As Freud had already emphasized, the rather complicated paternal function is not assumed only by the real father, the progenitor, and the mother's partner. In his seminar on Object Relations (1956-57), Lacan proposed, based on his rereading of Freud's case of "Little Hans," a distinction between the actual father and the function of the father in its real, symbolic, and imaginary instances. In the reality of the child's life, these instances are incarnated by a variety of actual agents.

From the Lacanian perspective, the instance of the real father (a term that Lacan sometimes uses in the sense of the "father in reality") is not only embodied by the biological father or even the man who lives with the mother, that is, by a "Dad" with his own history, qualities, shortcomings, and psychic structure. The real father—insofar as "he" desires the mother and is the object of her desire—is also, and even primarily,...