Father complex
Encyclopedia
Father complex in psychology
is a complex
- a group of unconscious
associations, or a strong unconscious impulses - which specifically pertains to the image or archetype
of the father
. These impulses may be either positive (admiring and seeking out older father figures) or negative (distrusting or fearful).
Freud, and psychoanalysis
after him, saw 'a Father complex - a male child's feeling of ambivalence
towards his father' - as 'one of the aspects of the Oedipus complex
'. By contrast, 'Jung
's view was that either a male or a female could have a positive or negative...father complex'.
In 1909, Freud made "The Father Complex and the Solution of the Rat Idea" the centrepiece of his study of the Rat Man
- placing 'a renewal of his ancient struggle against his father's authority' at the heart of his compulsions
. In 1911 he wrote that 'in the case of Schreber
we find ourselves once again on the familiar ground of the father-complex'; while in between, in 1910, Freud had written that "in male patients the most important resistances in the treatment seem to be derived from the father complex and to express themselves in fear of the father, in defiance of the father and in disbelief of the father". The father complex also stood at the conceptual core of Totem and Taboo
(1912-3); and even after the break with Jung, when "complex" became a term to be handled with care among Freudians, 'the father complex w[as] very much in the ascendent in Freud's theorizing' in the twenties - 'the father complex...coloured by a peculiar ambivalence' appearing prominently in The Future of an Illusion (1927), for example.
Others in Freud's circle wrote freely of the complex's 'ambivalent feelings and aims. On the one hand I wished to punish the bad father; on the other I hoped to be welcomed back as the prodigal son'. However by 1946, and Otto Fenichel
's compendious summary of the first psychoanalytic half-century, the father complex tended to be subsumed under the broader scope of the Oedipus complex as a whole, as with the way 'certain types of authoritative fathers by their behavior block any possibility of the child's becoming independent. A patient, forty years of age, with an intense ambivalent fixation upon his tyrannical father, having had a cold, received a wire from his father from a distant city: "Because of uncertain weather, do not leave house today"'.
Jung had also continued (after the two men's split) to use the father complex to illuminate father/son relations, as with the father-dependent patient Jung termed 'a fils a papa. His father is still too much the guarantor of his existence'. Jung noted for instance how 'in men, a positive father-complex very often produces a certain credulity with regard to authority'. However he and his followers were equally prepared to use the concept to explain female psychology, describing how 'a negative father complex, for example, is likely to make one feel that all men are harsh, judgmental, emotionally violent and unwilling to work cooperatively'.
'Having for years used the term "father complex", and having supplied flamboyant evidence in his own conduct to support the theory, Jung now rejected it as Viennese name calling'. To give a 'Freudian interpretation...[of] the short years of intimacy with his "father" in Vienna: the oedipal son had struggled free, at once suffering and inflicting suffering in the process'.
's stress upon the mother, what psychoanalysis tended to single out became 'the switched-off father...a search for a father'. It has even been suggested from a French perspective that 'the expression father complex has almost entirely disappeared from usage in contemporary psychoanalysis'; but while among post-Lacanians 'the metapsychological conception of the father and the "father complex" (Vatercomplex) itself varies', it still remains a matter of considerable debate. A postmodern dictionary of psychoananalysis is nonetheless more likely to have an entry for 'Father hunger: term coined by James Herzog (1980, 2001) to denote the growing son's longing and need for contact (including physical contact) with his father or a father substitute' than for "Father complex" itself.
Jungians such as Erich Neumann
would use the concept for longer to explore the father/son relationship and its implications for issues of authority, noting how 'a reactionary identification with the father, which lacks the living, dialectical struggle between the generations' could breed a 'sterile conservatism': 'the reverse side of this father complex - which by no means implies liberation from it - is to be found in the eternal son
, the permanent revolutionary'. They were also able to apply the same analysis to the type of woman whose 'negative father complex made it impossible for her to welcome [a man's] suggestions' - pointing out how 'an authority complex can derive from the father complex' unless the two can be strictly delimited. The authority complex is indeed a feature widely to be observed, especially perhaps in men whose father was oppressive or powerful. With time, however, it may be possible to cease to exaggerate the influence of the archetypal "father"; and to accept the archetype - and with it one's own authority - within oneself.
...the shift from: What will I get? to: What can I offer? '.
Eating disorders expert Margo D. Maine introduced the concept of “father hunger” in her book Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters and Food, with particular emphasis on the relationship with the daughter. Maine examined the longing that all children have for connection with fathers, and how an unmet father hunger influences disordered eating and other mental illnesses.
In contemporary psychoanalytic theory, James M. Herzog’s Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children addresses the unconscious longing experienced by many males and females for an involved father; and the importance of fatherly provisions for both sons and daughters during their respective developmental stages is examined in the writings of Michael J. Diamond (see My Father Before Me, WW Norton, 2007).
noted for example of 'Einstein...everything about him appealed to my father complex, my yearning for a protector and leader'. Not everybody was so enthusiastic about the complex, however. When his partner told D. H. Lawrence
'"It's the father complex, it's..." "Rubbish, Frieda!", Lawrence jumped in. "You have a fool's complex...with your smatter of Freud"'.
