De Neuter, Patrick
Fathers and their teenage daughter’s puberty and their shrink
- 2023.
29
Most of the time, the girl’s adolescence constitutes for her as well as for those around her, and in particular her father, a trying passage and, sometimes, a destructive tsunami. The author considers the difficulties that fathers may experience when their daughters become women: the revival of their oedipal desires and drive to control, the inevitable de-idealization, the fears that their daughters will be raped, that they will fall in love or leave the family home, or that they will manifest a transgender desire. If the difficulties are too great, psychoanalysis, analytical psychotherapy, or family therapy can help fathers overcome these difficulties for the benefit of themselves or their daughters. When these adolescents seek help from a psychologist, their transference poses a particular problem for clinicians.