Chapter 10 Fathers and the Transgenerational Impact of Loss

In psychoanalytic thinking the ability to deal with loss is seen as central to the achievement of mental health. In this chapter we would like to suggest that fathers have a critical—and previously underestimated—role to play in how well this central developmental task is accomplished.

It has long been recognised that the way in which the losses inherent to the Oedipal situation are negotiated may be critical for future development. Britton, for example, writes:

The initial recognition of the parental sexual relationship involves relinquishing the idea of sole and permanent possession of mother and leads to a profound sense of loss which, if not tolerated, may become a sense of persecution. Later, the oedipal encounter also involves recognition of the difference between the relationship between parents as distinct from the relationship between parent and child: the parents’ relationship is genital and procreative; the parent-child relationship is not. This recognition produces a sense of loss and envy, which, if not tolerated, may become a sense of grievance or self-denigration.

The father's (sexual) role in this Oedipal drama has, perhaps, tended to obscure the other important (parental) role that he has to play at this time as the one who may be able to help the infant tolerate those feelings of loss.

The losses of the Oedipal position, however, as Klein demonstrated, are fore-shadowed by other, earlier losses. For example, in her paper A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States (1935/1985), she argued that such states are the result of a failure to adequately negotiate that prototype of later losses, namely the loss of the breast:

The first and fundamental external loss of a real loved object, which is experienced through the loss of the breast before and during weaning, will only result later on in a depressive state if at this early period of development the infant has failed to establish its loved object