The first wound

The analytic space reveals a truth that shakes the foundations of childhood experience: the real trauma isn't physical abandonment, but the discovery that maternal desire is directed elsewhere. The first betrayal doesn't come from an act of negligence, but from the moment we discover that we aren't everything to the mother, that her gaze and desire can turn toward other objects.

The father appears here not only as a real figure, but as a function that embodies this first structuring rivalry. He is the one who introduces the dimension of time into love, who marks the limits of jouissance between mother and child. His presence announces a disturbing truth: love has schedules, maternal desire has other destinations, imaginary completeness is impossible.

This primordial narcissistic wound is, paradoxically, what allows us to become desiring subjects. Only when we accept that we aren't everything to the Other, that maternal desire exceeds and precedes us, can we begin to construct our own desire. The paternal function doesn't castrate pleasure: it opens the possibility of desire.