ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic literature on child development and object loss has focused on the effects of the presence or absence of the mother during the early preoedipal period, emphasizing in particular her contribution to the structuralization of self and object representations. The psychoanalytic treatment of a young woman whose father had died when she was 4 years old illuminates the crucial developmental importance of the father for a girl of this age, and illustrates as well the specific consequences of losing him just before entering the oedipal phase.
