ABSTRACT
The rarefaction of the father figure provokes confusion and recrimination, since responsibility, by definition, is something from which there can be no release. The disappearance of the father is a psychological collapse, in the minds of fathers themselves no less than in the collective imagination. Bewilderment and criticism become elements of a vicious circle: the fathers take them as still more reason to distance from their families and shrink from fatherhood. The analyst constantly encounters indications that a father's abdication from his role has been hidden away in recesses of the unconscious, but radically so, and in ways that are also a sign of our times. The finest aspects of the archetypal father were rooted in his moral authority and had little to do with physical prowess or seductiveness. As the family's proxy for the divine father, the image he developed was more likely to be spiritual and an-erotic.
