Susan Schwartz

        Absent Father Effect on a Daughter

…I sit

Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,

Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:

Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?   

          Conversation Among the Ruins by Sylvia Plath

          Father images appear in our collective and personal psyches through books, theories, mythology, fairytales and literature and he takes various roles depending on the culture. Here we reflect on the former norm of absence and the psychological impasse arising from father absence. 

          We know that the self becomes itself in relation to another. This archetypal, developmental and relational patterning includes a father figure. It involves experiencing him as a love object with relatedness, support and his valuing to the child. When he is absent and the need for him unmet a daughter’s natural flow is distorted. Here the focus is slanted on his betrayal, the lack of fulfilling the good paternal promise, the support and loved deprived. Personality integration depends on comprehending the wounds as the viability of the self is affected by the impact of father absence and lack.

         The central premise is that the absence of the father is harmful not only due to the absence but more to the presence of the absence, affecting a daughter in body, mind and soul. There is his actual non-presence physically, or very limited presence comprised of emotional absence and lack of relatedness. Without him there can develop a foreclosure on object relatedness fueled by the conviction that to be open to another is a risk of psychological annihilation (Solomon, 1998, p. 228).

The developmental need is to identify with a father figure in a relationship where a daughter is recognized as separate. Many are deprived of the alchemy of engagement with a father and even in therapy they do not quickly bring up or focus on him. He is blank. This might come from fear of him with no safety or getting close. Or, his absence so taken for granted that the efforts to forget or ignore the feelings masked the effects from his absence, creating yet more absence. One might not realize for years the lack or even the need of his good presence. Or, perhaps he said he was interested but not able to be there and he said his absence did not mean lack of love. So, what did his absence mean? 

         There are complex dynamics when a father has been emotionally absent, even if physically present. Child rearing practices in the past ignored the effects when he is not there or there and not there at the same time. An absence of passion lingers from the noxious childhood experiences that originally forced the self into hiding. A series of identifications and internalizations with external sources of environmental nourishment are needed to substitute for and constructed around the origins of the internal emptiness (Solomon, 2004, p. 642).

The father represents an archetypal pattern, “manifestations of a deeper layer of the unconscious where the images common to humanity lie (Jung, 1954, par. 228). His absence fosters living through the masculine mind leading to one-sided development. The feminine comes to hold limited value. Patriarchal domination castrates men as well by justifying their lack of emotional development. Countless generations of fathers had no time or emotional accountability to participate in family life. The lack of fathers' emotional relationship to themselves and others currently contributes to broken homes, failed societal values, and increased violence. Moreover, the untouched space around fathers culturally, personally, and psychologically submerges their influence into the unconscious. 

Jung referred to this when he contended nothing exerts a stronger effect on children than the unlived life of the parent. He said the unconscious repetition of the family pattern could be disastrous; likened to psychological original sin (Jung, 1963, par. 232). Too few opportunities for good experiences between a father and daughter pass on a legacy of non-involvement and personal detachment. Without sufficient emotional connection attachment becomes difficult, inhibits satisfaction in relationships and love becomes a difficulty not a pleasure. 

The following quote gives another idea about the father as archetype and its workings on the psyche. “Because our culture is a patriarchy the very air, the boundaries, the contents of the personal unconscious psyche, and the complete cast of the collective psyche, are full of The Man: his image, his history, his definitions, his requirements, his expectations, his needs, his desires, his threats, his power, his laws, his religions, his gods, his money, and his ambivalent, unrealistic image of her” (Cowan, 2004, p. 12).

          The father who has no capacity to relate to the child's mind and emotions has a direct behavioral or emotional impact (Knox, 2010, p. 132). A woman with an absent father says she is numb from too much stress. She often cannot speak or know what she feels. She is locked up inside. She knows she avoids conflict, avoids asking for or getting what she needs and is definitely not assertive. She does not decide. She vacillates and is worried she will offend, worried someone will accuse her, get mad or put her down and she will crumble. 

The absence of her father has left her without, closed down, unaccepted and feeling excluded, admitting no other in. There is no knowledge of being thought about by the father and no father reflecting back a sense of self. She did not experience being seen as herself and therefore had trouble finding herself in relation to others. She was trapped in an airless and enclosed space (Solomon, 1998, p. 234).

