Narcissistic Fathers, Daughters and the Damage Done
I could romp through discussions of intimacy, loneliness and isolation, but when it came to daughters and the negative father complex, I sink down in my seat, fearful that the remarks by a Jungian psychologist at the Jung Center in New York City on a Wednesday in July would come too close to home.
So like an eager, beginning student I set up a defensive perimeter before my character could be sketched in thin air. I think about my daughter. Didn’t I take her to every new play in New York City; attend most of her soccer games in high school and college; and take her to London for her sixteenth birthday and to other spots around the globe? Didn’t I visit her grade school class and write poetry with her schoolmates? Didn’t I hurry back from Germany for that father/daughter dance at her private school? Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I, sang the old refrain from a man who might have something to hide.
The instructor reminds us early that biography is not psychology. I’m not sure if I am on or off the hook. The teacher says she decided to focus on the negative father complex as it relates to daughters, never actually explaining why, even when pressed. I got the impression through the five hours in class that her focus had a lot to do with where she placed most fathers on that uneasy psychological spectrum. The busy end was populated with narcissists. I did find some relief from this blistering analysis in her occasional graphics showing fathers and daughters in serene poses. One father is even cooking breakfast.
The teacher talks about the dead father, both physically and psychologically. I think of my father who is dead and seemed dead to me when he was alive. This father, psychologically speaking, is absent, lost and not there; he is emotionally dead. He looks at his daughter and doesn’t see her. He might have a deadness or flatness about him and a resistance to his daughter’s life. If he is physically absent, the daughter might idealize him. She might wear his psychological mirror.
With a narcissistic father the daughter leans how to serve and likely projects this tendency onto other relationships. She might develop a glitzy persona, an outer vitality. In Jungian terms she is caught in this father complex. As long as it is not understood and assimilated, there can be no real psychological growth. The instructor noted that if a daughter does not have a genuine attachment to the father, she might develop an “as-if” personality with a very clever exterior, elusive persona and a kind of pseudo affectivity that requires frequent public successes. Or she might be a “puella,” Daddy’s little girl. There’s lots of energy but much of this is cover.
The session ends with a discussion of a fairy tale, “The Maiden without Hands.” It is common for Jungian analysts to use fairy tales in both therapy and course work because they embody archetypal forces and contain residue from the collective unconscious that represent material for psychological growth. Moreover, these tales have grown by accretion over time and in a sense represent a psychological memory through the ages.
The “Maiden” begins with all the simplicity of a well-worn allegory. A miller, who has become very poor, is confronted by an old man who chides the miller for cutting down wood when the visitor could make him rich if he lets him have what stands behind the mill. The miller responds that he must be referring to the apple tree and agrees to let the man have it for a price when he returns in three years.
The miller’s wife immediately informs her husband that his visitor was a wizard and he was referring to their daughter and not the apple tree. The daughter had been behind the mill sweeping out the court. Her father does not see her.
The wizard returned early but the daughter had bathed and drawn a white chalk circles around her, thus keeping the wizard at bay. He ordered the father to take water away from his daughter, but she kept clean by weeping on her hands. Since the wizard was unable to approach the maiden with such clean hands, he ordered the father to chop them off. If not, the wizard said he would claim the miller instead. The father obeyed and cut off her hands. The wizard returns the next day to find the maiden’s stumps were as clean and white as ever. He had lost all right to her.
The instructor advised us to reflect on the psychology rather than the allegory. The father doesn’t see his daughter. He is blind psychologically. He is a raging narcissist, agreeing to the wizard’s terms no matter what. He is an abuser of the first order. He will give her up to save himself. He is unconscious. When his daughter says she must leave because “I am not safe; let me go away with people who will give me the sympathy I need so much,” she is recounting the tale of the negative father in miniature.
