Some Functions of the Self Personified by the Father *

I have presented clinical material in order to illustrate a series of fantasies of parental intercourse which represent the self in successive stages of individuation from early projective identification to later introjective identification. From this is abstracted the idea of 'father' both as a component of the self representation and as the personification of the urge towards continuing development. Evidence is also gathered from the clinical material, supported by mythological parallels, to suggest that the whole process, including those components explicitly identified with the mother, is subsumed under an identification of the deintegrating self, its identity and integrity, with 'the father'.