he is afraid and unsuccessful, she is likely to take over this fearful attitude. Traditionally, the father also projects ideals for his daughter. He provides a model for authority, responsibility, decision-making, objectivity, order, and discipline. When she is old enough, he steps back so she may internalize these ideals and actualize them in herself. If his own relation to these areas is either too rigid or too indulgent, that will affect his daughter’s relation to these areas as well.3
Some fathers err on the side of indulgence. Because they have not established limits for themselves, because they do not feel their own inner authority and have not established a sense of inner order and discipline, they provide inadequate models for their daughters. Such men often remain “eternal boys” (the puer aeternus). Men who identify too strongly with this god of youth stay fixated at the adolescent stages of development.4 They may be romantic dreamers who avoid the conflicts of practical life, unable to make commitments. Such men tend to dwell in the realm of possibilities, avoiding actuality, leading a provisional life. Quite often they are close to the springs of creativity and are sensitive searchers for spirit. But since their interior year centers around spring and summer, the depth and rebirth which comes from fall and winter is lacking. By disposition, this type of man tends to be impatient. He has not developed the quality to “hold,” to bear through a difficult situation. Positively, he is often charming, romantic, and even inspiring, for he reveals spirit in the form of possibility, the creative spark, the search. But negatively considered, his tendency is not to carry anything through to completion since he avoids hard times and the down-to-earth work and struggle required to actualize the possible. Some extreme examples of these men who remain eternal boys can be found in addicts who remain forever dependent on their addiction, men who cannot work, Don Juan men who run from woman to woman, men who remain passive sons to their wives, and men who seduce their daughters by romanticizing them. A few are dazzlingly successful for a brief period, such as the movie star James Dean and the rock star Jim Morrison, only to succumb to their self-destructive tendencies, leaving a legend and even a cult behind, emphasizing the archetypal character of their fascination.
The daughters of these eternal boys grow up without an adequate model of self-discipline, limit, and authority, quite often suffering from feelings of insecurity, instability, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, frigidity, and, in general, a weak ego. Moreover, if the father was overtly weak (as in the cases of the man who doesn’t work or the addict), the daughter is likely to suffer from a sense of shame. And if she was ashamed of her father, she is likely to carry this sense of shame over to herself. In such cases, she often unconsciously builds up an ideal image of man and father, and her life may become a search for this ideal father. In seeking the ideal, she is likely to be bound to a “ghostly lover,” i.e., the ideal man who exists only in her imagination.5 Hence, her relationship with men, especially in the sphere of sexuality, is likely to be disturbed. The lack of commitment she experienced with her father is likely to produce a general lack of trust in men which may extend also to the whole realm of spirit, i.e., metaphorically speaking, to “God the Father.” At the deepest level, she suffers from a religious problem since, for her, spirit was not provided by the father. How, then, is she to find it? Anaïs Nin, who had such a father, has expressed it: “I have no guide. My father? I think of him as someone my own age.”6
Other fathers err on the side of rigidity. Hard, cold, and sometimes indifferent, they enslave their daughters through a strict authoritarian attitude. These men are quite often exiled from the vitality of life, cut off from their own feminine sides and from feeling. Their emphasis tends to be on obedience, duty, and rationality. And they insist that their daughters have the same values. Obedience to the established order is the rule. Departure from society’s norm is looked on with suspicion and distrust. These fathers are often domineering old men, frequently embittered, cynical, and sapped of life. Because their emphasis is on control and doing things right, frequently they are not open to the unexpected, to the expression of creativity and feelings. And they tend to treat such things with sarcasm and derision. On the positive side, their emphasis on authority and duty provides a sense of security, stability, and structure. On the negative side, it tends to squash “feminine” qualities of feeling, sensitivity, and spontaneity. Some extreme examples of fathers who function as domineering old men can be found among the old patriarchs who retain control of all the money, dominating their wives and children financially, fathers who make all the rules and require obedience, fathers who expect their daughters to achieve inordinate success in the world, fathers who demand that their daughters follow the conventional feminine roles, fathers who cannot acknowledge any sign of weakness, sickness, or even difference from themselves.
In later life the daughters of these domineering old men often find themselves cut off from an easy relation to their own feminine instincts, since their own fathers could not truly acknowledge their femininity. Since these women experienced strictness and harshness from their fathers, they are likely to be hard either on themselves or others. Even if they rebel, one often feels in that rebellion something relentless and sharp. Some daughters knuckle under to the authoritarian rule and never live their own lives. Others, though they may rebel, stay bound to their father’s control, living always in reaction to him. These daughters, too, like those of the more indulgent fathers, tend to be cut off from a healthy relationship to men and to their own creative spirit.
So far, I have described two extreme tendencies that may exist in a father’s relationship to his daughter. But most fathers are a mixture of the two. And even if a father has lived out his life in only one of these two extremes, he often acts out the other extreme unconsciously.7 There are many examples of rigidly authoritarian fathers who suddenly fly into irrational, emotional outbursts which threaten all the security and order they have established, instilling a terrible fear of chaos in their daughters. Since the feeling realm is not consciously acknowledged by the father, but instead seems to overwhelm him from time to time, it seems all the more threatening to his children. Sometimes these rages have sexual overtones as well—for example, the father who physically punishes a disobedient daughter in such a way that she becomes threatened on the sexual level. So, while the father’s conscious emphasis may be on duty, rationally toeing the line, in the background may be puerile moods and impulses which pop out unconsciously at unexpected moments. In the same way, indulgent fathers are likely to have in the background of their lives the sneering cynicism of the rigid judge. Such a father may suddenly turn on his daughter, criticizing her for those impulsive qualities he dislikes in himself.
Obviously, the role of the mother is another important factor in the daughter’s development.8 Since my purpose in this book is to focus on the father-daughter relationship, I do not go into the mother’s influence in any breadth or depth, but only hint in that direction. Quite often one finds certain pairs in a marriage. The father who is an eternal boy often has a “mother” for a wife. In these cases, the mother often rules the home and is the disciplinarian for the family. Through her alone come the values, order, authority, and structure that is usually provided by the father. Sometimes such a mother can be more rigid than the most rigid of old men fathers. And together with that comes the force of her female emotions. When the father is weak and indulgent and the mother strong and controlling, the daughter has a double problem. Not only is the father not able to provide her with a masculine model, but he does not stand up to the mother and help the daughter differentiate herself from her mother. The daughter may remain bound and identified with the mother. In this case, she is likely to adopt unconsciously the same rigid attitudes as her mother. In addition, when the mother has to function as the father, sometimes the daughter receives neither genuine fathering nor mothering.
A contrasting pair is the rigid old man father who has a girl for a wife. In this case, both mother and daughter are dominated, and the mother in her passive dependence does not provide a model for genuine feminine independence. So the daughter is likely to repeat the pattern of feminine dependence, or, if she rebels, she does so out of a defensive reaction against paternalistic authority rather than out of her own feminine needs and values.
It is also possible for both father and mother to be eternal youths, in the fashion of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and then there is
