The darker side of fatherhood: clinical and developmental ramifications of the "Laius motif".

Abstract

"The Darker Side of Fatherhood" is intended as a clinical sequel to an earlier article, "Oedipus Revisited: Laius and the 'Laius Complex'". After briefly summarizing the allegorical implications of the various forgotten Oedipus myths and the father's fateful role within the Theban tragedy, this paper elaborates on those pederastic and filicidal inclinations that I believe to be universal among fathers. When such wishes are subject to primal repression, they enhance adaptation, fueling a father's aggressive dialogue with sons and daughters from infancy through the oedipal era into adolescence. Maladaptations arise when fathers give free rein to a more or less unalloyed destructive aggressivity toward offspring, a manifest hostility that can further serve to defend against ambisexual amibitions or identifications. Another pathogenic situation occurs when a father succumbs to an excessive neurotic inhibition in a desperate effort to repress such urges, thereby depriving his children of age- and state-appropriated aggressive stimulation in the form of play, active providing, and necessary discipline. Observational, analytic, and clinical case examples are presented to illustrate the implications for observation, developmental theory, and technique of an emphasis on a father's gender- and generation-specific aggression toward his offspring and its abiding intrapsychic reverberations.