ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I reviewed the existing psychoanalytic contributions on the parental elements of a boy’s and a man’s identity, uncovering an extensive if lost literature on this subject matter. Psychoanalytic references to fathers in their paternal role, however, are much sparser, indeed, surprisingly so. At times it seems that the professional community has succumbed to the kind of primitive myths described by Bettelheim (1954), whereby procreation and parenthood are relegated to the realm of women alone. The father has for years remained the “forgotten parent” (Ross, 1979) in the psychoanalytic literature, treated in passing perhaps as some austere and remote overlord uninvolved in the direct care of his children and in their emotional growth.
