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In this chapter I want to describe a particular kind of relationship of women to their fathers that is disadvantageous to their development, inasmuch as it is at the expense of their relationship to their mothers and hence to their eventual relationship with themselves as mature women. I think that it derives from difficulties in their infantile maternal relationship and a compensatory idealisation of their relationship with the father.
This may seem life saving, and indeed it may be so in some cases during the early stages of development, but if it is perpetuated it becomes itself an obstacle to their fulfilment as women. The particular relationship I have in mind I call the Athene- Antigone complex.
I suggest that we can regard Athene, motherless, triumphant progeny of ‘a great father’, and Antigone, motherless supporter of ‘a great father in decline’, as personifications of psychic attitudes that women may adopt as their self-definition: forever father's daughter. In either position their sense of self-importance is derived from being father's daughter and from regarding this as the most significant of all possible relationships. In the position of Athene the importance is derived from being the incarnation of her father's ideas; as Antigone it comes from being her father's indispensable handmaid and guardian. Some women occupy these positions permanently, thus making them the basis of an enduring character formation. Others do so only at particular times or in particular parts of their lives. In both of these positions the quintessential self-defmition is that of being‘father's daughter’. The woman does not defme herself as her mothers daughter, nor does she as a sister, nor as a wife, and certainly not as a mother—even though she might have any or all of these relationships. In this belief system it is the father who is presumed to be of importance, and his daughter derives her significance by being the reincarnation of his power, like Athene, or the