3.1 Introduction: Entering the Symbolic
Lacan’s convoluted account of the Oedipus complex is based on three clear-cut
a priori assumptions: (a) a baby is always-already immersed in the Other qualan-
guage, long before he acquires the ability to speak. This is because from the mo-
ment of his birth, and probably even earlier, he hears other human beings speaking.
What is more, other human beings may be speaking about him; (b) the Other qua
language cannot but be structured in a symbolic way: human beings are speaking
beings insofar as they establish a culture governed by a fundamental Law which
distinguishes them from animals. More concretely, we could say that the people the
baby hears speaking most at the beginning of his life—his mother, father, broth-
ers, and sisters—are already symbolically related to each other in a family; (c) sym-
bolic relationships can never be phylogenetically transmitted from one generation
to another.^1 Precisely insofar as the Symbolic may, broadly speaking, be understood
as a successful “reaction” against the disadaptation of man as animal, it is impos-
sible for the Law to be “naturally” inherited. A baby is born as a totally helpless
animal surrounded by and belonging to a species which has transformed its
helplessness into a formidable tool that allows it to dominate all other “adapted”
animals.
On these premises, the entire issue of the Oedipus complex according to Lacan
could be summarized as follows: if, on the one hand, from the standpoint of the
big Other, language and the Symbolic perfectly overlap, on the other, this is far
from being the case for the newborn child. Language is always-already there for
him, but the symbolic relations that structurally accompany it remain utterly
enigmatic. As a consequence, the child has to “learn” how actively to enter the
Other quaSymbolic, and to enter it as an individual since, at first, he is only pas-
sively alienated within it. The child is initially an “a-subject”^2 (assujet) entirely
subjected to the Other. The pre-Oedipal child is an individuated subject only for
the Other: with the resolution of the Oedipus complex, however, the child indi-
viduates himselfsymbolically. The process of symbolization is, for the child, a grad-
ual one: however, it is fully actualized only by the resolution of the Oedipus
complex. Therefore, although Lacan admits the existence of symbolizations that
precede the Oedipus complex, these pre-Oedipal processes are, strictly speaking,
only retroactivelysymbolized with the resolution of the Oedipus complex. This
means that if the Oedipus complex does not occur, or if it does not function prop-
erly, the child does not (properly) enter the Other quaSymbolic as an individual
subject. Nevertheless, given the existence of pre-Oedipal protosymbolizations,
the child is not necessarily prevented from acquiring a certain ability to speak
(indeed, a child learns to speak well before the age of five, when the Oedipus