Chapter 9
DOES FATHER KNOW BEST?
The American affluence and scheme of things have produced fathers different from any in all of history. The influence of fathers upon their daughters has been discussed and analyzed many times by men and women in the fields of psychiatry and sociology. The Electra Complex - a sexual attachment between father and daughter - has been openly treated in novels, plays and motion pictures, enough for parents to be aware, and wary, of it. Nevertheless, many fathers continue to contribute to their daughters' sexual delinquencies.
The seductive-permissive or sexually-seductive father is less obvious in society than is the seductive-permissive mother. There are fewer fathers than mothers who subconsciously contribute to their daughters' sexual attitudes and expressions. Yet he is an influence - a big one.
Some fathers persuade their daughters toward sex subconsciously. Others, because of their own incestuous wishes, speak and act at more conscious level of subtle communication, conveying, even if not truly felt, their implied permission for sexual experiences. And still others are openly incestuous, feeling sexual stimulation for their daughters and expressing it although they may not commit the taboo act of incest itself.
The following cases present opposite situations: One wherein the father's seductive influence was subconscious, the other where it was consciously expressed.
CASE HISTORY
Len was bitter when his wife presented him with a daughter and not a son. But he subdued his feelings, even worked very hard convincing everyone that Sue was exactly what he wanted, that he had really wanted a daughter.
It was not difficult for Len to create such a pose. He was familiar with the role of an imposter to his true feelings. Many people considered him a phony of the first order, others were more delicate and claimed that Len was only weak and inclined to "let people push him around." Some said that he never had an opinion of his own about anything.
Len's passivity was cause for many arguments with his wife. Their child, Sue, was present during many such arguments. The mother was always bitter in her denunciations: "Why can't you act like a man - you're a jellyfish - haven't you ever had an opinion of your own? I'm glad we didn't have a son. If we did, he might turn out just like you!"
Len never said much in an argument with his wife. Usually, he suffered her verbal abuse in silence, but with painful, hateful expressions.
Sue has reported that she "always felt sorry for her father." Other than that, there are no signs that she was devotedly attracted to him as is the case with so many girls.
Sue was ten when her father began to take particular interest in her. It has been advanced that he did so as a means of compensation for his inadequate relationship with his wife. It is interesting, too, that at the same time Len's wife began to act out her hostility toward him by the taking of various lovers. If Len knew about her affairs, he never mentioned them to her.
Len was a favorite with the children in the neighborhood. He loved sports and could always be counted on to umpire a ball game or even take part. Sue began the habit of accompanying him to the school grounds. Here, she would watch the boys play ball. Here, too, she found the chance to talk to them, although she probably was too shy for that had her father not pushed her in that direction.
"Here, sit down and talk to Jim for awhile," he would say. She always obeyed.
Suddenly, Sue found her father putting her more and more into contact with boys. Sometimes it seemed that he almost forced a contact. And she has related that during those times when she was with a boy, her father seemed happier than usual.
"Sue's father wanted a son," a psychiatrist has said. "Therefore, in a way, through Sue, he was acquiring a boy, or son of his own, one that would be in his company and give him pleasure."
Sue was thirteen when her father persuaded her toward more intimate contact with boys. He became sponsor of a neighborhood club that had been organized to keep children busy and out of trouble. Len was the ideal sponsor. He was available, and willing. His first action as a leader of the group was to institute Friday night dances for the sub-teen and early teen-aged children. Sue was always his partner in the events.
If Len was passive and quiet with his wife, he was the opposite as leader of the club. He was an organizer with great ability and he had a talent for detailing duties to children in a way that enlisted their cooperation. Sue was always present at all the club activities. Len gave his daughter many duties to perform, such as decorations, ticket-taking, changing and selecting records, etc. And always he insisted that she do her work in the company of one of the boys. While in attendance at the cloak room one night, the sixteen-year-old boy assigned to duties with her, kissed her. She was flustered and upset. On the way home that night, Sue told her father about it.
"He did?" Len said when Sue told him that she had been kissed by a boy.
"Yes. Isn't that horrible!"
"Well, I don't know if it's quite that bad."
