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This paper will address the complex topic of the ways in which fathers play with their children from a clinical psychoanalytic perspective. As such, the idiographic will be highlighted. I will juxtapose these observations with earlier work in which normative paternal play modes were addressed. The relationship between father-child play and father-and-mother-together-with-child play will be a constant focus.
Ray came to talk with me about his father and his fathering. He was 44, a stay-at-home father who had been in a previous analysis. He was married to Margery, a highly successful vascular surgeon, and they had two children, Joey and Vicky. Ray's chief complaint at the time we began our work appeared to be a negative one. “I do not want to be my father,” he stated. We were to learn ever more about what this statement meant to Ray.
The decision for Ray to stay at home and be his children's primary caretaker was not our initial focus. Rather, Ray was concerned about his son Joe's naughtiness and his own reaction to it. He got very angry with Joe who, he thought, was actually a normal 4-year-old and whom he has on several occasions spanked quite hard. None of this sat well with Ray. As he spoke, he said thoughtfully, “I think that my chief complaint is that my paternal limit setting interferes with my being able to play—or more accurately, I get so mad that I lose the capacity to play.”
Ray told me about his first analysis. It began while he was in law school and allowed him to make the transition from continuing with his initial plan to become a trial lawyer and increasingly recognize his wish to write murder mysteries. He and his analyst were able to accomplish much of this vocational clarification while focusing primarily on Ray's deeply conflicted relationship with his own father, Harry. Ray summarized this work