Tag Archive for: paternal function

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The paternal function in psychoanalysis: the therapist’s role inside a multiple family therapy setting

11 July 2022/in Francesca Viola Borgogno, Roman days of multi family psychoanalysis/by @dmin

Abstract
In this article I want to describe the importance of the father in the psychic development of children, and his role of thirdness capable of progressively opening up the symbiotic mother-child bonds towards alterity. It is because of the presence of a third person in the relationship that children can start developing their thinking abilities, and particularly their symbolic world. In the second part of the article I will highlight how a therapist working with severely damaged patients and their families Read more

The father elsewhere. Commentary on the movie: “Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles”

1 January 1970/in Psychoanalysis and Cinema: “Through a glass”, Renato De Polo/by @dmin

Abstract

The article offers the opportunity to consider the loss and recovery of the paternal function in a culture that is different from ours, as well as to reflect upon contrasting and similar aspects. As far as the latter are concerned, in the movie the paternal function meets the child’s need for a reference point outside of his relationship with his mother, someone who can understand and tolerate the negative feelings that build up at the moment of separation from her. The father appears in his new function if he manages to stay there without having a boomerang reaction. When this happens the child can then accept a group, after both the maternal and the paternal function have proved they are present. We cannot but agree, even from our “western” viewpoint. However, the movie also describes the recovery of the Japanese father’s paternal function through a course in which the father starts over from point zero, where he symbolically Read more