The Absent Father Effect on Daughters

Course Description

A relationship with an absent father is a love story, but an unrequited one. The needs a daughter has for a father figure, made more prominent and painful when he has been absent. A daughter is left to cope with the difficulties encountered by him not being there. The absence of the father is harmful not only due to his absence but more due to the presence of the absence, affecting a daughter in body, mind, and soul. For many reasons detailed in this course, the father is an essential aspect of the psyche and significant for the daughter’s development and her psychological and physical life expressed personally and culturally.

Identification with or ignorance of the absent father has serious ramifications. It means a daughter can become unconscious and inwardly empty, without connection to herself. Even though other factors are involved in the daughter’s development, such as mother, culture, learned gender roles and styles, etc., the absent father/daughter dynamics still play their part. When there is no father, she is left wondering if she is valued and worthy of love to herself and others. When he cannot see, regard, or be with her, she carries a hole in her heart, the threads of her personality are ruptured. She is also put on the journey to repair and bring the missing pieces together.

The situation of his absence implies the question about how a father dreams of his daughter. What does he wish for her? When absent, he has not realized her needs for good attachment or how he can cause damage. Because she does not appear in his vision, she receives no reflection from him, and that might impede her development.

We will focus on the bleaker side of daughters and fathers’ relationship to shed light on the lack, symptoms, problems, as well as treatment and hope.

This course is ideal if

• Recognize the effects on a daughter’s body, mind, and soul from the absent father
• Comprehend the need for the psychological, emotional, and physical presence of fathers
• Recognize the dead father effect
• Have a better understanding of the facade of coping in the ‘as-if’ personality
• Find hope through psychological treatment, dreams, and inner work

Course Overview

Class 1. The Absence of Father through the Generations 

This class is an overview of the absent father, the Dead Father Effect, and the ‘as-if’ personality. What fills the father’s absence? Is it despair, defeat, depression, joy, pleasure, new ways? Without the good and present father, a daughter’s life can slant to disappointment, discouragement, and expectations sadly unmet, burdened by the memory of his absence.

Class 2. Daddy’s Girl is Always too Young 

The negative father complex and daddy’s girl complex are influenced by the presence or absence of a father figure. She can turn into a tragedy of changelessness, stuck and unmovable, limiting advancement from here to there, from past to future. Being split from her roots, she may experience arrested development as the eternal child. This shows up through her dreams and stories. Father’s absence calls for a new spirit to release the joy, play, and spontaneity in living, as she learns to recover from the early wounds. 

Class 3. Idealizing Masculine as a Demonic Complex 

The absent father leaves the daughter unaware of repeating the stereotypical, patriarchal, masculine aspects personally, culturally, and relationally. It includes dissociation and sacrifice of her body, causing illness in body and soul. Idolizing him adversely affects her confidence and promotes the idealization of others as she internally cycles through inflation and deflation, inferiority, and superiority. Yet, there remains the hope to fill the absence in creative ways, a process leading to individually and culturally more expansive dynamics for the present and future.

By the end of this course you will

• Recognize effects of father absence personally and culturally
• Learn the value of dreams to get in touch with the absence
• Understand more of the complexes in the personal and collective psyche
• Have a greater understanding of the effects of father absence on daughters mind, body, and soul