always satisfied by his mother, and thus unable to grasp the object as object,^15 he
nevertheless experiences the alternating presence/absence of the mother as agent
of the (virtual) object. In other words, despite logically preceding primordial frus-
tration, the opposition +/−which characterizes the symbolic mother is inevitably
dependent on an even more original “division,” and therefore possibly on an ear-
lier frustration.
Following the early Lacan of “Les complexes familiaux,” one could argue that
this earlier frustration is provided by (the trauma of) birth, by part(urit)ition. In
other words, the relation child–object could be considered as fully “direct” only
in an intrauterine state: the fact that, by being exposed to the opposition +/−, the
child is already implicitly differentiating the symbolic mother from the—as yet
virtual—object proves that every postnatal scenario should necessarily be consid-
ered in terms of some sort of “indirectness.” The simpler version of the child–
breast relation presented in “Les complexes familiaux” was, from this perspective,
much more consistent: the state of helplessness in which the child is born and the
consequent disorder of his Imaginary was deemed immediately to trap him in an
alienating—that is, “indirect”—identification with the imagoof the breast. Lacan’s
argument in Seminar IV would have been much stronger if he had clearly differ-
entiated between twomythical stages: an intrauterine one in which frustration is,
by definition, impossible and an extrauterine one in which frustration is possible
but never occurs, since the child is always satisfied.
How do we move on from this mythical state in which the child’s appeal is al-
ways answered by the mother? Lacan’s explanation is extremely clear:What is the pivotal moment in which the relation mother–child is opened to other
elements which will introduce what we can call a dialectic? I believe we can for-
mulate it schematically by asking the following question: what happens if the sym-
bolic agent, the essential term of the child’s relation with the real object, the mother
as such, does not answer... the subject’s appeal?... She decays. From being in-
scribed in the symbolic order, which made her a present–absent object as a func-
tion of the appeal, she now becomes real... that is, a power.^16Some essential consequences should be drawn from this key passage:( 1 ) The becoming real of the mother is accompanied by an “overturning of the
position of the object.”^17 That is, conversely, the object becomes symbolic.Objects (first
of all the breast) that up to this point were, for the child, simply (virtual) objects
that satisfied a biological needare transformed into giftsthat may or may not be do-
nated by the real mother understood as a power. After the mother has neglected the
child’s appeal, she thus becomes omnipotent for him.the subject of the symbolic (other)