8
ON BECOMING A FATHER
Reflections from infant observation
Ricky Emanuel
An adult female patient recently asked me, “Are fathers absolutely necessary?” It was asked in a tone like that of a small child saying “Do I have to?” Her question was motivated by her belief that there was no such thing as a good father. As such, she had major difficulties in conceiving of a good internal parental relationship which could form the basis for introjective identification with a creative combined object which affected her ability to engage successfully in intimate adult sexual relationships.
Becoming a father, in this sense, for the child, the mother and for the couple is a complex continual process through the developmental cycle, and necessarily a conflictual one, as it necessitates the development for the man of new facets to his personality, functioning and life, as well as the reawakening of conscious and unconscious infantile phantasies and conflicts from his past. No real development takes place without pain, and the ability to tolerate this pain depends on the capacity of the person to contain and modulate it with the help of an internalised container/contained system.
In this chapter, I hope to illustrate some aspects of the developmental process which can either promote or hinder the man becoming the kind of father who is necessary for the baby, and for the family’s growth and security. Donald Meltzer writes:
The father’s functions are generally those of supply and protection to the mother-child relationship… The parents are seen in the role mainly of providing a protected space where the child may have the kinds of experiences of intimate emotional relationships upon which the evolution of the personality depends… The concept of husband (partner) as provident manager of the overall space of the family in the community, would seem in keeping with psychic reality.
(Meltzer l988,p.65)
From the point of view of the psychic reality of the baby, in a prototypical situation, the mother is filled with projections and evacuations from the baby during the daytime and can seem to be depleted or overburdened in the process. The effect of “Daddy coming home from work” can bring relief to what can often be a stressful situation at the end of the day Somehow, mysteriously, the mother resurrects in the night-time and appears renewed and available again for the baby in the morning. The father’s role in this process is gradually assumed and is intimately connected to his work, the sexual work of servicing the needs of the mother, filling her up with better things, or resupplying her with what the baby needs, and relieving or cleansing her of what she has had to contain from the day. These toileting or feeding functions of the mother are complemented by the protective policing function the father is felt to have for the whole family Daddy’s work is thus to be seen not just in external terms of providing for the family materially but also intimately connected to his work in psychic reality and thus the basis for the child’s introjective identification of a working father which is necessary for healthy development. The father is also seen as instrumental in turning the baby’s view towards the outside world away from the intense intimacy of the mother-child relationship, or as introducing the “third position” (Britton 1989) which is essential for healthy cognitive and emotional growth and development.
I will be drawing on material from infant observation which allows us to see some of these processes in action and their effects on the baby and its caregiver. The technique of psychoanalytic infant observation was developed by Esther Bick (Bick 1964). Bick’s original aim was “to help students to conceive vividly the infantile experience of their child patients”. Infant observation has now broadened out from its original conception and has become an essential part of many psychoanalytic trainings for both adults and children. The observer visits a family following the birth of a baby regularly for an hour a week (usually for two years), and is exposed to the impact of the baby on the family and the world on the baby in all its varied emotional climates, states of mind and nuance. The observer not only learns at first hand how a particular baby develops in a particular family, but through discussion of the baby in a weekly seminar is also exposed to the detailed accounts of about four other babies whose development is also followed in the seminar. Similarities and differences in the babies and the families are striking, as well as the different kind of impacts the experience has on the observer. The experience is more than “just observation” as it involves the observer in absorbing and holding in mind the whole matrix of the physical and emotional experience of the baby and the family. By using the concomitant counter-transferential effect on him/her in a process akin to Bion’s reverie (Bion 1962), as well as the input of the seminar, the student observer tries to make sense of the developing relationships and to construct a meaning for those multiple experiences. It allows the observer to construct imaginatively the internal experience of the baby and the family members. The seminar will always try to remind the observers that these are just constructions and not “facts”; as such, the process of infant observation heightens sensitivity to emotional experience and the value of trying to use observational facts in constructing meanings, whether in clinical work or in other applications.
A full account of the theory and practice of infant observation as described in this chapter can be found in Closely Observed Infants (Miller et al. 1989) and Developments in Infant Observation—The Tavistock Model (Reid 1997). The growth in appreciation of infant observation as both a learning experience and a therapeutic tool in its own right has led to the founding of the International Journal of lnfant Observation and Its Applications.