The maiden wandered for a full day without food, stopping at a royal garden. She could see rich fruit trees but without hands couldn’t reach the prize. She knelt down and prayed for help. A fairy godmother appeared and made a channel in a moat that allowed the maiden to reach the fruit trees. She ate a pear directly from the tree and fell asleep. Later the king who owned the garden saw that a pear was missing and vowed to keep watch.
When the maiden awoke and went to eat another pear, a priest sent by the king asked her if she was a ghost. Her response is psychological: “I am not a ghost, only a poor creature forsaken by everyone but God.” The king overhears this and extends a hand of friendship adding, “I will never forsake you.”
The maiden’s entry into a circle of human sympathy is not without consequence. She marries the king and has a child while the king is away at war. A messenger sent by the king’s mother carrying this good news about the birth is intercepted by the wizard who writes back to her in the king’s hand that she should kill maiden and child. The mother is aghast and writes again and again to the king but the wizard intercepts her letters. His last summons was to cut out the child’s tongue and pluck the queen’s eyes.
The king’s mother, while believing the messages to be from her son, could not perform these deeds and sent the queen and her son into the world. The maiden/queen wandered, becoming confused about her direction. She prayed and her fairy godmother appeared, taking care of the queen and her son.
The king in time returned from war and was upbraided by his mother for such murderous orders. The king wept and realized the wizard’s treachery. He vowed to go to the ends of the earth to find them. He fasted on his journey, relying on spiritual nourishment. After seven years, he found his wife and son who she called “pain-bringer.” There are words of forgiveness and heart talk. The king notices that the queen’s hands are human and not the silver ones that her tears had grown. She says that “My hands have mercifully been allowed to grow again.” The maiden queen has regained the sense of touch and connection. The king embraced his wife and son, full of joy and exclaiming, “Now a heavy stone has fallen from my heart.”
This fairy tale is about escaping the negative, narcissistic and unconscious father and getting outside the circle of innocence and adolescence. This escape is always a journey, inside and out. The hands represent the symbol of the “via caritas,” the way of the heart. Without hands, the maiden must rely on other agents to feed and protect her. The cutting off of her hands is also a wounding, a first step to understanding the need for sympathy. The maiden becomes queen but has literally given birth to a son called pain, a living reminder to her of what she had suffered.
The Jungian instructor noted that life needs patience. A daughter stuck in the narcissistic hemisphere of her father will remain unborn to herself. She will be unable to give “birth.” She will have difficulty knowing how to love. Often the daughter will resist the journey.
The fairy tale tells a psychological story of a young woman, wounded and crippled by her father. The maiden has a sense, almost archetypal, that she needs sympathy from a wider world than her father represents. Psychologically, this is her journey into herself and about the help, betrayals and rewards she receives for a courageous and patient waiting.
This story begins in allegory and ends in the collective joy of an examined life.
But not completely; for the wizard remains afoot. A few nights after this Jungian session, I had a dream. I am standing facing forward in what feels like a church. I partake in a sense of reverence and communion. A person who walks up the church aisle towards me is holding a child, a girl, about a year old. She seems doll-like. The adult holding her says she is in pain. I note that she is ashen-faced, and points to her chest or her heart. I rub this area in a circular fashion with my fingers. I call out for help, for a doctor, but sense a lack of interest, even indifference. Then I see a woman who appears faintly familiar. Later I realize that she looks like the Jungian instructor. In the dream she appears to be a doctor.
The woman tells me to retreat a certain distance. I have the horrible feeling that the child has died. I return to her with great fear and trepidation. I approach slowly and see a lively child lying on the floor. I get down on my knees, and move forward, weeping with every movement. When I reach the child, I embrace her.
The Jungian class on the negative father was intended to provide perspective. Dreams tend to be compensatory to our daily life, no matter the content. The dream might be considered a reflection of the class in miniature.
But our psychological narrative never ends. There is always more work to do. Jung suggests we “dream the dream forward,” taking the image and essence of a dream and following them to the source.
