The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 103 - 107
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?[1]
Audrey McAleese
The mother-son relationship is examined with reference to Freud’s texts - including On Narcissism and Female Sexuality- and Lacan’s terms, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. The paper further explores what psychoanalysis offers in response to the absence of a sexual rapport between a man and a woman and questions ‘What’s love got to do with It?’ – the ‘It’ being any relationship, particularly that between a mother and her son.
Keywords: mother-son relationship; narcissism; female sexuality; the Imaginary; the Symbolic; the Real; the difference between the sexes; the Oedipus Complex; the absence of sexual rapport.
In light of our understanding that ‘there is no sexual rapport’ il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel, how do we assess what Freud writes about the mother-son relationship?