name-of-the-father is a "binary signifier" while the phallus is a "unary signifier".

History

Lacan's early work was centred on an exploration of the Imaginary, of those "specific images, which we refer to by the ancient term of imago....it set out from their formative function in the subject." Therefore "the notion of the 'symbolic came to the forefront in the Rome Report [1953]...henceforth it is the symbolic, not the imaginary, that is seen to be the determining order

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