equation between the paternal imago/Gestalt and what he calls the “imageof the
big Other”:^107 the symbolic order possesses an imaginary dimension of its own.
Two important specific points should be made to avoid possible confusion here:
( 1 ) Imaginary identification with the father furthers symbolic identification with
him, but this does not mean merely that he is introjected by the child as an ideal
ego. Imaginary identification with the father is fundamental because it entails, for
both boys and girls, the symbolic assumption of one’s own sexuality “with respect
to the function of the father,” the Name-of-the-Father—the symbolic father, that
is, whether the child has or does not have the (symbolic)phallus.^108 Here, we should briefly
refer back to our discussion of the distinction between ideal ego and ego-ideal:
Lacan is basically suggesting that the formation of the ego-ideal, which introduces
the subject to an active participation in the symbolic order as a sexuated being, re-
lies on an imaginary identification with the paternal Gestaltto be understood as the
ideal ego. Simultaneously, it is thanks to “the ego-ideal [that] the imaginary ele-
ments assume their stability in the symbolic”:^109 it is only after the emergence of
the ego-ideal quasymbolic identification that the subject is properly individuated
at the level of the Imaginary, and his ego is consolidated. Thus the ego-ideal cor-
responds to the way in which I (imaginarily) see others (symbolically) seeing
myself: this double reflection provides a symbolic “form” to the way in which I
see myself (the ideal ego).
( 2 ) Imaginary identification is necessary but not sufficient to bring about symbolic
identification with the father and the consequent emergence of the ego-ideal: as
we have seen, the real father has to intervene. “It is on the path to imaginary crime
[aggressive rivalry with the father] that [the child] enters the order of the law.
However, he cannot really enter this order of the law if, at least for a moment, he
has not met a real partner [the real father].”^110 In order to enter the Law, passing
through the imaginary rivalry with the father, the child has to relate to the real
father insofar as he transcends the protosymbolic +/−that links the child to the
mother, insofar as he anchors, or “groups” the oppositional sequence +/−by
somehow embodying the +, by showing that he has the symbolic phallus. Neverthe-
less, it is vital to observe that if, on the one hand, the Law needs to be embodied in
a concrete figure for the child to be able to access it, on the other, this very embodi-
ment can never be complete. In other words, the distinction between real father
and symbolic father ultimately consists of the fact that the symbolic father as the ab-
stract “paternal function” (the Name-of-the-Father, the Law of the +/−) “is strictly
speaking unthinkable,”^111 that nobody has ever fully occupied the paternal func-
tion.^112 Consequently, being a father as the bearer of the phallus means being a “real
person covered by a symbol”;^113 the real father is not the so-called biological or