WHEN I CALL YOU A DICKHEAD, I MEAN IT

In psychoanalysis the phallus is the symbol of authority, the attached insignia which invests a body with paternal power – the penis being the obvious imperative borrowed from our raw biology (that’s one loan that’s still not been returned, even though it’s way past its due date), though also see a crown attached to a king’s head or the high heel spike of a stiletto shoe in the work place or dominatrix’s basement. These are attachments to the body that allow points of entry and control within the symbolic social order. The phallus is the policeman’s gun in its holster, or an Obama soliloquy broadcast from a campaign platform. The policeman can have his badge and gun removed, Obama can lose his voice. But in their own supported contexts where the phallus is correctly attached, both the gun and the voice can assert power.

Despite the strength it holds over the entire myth of paternity and masculinity, as the phallus is itself a symbol, an addition, it is true that if that phallic attachment finds ways to consume a person entirely and for them to actually become a phallus, it embodies their worst nightmare. By embodying the phallus, we lose access to the negotiating channel between its role in the symbolic order and the pre-social, semiotic clearing of the body onto which it is first attached. By losing this connection the phallus embodied becomes a deanchored sign floating in space without a semiotic reference point to attach. If you become the gun, you still need a body to hold you and operate you, similarly a voice alone is not enough, you need vocals chords to produce it. When one ceases to attach the phallus and instead embodies it, what was once a symbol of power is made impotent and empty.

To become the phallus is to become grotesque, obscene and brazenly detached from the performative aspect of ones own activity in the social realm – to be obliviously disregarding of the always lingering threat of castration, a disregard that will lead inevitably to an unwitting castration. When a powerful man at the head of an organisation comes to think his power is innate, and loses sight of the process by which he has prior inscribed that power upon himself, it is then that he ceases to have a phallus, instead becoming one. It shall not be long before he becomes a clown-like figure of ridicule to his subordinates who see him stomping around his office with cocksure confidence while they undermine him by quietly fiddling the accounts for their own private ends, his embodying of the phallus exposing what is to the phallus-embodied a blinding gap between the phallic symbol and the foundation that before gave it its very power. The man castrates himself, becomes detached in his arrogance, and soon those with better control of their phallic apparatus shall usurp him.

So what this leads to is a simple social observation. Next time you hear someone bombast and bastard-like cursed as being a ‘dickhead’ for their social short-sightedness or failure to grasp their own obnoxious tendency, take a moment to congratulate the person doing the cursing, not only for their upfront criticism of the offending individual – swear words are always a comfort - but also for their astute psycho-analytical insight into the social mapping of phallic behaviour, the shift of phallic symbolism in the psychic framework of the individual accused, and their acknowledgement of man’s deep-rooted and unerring fear of castration. Similarly, if someone calls you a dickhead, take a moment to think about why. It's probably because you are one.