What leads to Little Hans’ particular exit from the Oedipus complex, the neurotic structure this produces and thus the subject’s place in the symbolic order?
Towards the end of his Seminar La Relation d’objet Lacan describes Little Hans’ exit from the Oedipus Complex: ‘he has never acquired his penis so there can be no question of him losing it. There is no phase of symbolisation of the penis.’ …… It is ‘as substitute for the phallus that Little Hans is installed in existence. …… The paternal function which the child assumes is imaginary. Hans has substituted for the mother and he has children as she does. …. He will become someone who is essentially a poet, a creator in the imaginary world’.1 This account astonished me even though I had already read Lacan’s next Seminar,...