At this stage, therefore, one fundamental question should be asked: whendoes
the child realize that “it is not he who is loved but a certain image [in/on him]”?^30
When does he understand that he is just the (imperfect) replacement of his
mother’s missing imaginary phallus? Lacan’s answer is straightforward: this “fun-
damental disappointment”^31 can occur only after the child has grasped for the first
time—and in an incomplete way—the difference between the sexes, during what
Freud calls the “phallic phase.” What is more, this phase is in the child strictly re-
lated to the emergence of infantile masturbation, the commencement of genital ac-
tivity, both of the penis and of the vagina.^32 These two complementary experiences
mark the child’s passage from the first to the second stage of the Oedipus complex.
But howdoes the child effectively beginto grasp the difference between the
sexes? How does he understand that he is not loved per se,and thus enter the sec-
ond stage of the Oedipus complex? It is not surprising that, for Lacan, this stage is
thought to be initiated by the intervention of the imaginary father who deprives
the real mother of the child as phallus. In concomitance with this, the child enters
into a narcissistic-aggressive relationship with the imaginary father to control the
mother’s desire, to beher phallus. The child aggressively competes with the father
by carrying out an imaginary alienating identification with his body image; al-
though Lacan is rather elusive on this point, the fact that the father is here consid-
ered as imaginary represents, I believe, a precise indicator that the child is relating
to a Gestalt.^33 Unlike the mother’s body image and the child’s own body image, as
perceived in siblings and the mirror,^34 that of the father is supplied with something
supplementary that obtrudes: the phallic Gestalt.^35 To put it simply, this is how sex-
ual difference is initiallyassumed by the child.^36 What is certain is that the child soon
realizes, by way of comparison, the utter inadequacy of his own real correlate of
the imaginary phallus: such an association between the image and the organ is fa-
cilitated by the fact that, meanwhile, the child’s own genital drives have begun to
manifest themselves in infantile masturbation. This sense of impotence also gives
rise to anxiety before the Desire-of-the-Mother, which is now perceived as a threat-
ening and engulfing force.
On this point, one common misunderstanding should be avoided: the mother
considers the “totality” of the child as her imaginary phallus, “the child as a whole
is involved”;^37 it is as ifshe desires to devour him, but she does not want his penis,
even after masturbation has begun. With the latter’s emergence, nothing changes
for the mother. It is clear that, for Lacan, anxiety is notprovoked in the child by the
mother’s desire for his real phallus. On the contrary, in a sense, anxiety is caused
precisely by the fact that the mother does not want his (inadequate) real phallus.
All changes occur in the child: “Anxiety consists in the fact that he can measure
all the existing difference between that for which he is loved [his whole body as
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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