Less than a father
Being a father is a very worrying issue in our time. What are the qualities of a father is questioned by the father-to-be subjects. Since the father is not just a progenitor, his position is also very important for psychoanalysis. The relationship between father as a signifier and the role assigned to the father in society poses a question. As time changed, the father’s role in the family undoubtedly changed. In the past, we might not say there were no arguments about the validity of his authority, and so are today. But today a new controversy seems to arise: “Can I be a good enough father?” “Do my qualities or shortcomings cause possible negative effects on my child?” “What happens if a man is less than a father?” Here in this lecture, I will try to discuss this aspect of the issue, the anxiety I call “being less than a father”.
Freud had an answer to why a woman wanted a baby, why she wanted to be a mother. Child = penis equivalence comes from Freud. So why would a man want to be a father? To my knowledge, this is not a question that is neither sufficiently asked nor answered. If it is legitimate to define our age as a kind of “risk society” and a society to pre-calculate and avoid possible risks, then the issue of being a father is also included in this list of possible risks. Some subjects want to calculate these potential risks in advance and take measures against it. Is this possible?
A recent newspaper article claimed that: “The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe.”[1] The article in question mentions a recently published book called Count Down.[2] The main thesis of this book is that by 2045 the sperm count in men will decrease to zero. It would mean no babies, no reproduction, no more humans. We do not know if this pessimistic thesis will come true but it’s obvious that something has changed at the reproductive level. It means at the level of the Lacanian Real.
There seems to be multiple factors that affect men biologically. Since the question of how an organism transforms into a body concerns psychoanalysis closely, we cannot ignore questions about biology. At this level, we can continue our discussion around three terms: reproduction, transmission of the name, and desire. As I mentioned in the title of my article, it seems that there is a downward trend in men in all three areas. Dad candidates in Turkey in the past would have said the following words: “I want to have a son and I want him to keep the name of our family.” The transmission of a name was coupled with the desire to become a father. And also this must have something to do with reproduction. Today, I observe that there is not a clarity but a hesitation in my own patients regarding the desire to become a father. Are they ready to be a father? Is their financial situation enough to do this? Are they with the right woman? Would it be better if they had children after they reached a certain point in their career?
Being a father is treated as if it were not a matter of desire, but as a risk calculation. I ask myself why these things have become like this or has it always been like this?
Most men associate being a father with achieving an ideal. They fantasize of being an ideal father, building an almost perfect relationship with their children. And because an ideal refers to an impossible situation, they almost always feel “less than a father”. Could it be said that we live in an age in which we are dominated by the “ideal father”, the fantasy of neurotic? How does this ideal father fantasy affect desire?
Lacan says in The Subversion of the Subject (p. 698, in English version): “In fact, the image of the ideal Father is a neurotic’s fantasy.” And the rest of this sentence designates to a very important point: the relationship between desire and the Law: “Beyond the Mother -demand’s real Other, whose desire (that is, her desire) we wish she would tone down- stands out the image of a father who would turn a blind eye to desires. This marks -more than it reveals- the true function of the Father, which is fundamentally to unite (and not to oppose) a desire to the Law.” (p. 698). Can it be said that there is a change, a problem, in the father’s function of uniting the Law and desire?
Lacan spoke of the “evaporation of the father” very early on, can we speak of the further eroding of the father’s power since then? If this is the case, it is inevitable that this will shake the belief in the Other. Lacan formulated this not as a loss of faith but as the pluralization of the father. Lacan also said that: “The Father the neurotic wishes for is clearly the dead Father -that is plain to see. But he is also a Father who would be the perfect master of his desire– which would be just as good, as far as the subject is concerned.” (p. 698). Frankly speaking, the fathers of our time hardly seem like masters of their own desires. They are more like less than a father. Fathers are divided between their own desires and the underlying law, and they seek an Other to tell them what to do. They cannot find the answer they are looking for on this subject in science. Nor can they find it in religion. Science can offer new reproductive technologies, but of course it cannot tell what a new desire is.
Although science does not have an answer about the desire and what a father is, perhaps the literature can offer us an answer. A dialogue in Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe’s novel A Personal Matter seems to shed light on what a father might be. The following dialogue takes place between the new father, the protagonist, and a female friend of him:
“I grew up fast, all right. And now I’m old enough to be a father. Only I wasn’t adequately prepared as a father so I couldn’t come up with a proper child. You think I’ll ever become the father of a normal child? I have no confidence.”
“No one is confident about that kind of thing… When your next baby has turned out to be perfectly healthy then you’ll know for certain that you’re a normal father. And you’ll feel confident in retrospect.”
Freud said from the very beginning that the father was a kind of security. In fact, in the Civilization and of its Discontents, he makes it clear that the origin of religion is the need for father’s protection. In the above novel quote, it is claimed that the child guarantees the existence of the father. Frankly, I do not know how far this thesis can be defended. On the other hand, Lacan says in The Symbolic, The Imaginary, and The Real: “Giving someone a child as a gift is the very incarnation of love. For humans, a child is what is most real.” It can be said that if the child touches the Real, she/he is also touching the object a, anxiety and castration. Lacan says that anxiety is an effect of the subject. So when is a subject affected by anxiety? The answer is, Lacan said to us, “When anxious, the subject is affected, as I told you, by the Other’s desire… The subject is affected by that desire in an immediate manner, which cannot be dialectized.” (In, Introduction to the Names-of-the-Father, p. 57). However, “Object a is what fell away from the subject when anxious” (ibid, p. 58). Could being less-than-a-father offer a solution to anxiety and the sudden surge of desire? So, isn’t it also delayed to encounter the enigma of the Other’s desire?
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