E. Galenson
Apr 1, 1995
Citations
0
Influential Citations
1
Citations
Journal
New Literary History
Abstract
loss presumes that the mourner has had meaningful physical and psychological contact with the person who has been lost. But there are many situations where the absence or loss of an individual in the family with whom a child may have had only minimal contact or has never even seen is acknowledged and referred to by the adults. Many children of single mothers who were conceived by artificial insemination can never know their father; children conceived but not yet born before their fathers left home for service in the armed forces, and children of fathers who visit them occasionally but do not form a psychological connection are all faced with the similar psychological dilemma of having no actual memory of the person whom others call "father. " How do children deal with such a void? The process of projective identification which plays a critical role in the evolving early parent child relationship, as originally described by Klein and recently elabo rated by Appr?y, and Apprey and Stein, requires the actual presence of the parent.1 Can the psychological structure of a child who has not experienced paternal intersubjectivity during the first few years of life be relatively stable? While the importance of the maternal relationship for optimal development has been recognized and documented extensively by many infant researchers and clinicians,2 only recently has the role of the father in early development been studied in depth.3 This omission is all the more surprising in view of Freud's emphasis on the influence of his own father on his psychological development. The changing social mores of society affect family structure and family relationships. With more women in the work force, attention became focused on the effect of maternal deprivation on young children. The current need for greater paternal collaboration in infant care has now shifted more attention to the children's relationship to the father, and the special influence of the father's psychological and physical presence