From Selfobjects to Mutual Recognition: Towards Optimal Responsiveness in Father and Daughter Relationships

This article examines the nature of the father and daughter relationship, studying its impact on both parties. The author first summarizes the relatively sparse psychoanalytic literature on this topic, and offers a detailed analysis of newer models of development that might broaden our understanding of desire and sexuality. It will be argued that, for the daughter, an optimal experience with her father includes the development of a capacity for an intimacy with otherness, and, in turn, permits the father a new opportunity, in midlife, to further develop this capacity in himself. A clinical vignette with a male patient portrayed an enactment in which the author experienced herself as a daughter, and used this experience in a way that facilitated an understanding of and integration of the patient's split-off self-states.