The Role of the Father in Anorexia

The literature on anorexia often overlooks the important role of the father in the complex etiology of the illness. This paper examines the father's role and how it impacts on the psychological development of his anorectic daughter. Premorbid and comorbid personality components such as dependency, perfectionism, and high achievement, are shown to be influenced by the father. His role is again significant at the onset of adolescence, when his daughter needs his affirmation as she struggles to make the transition from childhood to womanhood. Socialization of the sexes is implicated in hindering the father/daughter relationship, as is the father's fear of sexual attraction to his developing daughter. The effect of a patriarchal society on the development of anorexia in girls is also explored. The nature of the society we live in is thought to further complicate the anorectic girl's relationship with her father.     

Anna Freud's Analysis by Her Father: The Assault on the Self

Sigmund Freud's analysis of his daughter, Anna, continues to create many troubling questions: For example, in terms of his own theory did Freud envisage the transference reactions of his daughter in her analysis with him? How are we to understand Anna Freud as a well-trained analyst in terms of the inevitable limitations of her analytic experience with her father? Menaker explores the ethical effects of this analysis in regard to fundamental problems in psychoanalytic theory and therapy.     

Revenge of the fathers Incest and the male therapist

Abstract

This paper argues that the socio-psychological foundation of incestuous relations between father and daughter resides in the primordial rivalry between father and son and is a manifestation of the property relations existing between them throughout the period of patriarchy. After an attempt to trace this rivalry along a path through Western civilization by summarizing evidence from both religious and mythological sources, I introduce it into our own times by using two case illustrations from my own clinical work. Here I claim that when a male counsellor/therapist engages a sexually abused female patient he, at the same time, encounters the incestuous father in a potentially rivalrous struggle over the patient. For genuine healing to take place in the patient, the counsellor/therapist must form an alliance with the father and utilize his hidden value in enhancing his own therapeutic capability.

I began by stating that particular clinical complexities exist when male therapists engage with female clients who have been the victims of paternal incest. I then postulated the idea that the socio-psychological foundation of such relationships is the primordial rivalry between father and son and is in fact a particular manifestation of the property relations existing between them. I then traced this father/son rivalry along its path down through Western civilization via Jerusalem and the Judaic/Christian religions, and Athens with its early creation myth, and the somewhat later myth of Oedipus. I then pursued the course of its influence to our own times, to the incestuous father/daughter relationship, and, using examples from my own clinical work, I attempted to show how this father/son rivalry survives as a powerfully pervasive influence in the clinical relationship between the female patient who has experienced paternal incest and her male therapist.     

Mothers,daughters, and the socialization of political women

Using biographical data from what we call a focused sample of 36 elite women, the conjugal power structure of their parental families is examined to assess its impact upon the development of political women. The results revealed that the mothers of elite political women scored higher on indices of independence both within the family structure and outside the home than did the mothers of elite nonpolitical women. The fathers of the elite political women tended to show more respect and love for their wives than did the fathers of the elite nonpolitical women. The fathers of elite political women also tended to view their work as interesting and fun rather than as just a job. The elite political women were also less likely to have brothers, particularly older brothers, than the nonpolitical women. This finding suggests that female involvement in politics is not necessarily derived from cross-sex-role preferences. The study suggests that in terms of political socialization, the father's behavior and achievements are not as critical for his daughter as they are for his son. Their importance for the daughter must be filtered through the effect the father and his behavior have on the mother and the sex-role ideology held by the family.     

The pitch of “real” and “rhetorical” questions directed by a father to his daughter: A longitudinal case study

A longitudinal study of a father and his daughter examined pitch-variation of “real” and “rhetorical” questions. Although the father asked “real” and “rhetorical” questions from the start of the recordings, he did not distinguish them through differential pitch height until the baby was 15 months old.     

