‘A father is being beaten’: Constructions in the analysis of some male patients

Abstract

I will suggest that the phantasy of 'a father is being beaten' and its transformations emerges for certain male patients as a result of the work of analysis and becomes a potential appropriation of the (symbolic) father. The symbolic beating of the father takes place at the threshold between an anal-sadistic organization and the oedipal situation. The phantasy of the 'father being beaten' does not necessarily mean that it is the father who is explicitly being beaten. It is a construction derived from the free associations and dreams, in the analytic encounter, reached through the work of interpretation. Detailed material of sessions of the five times a week analysis of one of my patients will be presented. This will be contrasted with material from four other analyses of male patients where the 'father being beaten' phantasy was not achieved. The common feature in all these other configurations is a foreclosure in the relationship to the father and a lack of an internalization of the paternal function as a symbolic capacity. It is my suggestion that this absence of the father in its symbolic function is then sexualized in a fusion between life and death drives. A final contrasting example is derived from Karl Abraham's classic paper detailing the analysis of a patient where one can interpret a dream as expressing 'a father is being beaten' phantasy; however the dream's repetitive nature and its links with a current dream in the analysis points out to a lack of differentiation between the sexes and an anal-sadistic organization.

De la fonction du père au principe paternel

“…Elles mettent également en lumière le rôle de la dynamique transfertcontre-transfert et du processus interprétatif dans l'induction de cette potentialité de symbolisation vers un accomplissement ouvrant sur un ordre symbolique qui ne repose pas sur le seul signifiant verbal, mais émerge dans l'hétérogénéité du champ représentationnel. Elles mettent également en lumière les rapports entre le déploiement transférentiel du fantasme parricide (Kristeva, 1983 ;Perelberg, 2009Perelberg, , 2011 39. « L'énonciation de la règle fondamentale signifie la désignation implicite d'une fonction tiercéisante à découvrir, la vérité de la règle étant de créer un jeu analytique dans lequel la fonction tierce peut émerger de l'investissement même de la dérive associative et de sa relance par l'interprétation dont elle signe la réussite » (Donnet, 2005, p. 27).…”

Love and melancholia in the analysis of women by women

“…From the above, one can identify a crucial dimension that is present in the analyses of these female patients: a struggle with a melancholic core that cannot be elaborated (for the way in which this melancholia may also be found eroticized in the analysis of a man, see Perelberg, ). The core of melancholia is the murder of the primordial object that is lost for ever, yet in a way is never entirely lost, because the subject will always be attempting to find it again.…”

Negative hallucinations, dreams and hallucinations: The framing structure and its representation in the analytic setting

“…The framing structure is not perceptible as such, but only through the productions that it gives rise to in the setting (Green, 1999). It is in the apr es coup of an analysis that one has access to the traces left by the traumatic, archaic past, some of which will find representation for the first time in the here-and-now of the analytic process (Perelberg, 2006(Perelberg, , 2007(Perelberg, , 2011(Perelberg, , 2015b.…”