TPC-Journal-V2-Issue3

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 3 201 Impact of Family Dynamics on Narcissism and Impotence: A Commentary and Implications for Psychodynamic Counselors Martha Nodar Growing up in a thwarted relationship with a father perceived as lacking in meeting the basic nurturing needs of the father-son relationship disrupts a boy’s normative development and may leave him fixated in a regressive state. This also impacts the mother-son relationship. This paper uncovers obscure layers of the male psyche and argues that a regressive state renders the grown man highly susceptible to developing narcissistic tendencies in adulthood. These tendencies are likely to affect interpersonal relationships including impotence and sexual performance with women. Implications for psychodynamic counseling and clinical supervision are discussed. Keywords : narcissistic tendencies, father-son relationship, impotence, psychodynamic counseling, clinical supervision The Professional Counselor Volume 2, Issue 3 | Pages 201–207 http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org © 2012 NBCC, Inc. and Affiliates www.nbcc.org doi:10.15241/mnn.2.3.201 Holmes (1999) submits that the quality of the parent-child relationship tends to be the template by which the realm of other relationships would fall. The father-son dynamic in particular appears to have an impact on the relationships boys develop with themselves and others, including their adult male-female relationships (Goss, 2006; Herzog, 2001; Jacobs, 1977). Extensive research on this subject led Herzog (2001) to contend that the quality of the relationship a father or a father figure may develop with his children is crucial in the children’s developmental landscape. Herzog (2001) coined the term “father-hunger” to explicitly depict a child’s yearning for his or her father’s nurturing (p.21). Herzog (2001) adds that father hunger “is an affective state experienced when the father is felt to be absent” (p. 51). While Herzog concedes that this yearning for a father’s availability applies to both sons and daughters, he suggests this sense of longing is far more prevalent with and processed differently by boys. A plausible explanation may be found in how girls experience their relationship with their fathers as separate from the one they have with their mothers—which is not the case with boys (Gauthier, 2010). Following Freud’s earlier arguments, Gauthier (2010) proposes that boys expect to be rescued by their fathers from what they perceive to be their mothers’ propensity toward engulfment, but they (the fathers) also lead the boys “back to mother, at a new relational level” (p. 116). This new relational level proposed by Gauthier should distinguish the mother’s self from her son’s self. It should be noted that girls do not need their fathers to rescue them from their mothers as they innately want to identify with them (Hall, 1954). Gauthier (2010) extends Herzog’s (2001) arguments on father-hunger and argues that father-hunger in boys not only includes the quality of the relationship a son may have with his father, but also encompasses the relationship a boy perceives to be between his mother and his father as a couple, as well as his own place in the triad: father-son-mother. Moreover, a boy whose father or father figure is consistently absent (physically, emotionally, or both) is more likely to perceive his mother as the responsible agent for his father’s absence, which would in turn impact the mother-son relationship (Gauthier, 2010). Martha Nodar is a graduate counseling student at Mercer University. Correspondence can be addressed to 3001 Mercer University Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30341, martha.a.nodar@live.mercer.edu .