254 Thomas Bolin draws upon Freud’s early work on parent-child relationships. Before he developed the notion of the Oedipus Complex (which for Girard is an unnecessary limiting of a basic insight concerning rivalry) Freud noted the following paradox at the heart of the parent-child relationship. On the one hand, the child is told to be like the parent and so to look to the parent as a model of behavior. On the other the child is simultaneously told not to be like the parent and so to deny any aspirations toward the parents’ rights and responsibilities (39). Borrowing a phrase from the study of schizophrenia by Gregory Bateson, Girard expresses this paradox as “the double bind”, which may be put succinctly: “Taken as model, imitate me; and as rival, do not imitate me” (40). Desire, and the resulting conflict, are thus the necessary outcomes of mimesis. If one is to be like another, then one must desire what the other desires. Doing so amounts to nothing less than the desire on the part of the imitating party to replace its model. Imitation becomes rivalry; flattery becomes aggression. Girard conceptualizes this relationship in terms of a triangle between the subordinate, who desires to be like the model; the object, which is the thing desired, and the mediator, the superior who commands both imitation and distinction. In Girard’s terms, these three parts of the triangle are: 1) the subject, who desires 2) the object, that which is desired but is the possession of 3) the mediator, so called because it is only through the mediator, as superior commanding imitation, that the subject becomes aware of the object as desirable. The artificial distinction made by the subject concerning the object and the mediator is often a necessary guard against the subject, as subordinate, facing the reality that its desire is really to replace the mediator. Yet paradoxically, at the same time it also allows the subject to view the mediator as separate from the desired object, and an obstacle that prevents the fulfillment of the subject’s desire. This separation of the object and the subject’s focus on it intensifies to such a degree that the object is invested with a reality above and beyond that of the subject’s. This creates what Girard calls “metaphysical desire”, i.e., the view of the object as possessing infinite capacity for desirability and fulfillment (41). (39) Violence, 169-174. (40) Things Hidden, 291-293. (41) Things Hidden, 296-297. This is reminiscent of P. TILLICH’s discussion of “ultimate concern”, and of the danger of making finite realities objects of ultimate concern (Dynamics of Faith [New York 1957] 1-29. For Tillich, “the