The concept of “Father” has had different meanings in human history. The definitions made about the father are usually based on biological origin or find a place for himself with the connotation of a person who is the owner of a powerless being. The asylum seeker sometimes forms a part of the concept of father, voluntarily, and sometimes by adoption. Interestingly, it is seen that the person who is addressed as a “Father” gathers the weaker people even in the mafia and gang formation, which is called illegal and out of society. There is no mother here. However, the private person is defined as the father. This shows that it is not only the mother who determines the father, even with an extreme example in the non-social and illegal sample.
Regarding the pre-social period, Freud; He wrote the book Totem and Taboo. The reason for writing this book was originally to prove the sexual origin of neuroses. The father, who was seen as the other and private, was seen by Freud as the cause of the formation of neurosis. Later, Freud put the father in a different position with the concept of oedipus. The father, who is not a mother and called the other, has hardly taken the third place between mother-child one and duality. The child who comes to life in the mother and the mother in the euphoric state of giving life to a living thing are not inclined to move away from this symbiotic life. Trying to find a place for himself with the beginning of Oedipus, the father pulls the child out of this schizoid, isolated cocoon and reveals the incest prohibition. If the father’s adult side and authoritarian role are emphasized while putting this prohibition and forming the culture and society interaction, the father actually brings this prohibition together with his childish side while imposing this prohibition. He identifies with both his childhood, his mother’s side and his fatherhood. The Bisexual psyche structure in Freud’s view manifested itself here. The individual also acquires the characteristics of the opposite sex by identifying. Why is the rule maker the father and not the mother? Perhaps the answer to the question is based on the concept of Taboo. Taboo, as the meaning of the word, is the exact equivalent of what is feared to be done and what is attributed to sanctity and desired. Similar to this ambivalence, the father is the source of both fear and love for the child. Since the father is the one standing in the middle of this push and pull, it is not surprising that he is the rule maker. Apart from this, instead of the mother who should be protected from the father (the other one) in the eyes of the child, it is the father with whom he has opposing feelings. For these reasons, the father is also the bringer of the other.
In addition to Freud’s views, in the tribe example in Totem and Taboo; Tribes are ruled by powerful tribal chiefs. The power of these powerful tribal chiefs is enough to expel the adolescent child from the tribe he belongs to and turn him into the other. After the expelled boys, combined with the torment of this marginalization, they killed the tribal chief, that is, their other father, and got all their women by eating their father’s flesh. After this possession, regret occurred in men. A fight broke out between the brothers. Here, too, the determining factor is not the mother. The father has been internalized by beating and is even more powerful and influential in his children than before. It was not only the power of the father but also the presence of the other that was assimilated by his children. They themselves have become a chief, a father. The next others (children) also pose a threat to them.
In summary, for fathers, their children are a rival and then a threat. The father must be willing to surrender his power when the time comes. From a primitive point of view, the concept of a father is to accept being killed by his child and to live with it and love the threat element. In the light of all this, it seems difficult for the father symbol, which the mother gives to the man from the outside world, to prevent the life impulse of the man on its own.
According to the psychoanalyst Florence Guignard, the paternal function does not occur all at once. Ertüzün, 2019). The man should be in close, meaningful contact with the child of whom he is the father. In other words, even if a mother claims to be the father of the child, in a symbolic sense, a man needs different elements for a symbolic concept to form in his mind. Even DNA tests showing 99% results will not be enough for this. At the same time, even if the mother determines the father, if the father is not aware of this, this man is not the father. Even if the father is not happy with the news of the child, he is the father only to the extent that he accepts the existence of the child, and only in this case can the child find his own place in the father. If these conditions are not met, it is not only the father who is outside, the other, but also the child.
Talat Parman’s thinking in his article titled “Fathers, Intimate Strangers” that technological and cultural changes will limit the father’s function and disappear in some places, actually stems from his thinking that it is the mother who determines the father. On the one hand, lineage defined by non-mother, the honorific father must exist on its own as it is without being pacified. This problem can be overcome by considering that the integration process of the father with the child goes beyond being a discriminator and goes even further. Otherwise, the father’s function, which comes from the most basic point, cannot be placed on a solid foundation due to the situation of the father alone; It comes in a state that can be shaken with the slightest factors. With the thought that it is not the woman alone who determines the man as a father, fathers can find a foundation of their own. It is too deep within us to be reduced to basic biology. As the father exists by the mother’s symbolization in his own mind, the mother also finds a place for herself if the father symbolizes the mother as a woman or mother in her own mind. The mother not symbolized as a woman is a mother, but not a woman in the symbolic mind of the man.
As a result, the father is actually the man who accepts to be a father. It is not enough for the mother to designate the man as the father and it will not be enough. The father is both the other side and himself of the mother-child interaction. Fathers who become parents without being adults are the source of marginalization and perpetuate the taboo.
Ozge Akgun
References
Ertüzün, MI (2019). Father Function. F. Guignard. in Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press.
Freud, S. (2012). Totem and Taboo. Say Publishing.
Mitchell, SA (2018). Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press.
Parman, T. (no date). Fathers, Intimate Strangers. 79-84.
