THE FATHER AS A CONCEPT AND THE ORIGIN OF THE INSTITUTIONS: FAMILY, RELIGION AND LAW

In Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud identified the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy as the founding moment of civilization. A moment articulated in three institutions: Family, Religion and Law. As psychoanalysts, we can describe the individual phsychical life as centered on the same passage: from the centrality of the mother to the father-complex. In a famous letter to Fliess (1897), Freud explores the etiology of neurosis and confesses his «surprise that in all cases the blame was always attributed to the father, not excluding my own». Neurosis shows the central role played by the institution of the Family in the structuring of the Unconscious. The emergence of neurosis also shows that the original environment of human life (i.e. the family) can actually become the pathogenic factor of the crisis of thinking in the individual. The Oedipus of the Greek culture, the famous son, then father, becomes the prototype of the tragedy unfolding in every individual neurosis. Indeed, all forms of psychopathology, old and new, bear the mark of the crisis of the relationship father-son. Freud describes in all his works the Father as a concept in crisis. Once the crisis occurs, civilization inevitably resorts to Religion. In particular, Freud focuses on the parricide as the source of monotheistic religions. «Neurosis is inseparable from the desire of escaping the father.» (J. Lacan, 1963) This father-desire signals the concept of Father as the foundation of a healthy phsychical life, where Father means inheritance, succession and entitlement. Father as inheritance shows the phsychical life is a juridical life (G.B. Contri, 2008). The lively thoughts and actions of the child still healthy bears witness of it.