In her recently published story La faille [1] (The flaw), in which the word “family” (“famille”) is deliberately missing a letter, Blandine Rinkel explores the conditions that allow a subject to extricate themselves, like the missing letter, from family determinations in order to forge a singular desire and destiny. This issue of FαMIL gives us further examples with the lives of Rousseau and Elon Musk, whose beginnings were marked by the death of the mother and the abandonment of the father in the case of the former, and paternal violence and insults for the latter. The cinema of Delphine and Muriel Coulin are also stories of attempts to break free from an alienating bond, sometimes only possible by way of opting for opposing ideals, not without the danger of a new, more radical alienation. In her text, Chiara Nicastri reflects on the impact of a father’s desire and jouissance on his children, which have more far-reaching consequences than the family ideals embraced by society. A final text explains how psychoanalysis can interpret these consequences in the case of children who have suffered abuse within their family, by focusing on the fantasy elaborated by the subject rather than on the traumatic dimension of the abuse.
[1] Rinkel, B., La faille, Paris, Stock, 2025.
Translation: Polina Agapaki
Proofreading: Robyn Adler
