Rethinking Absent Fathers
Contemporary, Historical, Personal and Analytical Reflections for Clinical Work
Recorded Saturday 21 January 2023
With Dr Aileen Alleyne, Eugene Ellis, Mark Linington and Susan Schwartz
CPD Credits: 4.5 hours
How we understand psychological development has evolved considerably since Freud theorised that a child with an absent father, raised by a single mother, will face challenges in their personality and identity. Today this theory is considered heterocentric, westernised and outdated, and contested in research. However, the ‘absent father phenomenon’ remains a pertinent area of exploration in therapeutic theory and practice.
READ MORE...How can we think about the ’absent father’ in a more meaningful and contemporary way, while holding in mind what might remain relevant from earlier psychoanalytic theory for understanding clients’ unconscious processes?
In this conference, we will hear from a range of speakers exploring ‘absent fathers’ from diverse social, personal and analytical angles. This will include exploring the complex and intergenerational impact of absent fathers in black families; the cultural legacy of war; the impact of illness and death as well a focus on daughters’ experiences of fathers’ ‘emotional deadness’ through a Jungian perspective.
Through both clinical and personal perspectives, the speakers will offer ideas and reflections on how to work with clients who have experienced physically and psychologically ‘absent fathers’ or other absent primary caregivers. This will include how Bowlby’s concepts of ‘relational presence’ and ‘relational absence’ may provide a reparative experience in psychotherapy, as well as how drawing on archetypal and collective symbols can be a route to healing in depth analytical approaches. We will finish with a Q&A between the participants and all speakers, focusing on considerations for clinical practice, such as working with loss and dislocation, transferential complexities, reparation and individuation.
CPD – Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 4.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.
Access to the Talks On Demand runs for 365 days from the date of purchase.
SPEAKERS
,FULL PROGRAMME
Dr Aileen Alleyne
The Absent Father Syndrome in black families: Myth or intergenerational trauma?
In this talk, Aileen Alleyne will explore how the absent black father phenomenon appears to hold an aspect of historical trauma that continues to plague black life. While Generation Z seem determined to change old narratives and fixed perceptions of black fatherhood, for example through proactive education and men’s self-help groups, the intergenerational cycle of this phenomenon still remains disturbing. It highlights the very complex nature of ‘absence’ in its many manifestations of black family life and bears the indelible scars of a past where traumatic re-enactments are still being played out in the building, formation, and maintenance of strong affectional family bonds. The intergenerational impact of black masculinity, fatherhood and women’s roles in family life make for complex and highly contentious discourses. The talk will situate the historical context for the recurring absent-father syndrome and address the clinical work needed for supporting clients in developing a strong identity in when facing father-parental alienation.
Q&A
Eugene Ellis
The Cry of the Ancestors: a personal perspective on black fatherhood
This talk is about Eugene Ellis’ journey of reconciliation with his father, his inner healing and becoming more of the father he wanted to be. Trauma shaped his own father’s inner life. Eugene’s father was Jamaican born and raised, and intergenerational trauma was in the background of their relationship. Eugene’s father was physically present but emotionally struggled in the context of bringing up Eugene as a black boy in the UK. These forces had a significant impact on Eugene. When Eugene’s son was born, he did not want to perpetuate the intergenerational trauma that had been passed onto him. This personal reflective approach to the topic aims to widen and challenge the all-too-common one-sided notions and fixed perceptions of what is the nature of the black father’s absence. Eugene’s intergenerational perspective will offer a real and lived context for a deeper understanding and compassion for the many factors that contribute to black parental struggles, limitations, failures, and fortitude.
Q&A
Susan Schwartz
The effect of Absent Fathers on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds
The presence of a father’s emotional deadness and absence may have a significant impact on both daughter, and father, in body, mind, and soul. In Susan Schwartz’s experience of clinical practice, without a father, a daughter retains an absence in her heart replaced with a longing and a preoccupation with how he thinks about her or holds her in mind. Susan will bring Jungian and other depth analytical approaches, dreams, and case examples to offer a context for understanding the daughter’s experience and ensuing dynamics. Susan’s theoretical model will offer connection to the archetypal and collective symbols to demonstrate how clinicians might work with their clients in order that healing can begin. The talk will also consider intergenerational experiences, as well as the context of war in which many fathers are forced to be absent and may die.
Q&A
Mark Linington
He is Always With Me: working with Bowlby’s concepts of relational presence and absence
In this talk, Mark Linington will reflect on John Bowlby’s concepts of relational presence and absence: “By presence is meant ‘ready accessibility’, by absence ‘inaccessibility’” (Bowlby, 1973). Mark will describe a case from his work as an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist, exploring the nature and impact of the father’s presence and absence on his son, who fled at a young age with his mother, to escape a violently abusive relationship. In the case, Mark will consider how the previously physically abusive and then absent father, continued as an internal presence in the son, with serious consequences for his sense of self, his feelings of constant threat, and for his way of being in relationships with others. Mark will then explore how the presence of a good father in the young man’s world became understood as something that was painfully longed for, becoming an important part of the mourning process. Mark will consider how this young man’s presentation was understood and responded to by the professionals working with him, with particular emphasis on the counter-transferential re-enactments that emerged. How these issues were worked through will be addressed to allow a different internally present and accessible father to develop for this person through an attachment-based and trauma-informed psychotherapeutic relationship.
Q&A
Discussion and Q&A with all speakers