From Son to Father

In filiation, each parent enables the other to exist in the child’s psyche by obeying “a uniform opposition”. More precisely, the paternal archetypal energy orients the psyche towards differentiation and what constitutes the Other. The father becomes symbolic when he enables the child to merge from the imaginary primal unity with the mother. Inspired by the symbolic paternal function, the child learns to accept separation, loss, and the solitude of the subjective condition. In the absence of a symbolic father, the archetypal father will take over to maintain the psychic dynamic, but the individuation process will force the ego to confront loss, the void, and death.