Besdine believes that male geniuses have unresolved Oedipus complexes, fear of love, a strong homosexual element, great egocentricity, difficulty with the opposite sex, exhorbitant need for recognition, strong masochistic and paranoid trends, and significant narcissism. These characteristics develop because of a family dominated by an 'affect hungry mother' with an 'absent, inept, distant, aloof or gentle father'. Descriptions of the lives and characters of Isadora Duncan, Violette LeDuc, Pearl Buck, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, George Sand, and others illustrate that creative women also have such characters and family experiences. A father can occasionally play the role of the 'Jocasta mother', however. 'The key to the psychosexual dynamics in women geniuses appears to be the role of provider and "husband" to which the girl child is conditioned by her Jocasta mother.'