Chapter 14 Fathers and Disability

Many psychoanalysts have written about children with chronic illness or physical disabilities, and discussed the different ways the sufferer and his1 family cope with the psychological effects of these misfortunes. In particular, the handicapped child's psychological development forms the subject matter of numerous papers in the child analytic literature. From the Anna Freud Centre alone, many publications have drawn attention to the psychological effects on development of total and partial blindness, deafness, haemophilia, congenital deformities, and other disabilities including amputation of a limb for bone cancer.2 Like many papers to be found elsewhere, these contributions include in their survey the effect of the disability on the child's family In particular, the impact of a damaged child on parents—especially the mother—has been widely reported. The psychological effect that a sick child may have on a healthy sibling has been a subject of discussion, notably by Kennedy (1985). As for sick or damaged parents, it is an everyday matter to discuss the effect on an infant of a mother's post-partum depression or long-standing incapacity; examples abound in routine clinical practice. The effects on the family of uncommon or unusual conditions have been the subject of fascinating studies— for example, a clinical study of a man raised by deaf-mute parents (Arlow, 1976) was followed by an account of psychoanalytic work with a child brought up in comparable conditions (Bene, 1977). These papers are of particular interest in that both father and mother were irremediably damaged. But in general the significance for a child's psychological development of a chronically ill or disabled father has received less attention than the psychological effects on child care of damaged mothers. It may be of value to comment on something of what is known about the subject, and to illustrate various points with appropriate vignettes.

The Mother's Disabled Partner

Clearly, not a