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The empty nest syndrome has been described as a mother's depressive reaction to the loss of her children and her maternal function. A connection between her identity as a mother and her ego ideal is disrupted; her self-esteem is damaged and the ensuing anger, and her strenuous defensive reactions against this rage, temporarily paralyze efforts to shift to other facets of her valued identity.
While focusing on the empty nest syndrome, this paper will highlight six men whose phallic vulnerabilities precluded assisting their spouses' transitions from motherhood to increasingly cathected wifehood. During this period they also withheld from their children sufficiently unambivalent permission to leave home. This negative activity resulted in marked family and marital turmoil, in dramatic contrast to the glittering vocational success of the six fathers studied.
One of the major accomplishments in healthy phallic development is the attenuation of the boy's tie to his mother and a growing identification with his father as a strong and sustaining figure. Although such identification is a life-long process, the oedipal phase is crucial because it permits the young child to test his father's love under the onslaught of repeated phallic challenges. A patient, yet involved, father teaches his son that he can neither be toppled by the boy's wishes nor will he retaliate for those fantasies (Zetzel, 1970; Ross, 1977; Weinberger and Muller, 1974).
Mother's task during the oedipal period and indeed throughout most of the boy's postsymbiotic phase is to delicately balance accepting availability with appropriate detachment. Within this dialectic, the boy is free to move toward and from his first love object and to throw in his lot with his father without fear that he