On Foreclosure of the Name of the Father – 3 – Becoming a Real Father

The capacity for men to develop into functional, rather than dysfunctional, fathers depends directly upon the psychological and spiritual formation in them of a healthy ego-ideal. Formation of the ego-ideal occurs “through an identification with the symbolic father - that is, as an effect of the instauration of the Name-of-the-Father - [and it is] structurally opposed to the formation of ‘pathological Master-Signifiers in the case of perverts” (Chiesa, L. [2007]. Subjectivity and otherness: A philosophical reading of Lacan, p. 117).