Fathers and daughters: their relationship and personality characteristics associated with the daughter's smoking behavior

This study examined the interrelationships of domains (i.e., sets) of paternal personality and father-daughter relationship variables and daughter characteristics and their impact on the daughter's smoking. In addition, the interactive effects of individual father and daughter variables on the daughter's smoking were studied. Female college student volunteers (N = 403) and their fathers were given closed-ended questionnaires that included a number of scales assessing father and daughter characteristics. Results indicated that the domains of father and daughter variables each had a direct impact on the daughter's smoking (an independent model). Interactive findings revealed that daughter protective factors (those conducive to her not smoking) could offset the negative impact of paternal risk factors (those conducive to her smoking), and that, to a lesser extent, daughter protective factors further enhanced the positive effect of father protective variables.     

Excitations of Vengeance: The We-Ness of History

The author responds to Frie’s paper by examining our denial of our own perpetrator legacies, both personally and culturally. In reckoning with this legacy, we, too, can be bewildered, as Frie is, by his central question: How can grandfather be loving and also a Nazi? Can we go on loving a beloved grandfather who wore the Nazi uniform? How do we metabolize this predicament? The author pursues these questions by excavating her own complementary history. Her father was an American Jewish soldier during World War II; he witnessed the liberation of Dachau. Through narratives of vengeance, the author’s father neutralizes his impotence and reconstitutes himself. How do his stories infuse a daughter’s idealization? What happens when these threads meet Frie’s history and concern? How do we construct a new I–Thou out of this dialogue across history and atrocity?     

Observers' reaction to parent-child intimacy

A study was carried out to examine how people react to acts of intimacy between parent and child. Based on an extensive series of studies reported in 1998 by Reis who found less intimate interactions between two men who are friends than between men or women or between two women who are friends, it was reasoned that intimacy between two males may violate norms of our culture, so it was predicted that people would react less favorably to intimacy between father and son than to intimacy between father and daughter, mother and daughter, or mother and son. Men (n = 19) and women (n=26), most of whom were 18-24 years of age, read versions of a mother or father having an intimate interaction (lap-sit, hair-stroke, hug/kiss) with an 11-yr.-old daughter or son and then rated the act on a 7-point scale from good to bad. As predicted, the undergraduates rated intimate interactions between father and son less favorably than those between father and daughter, mother and daughter, and mother and son.     

Reinterpreting the purpose of premarital counseling

Summary Premarital pastoral counseling is a broader activity than is often suspected, going beyond a set of interviews designed to prepare a couple for marriage. Its purpose is to extend the resources of the Gospel and the Church to a couple at a critical period in their lives. In the case of Bill and Gretchen, this meant reassessing their guilt over having had intercourse prior to marriage and setting it within the context of God's forgiveness. It meant helping Bill's mother to meet certain of her personal needs, and it meant helping Bill to understand his own interpersonal relationships more clearly. Later observation showed that, as a couple, Bill and Gretchen were able to sustain a meaningful relationship with each other and to meet the continuing stresses placed upon their marriage as they tried to help Bill's mother and father.The adoption of the purpose advocated here enables the pastor to avoid the contagion of emergency feelings, to set meaningful partial goals for his work with a couple in various stages of the premarital counseling relationship, and to set premarital counseling squarely within the context of his total pastoral ministry.     

Some Facts from the Biography of A. R. Luria

The biographical sketches from Luria's life reveal the capricious political changes and their effect on the development of Soviet neuropsychology. The picture that emerges is of an individual who survived several ideological reprisals. He introduced Vygotsky into the mainstream of psychology, and continued to advance the study of cognitive functions within the context of neuroanatomy of the brain. And yet, he had an open mind judged by his interest in Freud, and welcoming to his clinic pioneers of psychology such as Piaget, Bruner and Pribram. Also included are intimate impressions of a daughter of her father, who like his young mentor, Vygotsky was a near-genius. He was unvanquished by adversities, doggedly working away to extend the frontiers of the science of human mind.     

JERRY FORD

Jerry (Jerome) Ford, Director of the Institute of Family Counseling at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, died Wednesday, September 5th at the age of 41. Mr. Ford spent his entire professional career teaching, guiding and counseling inner city youth and their families, and training others to do the same. He graduated from the University of Maryland and earned a master's degree in guidance and counseling from Temple University. Mr. Ford joined the Clinic in 1969 while serving as a guidance counselor at Bok Technical High School, Philadelphia. He had earlier been a teacher in the public school system. Mr. Ford was a member of the Family Institute of Philadelphia, Family Service of Philadelphia, the Women's Christian Alliance and the Crime Prevention Association. He is survived by his wife, Clarice Bailey Ford, a son and a daughter.     

