Father regression: Clinical narratives and theoretical reflections

Abstract

The author deals with love‐hate enthrallment and submission to a primitive paternal object. This is a father‐son relationship that extends through increasing degrees of ‘primitiveness’ or extremeness, and is illustrated through three different constellations that constitute a continuum. One pole of the continuum encompasses certain male patients who show a loving, de‐individuated connection to a father experienced as trustworthy, soft, and in need of protection. Further along the continuum is the case of a transsexual patient whose analysis revealed an intense ‘God‐transference’, a bondage to an idealized, feared, and ostensibly protective father‐God introject. A great part of this patient's analysis consisted in a fi erce struggle to liberate himself from this fi gure. The other end of the continuum is occupied by religious terrorists, who exemplify the most radical thralldom to a persecutory, godly object, a regressive submission that banishes woman and enthrones a cruel superego, and that ends in destruction and self‐destruction. Psychoanalytic thinking has traditionally dealt with the oedipal father and recently with the nurturing father, but there is a gap in thinking about the phallic, archaic father, and his relations with his son(s). The author aims at fi lling this gap, at the same time as she also raises the very question of ‘What is a father?’ linking it with literary and religious themes.

Key words:

• archaic
• father
• perversion
• regression
• religion
• sacrifi ce
• separation
• son
• submission

1. This text combines and modifies two presentations:one read at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR),15 November 2002;the other presented at the Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association,20 January 2004.

1. This text combines and modifies two presentations:one read at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR),15 November 2002;the other presented at the Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association,20 January 2004.

Notes

1. This text combines and modifies two presentations:one read at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR),15 November 2002;the other presented at the Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association,20 January 2004.