'Constable
had to destroy the landscape as an object to be related to in the way his father intended for him....He destroyed the identity
offered to him, but it survives, refound in his identity as an artist'
Bob Dylan
's choice of name has itself been linked to the father complex. '"Bob Dylan" is a made-up name, and according to one theory represents the son's assassination of his father...an originating murder to make a name for himself '. Only a couple of decades after that choice of name, however, in his post-Sixties 'battle to escape canonization..."It's rough times", Bob commented during one of our talks. "Everybody needs a father"'.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
is a complex
Complex (psychology)
A complex is a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status...
- a group of unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
associations, or a strong unconscious impulses - which specifically pertains to the image or archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
of the father
Father
A father, Pop, Dad, or Papa, is defined as a male parent of any type of offspring. The adjective "paternal" refers to father, parallel to "maternal" for mother...
. These impulses may be either positive (admiring and seeking out older father figures) or negative (distrusting or fearful).
Freud, and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
after him, saw 'a Father complex - a male child's feeling of ambivalence
Ambivalence
Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having thoughts and/or emotions of both positive and negative valence toward someone or something. A common example of ambivalence is the feeling of...
towards his father' - as 'one of the aspects of the Oedipus complex
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
'. By contrast, 'Jung
Jung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
's view was that either a male or a female could have a positive or negative...father complex'.
Freud and Jung
Use of the term father complex emerged from the fruitful collaboration of Freud and Jung during the first decade of the twentieth century - the time when Freud wrote of neurotics 'that, as Jung has expressed it, they fall ill of the same complexes against which we normal people struggle as well'.In 1909, Freud made "The Father Complex and the Solution of the Rat Idea" the centrepiece of his study of the Rat Man
Rat Man
"Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose 'case history' was published as Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose ['Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis']...
- placing 'a renewal of his ancient struggle against his father's authority' at the heart of his compulsions
Compulsions
Compulsions is a Drama web series which debuted Dec 01, 2009 on Dailymotion.com. Compulsions is the internal character story of Mark Sandler , an admitted Sadist leading a life with a dull desk job...
. In 1911 he wrote that 'in the case of Schreber
Daniel Paul Schreber
Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who suffered from what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox. He described his second mental illness , making also a brief reference to the first illness in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness...
we find ourselves once again on the familiar ground of the father-complex'; while in between, in 1910, Freud had written that "in male patients the most important resistances in the treatment seem to be derived from the father complex and to express themselves in fear of the father, in defiance of the father and in disbelief of the father". The father complex also stood at the conceptual core of Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud published in German in 1913 under the title Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker...
(1912-3); and even after the break with Jung, when "complex" became a term to be handled with care among Freudians, 'the father complex w[as] very much in the ascendent in Freud's theorizing' in the twenties - 'the father complex...coloured by a peculiar ambivalence' appearing prominently in The Future of an Illusion (1927), for example.
Others in Freud's circle wrote freely of the complex's 'ambivalent feelings and aims. On the one hand I wished to punish the bad father; on the other I hoped to be welcomed back as the prodigal son'. However by 1946, and Otto Fenichel
Otto Fenichel
Otto Fenichel was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation".Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna. Already as a very young man, when still in school, he was attracted by the circle of psychoanalysts around Freud...
's compendious summary of the first psychoanalytic half-century, the father complex tended to be subsumed under the broader scope of the Oedipus complex as a whole, as with the way 'certain types of authoritative fathers by their behavior block any possibility of the child's becoming independent. A patient, forty years of age, with an intense ambivalent fixation upon his tyrannical father, having had a cold, received a wire from his father from a distant city: "Because of uncertain weather, do not leave house today"'.
Jung had also continued (after the two men's split) to use the father complex to illuminate father/son relations, as with the father-dependent patient Jung termed 'a fils a papa. His father is still too much the guarantor of his existence'. Jung noted for instance how 'in men, a positive father-complex very often produces a certain credulity with regard to authority'. However he and his followers were equally prepared to use the concept to explain female psychology, describing how 'a negative father complex, for example, is likely to make one feel that all men are harsh, judgmental, emotionally violent and unwilling to work cooperatively'.
The Freud/Jung split
Freud and Jung were both more than willing to use the father complex as a tool to illuminate their own personal relations. As their early intimacy deepened, for example, Jung had 'found himself impelled to ask Freud "to let me enjoy your friendship not as that of equals but as that of father and son"'. In retrospect, however, Jungians would tend to concede that (beneath a positive facade) 'Jung had a negative father complex and could not refrain from questioning the "father"'s ideas'. But while through most of their relationship 'Jung preserved the stance of the favorite son, loving, only intermittently unruly', ultimately the complex exploded in both their faces, Jung accusing Freud of 'treating your pupils like patients....Meanwhile you are sitting pretty on top, as father'.'Having for years used the term "father complex", and having supplied flamboyant evidence in his own conduct to support the theory, Jung now rejected it as Viennese name calling'. To give a 'Freudian interpretation...[of] the short years of intimacy with his "father" in Vienna: the oedipal son had struggled free, at once suffering and inflicting suffering in the process'.
