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The law of the mother is made up of words charged with pleasure and suffering that leave their mark on us in early childhood.
In this ground-breaking book, Genevieve Morel explores whether it is possible for the child to escape subjection from this maternal law and develop their own sexual identity.
Through clinical examples and critical commentary, the book illustrates the range and power of maternal influence on the child, and how this can generate different forms of sexual ambiguity.
The book avoids many of the moral and political prejudices that paralyze twenty-first century society, be they related to legislation on marriage, parentage or adoption, the status of “mental health”, or the limits to the supposed ownership of the human body. Insightful and revealing, The Law of the Mother will be of great interest to Lacanian psychoanalysts, as well as to researchers in the fields of gender studies and sexuality.
The Law of the Mother: An Essay on the Sexual Sinthome is available from the
Freud Museum Shop.
Geneviève Morel is a psychoanalyst practising in Paris and in Lille. She is a member of the Association Lilloise pour la Psychanalyse et son Histoire and of the group Savoir et Cliniques. She teaches at the University of Paris VIII. She is the author of several books including ‘Sexual Ambiguities’ (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy).
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of The College of Psychoanalysts-UK. He is the author of several books including: ‘Why do women write more letters than they post?’; ‘Freud’s Footnotes’; ‘Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing’; ‘Why do people get ill?’ (with David Corfield) , ‘The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression’, ‘What is Madness?’ , ‘Strictly Bipolar’ and ‘Hands’, and frequently about contemporary art.