"But he forced himself on me, Dad. I didn't want to be kissed - he just wrapped his arms around me and made me kiss him."
"Ummm, you didn't want him to kiss you?"
"Of course not."
"Why?"
"Well, because I -" Sue hesitated and grew silent.
"Ah," Len laughed. "See, you can't think of a reason why you didn't want him to kiss you."
"I just didn't, that's all. I don't like him well enough for that," she said.
"But didn't you like it a little bit?" her father asked. "Be honest now, didn't you really like the way it made you feel?"
"The way it made me feel?"
"Yes."
"Well, I didn't feel anything. Not especially, I mean. He just kissed me and that was that."
Len frowned, then said, "But didn't you get a little excited?"
"How do you mean excited?"
He hesitated, then said, "Well, kind of warm and everything. Kind of soft and cuddly-like. Didn't you really feel anything like that?"
In later years, Sue reported that as her father talked to her about the first kiss she received, she noticed that he seemed to get very excited, himself, that he really wanted to talk about it.
When they arrived home that night, her mother was absent from the house. Both Sue and her father knew that she was with one of her lovers. Neither of them mentioned it. But had she been home, Sue has said, she would have told her mother about being kissed and would have tried to provoke a different reaction from the one that she had received from her father. She was terribly disappointed by her father's reaction. She had expected something else, perhaps even punishment for the boy who had kissed her.
Why did Sue want some aggressive reaction from her father? Psychiatrists have submitted several theories.
"Sue wanted her own sexual cravings to be checked," says one therapist. "She was a maturing girl, she had natural sexual desires. Unconsciously, she hoped that by telling her father of the kissing incident that he would be less inclined to pair her off with boys tempting her and putting her in situations that could very well lead to more involved sexual play."
Nevertheless, and regardless of the motivations, Sue was presented with the opportunity to become more and more involved with boys. And usually the opportunities were made by her father. Once, on a picnic, he actually sent Sue and a boy who had a notorious reputation with the girls, into the woods on pretense of an errand. He showed all the signs of disappointment when they returned before the time he had expected them. Another time while transporting children to a basketball game in another area of town, Len insisted that his daughter sit in the back seat where four boys were already jammed together. He allowed two boys to sit in the front seat of the car with him. Sue sat crowded in between two mischievous, sexually-exploratory boys. Sue went on her first real date when she was fourteen. Her mother, busy with her own love life, hardly noticed the event. Permission was not asked of her for the woman had long ago relinquished any authoritative role with her daughter. But Len, the father, was worse than most women over the event of his child's first date. He bustled like a mother hen. And he even provided Sue with twenty dollars to buy a new dress.
The date was not extraordinary. Sue was not thrilled by the boy. But she did permit as many kisses as he wanted during the movie they attended. It was the thing to do, she had learned from other children. It was "in" and on top of all that, her father did not object. He even sanctioned her kisses and her relationships with boys.
Sue submitted to masturbatory play with a boy of seventeen on her second date. This, too, had a drive-in theatre as setting. But this time, Sue for the first time, began to feel reactions to the boy's manual love-making. During the second movie that night, she attempted to engage him a second time in the manipulations that had excited her. And in her mind she knew that this was what her father had meant when he had talked to her about "getting excited." This was what it was all about.
Sue began to see more of this particular boy. The boy was also a favorite of Len's. Len admired the boy a great deal and expected great things from him in the field of athletics. Sue claims she thought of this every time she was with the boy.
After six months of regular dating, a period that found them perfecting their practice of mutual masturbation to an extent that also provided Sue with release, the young couple engaged in sexual intercourse for the first time. They had not planned it. Indeed, neither of them anticipated this turn of events for both had found satisfaction in the love-play they knew so well. But each had also reached a peak from which there was no return. Before they were truly aware of what they were doing, they had climbed into the back seat of the boy's car and shed their clothing more than at any previous time. For the first time, Sue knew the excitement of a boy's kisses upon her bare breasts. She knew the excitement of giving him thrill by touching at his bareness. And this night their kisses seemed more fevered, their tongues more thrusting and thirsty, their hands more anxious and exploring.
