An NJI (The New Jersey Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis) event, co-sponsored by ACAP

Sunday, February 2, 2025 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Via Zoom

Michael J. Diamond, PhD., FIPA

It is a wise father that knows his own child. – Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

In this two-hour workshop, Michael Diamond discusses both the symbolic and the actual, flesh-andblood father and the impact each facet of fathering has on both the child’s and the father’s development. The so-called “paternal function,” more accurately termed the “symbolic function,” signifies that a triadic matrix always exists psychically yet is not intrinsically gendered. Moreover, an ever present “father in the mother’s unconscious mind,” indicates that triangular relations operate within the mother/child dyad – including across heteronormative, gay or non-binary, and single parenting circumstances – that enables the ‘third’ to open up symbolic space. As an embodied other, the actual father or surrogate (regardless of gender), operating as both a protective and attracting object as well as a separating agent serving as the “second other” to the mother, is called upon to recognize the child’s otherness. Challenges to fathering arise from inescapable dependencies, desires, rivalries, and absences or neglect. Recovering the “missing” paternal function in dyadically-oriented analytic space is often required as brief clinical material will illustrate.

Learning goals:

• Describe and discuss the nature of the “symbolic” or “paternal function” and its relationship to actual, flesh-in-blood fathering.

• Demonstrate an ability to distinguish and utilize both so-called “paternal” and “maternal” functioning in clinical analysis.

• Question classical psychoanalytic understandings of the role played by male and female genders in providing successful triangular functions and indicate more contemporary analytic contributions to contemporary parenting arrangements.

• Demonstrate an understanding of the role of the paternal or symbolic function in clinical treatment and indicate how it applies to specific therapeutic intervention strategies.

2 Continuing Education Credit/Hours for Psychologists, NJ Social Workers, LPC’s and Psychoanalysts.