ABSTRACT
The anxious attachment style of compulsive self-reliance gives one an illusion of competence but cuts one off from close feeling contact with another. "Men and women each seem to entertain the fantasy that their emptiness should be filled by an other who becomes in fantasy a 'transformative object' who can save us from ourselves. There are no gender boundaries when the void experience arises from hostility or lack of care from early caretakers. Most often the other is of the opposite gender". Children of both genders develop out of the physical substance of the mother and must move out of that early oneness with her. The father has a unique and important function in leading the growing child out of that oneness and into the world. Charles suggests that the lack of acknowledgement of the actuality of a child's experience affects his capacity to perceive and sustain meaning and this can give rise to a void experience.
