The Single Parent: Power and the Integrity of Parenting

Part of growing up consists of recognizing the limits of one's power as well as its possibilities. A major goal for us as psychoanalysts is to empower the patient, to help him or her acquire a realistic sense of power. The confusion about power, namely, what is real and what is illusory, what is constructive and creative and what is destructive, originates in our childhood experience. Many of our patients come to us because the means by which they attained power in the family or their assumptions about power do not serve them in the world.

Rollo May cited how love and power are traditionally viewed as opposites of each other. He put forth the common argument that “the more power one shows, the less love; the more love, the less power. Love is seen as powerless and power as loveless. The more one develops his capacity for love, the less he is concerned about manipulation and other aspects of power. Power leads to domination and violence; love leads to equality and human well-being. This argument, … inherited from the Victorian period … leads us into gross errors and endless trouble” (May, 1972).

Karen Horney does not speak in detail of the constructive use of power, but the concept is inherent in her theory of self-realization. One cannot self-realize unless and until one achieves a sense of real power in contrast to ideal or imaginary power inherent in one's idealized image. “The feeling of power, for example, may in a normal person be born of the realization of his own superior strength, whether it be physical strength or ability, mental capacities, maturity or wisdom…. The neurotic striving for power, however, is born out of anxiety, hatred and feelings of inferiority. To put it categorically, the normal striving for power is born of strength, the neurotic of weakness” (Horney, 1937).

Some of us may assume that the acquisition and use of power is a natural phenomenon. Often, I think its ubiquitous presence jolts us unexpectedly.