It was a little difficult for Sue to receive her young lover. But together they improvised upon positions and knew the first intimacy of sexual penetration.
She did not experience an orgasm from sexual intercourse. When her boyfriend lurched a final time and shouted the joy of his climax, she wanted the same thing for herself. She did not achieve it. And Sue was left distraught and aching. With her hips still arching, she pleaded for the boy's attention. He gave it manually, and she soon knew the thrill of climax.
Sue began to investigate the love-making qualities of other boys. She dated many, and with almost all of them she permitted intercourse. Her reputation zoomed among the boys of the neighborhood and Sue was certain that her father had learned of the turn her sexual interests had taken.
He made many inferences about intercourse and, strangely, he began to make them soon after her first such experience. At the time he appeared to take an undue and unnatural interest in her menstrual cycles and on one occasion told her quite frankly that if she ever got into "trouble" she should tell him at once.
Such an occasion did develop for Sue became pregnant. To the girl's shock, her father was furious, stormed as he never had before and made her fear a beating. It was the first such outburst the man had ever expressed. And, it tells of the complexities of a man whose permissiveness and subconscious seductiveness tempted his daughter toward the sex that she truly did not want at the time.
CASE HISTORY
Art E. was big and carefree and rough. As the Police Chief of a big city suburb, he had many opportunities to demonstrate those qualities. He was rough with criminals. He was carefree in a way that endeared him to the people of the suburb, in a way, too, that created amiable relations between his department and the City Council. Art partied a lot, too. Both he and his wife drank heavily. It seemed that a party was almost always in session at the house.
June E., fourteen years old, was the apple of her father's eye. He had adored her from the day of her birth. A big, strong man, Art was soft when it came to his daughter. She could get anything she wanted out of him and he never hesitated to tell people about it.
Art was rough with words, too. Some people thought him crude. June did, too, upon occasion, especially when he grabbed her as he often did and wrestled her to the ground in a fierce bear hug.
"Many, I envy the guy that finally gets you," he used to say while his hands hugged her tight to his body. "You're built right now better than most women are when they're twenty."
It was true, too. June was proud of her mature body. And she was never the least bit embarrassed when her father recited compliments about it. She has reported that she "liked it," that it gave her a feeling of being "grown-up" and "almost like Daddy's wife."
June never knew when she first started acting seductively toward her father. It must have been at a very early age for she could not recall any time when she did not try to please her father with her physical attractiveness.
With Art, it seems that his words were the most seductive that any father could use with his child. Always, they hinted at sexual matters. Always, they seemed to encourage June in this direction. And his statements about his daughter's body, her "sexiness," were not confined to the home. Art especially liked to talk this way when boys were present. And, as June grew older, it seemed that boys were always present.
"Hey, you two kids watch it down by the river," he once said. "I've got a man patrolling that beat and I don't want him catching-you kids making out or something."
Another time he admonished, "Be good now, June, and if you can't be that, be damn sure you're careful."
June always laughed at her father's words. She was very fond of him. He seemed the very best, most understanding father that a girl could have.
Once, during a steak roast in the back yard, while he was quite drunk, Art came upon his daughter being kissed by a neighbor boy.
"What the hell, you don't know a damn thing about kissing a little piece like June," he laughed. He pushed forward, took his daughter from the boy's arms, then kissed her himself. He kissed her hard. When he had finished, he stepped back, extended his hand toward June and told the boy to go ahead and try again.
About that father-daughter kiss, June has reported that she didn't think it was the least bit unusual. And she admits that she kissed her father as she would a boy - with fervor and with her tongue.
There is no evidence that Art E. ever entertained conscious, incestuous desires for his daughter. His subconscious level was that of a joker, kidding his child, being the good buddy, the pal, rather than the father.
Art's constant kidding about sex made June more than usually curious about it.
"It was almost as though I just couldn't wait," she later told her therapist. "All those hinting remarks of my father, and all his hugging and kissing of me, made me much more conscious of sex than a girl my age should have been."
To satisfy her curiosity, June made a point of securing a date with a high school senior, Kevin, who was eighteen years old. June later pointed out, interestingly, that Kevin resembled her father.