A father’s neglect can contribute to internal vacuity, vulnerability and lack of psychological connection. These manifest as melancholy and passivity, avoidance of spirit. The person suffers a loss of meaning, inability to repair the mourned object or awaken the lost desire. The identification is with the vacuum or the gap that has been left behind from the paternal lack. It is this loss, “arrested in the capacity to love…sharing is forbidden. In effect the child stays with the dead father, isolated and with no one else (Green, 1983, p.156). Attachment forms to what is missing, the gap, the absence and what remains is “an essentially conflictual, ambiguous nature of desire, which is conceivable as the desire of the desire of the Other” (Green, 1979, p. 69)…”The reference is to the non-existence, the void, the emptiness, the blankness…even if the object appears later its realness is related to its non-existence” (Green, 1998, p. 218). 

When a father cannot fulfill the needs for love and affirmation, self-denigrating habits and moods develop, low self-worth, hesitancy in the world and avoidance of intimacy. This negative energy creates self-isolation and both the masculine and feminine aspects betray the unfolding of personality. The absent father can become an internalized persecutory father figure and contributes to a hostile inner world of rage, numbness, or manic reactions obstructing inspiration and arresting self-integration. (Kavaler-Adler, 2000, p. 40).

For example, a woman dreams her father put his hand on her thigh so forcefully it burned her flesh to the bone. Branded, she cannot rise against the resistance of his hand. Later, she thinks about filling the wound with concrete. How can this wound heal? Concrete will make her flesh inflexible, heavy, and non-human. The branding gives her a phallic father wound imprinted for life. Her response in the dream will make it more concretized, more rigid. The dreamer registers no horror at the dream’s ghoulish image, neither rage nor defiance at her father, but passively accepts this as her fate. From the absence of a father, a woman can develop a father-complex that becomes like a demon holding her in its clutches (Leonard, 1983, p. 88).

She needs what is referred to in the I Ching, hexagram # 18, “Work on What has been Spoiled” [Decay]. Throughout the hexagram is a call for “setting right what has been spoiled by the father”. This happens through the process of destruction and construction and entails facing reality, mucking in the decay and gradually fashioning an expanded father image. But, when there has not been enough nurturance and too much guilt, sorrow or betrayal one is unable to access the strength needed for the task. Paradoxically, these are the very wounds opening the world of self-discovery and the impetus for movement through the problems.   

Jung, (1956, par. 253) spoke about the “inertia of the libido, which will relinquish no object of the past, but would like to hold it fast forever…(an) original passive state where the libido is arrested in the objects of childhood.” This becomes more difficult when the Eros, or relatedness aspects are linked to an absent, neglectful, yet overarching father. His abandonment through absence leads to fixation and entrapment with him. Unable to free the libido, the wounds from the lack of connection with him do not easily heal. When the father figure has no limits by giving too much or too little, or is a rigid disciplinarian encased in a distant and foreboding authority position, a daughter cannot feel personally or lovingly touched by him. Instead, the daughter feels betrayed, without individual identity and deprived of authority or voice. If he is emotionally absent or physically unavailable, no guidance is imparted but a vacuum of bewilderment forms, a void that fills with various adversities. And, as an extension of this the father figure can turn malicious and malignant to the feminine through internalizing his sadomasochistic enactments (Kavaler-Adler, 2000, p. 85). 

          Paternal deficiency affects the formation of a daughter’s femininity and masculinity. Internal disconnection evolves from a father who was unapproachable and surrounded by psychological silence. Father’s lack of love and care becomes how she views herself with lack and absence. These negative images over time collapse her life capacity and undermine self-security. There is no feeling of containment establishing peace of mind when the father is absent. She must relinquish coherence for incoherence as the world is not as was expected. (Britton, 1998, p. 79) The daughter attempts to incorporate the attributes, interests etc. associated with the paternal image. Yet, the disappointment brings on depression and the disillusionment. Without him life within oneself is difficult; being with others is also difficult. She varies between being both insensitive and hyper sensitive to the deeper emotions, easily vulnerable. 

          If a daughter is demeaned, without support by her father, psychological development is damaged and she loses a pathway to herself. Rather than experiencing the full range of her senses, she learns constraint and acts in mechanical ways. Various modes of emotional protection and avenues of psychological escape are defense.  The emotional distance from herself and others encases her in a suit of armor. Life reactions can become numbed with father absence and blankness of response. She becomes desensitized with subtler emotionality muted, aware of her self in situations of intensity or crisis. 

This type of father is unavailable, unsupportive and not present as a partner for the mother. This leaves the daughter with disappointment, promises unmet, without models for coupling, working things out and love broken. (Samuels, 1993, p. 73) Dependency needs are denied and the mutual reliance between partners not enacted.

The attitudes towards the father figure, his position and image as untouchable perpetuate any examination of relationship qualities emotionally, psychologically, culturally and physically. Men formerly could justify their lack of emotional relatedness. Countless generations of fathers had no father models. Girls whose childhood is characterized by father-absence grow up with the paternal role unfulfilled, unreliable and unknown and the male not trusted. Yet, she also might idealize him and the masculine just because it is unknown.

