Selfobjects, Oedipal Objects, and Mutual Recognition: A Self-Psychological Reappraisal of the Female “Oedipal Victor”

Relatively little has been written about the father–daughter relationship in both the psychoanalytic and general psychological literature, particularly when compared with the body of work written about mother–daughter, mother–son, and father–son relationships. In preparing to write this essay, I conducted a computerized literature search that revealed that about 80 percent of the few books and essays yielded by the search focused upon father–daughter incest. The Chicago Index of Psychoanalytic Literature did not even contain a section on the father–daughter relationship until 1983, although the Index contained pages of references on father–son and father–child relationships. In talking with colleagues concerning how to interpret these data, opinions seemed to converge into two general trends: that this could reflect the comparative emphasis on psychopathology over normal development that exists in the literature in general, but might also reflect upon a relative scarcity of close father–daughter relationships. In my view, however, it may also reflect a more recent emphasis on preoedipal phases of development that stress the primary impact of the mother (who is usually the first parent with whom the child relates).

This phenomenon is particularly startling since Freud's first cases and theories were built around the experience of Freud himself as a father figure in relation to mostly young female patients and that, until recently, a majority of psychoanalytic dyads consisted of a male analyst and female analysand. Of course, this phenomenon has recently been subjected to a thorough reexamination by feminist scholars. Thus, another factor influencing the scarcity of literature on the father–daughter relationship, at least in the past 30 years, may be the influence of the feminist movement and its revision of Freud's view of female