Father Complex

The father complex is the complex organized around the paternal figure — the actual father’s imago in combination with the archetypal pattern of the father — and the affective-behavioral consequences of that organization in the adult life of the son or the daughter. Jung’s general doctrine of the complex applies: the complex is feeling-toned, autonomous, and capable of inundating the ego when activated.

The son’s father complex characteristically presents along the puer-senex axis: unresolved paternal material leaves the son oscillating between puer-flight from paternal authority and a later compensatory senex rigidity, without having integrated the paternal principle as his own. The daughter’s father complex — the patriarchal daughter pattern in the Jungian feminist literature — leaves her orbiting the father’s values, over-identified with his intellectual or public world, and cut off from the maternal-chthonic ground the Seba tradition marks under Demeter, Persephone, and Gaia. In both sexes the archetypal core of the father complex is the Senex — the old king, the principle of form and law — which mature individuation requires integrating rather than either submitting to or rebelling against. See mother-complex for the parallel structure.

Relationships

• complex
• senex
• puer-senex