          Feeling puny and disappointing, she lives in psychological submission to the father. Father hate and love are polarized keeping she and her father psychologically intertwined yet disconnected. She is cowed by the physical and psychological absence of him that in turn becomes an exaggerated presence. 

        She unconsciously assumes her father’s language of internal destruction and self-hate, failure and inadequacy. The validation sought continues to be lacking, eventually she may give up trying, disconnected from herself and others as well, and in many ways isolated and lost.  There also is the issue of damaged connection to the body as the instincts are off, the spirit dampened without genuineness.     

          All this leaves her questioning how to be. She finds herself unable to use her talents fully, taking the role of second in one way or another, expecting less even as she succeeds. She holds some internally imposed ideal, a feeling that frustrates yet has been with her for as long as she can remember. Out of touch with her femininity, she is caught by the personal and cultural pressures that worship the unattainable, unrealistic and inhuman ideals that contribute to the lack of mature female models in our society. 

          A father unconscious, depressed, preoccupied disturbs the object cathexis. The self became buried within and cannot summon the energy to make a full attempt at life. Like a puppet, deprived of independent action, this woman is vulnerable, and then erased, unable to forge her own image. Self-hatred is at work in the desire to be rid of her body--because it is female. Because her natural impulses to express were stifled, she has anxiety about relaxing or being intimate. She finds it difficult to be still or comfortable due to a mental vigilance of thoughts, actions and compulsive preoccupations. She often cannot hear in therapy and is suffocated by feelings. 

         Paradoxically, like portrayed in the fairytales, it is the hurt from the father betrayal that forces the break from him. Painfully, the impetus for movement beyond the father and original family enclosure originates from the father unconsciousness and lack.  

         When the father figure has no limits and is either all-giving or a rigid disciplinarian encased in a distant and foreboding authority structure, the girl has not been personally touched by the good enough masculine. When his emotion is absent or when the father is physically unavailable, no guidance is imparted but rather a vacuum of bewilderment is formed which naturally and often negatively under such conditions seeks to be filled. 

Absent Father Complex

         Knowledge of the particular make-up of the father complex is significant because like any complex it contains the images pertaining to the unconscious situation. These often are conflictual emotions difficult to reconcile with the conscious mind. A complex has varying degrees of autonomy from hardly disturbing functioning to being strong enough to rule the personality. Because it presents as a well-organized but split off part of the personality, the complex feels like an independent source of energy at work within the psyche. When unconscious she becomes controlled by the complex and the problem can go unresolved for generations.              

         Diane began analysis with the following dream: "I was going to be killed by my father.  I tried to stall for time.  He had already killed my sister that made me mad and sad.  I tried to remain cool on the outside as he pointed a gun at me.  I grabbed the gun through a struggle and ran and ran and woke up."

         In this dream her life is at stake and she runs away, but to where we do not know. The leaving is crucial to wrestle her self from the male/ father/killer. Part of the feminine self or the anima/shadow in the form of the sister has already been killed. Diane is now in danger of annihilation. The masculine has been so unconscious within Diane that this part has amassed a great amount of destructive power in an unconscious relationship devouring the personality. She is a portrayal of the person whose unfolding of the self early on “met a blank and hostile environment so misattuned that the person felt unseen and/or noxiouslyrelated to” (Solomon, 2007, p. 198). 

         The dream illustrates the understanding of feminine psychology brings attention to the father. He is part of what signifies woman's feeling relationship to man, to men in general, to culture, and connecting to the more complete psyche. 

         In the meantime she is demasculated when the masculine remains unconscious. Emma Jung said the following, "What women have to overcome in relation to the animus is the lack of self-confidence and resistance of inertia… Without this sort of revolt, no matter what she has to suffer as a consequence, she will never be free of the power of the tyrant, never come to find herself" (1969, p. 23). 

         Obedience to the male reduces her. She cannot only rely on being sweet for in reality it will not suffice. The sickening spell of the absent father complex empties her of self-definition. Betrayed and abandoned by the father is a rupture representing the end of ignorance, as reality has to be consciously recognized. Giving him excuses, taking blame or making him less important does not work. Severing from the father psychologically and physically is part of finding the inner resources, stamina and inspiration. 

A woman brings to therapy favorite passages from the books she read and wanted to share them with the idea to be understood, her life witnessed. Many dreams show her wanting to be in the therapist’s house, feeling that she is intruding, wanting to attend the parties there yet feeling ashamed for how intensely she desires this and how excluded she feels. 

