Within the tragedy of the father’s absence from his daughter is a psychological process of self-discovery, recognizing the losses and their effects from the past and into the present. Consciously experiencing the father’s absence arouses repressed desires for love, accomplishment, and self-esteemas well as unmet needs. Uncovering them releases the obstacles, opens the inner psychic space, and the personality can expand beyond its narrowed adaptation.
We now realize that father involvement throughout life is important for a daughter to develop self-feeling, body connection, respect, care, and an inner reflective and meaningful existence. The presence of a father has a trans-generational impact on what, in Jungian analytical psychology, is called the collective unconscious. This term represents the history, symbols, reactions, and emotions we all share to some degree. Acknowledging the intricacy and ramifications of these personal and collective issues, including those related to mothers, family, and culture.
This is because even an absent father has a presence. He remains active through a myriad of cultural and psychological images, songs, myths, and tales. For instance, in fairy tales, a great sacrifice is usually required of the heroine. The daughter must leave the father and his home to grow and develop. She does not return. Along the way, she loses her naiveté, her abilities are challenged, and the capability to survive and prosper is realized. These stories, like the Grimm’s Handless Maiden fairy tale, make the point that it is an intricate path to break the visible and invisible ties to the father and his ways. On the journey, she claims the authority projected onto father/male/masculine figures and establishes her self-agency.
The father’s absence brings shattering and deprivation. A psychic space shuts when a father is not there. The daughter experiences gradual failure. It is a non-existence marked by blankness, emptiness, and void. Insufficient fatherly nurturance can lead to feelings of guiltsorrow, and/or betrayal. From this, the daughter often attempts to repair the damage by adopting various perfectionistic methods, but dissatisfaction remains.
A wedge can develop between a loving and reparative self and a hating and persecutory self. Without a father, a daughter grows up in a twilight state, non-differentiated or embroiled in an internal tug of war between wanting to come alive and pulling back. Compulsive and negative thoughts and behaviors kill off desires, feelings, and bring discomfort with oneself and others. The body becomes an object, subject to self-betrayal, denialand always something wrong. The acts of satisfying hungers, taking things in, and indulging in pleasure become distorted, and obsessions take over. She becomes disembodied. The trouble is signaled by the frantic emphasis on the persona and ego, in which she assumes a false self.
Tension, anxiety, fear of fragmentation, and feeling without creative expression are the result of attachment to the absent father. She develops coldness and impenetrability. It may become so severe that she severs all contact with the world and is consumed by an implacable helplessness, impotence, and passivity. The real self remains silent and isolated in a state of non-communication with the rest of the personality.
Identified with the father and his absence, yet needing his love, she can become unconscious and lack her authenticity. She adopts a brittle, crystalline quality, and there is an aura of aloofness behind which the real person exists, but in an untouchable domain. Trapped under his spell, she lives provisionally—time passing without meaning or purpose. She wanders, unable to separate from his influence. To access her soul, she must demystify the bond with an absent father based on illusions and wishes. A daughter goes through a natural stage of idealizing her father. However, if he remains ideal, she cannot grasp her reality. The idealization can leave her helpless, submissive, and masochistic. Carl Jung, psychiatrist of the twentieth century, commented, “The fear of life is a real panic…It is the deadly fear of the instinctive, the unconscious, the inner one who is cut off from life by a continual shrinking back from reality” (Jung, 1956, par. 298). With knowledge, the father can become conscious, and the negative impact can be reduced.
Dreams can help restore missing pieces of the personality. As an example, a woman client dreamt her father put his hand on her thigh so forcefully that 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 the father who wounds, imprinted on her. Yes, she said he is heavy-handed, as the dream commented. Yet, the dreamer registers no horror at the dream’s ghoulish image, neither rage nor defiance at the father, but passively accepts this as her fate.
The dream is an example of a consuming, negative, authoritarian father. And, to this dreamer, it was associated to her father. She realized she had difficulty attaching in life. There was a vacuum at the center, surrounded by feelings of loneliness and solitude. This daughter, who lacked good fathering, retains an uncomfortable, aimless, and searching nature. To correct the situation, the unconscious calls through the dream to give her voice and action.
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Healing
Uncovering the denials, the fantasies that protect, and the bonds that keep old, inhibiting roles in place are part of the tasks in analytical depth work. Inner work and focus disrupt memorydisturb the status quo, and pierce the psychological complexes. The process of questioning and self-exploration uncovers elements of desire, passion, and suffering—all essential ingredients for renewal in the personality. The wounds open to self-discovery, providing movement out of old, entrenched positions—personally, psychologically, and culturally. A daughter learns to discover her authenticity and release herself from the destructive and absent father attachment. She then opts for voice and action, not silence and obedience to old ways.
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