This is a book on psychopathology in the family system applied to the special predicament of the psychiatrically impaired father. The essays that make up this volume should not be thought of as a work on development. Their central concern is neither the role of the father in development nor fatherhood as a developmental phase. I have not attempted to add to the recently burgeoning appearance of literature on the father considered developmentally, but rather to assemble in one volume a collection of preliminary attempts to understand the psychiatrically impaired father in a truly dynamic way. The contributions concern psychopathology with special emphasis on characterologic adaptation to narcissistic pathology, that is, of proneness to shame and fragmentation proneness within the family system. These papers, therefore, deal with family dynamics in general and the specific dynamics of handling shame in particular.