 “Change occurs only perilously…there are positive forces that seek to move the psyche into the future, there are powerful retrograde forces that seek to prevent such movement. These…often create the experience of a shared area of tumult and turmoil that requires engagement from both parties in the analytic consulting room” (Solomon, 2007, p. 142).  All this indicates the early deficient experiences occurring before the child can process the onslaughts that were both too high and too low in physical and psychological arousal (Solomon, 2004, p. 646). 

This woman learned to diminish her needs for being understood and appreciated by her father, a man who was absent from her life until early adulthood. He never reached out to her. His being gone was a mystery. She longed for him and secretly inhabited what she called her melancholic mind. She experienced alienation and difference from others, feeling doomed to an indescribable loneliness. She could not get rid of the pall of depression. She believed if her father did not want her, who would? 

The personality seeks self-regulation as the therapeutic process collects the dissociated fragments and brings them into relationship. She yearns for the experiences of attunement formerly missed. The term yearn poignantly expresses the strength of early noxious experiences that forced the self away. Here was enacted the displacement onto her interior self from the absent father, who was an impenetrable and tomb-like figure. Lacking the basics, she said she needed a ‘how to be a person manual’.     

         When the necessary paternal validation has been lacking, she becomes self-absorbed but without self-connection. The foundation to one self remains unknown and she is unaware of herself as the source of her reflection. Consciousness of self acknowledges the source as the self.              

          The absence of a father placed her in an impossible dilemma. Jean Knox, Jungian analyst explains this as follows. “In order to be loveable and loved, she must cease to exist and so must destroy all her aliveness in a constant struggle against being who she is. This conflict and resistance becomes a kind of self-torture. On the other hand, to experience oneself as a real person, with a sense of self and a capacity to make her own choices brings the risk of violent retaliation...It is an irresolvable impasse, which eventually leads the daughter to a state of despair. To love means to exist and to want to have one's independent existence recognized and responded to by the loved other”. (Knox, 2004, p. )

Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong.. 

          Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

           The quality of connection between father and daughter shapes body awareness, satisfaction and care. The more his withdrawal of love, rejection, both physical and emotional, the more one can become abandoning and anxious, one runs the risk of negativity towards all bodies, mostly one’s own. “There is a huge gap or silence over the part played by the father’s body in an early direct relationship with a baby” (Samuels, 1993, p. 137). 

Acquiring such patterns and behaviors, she grows increasingly lost. A daughter learns to be inhibited, emotional development and adulthood feigned rather than realized. She might be sexually frozen, unconsciously preserved in a childish state, appearing helpless and dependent or defensively aggressive. Psychologically, she is affectively deadened and unable to move out of singularity and insularity to establish the twoness necessary for intimacy. She is either so self focused the other is not included or so other focused she is eliminated, the duality and mutuality unmet. "She must confront the perverted masculine aspect and leave the role of innocence which may manifest itself, as helplessness, dependence, being a victim and instead assume responsibility for the strength she really has" (Leonard, 1983).

          When the childhood paradise is too early destroyed from his absence, it can feel like a crime against the personality, often imposing persecutory actions and internal vengeance. Marking an unfinished area of the personality and originating from the emotional absence, the resultant negative paternal complex adversely affects a child’s confidence, promotes idealization of others and destroys initiative. One feels nostalgia, regret, guilt, resentment and anger. The psychological process of canceling his claim on the spirit and separating from the forces related to his absence can also threaten to destroy. 

The search for the father as the lost love object is a dominant psychological theme. The father absence brings a shattering, depriving the child of an essential part.  Insufficient father nurturance creates guilt, sorrow and/or betrayal leaving the daughter to repair the damage with various perfectionism. These indicate the reign of a false and/or incomplete self. Christopher Bollas, American psychoanalyst, wrote that the person deadens himself and his psyche due to the deadened object within (Lane, 1979, p.74). The effect of the absent father leaves the daughter without an inner holding place. Life becomes marked by disconnection to self and others.  

A psychic space shuts when a father is not there. The child experiences gradual failure, a non-existence marked by blankness, emptiness and void. One is rudderless, betrayed, disillusioned; the damage imposed on memory. “Absence can only be borne if it is recognized as such” (Kohon, 1999, p. 165). In the word absence there is the hope of a return of the presence…The power of the human mind with its infinite capacity will create new objects (Kohon, 1999, p. 218-219).

Jung wrote at the end of his essay, “The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual” as follows: “It is to be hoped that experience in the years to come will sink deeper shafts into this obscure territory, on which I have been able to shed but a fleeting light…” (1961, p. 301).

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