Postmodernism: the absent father
Whereas the father complex had originally been evolved to deal with the heavy Victorian patriarch of the early twentieth century, by the latter's close there was instead a postmodern 'preoocupation with the lost authority of the father, this nostalgia for paternal authority'. With the shift from Freud's emphasis on the father to object relations theoryObject relations theory
Object relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
's stress upon the mother, what psychoanalysis tended to single out became 'the switched-off father...a search for a father'. It has even been suggested from a French perspective that 'the expression father complex has almost entirely disappeared from usage in contemporary psychoanalysis'; but while among post-Lacanians 'the metapsychological conception of the father and the "father complex" (Vatercomplex) itself varies', it still remains a matter of considerable debate. A postmodern dictionary of psychoananalysis is nonetheless more likely to have an entry for 'Father hunger: term coined by James Herzog (1980, 2001) to denote the growing son's longing and need for contact (including physical contact) with his father or a father substitute' than for "Father complex" itself.
Jungians such as Erich Neumann
Erich Neumann (psychologist)
Erich Neumann , was a psychologist, writer, and one of Carl Jung's most gifted students.-Career:Neumann was born in Berlin. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1927. He later moved to Tel Aviv. For many years, he regularly returned to Zürich, Switzerland to give lectures at the...
would use the concept for longer to explore the father/son relationship and its implications for issues of authority, noting how 'a reactionary identification with the father, which lacks the living, dialectical struggle between the generations' could breed a 'sterile conservatism': 'the reverse side of this father complex - which by no means implies liberation from it - is to be found in the eternal son
Child (archetype)
The Child archetype, is an important Jungian archetype in Jungian psychology, first suggested by Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Recently, author Caroline Myss suggested Child, amongst four the Survival Archetypes , present in all of us...
, the permanent revolutionary'. They were also able to apply the same analysis to the type of woman whose 'negative father complex made it impossible for her to welcome [a man's] suggestions' - pointing out how 'an authority complex can derive from the father complex' unless the two can be strictly delimited. The authority complex is indeed a feature widely to be observed, especially perhaps in men whose father was oppressive or powerful. With time, however, it may be possible to cease to exaggerate the influence of the archetypal "father"; and to accept the archetype - and with it one's own authority - within oneself.
Father hunger
However Jungians as well as psychoanalysts began to explore "father hunger" as the century wore on, emphasising how 'the pangs of such parent hunger can be powerful indeed', as one is 'drawn repeatedly to..those unactualised parts of the father archetype concerned with loving guidance and support in the outer world'. The answer men are offered is 'to recognize that the way to find the father they lost is to find him in themselves and then to give him to the next generation' - a 'move into generativityGenerativity
Generativity in essence describes a self-contained system from which its user draws an independent ability to create, generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input from the system's original creators...
...the shift from: What will I get? to: What can I offer? '.
Eating disorders expert Margo D. Maine introduced the concept of “father hunger” in her book Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters and Food, with particular emphasis on the relationship with the daughter. Maine examined the longing that all children have for connection with fathers, and how an unmet father hunger influences disordered eating and other mental illnesses.
In contemporary psychoanalytic theory, James M. Herzog’s Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children addresses the unconscious longing experienced by many males and females for an involved father; and the importance of fatherly provisions for both sons and daughters during their respective developmental stages is examined in the writings of Michael J. Diamond (see My Father Before Me, WW Norton, 2007).
Cultural examples
While the notion of the "Father complex" may have moved somewhat into the psychoanalytical background, its presence in the wider culture has continued to flourish. Czeslaw MiloszCzeslaw Milosz
Czesław Miłosz was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator of Lithuanian origin and subsequent American citizenship. His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of 20 "naive" poems. He defected to the West in 1951, and his nonfiction book The Captive Mind is a classic of...
noted for example of 'Einstein...everything about him appealed to my father complex, my yearning for a protector and leader'. Not everybody was so enthusiastic about the complex, however. When his partner told D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
'"It's the father complex, it's..." "Rubbish, Frieda!", Lawrence jumped in. "You have a fool's complex...with your smatter of Freud"'.
'Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
had to destroy the landscape as an object to be related to in the way his father intended for him....He destroyed the identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
offered to him, but it survives, refound in his identity as an artist'
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's choice of name has itself been linked to the father complex. '"Bob Dylan" is a made-up name, and according to one theory represents the son's assassination of his father...an originating murder to make a name for himself '. Only a couple of decades after that choice of name, however, in his post-Sixties 'battle to escape canonization..."It's rough times", Bob commented during one of our talks. "Everybody needs a father"'.