Marcel Rufo: the child needs a father-hero

Role of the father: Marcel Ruffo explains his importance for the child

In your opinion, all children need to idealize their father first. Why is this so important?

In the life of a child, the father must be the first hero. He is the strongest, he is not afraid of anything, he knows a lot of things … Even in the least gifted or the most pathetic of fathers in reality, the child will succeed in finding a quality, however minimal it may be. , which will allow him to see him glorious. Thus, he will be able to compete with the other children, each one brandishing his father like a standard. Fatherly exploits are a bit his. This imaginary father will therefore allow the child to build himself up, even if he is never completely fooled by this idealization compared to his real father.

The idealization of the father is necessary for the child

It’s more than disappointment. In some cases, children may categorically refuse to speak with their father. Growing up, the child will need to oppose the father of reality in order to detach himself from the idealized father. He reproaches him for what he is, but even more for what he is not and which he thought he saw in the past. An essential conflict to allow him to mourn an ideal father and put himself in a position for the future.

Mourning the ideal child imagined during pregnancy

Indeed. Each would like the other to be a mirror giving it a flattering image. When the child grows up and begins to assert himself, his father finds it hard to find his own weaknesses at home, especially since he had asked him to repair them. He must therefore also mourn the ideal child he had imagined during pregnancy, in order to love the real child different from him and his expectations.

Absent father: find a surrogate father

When the father is not present with his child, the imaginary father takes on an enormous dimension compared to the real father. Mothers therefore have every interest in protecting his image by describing him as a fabulous man despite everything that may have happened between them. By identifying with him, the child will then be able to build an inner confidence sufficient to face life. And it would be necessary to prescribe lovers to their mother because stepfathers often make wonderful surrogate fathers.

Demonstrating authority doesn’t mean being scary

It is the old fantasy of the pater familias that resurfaces. Yet the scary father is a father who fails by confusing authoritarianism and authority. Authoritarianism includes an element of arbitrariness, of not taking into consideration the existence of the other that one wants to subjugate in order to better establish one’s own power. Authority, on the contrary, takes the other into account and aims to provide benchmarks, to defend and impose principles by explaining their merits and their necessity. This is the only way to generate respect, while fear breeds aggression.

A new generation of father

Contemporary fathers know that they can show their emotions without appearing to be “weaklings” or forfeiting their status as father-heroes, and that this does not make them “double mothers”. They are more democratic in the sharing of tasks, spend a lot of time playing with their child and even grandfathers do it. During my lectures, there are a third of men in attendance when they were totally absent when I started to exercise.