  Castration takes place when the child recognizes lack in the mother and her maternal omnipotence is annulled. The mother, for the child, ceases to be the all-powerful provider of every satisfaction as she herself is a desiring being deprived of satisfaction. This conundrum of maternal desire points elsewhere, toward “the law introduced by the father” (Lacan 2006 [1970], 582). The paternal prohibition intervenes to warn the child that s/he is not the answer to the question of the mother's desire. Galvanized by the mother's lack, the law of the father (which need not be embodied in an actual person) takes the place of the desire of the mother, substitutes for it, occludes it. Indeed the paternal function, working through name and law, indicates a dead father, just as Freud understands in Totem and Taboo that the murdered father, the precondition of law, is stronger than the living one. In the Lacanian version of the Oedipal Complex, human beings achieve a sexual position by traversing the Oedipal Complex, i.e., by submitting to castration, also called the phallic function, and thereby entering into signification. There is thus no sexual difference prior to representation.