The question about the father in the analytical experience remains central from Freud until today. The objective of the present article is to discuss the role that the different instances of the paternal function - the real father, the symbolic father, the imaginary father and the Name-of-the-Father - have in the constitution of the subject and in a clinical practice. The article begins with the writing of a clinical experience and the questions it brings forth. Next, we outline some of the developments that such concepts had in Lacan's work, highlighting the fact that while his theorization of the paternal problematic shifted permanently throughout his seminars, the articulation between its different elements remained an irrevocable conceptual requirement. The interdependence of these different instances in relation to what they operate in the structuring of the subject and the lacanian formulation of the Borromean RSI point to the clinical importance of considering the paternal instances in an interlaced way.
paternal function; RSI; Name-of-the-Father