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Key Words: inner father, father presence, father image, father-child relationships, father attachment
The primary purpose of this article is to examine the inner subjective experience of the father; hence, the inner father. The focus on the subjective makes possible the exploration and unification of two significant dimensions of the father experience: first, the inner representational world of human consciousness as it involves the father experience, and second, the meaning of having a father or being fathered. Present-day research on paternal relationships focuses on the male parent himself, on the father role, and on father-child interaction, often in the context of other family relationships (Marsiglio, 1995; Pleck, 1997). It also looks at institutional factors that may influence paternal practices. Some contemporary investigations also address the child, examining his/her gender, level of development, and attitudes toward the male parent (Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1998).
The focus of this article is on an additional dimension: the inner, subjective experience and meaning associated with the father. Here, inner subjective experience refers to the ways in which the individual intrapsychically represents the father and the images and attendant feelings connected to mental representations of him (St. Clair, 1986). The meaning of the father signifies the individual's interpretations of his/her intrapsychic images of and feelings about the father. Interpretations are infused with both personal experience and cultural ideology. I enumerate the features of the inner subjective world, particularly those aspects that pertain to family life. I then explicate the attributes of the inner father and father meaning.
A second and related purpose is to offer a new way of thinking about the son's and daughter's bond with his/her father, one that is theoretically rooted in object relations theory, analytic psychology, and John Bowlby's ethological attachment theory (1969/1982, 1973, 1980; Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Jacobi, 1953/1970; Jung, 1933; 1959/1968). I draw from Bowlby's work to explore the possibilities of innate structures in the personality that lay the foundation for the inner father. I then draw from cultural anthropological and psychological literature to hypothesize that aspects of the inner father may be genetically inherited. In the next section of the article, I discuss three levels of fatherlessness that appear to exist -- personal, psychological, and societal. Finally, I address the significance of the...