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This chapter explores the relation between Lacanian psychoanalysis and object relations. The differences between Lacan and Winnicott are a consequence of the two theories being differentially placed with respect to the paternal/parental metaphor. Freud and Lacan have been accused of being father-centered while Klein, Bion, and Winnicott are mother-centered. There is no father function per se in any of them. The mother is present in Lacan as one of the two elements of the paternal metaphor: NoF/desire of the Mother. The desire of the mother needs the NoF to appear as a signifier, and the NoF does not have meaning without the enigma of the mother's desire. The Lacanian view of analysis represents a working through the love transference, while Winnicott's involves surviving the negative transference: Lacan's subject says "I love you, I mutilate you", while Winnicott's subject says "I destroyed you, I love you".

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-94003-8_9

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