The most striking thing about infant observation is that the father is by and large a missing person, except at the beginning of the observation and on occasional visits. There are a few exceptions, when, for example, the father has become the main caregiver in the family or is present for other reasons over a length of time. More usually, we have to intuit the role of the father in the family from observations of the baby or by the way the mother may talk about him. It is significant that the father is such a missing person in the observed family, as it reflects one of the main problems and difficulties in becoming a father; that is, finding a role for himself in the new family constellation. I will start by talking about the birth process itself, and then move onto the different roles which the father may occupy in the family in relation to the mother and the new baby. I will be using examples drawn from infant observation, both my own during my training, as a child and adolescent psychotherapist as well as from my experience as a leader of infant observation seminars at the Tavistock Clinic, London.
The impact of birth
It is increasingly common for fathers to be present at the birth of their child, but little has been spoken or written about its impact on them. Only recently have newspaper articles begun to appear where men “share their experiences”. I think it has been hidden, as the impact of the birth itself is traumatic for the man as well—though it is hardly acknowledged or spoken about. The sight of the mother in intense pain, with the man relatively helpless to do anything about it despite antenatal classes for men about birth stages etc., is distressing in itself. The emotionality of the whole experience can be awesome and overwhelming. Although birth is so ordinary in one sense, it is so extraordinary in another. The visual and other sensual aspects of the birth itself also can have a powerful impact on the man which can have a long-lasting effect, akin to the posttraumatic stress flashback phenomenon. I think men feel slightly ashamed about this, as they are supposed to be able to take it “like a man” and not be too upset or distressed. Informally, men have spoken about how these images interfere with sexual relations for some time afterwards. The sense of redundancy in the process, even if the man is “supporting” the mother, means that these feelings need to be worked through over and over again, especially with the new nursing couple.
The impact of the new baby
The father, along with the other children in the family, has to adjust to a new situation. In our society the father’s role in the earliest days and weeks has been to provide a protective environment for the new nursing couple, as well as to look after the mother. This period can be as vulnerable a time for the father as it is for the siblings. It is easy for him to feel rejected and redundant before he can settle into the new role. He has to find a place for himself. Many men find this extremely difficult, especially if they cannot tolerate the sense of exclusion from the mother-child couple. This stirs up early constellations of feelings, and defences against them, belonging to Oedipal configurations which require reworking through. The man, along with the woman, suddenly has new responsibilities thrust upon him. Most theories of child development are weighted heavily in favour of the role of the mother as primary caregiver and attachment figure. The role of the father “must be appended as an important modulating and potentially modifying force in the field” (Meltzer 1988, p. 59). Meltzer thinks it is the source of some of the most important faults and distortions of both character and psychopathology.
Mothers are somehow assumed to know by instinct what to do with babies, but fathers have to be instructed according to folklore. They often feel clueless and frightened of the potentially screaming bundle.
Perhaps as a defence against the anxieties expressed in the previous extract, some fathers try to deal with the new situation by becoming the confident one who knows:
Tom (aged 16 days) was lying on a cushion, and as his mother, Laura got up, saying to Tom,“You’re OK there aren’t you?”, Jack, the father, said,“Why, are you going somewhere?”, slightly alarmed that Tom might roll over. Laura said, “Well you take him.” Jack stood up and reached down to Laura who was on her way upstairs, and expertly took the baby in his arms. Laura remarked on how he did it. The observer asked Jack if it was his first child. He said, “Yes”, but that he already felt that he’d been a father a long time. Jack sat back in a rocking chair and rocked, pulling the sheet, tucking it under Tom’s toes, making small adjustments to the covers and position of Tom. He told the observer how glad he was he had waited to take maternity leave and how difficult they had found the hospital time. How public it had all been.
In this sequence we see Jack ridding himself of any alarm at being left alone with the baby and becoming an old hand at fathering. Or is it mothering? His slip on the word “maternity” rather than “paternity” suggests a phantasy of getting into the mother’s place through projective identification.This became a powerful feature in this family: this father was in danger of “becoming a better mummy than mummy”. We will be exploring this situation in more detail later.
It does not mean that fathers cannot perform maternal functions through introjective identification with a good internal mother, and vice versa for mothers performing paternal functions. Meltzer writes:
Father-liness…is a set of feelings, attitudes and consequent behaviour which cannot have a necessary relation to the status of progenitor, nor even of the masculine sex… Father-liness can often be simulated, or rather caricatured, by the competitiveness with the mother that interferes, controls, encourages maternal neglect. Similarly the tenderly supportive attitudes and attentiveness of father-liness can be quietly replaced, as the children grow and their sexual attractiveness becomes more manifest, by erotic play and cuddling which easily escalates and also drives the children into secret sexual games and masturbatory habits.