MY FATHER,MYSELF

This essay presents material from the second analysis of an offspring of two Holocaust survivors, each of whom lost a child during the war. The first analysis (Kogan 2003 ) focused primarily on the patient's relationship with her mother. This second analysis revolves around the elaboration of the complex and painful father–daughter relationship, centering on the events surrounding the death of the patient's father. The discussion includes an exploration of the father's deferred action on account of his Holocaust trauma, which he passed on to the next generation; the break in the idealized paternal representation; and the daughter's identification with her father's disavowed aggressive aspects. It also examines some of the unique transference and countertransference problems that arose, mainly because patient and analyst belonged to the same traumatized large group.     

Individuation,ego development and the quality of conflict negotiation in the family of adolescent girls

Individuation, ego development and family negotiation of conflict were studied in 27 Norwegian families with an adolescent daughter, 16–19 years, drawn from a larger sample to represent a rectangular distribution of ego development. Individuality and Connectedness (individuation) as conceptualized and scored by Condonet al. (1984) was modified and adapted to a Norwegian material. Four factors were extracted, one related to individuality (self-assertion and separateness) and two to connectedness (clarification and acceptance). Ego development, measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) was related to connectedness between mother and daughter and between father and daughter, but not to individuality. Maturity of conflict negotiation was positively related to connectedness between mother and daughter and negatively to individuality between father and daughter. It was argued that for women, individuality may not be a singular goal in ego development or in individuation and that self-other differentiation of identity and interests may develop within a close relationship and not only through separation.     

South Asian American Daughter–Father Relationships in the Aftermath of Maternal Loss

ABSTRACT

In this transcendental phenomenological study, we interviewed five South Asian American daughter–father dyads regarding their experiences of coping and resiliency in the aftermath of maternal/spousal loss. Mothers play a crucial role in immigrant families as they serve not only as caregivers, but also as the main people who facilitate the transmission of culture. An untimely death of mothers in immigrant families can lead to confusion of roles within the family subsystems. Three main themes emerged for daughters from the interviews: (a) re-grieving, (b) coping/resiliency, and (c) daughter’s relationship with father following maternal loss. Three themes also emerged from the interviews with the fathers: (a) lack of traditional sources of familial support, (b) coping/resiliency, and (c) relationship with daughter following spousal loss. We utilized dyadic analysis to examine the dynamics of the daughter–father relationship. Overall, in the aftermath of maternal loss, the families experienced significant reorganization in its structure and reassignment of roles. For many of the daughters, cultural norms of patriarchy and traditional gender roles explained their pattern of assuming more responsibility in the household after the death of their mothers. Findings also showed how the intersection of gender, culture, and immigration status contributed to the process of complicated grief following maternal loss and the struggles experienced with reorganization of familial roles, rules, and expectations for South Asian American daughters and their fathers. Results from this study have implications for future research and clinical practice.     

Recognizing the Threat Posed by an Incestuous Parent to the Victim's Siblings. Part II: Improving Legal Responses

Many courts refuse to protect the siblings of an incest victim even when faced with unmistakable evidence that they are at risk, arguing that no one can predict what will happen. For instance, some courts believe that a parent who molests his stepchild is unlikely to victimize biological offspring, while others believe that a father who violates a daughter will not also victimize sons. Although judges have relied principally on intuition, a substantial body of empirical studies can help them to better assess a sibling's risk. In Part I, I argued that once a parent establishes the first sexual relationship, other children in the family should be considered at risk. Nonetheless, not all children in the household face identical risks of molestation. In this paper, I continue this theme and argue that a legal presumption should arise that other children are endangered. Further, I maintain that offenders should have an opportunity to rebut this presumption. Without this opportunity, a child who never faced a significant risk of abuse may be removed from his home or unnecessarily lose his ties to a parent. In order to better protect children, I outline how legal decisions can better reflect what is known about child victimization.     

