the property of being there symbolically”;^56 furthermore, this “object qualacking
object [is] the phallus.”^57 The same goes for the mother: she loves the child for
what he lacks, or better, for what literally is in him more than himself, the phallic
Gestalt.Conversely, as beloved, both child and mother give what they do not have:
the child is the stand-in for the mother’s missing phallus (without knowing it);
similarly, the mother, who has not yet been perceived as deprived by the child, is
considered as omnipotent and thus capable of satisfying allhis demands. In this
way, what both the child and the mother give without having is the phallus: a tem-
porary superimposition of lacks is obtained. Such a result becomes even clearer if
one recalls that, due to a double imaginary alienating identification, the object of
the child’s demand is nothing but the object of his mother’s desire. However, we
shall later need to clarify the distinction between the phallus as “universal ob-
ject,”^58 the impossible object that the child pursues with his demand, and the phal-
lus as phallic Gestaltwhich the mother provisionally identifies with the child taken
as a whole.
( 3 ) What happens when there is actual frustration? Lacan maintains that when de-
mand is not satisfied, “the subject begins to make a claim [entre dans la revendication],
insofar as the object is considered as demandable by right”:^59 that is to say, the
child enters into an imaginary narcissistic relation with the object. Consequently,
whether demand is “satisfied” or not, the object as such (the real object) soon
fades into the background. Focusing on the situation in which demand is not sat-
isfied, Lacan then insists on distinguishing between the symbolic frustration of
love and the real frustration of a need (despite the fact that they may be linked to
the same lack of object). Only the former “generates reality.”^60 In other words, the
productivity of the imaginary narcissistic relation between the child and the object
which is refused to him can only rely ultimately on symbolic frustration. Un-
doubtedly, (primordial) frustration is, by definition, the lack of a realobject (of
need), but “it is not simply because the child does not obtain the mother’s breast
that he fosters its image.... It is necessary that the image is taken in itself as an
original [symbolic] dimension. It is not the breast that is essential here, but the
breast’s tip [the erected +/−], the nipple.”^61
( 4 ) From the protosymbolic stance of the dialectic of frustration, what is the value
of the real object insofar as it satisfies need? Lacan’s answer is ingenious: “The sat-
isfaction of need corresponds to a compensationfor the frustration of love.”^62 In this
sense, the real object functions as an “alibi”: I eat or drink (milk, sweets, choco-
late, etc.) to compensate for the love I lack....^63 Again, one can see how the vir-
tual object becomes real only in the Symbolic, after primordial frustration, insofar
as it compensates for the structural lack which goes together with the symbolicoedipus as a metaphor