The Paternal Roots Of Male Character Development*

The thesis of this paper is that the father has a specific contribution to make to his son's development, starting at infancy, and that the absence of this contribution causes predictable defects in the child. My assumption is that the child has particular needs the father is uniquely equipped to fulfill. A prime need is to dissolve the symbiotic bonds with mother, in order to develop a separate identity generated by his own powers. The other is a need to relate as a contributing member to the social world he inhabits. I do not suggest that the parents are restricted to mutually exclusive reactions, but rather that the sex of the parent differentiates his or her parental role. I propose to discuss two major points: the role of the father in the character formation of the male child, and the effect of the presence or absence of the father's early educative influence on his son's development.

Freud5 describes the father's role as initially significant in the phallic stage, when the boy's love for his mother and desire to have her for himself provokes hatred of father for his intrusive conjugal claims. Father's obviously superior strength and the necessity to safeguard his penis from father's retaliative wrath lead the child to resolve the Oedipal conflict by withdrawing from the contest and identifying with father's prohibitions and strength. We infer that Freud considers the father's role to be that of the frustrating parent whose incorporation strengthens the boy's weak ego, affords him structure for masculinity, and teaches him to master frustration. Freud believed it necessary that the father free the child at around the age of five, for