Johnston,A . "A triadic drama beyond the family: Freudian metapsychology in light of Lacan's object a." Journal for the psychoanalysis of culture & society [1088-0763] 4.2 (1999). 299-306. 

 

Discusses J. Lacan's interpretations of Freud's Oedipus complex. The majority of criticisms leveled against the Freudian Oedipus complex derive both their strength and their often high degree of moral indignation from this complex's apparent grounding in historically contingent, gender-determined, and biologically tinged factors. Lacan is widely recognized as reconciling many of the problematic nuances in Freud, particularly Freud's biologism and sometimes blatant sexism, using a form of structuralism. Lacan's registers of the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary form the structural groundwork within which the sociological particularities of the familial Oedipus complex take shape (that is, these registers are meant to provide something on the level of a priori principles for psychoanalytic theorization).