Fathers and daughters: Paternal presence and gender identity.
Item
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Title
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Fathers and daughters: Paternal presence and gender identity.
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Identifier
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AAI9720143
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identifier
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9720143
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Creator
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Silverman, Mara L.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Steven Tuber
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Clinical | Women's Studies | Psychology, Personality
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Abstract
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The purpose of the present study was to use psychoanalytic methods of inquiry on a non-clinical population to empirically evaluate the role of the father in female development. Specifically, the study focuses on how the father's availability as an object of identification impacts the development of his daughter's gender and self identity. It was proposed that daughters with emotionally available fathers will have a less restricted self and gender identity than daughters with emotionally unavailable fathers. A number of components of self and gender identity were explored, including sex-role identity, complexity of the self and gendered self, richness of the self and gendered self, agency of the self and gendered self, and level of self-other differentiation. The tools used in this study were the Object Representation Inventory, the Assessment of Self Descriptions, a modified version of the Assessment of Self Descriptions designed to measure gender identity, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, and the Separation-Individuation Scale which is applied to Rorschach responses.;Results from the study indicate that women with emotionally available fathers have more "androgynous" sex-role identities than women with emotionally unavailable fathers. This suggests that the father influences the type of sex-role behavior his daughter attributes to herself. Women with emotionally available fathers were also found to have a rich self identity, but not a rich gendered self identity. The study further suggests that the ability to articulate and integrate multidimensional aspects of the father's personality, the amount of contact with the father, and the amount of contact with the mother also influence aspects of self and gender development. Finally, other noteworthy results indicate that the more therapy women have had, the more articulated and complex their female self representations, but the less they experience their fathers as emotionally available.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
