ABSTRACT
A father who is absent, physically or emotionally, creates a hole or wound in the inner world of the child. This chapter discusses the inner preconception of the child of a functioning father that meets frustration and creates thinking, or a bad object, if the child is unable to bear the absence. The integration of this dialectic of the role of inner and outer realities is touching a complicated debate in psychoanalysis. The absent father is the external father who is nonexistent, non-functioning or insignificant. It is also the image of the father internalized in the inner world of mother, child and father, which constitutes a central, powerful part of the inner world, consciously and unconsciously affecting one’s inner and external life. The clinical cases which have been presented were chosen as different illustrations of the typical play that takes place between the therapist and the child or adult patient suffering from father absence.