The Sweet Hereafter by Atom Egoyan: extreme loss and psychic survival

In a small mountain community of British Columbia a school bus swerves off the road, causing the death of 14 children. Mitchell Stephens, a New York lawyer, immediately enters the fray with the idea of instigating a large‐scale lawsuit to obtain compensation for the victims, making contact with each of the parents who had lost children in the accident. Many are persuaded to join his cause. The lawyer, bombarded by phone calls from his daughter, a drug addict, even turns to Dolores Driscoll, the bus driver, who survived the accident. The latter, however, with the support of her paraplegic husband, refuses to become involved in the lawsuit. Another character who is vigorously opposed to the collective cause is Billy Ansel, a garage owner who had already lost his beloved wife and witnesses the death of his two children from the pick‐up truck in which he is following the school bus. Among the survivors there is, finally, the 14 year‐old Nicole Burnell, who had dreamt of becoming a folk singer and now finds herself paralysed from the waist down. Nicole is initially persuaded by the lawyer and by her parents – in particular by her father Sam, with whom she has had an incestuous relationship – to testify in favour the party seeking compensation, but when she steps into the witness box, realizing that such legal action was misguided, she offers a ‘false’ account of the accident, invalidating the case. Two years after the tragedy of the school bus, Mitchell Stephens bumps into Allison, a friend of his daughter’s, on an airplane and ends up revealing to her some of his painful experiences.     

Early Stages of a Psychoanalytic Treatment: The Case of Laura

This case analysis describes a young woman's jouney to integrate the experiences of having an unresponsive and nonnurturant mother and an invasive, seductive, and chronically anxious father, who functioned as the loving and responsive parent. From the outset of the analysis, mother's difficulties in attachment and empathy with her daughter's needs or fears, and father's overstimulating and intrusive relationship to his daughter, were present in the patient's dreams and in the transference. The early stage of treatment reported here describes the patient's efforts to find a self-regulatory balance between states of extreme overstimulation and excitement and of withdrawal and a fear of invasion.     

The familial menage-a-trois: Mother-daughter sexuality and father-daughter incest

It is proposed that poorly integrated sexual feelings between mother and daughter are frequent early precursors of later incestuous interactions between father and daughter. Father-daughter molestation may be seen as an enactment of erotic urges and fantasies between mother and daughter that find origin in pre-Oedipal, mother-child qualities of relatedness. The familial menage-a-trois is an intrapsychic and interpersonal compromise for mother and daughter between a more deeply disturbed and a more fully severed internal and external bond; it allows both partners enough distance from their dissociated feelings to feel safe, enough proximity to feel vicariously connected, and enough libidinization to maintain an alliance with the exciting object.     

When Love Hurts: Preadolescent Girls' Reports of Incest

The present study explored incest behavior as it was reported by young girls in Internet chat rooms. Thirty-eight percent of the girls in the study reported having sex with a relative. The most frequent type of incest (36%) was between a father and his daughter. Thirty-six percent of girls reported that the incest occurred before they were 10 years of age. After the initial intercourse, which virtually all girls reported as painful, many of the girls stated that the sexual behavior was a part of their life, occurring on a regular basis. The actual accounts of the girls are included in this article. Therapeutic implications are presented, as well as the socially constructed meaning of the behavior within the context of larger socio-historical values.     

Correlates of parent–child communication about specific sexual topics: A study of rural parents with school-aged children

Using data from 600 parents of children aged 5 to 18, and a context-oriented, developmental socialization conceptual framework, the interrelationships between parents' perceptions of themselves, their child, and their family relationships and the amount of parent–child discussion of 16 sexuality topics were explored. Canonical correlation analysis was used to demonstrate how circumstances and contexts influence the complexity of parent–child conversations for mother–daughter, mother–son, father–son, and father–daughter dyads. Results lend support to the conceptual framework used, as well as to previous studies of this topic area. The implications of these findings for parent–child relationships and for future research on parent–child communication about sexuality are discussed.