Abstract

The article examines the impact of uncertain times from a number of viewpoints. Particular focus is on the phylogenetically-intelligent sense of the father-figure, the father from a psychoanalytical perspective, the father's place in history and the father possible in the future.

Keywords

uncertain times – father – corporeity - biosphere.

Uncertain times – the deposed father

Today, we are witnessing the removal of the father from his role as the symbol of the West’s patriarchal family - we are witnessing the erosion of the Family and the consequent removal of the Father. With the Acceleration in External Time, the Superego, the internal regulator of human behaviour, has moved out and no longer dwells within the family. It has moved into social media, which is polluted by impulsive-consumerist primary orality, chock-full of primitive, reptilian-brain patterns, originating from the most archaic of our three stratified brains. The parents, the previous repositories of the Superego, have been lost and become disenfranchised and the father has been disqualified and is effectively absent. External Attractors have perpetrated the theft of time from the affective relationships within the family and, being no longer able to sustain the respective bonds with its own energy, the family has become disorganised and dissipated. Every individual has their own outward-pointing vectors, seeking connections with external objects that carry connotations of importance as indicated by the Superego. Paradoxically, the "new" Superego is a guide which is, itself, out of control, often only serving the unrestrained, beyond-threshold goal of making a profit at any cost.There is no longer "Internal Family Time" and children are now drawn much more towards instant emotional gratification and far less to building sentiment over time.

Most human beings relate to the world using patterns featuring compulsive, consumerist traits in an eternal present, which, today, interacts with individual narcissism - another beyond-threshold primary oral pattern. This occurs in a social setting in which "we are both all together and, at the same time, profoundly alone". All patterns involving taking and seizing control of are inferior, lower-rank patterns compared to the capacity for self-control and planning over time, which are more highly-evolved patterns and, historically, part of the father's area of competence. Using this evidence as the basis, it is relatively simple to formulate a clinical diagnosis – Society's "social body" is now affected by depression masked by acceleration! In terms of neuromediators, the acceleration in the experiencing of time has led to beyond-threshold dopamine (DA) levels (the neuromediator responsible for action), which produces an imbalance in the interaction with the other two neuromediators, serotonin (5HT – affectivity) and norepinephrine (NA – alarm). In particular, the acceleration in dopaminergic time leads to the theft of serotonin from affective relationships, which, in turn, provokes norepinephrine- based alarm, hyper-activating dopamine again in a pathologically-repetitive cycle. This theft of serotonin from affective relationships is the first factor contributing to the disintegration of the Family. The balanced equilibrium between the three neuromediators has been lost, as has the hierarchical equilibrium of the three brains. The result is the dominance of the more primitive reptilian-brain, mainly utilising one particular pattern – the Other-than-me/Different-from-me is enemy and is threatening.Today, we live in a liquefied, rarefied modernity which is coming apart at the seams. That is to say life is more instantaneous and less well-founded, there is more excitement and less awareness, more communication and less relationship, more information and less knowledge. There is often only one "present", although, sometimes, there may be two – the mother-child dyad, but there are very rarely three, in a relational interaction also frequented and inhabited by the father.

The phylogenetically-intelligent sense of the father-figure

According to Edgar Morin, the important phenomenon leading to the evolution of homo sapiens was the birth of the "father". Evolution selected males who provided for their children because it gave them a greater chance of survival. Being a father required having greater discipline and self-control than those who remained "solely males". Animal socialisation was, thus, transformed into human society with the passage from irregular mating behaviour to the first kinds of couples. Once there are couples, it becomes implicit that if all males produce offspring, then those that provide better for their children give them a greater chance of survival, by not being merely males, but by also becoming "male-fathers". Thus, the origin of the father lies in this transition from nature to culture and, as Edgar Morin states, culture rests upon early, pre-cultural complexity, which is that of primate socialisation.

I would suggest that "the father-figure" represents an organisationally- significant evolutionary step along life's arrow of time, bearing in mind that this paternal role can be taken on by a man, or by a woman, and by individuals, or by groups. During human history on our planet, the role of the father has primarily been performed by males. For much of the time that life has been present on our planet, evolution had ignored any form of maternity or paternity and, indeed, only quite recently, on life's journey, did evolution introduce the division of the sexes. In animal species males have a quantitative function and only a relatively small number of males would be sufficient to sustain population levels on Earth. The female, on the other hand, has a qualitative function and there are limits to the direct number of offspring that she can produce.

In humans, the father is not as near to the child as the mother is in early life, and tends to intervene later in ontogenesis, after the biological dyad with the mother and predominantly after weaning. In phylogenesis, too, the father arrived later, when he took on the responsibility of being the adgredior for the couple in terms of socialisation beyond the family. Among early human pairs, it would be the father who would leave the safety of the home area to hunt, defend or fight. The father was born on the distant horizons of prehistory, as we were moving out of zoology and drawing closer and closer to anthropology – this is the fundamental step that gave rise to human civilisation. Seeking out the father is, thus, an ancestral, archetypical theme and is a response to a universal, psychoemotional need for uplifting and growth. Analytically-speaking, I would suggest it is the need to achieve "the three", a position for three-way interaction which is able to open up the closed dyadic system and intercept and interact with positive, vital energy in a new way.

