The Power Principle: The Shame of the Father or The Emperor’s New Clothes

Abstract

Freud’s paternal principle is a key unconscious presence that functions independently of the actual person of the father of childhood. As the third to the mother-infant dyad, this paternal function is of singular importance, while simultaneously placing the subjective experience of the father in the muted position of being an absent authority. As the paternal principle suggests and the power principle makes explicit, the father is largely a transference phenomenon enacted by the child to imbue the person of the father with his power, rendering him paradoxically in a vulnerable position. Furthermore, his power, dependent on the child’s perception, is often eventually attributed to others. Despite this precarious position, fathers retain their childhood perception of their own father’s omnipotence. This perception remains sequestered as an unconscious belief, a paternal bastion, holding fathers—even those who have awakened to women’s equality—accountable to an archaic and patriarchic ideal, but without the support of the patriarchal systems of the past. In the context of changing social structures, the presence of the paternal in the unconscious has direct implications for the treatment of men and women modeled on developmental theories of the mother-infant relationship.