A (de)missão paterna e suas incidências corporais

Abstract

This work is the result of a theoretical research which aimedat investigating possible relations between what we call father demission and certain body symptoms that have become frequent in contemporaneity. In order to carry out the study, we have started from Freudian considerations regarding the father, proceeding to Lacan s propositions on the father s mission and arriving to the meaning of what we have designated with the term demission.It stands for the decline of operational possibilities to exercise the symbolic paternal function, as a result of nowadays social bond characteristics. Therefore, talking about father demission is not rigorously the same as talking about the decline of paternal function. It actually is about realizing that the father s role as athird cannot be done without social support, which in our time is crossed by a discourse that cannot but to contradict such role, being, however, indispensible to subjective constitution.We intend to demonstrate how does father demission put in evidencenew forms of subjective constitution that, thus, result in the primacy of the body in certain types of embodied phenomena.Aiming to promote a productive discussion on these new symptoms, we haveused Freud s and Lacan s conceptions of body symptoms, or at least symptoms subject to be inscribed in the body.Finally, we have built our considerations towardsthe tacit and causal linkage that, in our comprehension, unites father demission and some contemporary symptomsin which the body is highlighted. We have also brought attention to the structure of the term father (de)mission, which have allowed us to maintain the idea of an operational paternal function, even when the conditions for it are not so favorable