Is the male chest an indication of this? In Contemporary Reichian Analytical terms, isn't the extraordinary 4^th relational bodily level which carries the double valence of expressing both affection and aggression – "with outstretched arms inviting an embrace" or "the threat of raised fists" – telling us about the double role of the father across the millennia? Could this double valence be partly responsible for the difficulty some fathers have in giving and receiving hugs?

The father from a psychoanalytical perspective

Psychoanalytically, the word "father" is associated with leadership, the provision of food, upbringing and teaching the child how to behave, to respect limits, the law, responsibility and ethical considerations. This identikit certainly does not match the role of the father in uncertain times, because the masculine-paternal identity has now largely disintegrated. Consequently, there is either regression to the "male-animal", that has laid dormant beneath paternal expression, with the consequent risk of bands of males, roaming a fatherless society. Or there is the type of "new father" defined by Luigi Zoia as being a lethargic, uninvolved spectator, copying the Mother's positions and leaving those roles assigned to the father since the dawn of humanity unfulfilled.

But what does a child expect from their Father? The child wishes to feel that their father is close by when things are going well, yet, even moreso, they wish to feel their strength. They want to feel that their father is strong and successful, with higher-rank, guaranteeing safety and survival, rather than just providing affectivity. Many children distance themselves from a mild father to confer their admiration upon someone else who expresses their aggressiveness more openly. The child expects the father to be good and fair, but before that, even, they expect strength. For today's children the father and mother have been moved to the sidelines. The father's authority has been reduced and his status is lower. However, we shouldn't forget that our subconscious cannot remove, in only two or three generations, something that it has held dear for millennia... The father is constructiveness, planning, organisation, intention and memory.

The father often carries aggressive-defensive armouring and even when he embraces his child this double-valence is present. It reflects the child's divergent expectations of him – kindness and strength, tenderness and potency, affectivity and assertiveness. This paternal armouring serves as defence against 'other fathers' outside the family unit and protection from growing siblings or a partner within the family behaving competitively. In order to maintain his shell-like armouring, the father tries to remove or effectively shut off those relational dwelling-areas, or 'apartments' of his personality dating back to the time of his primary relational experiences, the time of absolute dependence. He does this by wearing his armouring, even when by himself, on his Chest-Neck area, distancing himself from that yearning against primary separation still located in the Abdominal-Umbilical area.

The father seemed to have found support in early psychoanalysis, but many of Freud's successors have marginalised him again. Indeed, psychoanalysis has always given more emphasis to the primary maternal figure, finding common ground in this with the correlated tendency towards disengagement from certain aspects of socialisation in favour of greater individualism. However, the importance of 'Corporeity', as bodily expression, in Contemporary Reichian Analysis reminds us of something important. It implies that different guidelines should be followed in that there may be dysfunctional etiopathogenetic questions, which may have arisen not only during primary maternal time, but also during secondary, paternal, family time, or even during tertiary socialisation. These "windows" represent each of the 3 fundamental, evolutive Fields that we pass through as we grow up. It is a Corporeity that bears the marks incised onto each of the successively- acquired apartments representing our personality, which contain not only the narration of our own personal life-story, but also that of humanity itself.

The father's place in history

Our project must be associated with the future in a similar way to how our past is associated with memory. It should teach our children “memory”, providing them with regular 'doses' of 'father'. Let us briefly consider our historical evolution. The image we have of the father formed from Greek myth, from Roman law, from Christianity, from the French revolution, the industrial revolution and from the world wars. The Ancient Greeks reacted to the prehistoric males' original insecurity by armouring the father and protecting themselves from that yearning against separation which would have crushed them back into being the dependent males of primary time and back into the myth of the creative-destructive Great Mother from before the emergence of the father-figure.

The Ancient Greeks' reaction was, however, beyond-threshhold, establishing, as it did, the father's superiority over the mother. The Ancient Greeks' patriarchy was the continuation of the paternal revolution that had begun in pre-history and it reached its zenith under them. They represent the civilisation that raised the father highest over the mother, but they also gave rise to European civilisation and the rich, complex Western culture which would export patriarchy to the world. The Ancient Greeks created ideal, universal role-models through which their children could exalt their fathers, such as Hector the pure hero, Achilles the furious or Ulysses the astute... Even the Gods were a patriarchal group living on high, the Sky was male and the Earth was female!

Rome rose after the Ancient Greeks' decline and went on to continue the patriarchy. However, the Ancient Romans took another step – they did place the father higher than the son, but they added that legitimate fathers must make a public declaration of their wishing to be a father to their child. Fathers in Ancient Rome had the right of life or death over their sons for their entire lives and were also their teachers. The three members of the Holy Family in Christianity, seemed to clear the way for a return towards ancient, earthly, female values.

The Christ supports in alliance with the Father and the role of Mary gives strength to the Mother. The West adopted Christianity which lends itself extremely well to supporting the Father-figure, yet, at the same time, it was disseminated by force, as survival of the fittest, and we might ask ourselves whether or not it genuinely carries that double structural valence of the father's chest established over the millennia.

