time that loved. But she finds the signifier of her own desire in the body the one to whom your demand for love is addressed (Lacan, 1958, p. 701).
Indeed, it is necessary to remember the famous Lacanian phrase that says that sexual relationship does not exist (1972, p. 40). This sentence refers to the impossible of completeness among human subjects, the non-proportion between the sexes. The woman will never be taken until she gets married. The woman only comes in role in sexual intercourse as a mother.
"[...] For this enjoyment that it is, not all, that is to say, that it does it somewhere absent from itself, absent while subject, she will find, as a cork, that which will be her son (Lacan, 1973, p. 49)."
The notion of lack of object is associated with the notion of phallus, which is the object of missing, pivotal object of all human experience. Therefore, we understand that the phallus is the signifier of the lack. Thus, each and every subject is marked by lack, both man and the woman. However, according to Lacan, women, in addition to this lack-to-be, suffer another: the lack of a gender-specific signifier (1972, p. 14). There is thus a double fault in women: as a subject and as a woman. The only representative of sex in the unconscious, as we have seen, is the phallus that is masculine. As there is only one sex that can be represented in the unconscious, the male, the woman does not find possibilities to represent the said ‘Other sex ’, since it doesn’t exist. As long as the man has a representative of his sex in the unconscious, the woman does not have it. In the face of this Other unassimilable sex, nothing can be said.
Lacan states that women do not exist because there is no representative of your sex in the unconscious. The woman is not all (1972, p. 14). That's why women they need to invent themselves one by one (Ibid, p. 17).
To better understand this point, let us take the situation of the human baby. In 1957 - 58, in his seminar on “The formations of the unconscious”, Lacan proposes to discuss the Oedipus complex by formalizing it in three logical times. In the first logical time of Oedipus, the child seeks to satisfy the desire of the mother. The question that arises for the child is: to be or not to be the mother's phallus.
In this first stage, Lacan refers to the child as a subject, that is, a not subject. This is because the child is totally subject to the law capricious of the mother, on whom she totally depends. We see that whoever introduces the infant to the world of language is his mother. IT IS she who will inscribe the baby in the discursive, symbolic universe. Initially, the child's universe is governed by the mother's wishes and fantasies, which are unknown.
In this way, we realize that “the first saying in the child's life is that of mother, and not that of the child ”(Zalcberg, 2007, p. 33). Therefore, the subject never will have access to that part of his own story, since it was not written by him same, but for the Other: “its own beginning is in the Other; not in it ” (Lacan, 1957 - 58, p. 154).
It is essential to highlight that there is something in the Other that is unassailable and enigmatic; and this causes the subject to suffer from a lack-to-be, since he cannot be fully represented, there is something that escapes and it is impossible to be apprehended by the words.
Lacan will ask himself how the child perceives that his omnipotent mother something is missing and how she, the child, will be in charge of giving the mother the object wanted. When the child enters a new record, different from the dual relationship, primitive with her mother, she will enter the phase that Lacan called “decoy”. For he, this is a crucial stage that is before the Oedipus. At that moment, the child offers itself to the mother as the “deceiving object” in order to satisfy her desire. It is in this register of “deceit” that the phallus, significant fundamental to which the child identifies. Identified to the phallus, the child becomes misleading object to the lack found in the mother(3).
In the primordial relationship with the mother, [the son] has the experience of what she lacks: the I speak, [...] Behold, he strives to satisfy [her] that impossible desire to fill in a dialectic of deception, for example, in activities of seduction, all ordered around the present-absent [symbolic] phallus (Lacan, 1958, p. 700).
At that moment, it is an imaginary triad, of the pre-dipian triangle, namely: mother, child and I speak. The child symbolizes for the mother the realization of the desire to speak. “If the woman finds satisfaction in the child, it is very precisely, to the extent that it finds in this something that attenuates, more or less well, his need to speak, something that saturates him ”(Lacan, 1957, p. 71).
Lacan emphasizes what has already been explicitly stated by Freud: the woman has as one of its essential faults, the phallus. This is not the penis, it is a signifier defined in the pre-oedipal triangle, as imaginary. For the woman it is not a real fault, but an imaginary fault. The child represents for women the result of a symbolic equation penis = child, the substitute imaginary of the phallus he lacks.
Things then fall into place as follows:
"If the mother's desire is the phallus, the child wants to be the phallus in order to satisfy it. Thus, the division immanent to desire is already felt by being experienced in the desire of the Another, for already opposing the subject to be satisfied in presenting to the other what he there may be real that corresponds to that phallus, because what he has is not worth more than what he doesn't have for his demand for love that he would want him to be" (Lacan, 1958, p. 701 and 702).