(Meltzer 1988, pp. 64–65)
He continues by pointing out how the changes in patterns of paternal behaviour in Western culture are in severe flux with more sharing of domestic chores and bringing up the children which can lead to a “confusion between father-liness and mother-liness in the man”.The threat of redundancy for the man and prolonged periods of unemployment can lead to a “greater gratification of the bisexuality of both partners “, but “its consequences for the children are unclear” (ibid., p. 65).
Father as rival
In clinical practice the impression gained is that most fathers who leave a marriage do so after the birth of the second child, closely followed by the birth of the first child. Maybe this is because the first child presents more of a novelty to the family, but in both situations the father can easily feel left out and rivalrous with the baby In the baby, Oliver, whom I described in Closely Observed Infants (Miller et al. 1989), I observed the way the father treated me as another new male entering the family may have mirrored the way he felt about his new son’s entrance to the family:
The first thing that father said to me when he saw me was “so you’ve come to scrutinise my protégé?” He appeared antagonistic to me, betraying a strong wish to protect his son saying, “I reserve the right not to have an observer as part of my child’s experience.” This together with his comment that my ethnic background “threw him in his categorisation process” made me ofer him the chance to withdraw his consent to the observation. Mother quickly intervened, saying “if he wasn’t happy about you observing, you would have been out the door already”, and that I “shouldn’t worry about him as he is always rude”.
(Miller et al. 1989, pp. 176–177)
Eventually, I came to feel I was made welcome in the family by the father, but that this was interfered with by negative feelings which emerged despite himself. This may have mirrored the situation of Oliver’s arrival. The birth of his son threw him in his categorisation process, as he had to redefine his role to accommodate the new male member of the family. Many of these feelings were projected into me as a safer place for them to be. Throughout the year the father had to go away for his work. Each time he returned his suspicion of me emerged, probably fuelled by painful unconscious jealous phantasies whilst he was away. Several times when he walked in when I was visiting He would apologise for “disturbing our rapport”. There was a strong feeling that he felt left out.
Once Susan, Oliver’s sister, farted. Father immediately said,“Say pardon me.” Mother retorted, “Paul—you’ll embarrass her.” This comment seemed to embarrass father instead and he said hopefully I was “up wind” and that Susan should have been facing me when she did it. In the same observation while watching Oliver being changed he said to me,“you really do see everything, don’t you?” Oliver was put into the bath and whilst in the bath, Susan pulled Oliver’s penis. Mother stopped her saying, “That’s Oliver’s tail—don’t pull it.” Father saw this and groaned, saying of me,“Susan, don’t do that—Ricky is in agony.” As I left to go shortly afterwards, with mother saying I should let myself out, father said “Don’t steal the silverware.”
It was as if all the painful, embarrassing, unwanted bad feelings were to be lodged in me. It seemed father identified me with the baby since we were both males, but at the same time was talking about his own masculine identification and feelings of rivalry, and feeling in danger of something being stolen from him. This may have referred to the loss of his previous position as the only male in the family. Again I and not Oliver was being held responsible.
(Miller et al. 1989, pp. 176–177)
There were times however, when the father could not contain his feelings of rivalry and hostility towards Oliver and they spilled out directly:
Once, when Oliver was being breast fed, Father put on a King Kong mask which earlier he had told me in a lot of detail frightened Oliver. He called Oliver as he put the mask on. Oliver turned round and his face dropped. He looked very uncertain but quickly turned back towards Mother and continued feeding. Father said, “Oliver’s got his priorities sorted out.”After this incident Father played with Oliver, tickling his feet and playing with his toes, tickling him again and then biting his tummy Oliver grimaced and turned abruptly away from Father who sadly said “You love it when Mummy does that.”
It was as if the father’s genuine wish to do well by Oliver was continually interfered with by his unconscious rivalry and jealousy. The underlying belief was that only the mummy can really satisfy the baby, and thus there was no real place for a good daddy. The essential paternal function where the father protects the mother-baby couple was inverted.
In this family, the father increasingly wanted me to admire his creations, taking me away from observing Oliver and his mother by showing me his collection of electronic clocks. It was as if he fea...