Later, it was French Society that produced a more radical re-invention with "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" and the world's vertical axis, in family terms, became horizontal. Children wished to elevate themselves, no longer expecting their Father to do so. The industrial revolution and the two world wars together finished off the existent social structure by breaking it up. The father-figure was cast away towards the unknown, becoming distant and invisible. The child no longer really saw the father and was not aware of the father's activity. Paternal ordering slid entropically downwards and away into the background. The father's main task was no longer to be a master of life and a moral compass, but, rather, to be the male hunter seeking income and success.

The father in the future

The greatest height that can be reached in being a person (etymologycally derived from the Latin personare, meaning to "sound through", "resound" or "resonate") may be taken to be the capacity to resonate and pass through the different 'appartment areas' of our own life-stories, from which we may choose where to 'dwell' for our own relational interactions, including for any roles as 'Mother' or 'Father'. Given this, I might suggest that the key to learning to make journeys of relational-positioning self-aware and metacommunicative is Humility.

In this way, Subjectivity can learn to govern re-positioning on the different floors of our own character's 'Apartment-building' and can no longer be 'imprisoned' in the shell-like armouring of just one particular relational apartment, originating from one specific stage of our life-journey. Subjectivity becomes aware of space and time and, aware not only of the contents of that apartment in which it may habitually reside but also of other apartments. It becomes aware of the 'apartment' in which the Other person resides and it knows about the co-construction of precious relationships.

There is not, then, male and female symmetry, nor is there symmetry between the mother and the father-figure, nor are there bands of males or of females.There is no uterus-envy or breast-envy, nor any penis-envy. The future is complex and greater intelligence is required of us to deal with the presently-existing symmetries. In the last few decades, some environmentalists have elaborated theories criticising anthropocentrism, which, together with feminist criticism of patriarchy, accuses the West's male-father of devastating the planet and of robbing women and all other forms of life. The male and the father are in the midst of a grave identity crisis, as are women and young people. Society risks collapsing back to a primary, maternalised existence, or of falling into wild, entropic chaos. It is absolutely clear that the implicit request emerging from this, psychoanalytically-speaking, is for a "new" father!

All that is constructive in these criticisms must be heard, cherished and made productive as part of a new "paternal" project within a restored equilibrium based on a higher evolutionary platform. It must bring the Male-father back out of his regressive blindness in chasing success and profit; it must bring the Father-male's affective chest back into play, together with his authoritative neck and intelligent eyes offering higher, more complex ethics. On an individual scale, by removing the rigidity with which a mother may manage the primary field (inside her and caring for the young) and the rigidity with which the father-figure may manage the second (the outside and those values already mentioned), then our destination is no longer the "lower" primary relationship, but, rather, a new, "higher", three-way interaction, a new equilibrium and rebirth along the arrow of evolution!

Reconnecting to cosmological history, to body-to-mind human history and to our own life-histories, means the male-father being re-directed towards a new form of verticality that includes his primary vulnerabilities (the needs of his inner child) in being a 'man' and a 'father-figure'. We should not be removing those vulnerabilities, but neither should we be allowing them to dominate. In this way, the woman-mother (who is more limbic) is also directed towards a new verticality which includes the secondary, conserving female assertiveness, but using it in alliance with the male-figure and not in imitative-symmetry with the "accused" male.

On a larger scale, the implicit request for today's new fathers coincides not only with the archetypical request to ensure survival and the continuity of the species for their children, but also to move back from the horizontal to the vertical - in Contemporary Reichian Analysis you would say “to dwell in higher analytical-corporeal apartments which are further from insufficient primary orality (from the 6^th to the 2^nd relational bodily level) and, in particular, to inhabit the dorsally-straightened neck (3^rd), which guarantees the atlanto-axial joint a more intelligent visual horizon over time, granting a perspective which reveals the possibility of a new, future upright stance!”

Ensuring the continuity and survival of the species today is still an ethically and evolutionarily "paternal" project, but it is everybody's responsibility to save Life and the Biosphere on this extraordinary living Planet. This needs 'Us' and 'Together with', the female and the male, men and women, parents and young people and new Fathers-to-be. We need Survival Intelligence together with Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Intelligence. In this way, by reading the Complexity of living systems in four-dimensional, stratified depth (height, width, length and time), our bright future reappears. Better-organised, authoritative evolutive stages based on higher principles, mean that a dignified, Male Father-figure reappears as a man worthy of being held in high esteem.

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[*]Psichiatra, Psicoterapeuta, Analista didatta S.I.A.R., Presidente S.I.A.R. e Direttore della Scuola Italiana di Analisi Reichiana, Direttore del board scientifico della collana CorporalMente dell’Editrice Alpes, Membro dell’Accademia delle Scienze di New York, Membro del Comitato Scientifico Internazionale di psicoterapia Corporea. Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.. Indirizzo professionale: Via Nazionale, 400, 64026 Roseto degli Abruzzi (TE).