When Kevin picked June up for their date, he asked her where she wanted to go. June, keyed up to the point of bluntness, said, "Some place where we can have sex."
Kevin grinned and said, "It's all fixed, baby!"
He took her to a small cabin which he and some other boys had on permanent rental as a place for sex parties. Kevin had already arranged to have the cabin for himself that evening, at least for the early part of the evening. He quickly drove June there.
The small cabin was furnished very functionally - a bed predominated the room. There were a couple of chairs, and a sofa that could serve as another bed. June and Kevin quickly shed their clothes. June stared curiously at Kevin's hardening penis.
Kevin laughed at her curiosity. "That's not just to look at, honey," he said. "Come on and kiss it. Suck on it." He threw himself onto the bed, on his back, his organ standing up like a tent pole.
June approached him hesitantly. "Is that how we start?" she asked.
"Sure," Kevin said. "A little sucking always helps get things started. Here, stretch out alongside of me, and I'll eat you while you suck me off."
June stretched out, her head toward his feet, and tentatively took his hard organ into her mouth. At the same time, she felt his hot tongue licking all around her vagina. The double sensation excited her thoroughly. Kevin pressed his penis deep into her mouth, at the same time darting his tongue more excitingly into her opening. He reached his hands down and roughly pulled her head tightly against his body. His penis went so deep into her throat that she thought she would choke. She gagged once, and he released her head, so that she could once again suck just on the forward part of his organ. She felt it throb with urgency, and he took his mouth away from her vagina just long enough to cry out, "I'm coming, baby! Open the floodgates!" Then June felt a cascade of hot juice fill her mouth.
Afterward, June demanded "regular" sex, which Kevin was only too glad to provide. "So you're an old-fashioned girl!" he laughed. "You like old-fashioned style fucking!"
In the regular intercourse which followed, June experienced her first pleasures of orgasm. Kevin was an adept sexualist, and her first experience was an enjoyable one. Afterward, he got her to perform fellatio upon him again. He also attempted to perform anal intercourse upon her, but for some reason, June protested and refused to permit this.
While they were still engaged in sexual variations, the front door of the cabin opened, and two of Kevin's friends came in. They were Jack and Arnold, both about Kevin's age. June felt a little embarrassed, but Kevin hardly seemed surprised.
"Boy, oh boy!" Arnold exclaimed when he saw June lying naked on the bed. "Fresh cunt!" He immediately started taking off his clothes. Jack didn't say anything, but he started undressing too. June looked at Kevin inquiringly.
"You won't mind giving them a little, will you, baby?" Kevin said to her.
For the next two hours June serviced all three boys in various forms of sex, some of which she had never even imagined before. Occasionally she protested at some of their more extreme deviations, but always they either teased or coerced her into acquiescence.
At last, when all three boys were satiated, they allowed June to get dressed, and Kevin drove her home.
"Get enough fucking tonight, baby?" Kevin asked her.
"Yes," June said, shortly.
Kevin glanced over at her. "You're not sore, are you?"
"Just down here," June said, putting her hand in her crotch.
Kevin laughed. "That'll wear off," he said.
June later said to her therapist that, even as she and Kevin were saying good night, she wondered what her father would think if he could know what experiences she had gone through that evening. "I think he would like Kevin," she remembers musing to herself.
A psychiatrist, reporting on the case of Art and his daughter, June, has said, "This man and his daughter were psychic lovers. No doubt this man would be stunned to learn things about himself that prompt us to know that he actually desired his daughter sexually, and, not being able to break the taboo of incest, settled for the lesser satisfaction of being a seductive-permissive father."
The circumstances surrounding the seductive-permissive father are as complex and as varied as are the individuals who are part of this unfortunate pattern. Many subconscious matters are involved. Incest, hostility, youth worship, many other things, all are present. But, in one respect, the principles are alike. Investigators agree that in every case, there is a mother who is either inadequate to her duties, or who is herself a subject for psychological treatment.
Parenthood must be a balanced endeavor. It must be without an imbalance between the partners. And, it must be cleansed of those neuroses which provoke parents to express their own difficulties through the person of their child.