Masculine Psychology - Role of The Father

Role of The Father

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung argued that a father is very important to a boy's development of identity. In his book Absent Fathers, Lost Sons Canadian Jungian analyst Guy Corneau writes that the presence of the father's body during the son's developmental phases is integral in the son developing a positive sense of self as masculine. Corneau also argues that if the son does not develop positively towards the father's male body, then the son runs the risk of developing negatively towards all bodies. Jacques Lacan argued that in the son's mind, the father's body represents the law, and that the role of the father's body is to break the attachment the son feels to the mother and by extension his own.

Freudian analysts claim that all sons feel they are in competition with their father and often feel in a battle against the father. This is well represented in Greek mythology as Chronos, the father of the gods, is in constant war with his children should they contradict him. This dominant patriarchal attitude still has roots in society today as men are viewed to be heads of families. (Sigmund Freud referred to this as Oedipus complex.) Freudian psychologists claim that the risk the son runs is that in some cases it is more difficult to win the battle against the father than to lose the battle against the father. This is because a common result of winning the battle against the father is that the son suffers tremendous guilt.

French psychoanalyst Annette Fréjaville has presented her thesis that all men experience what she terms "primary homosexuality." She argues that primary homosexuality takes place very early in a son's life and consists of a "love story" between the son and father. This "love story" consists of idealizations by the son of the father in which the son expresses an interest in his father and a desire to become what his father represents to him, e.g., "When I grow up I'm going to be like daddy." Fréjaville theorized that such recognition of similarity is the basis of all identification, and that such idealization and identification provides the son with a firm grounding in his own masculinity.