At this point in the development of his theory, Lacan asks himself:
“What happens to the extent that the image of the phallus to the mother is not completely reduced to the child's image? ” (Lacan, 1956, p. 71),
that is, what happens when the child no longer saturates the mother, does her need to speak? Miller (1996) draws attention to the fact that female desire is divided, that is, the child promotes the division of the female subject between mother and woman. That that is to say that the child will not be verything to his mother and that her desire must be also drive for a man."
However, if there is no desire in the mother another, which points to something that satisfies her outside the mother-child relationship, he will becondemned to maximum alienation, being completely trapped in his being of object, will remain the mother's property (Soler, 2005, p. 95).
In “Note on the child” (1969), Lacan talks about the clinical consequences when the child saturates his desire to speak to the mother. When the mother's desire is not mediated by the father, and the child saturates the mother with her need to speak, the the child has no other place than the mother's object.
The phallus as signifier of the Law
According to Lacan, castration is not only constituted by the threat that causes anguish in the boy, or the finding of one made by the girl, which ends up causing penis envy, as we will see in a later moment of our work. What is fundamental in castration is that it separates the child from mother.
The child is, in that initial moment, in a relationship of subjection to maternal desire, identified to its object of desire. Like we saw, the child is placed in the mother's imaginary phallus position and identifies with this place with the intention of fulfilling the maternal desire, in the position of to make an object of what the mother is supposed to be missing.
The object of maternal desire that could fill your absence is the phallus. If the the woman's desire is to have the phallus the child will seek to identify herself with the I speak. It is crucial for the child that he comes to occupy a place in the Other's desire.
Lacan speaks of a triangular relationship between child-mother-phallus and affirms “the The child's relationship with the phallus is established as the phallus is the object of mother's wish ”(1958, p. 700).
It is at this point that the role of the father must be introduced. The father will intervene innumerable ways, but primarily acts by interdicting the mother. That's what consists the fundamental of the Oedipus complex on which the father bases the law of prohibition of incest. It is up to the father to represent this prohibition (Lacan, 1958, p. 174).
In the Oedipus complex, the father is not limited to a real object, even if can intervene as such. According to Lacan, the father is also not an ideal object, In fact, the father is a metaphor (Ibid, p. 180). He explains that a metaphor is a signifier that appears in the place of another.
Therefore, the father is a signifier that will appear in the place of another, or that is, the father's role in the oedipal complex is to replace the first signifier that the maternal signifier was introduced in symbolization (Ibid, p. 180). Just right in which the father replaces the mother as a signifier a metaphor is produced. Said of otherwise, the significant Name-of-the-Father comes to block the Mother's Desire. The answer made possible by this operation is to make possible the phallic meaning, the given to the Mother's Desire. The Mother's Desire is written with a capital D because it is translates as a lawless will. The phallic significance will be exactly the meaning that there is some Law that regulates this powerful maternal desire.
The symbolic law placed through the paternal word castrates at the same time the mother's claims to have the phallus and the son's claims to be the phallus. This implies that the child needs to renounce being the object of maternal enjoyment and the mother, in turn, he must renounce considering the child the object of his enjoyment. For Lacan, this Law is structured as language and in the unconscious. At the text “The meaning of the phallus”, Lacan points out that the child's future will depend the law introduced by the father and putting it into effect.
With regard to the paternal instance, this is introduced initially in a veiled way, even if there is the father of reality. “[...] the phallus issue is already placed somewhere in the mother, where the child has to place her ”(Lacan, 1958, p.200). In a second moment, the father asserts himself as a depriver and support of the law. At that time, the father no longer appears as veiled, but mediated by the mother. Per finally, the father intervenes as the one who has the phallus. At this point there is the identification with the father who was named Ideal of the self.
However, as far as the girl is concerned, the phallic identification that takes place at his departure from Oedipus, the structure as a desiring subject, but it is not enough to resolve your identifying issue.
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(1) This change marks a fundamental point: “if the phallus has an intimate relationship with the organ male, it is to the extent that it designates the penis as faulty or susceptible to be lacking ” (André, 1998, p. 172).
(2) Lacan arrives at the concept of signifier from a re-reading of Freud's texts which articulates with Saussure's linguistics. The signifier is pre-existing to the subject, while the meaning of the speech is directly related to the opposition relation of a significant to the other. In Seminar 20: Furthermore, Lacan states that the signifier is first that which has an effect of meaning, and it is important not to exclude that, between the two, there is something to cross (1972, p. 25).
(3) Barros, R.R., 2011. Course “Mothers Lacanianas” taught by Marcus André Vieira and Romildo Rêgo Bastos, at the Brazilian School of Psychoanalysis, Section Rio (unpublished).
Tradução: Benivaldo do Nascimento Junior
Rabelais, Giselle Wendling; Vieira, Marcus André (Orientador). A devastação na relação mãe e filha como efeito do gozo feminino. Rio de Janeiro, 2012, 90p. Dissertação de Mestrado – Departamento de Psicologia, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
