 Okay, Svanpanim and Svanpanot. Svanpanot means bunnies like in Playboy and today we're going to discuss daddy issues. Daddy's girl, mama's boy, going back all the way to that ancient and wise Jew, Zygmunt Freud and his father complex. Yes, may come as a shock to you, but men can also have daddy issues. Today we're going to describe the whole panoply of the psychodynamics, the reasons behind the etiology and the types of behaviors that characterize these kind of people who never had a good enough father to start with. And just to make clear, I am not referring in this video to those sweet little things known as sugar babes and they're looking for sugar daddies. I'm also not referring to these industrious gold diggers who mine for older men the way other people mine for Bitcoin. So I am not in this video I'm not going to deal with women who target older men for their money. There's a name for this kind of behavior and for this kind of profession and it is far outside the remit of a channel which deals with psychology. So today we're going to discuss with the psychological phenomenon, non erroneously as daddy's issues. Now daddy's issues, daddy issues, men use this to slut shame women. Men berate and demean and degrade women by telling them you have daddy issues. The irony of course is that daddy issues are much more common among men than among women. That's not me. That's Zygmunt Freud who coined the phrase father complex. But before we go that, there's something very important to understand. It's called self-splitting. And I propose splitting it's time to introduce myself to those of you who had not been traumatized by me in the near past. My name is Sam Wackney and the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I'm also a professor of psychology and today I am blue in shirt if not in mood. The thing to remember before we proceed is a phenomenon which I describe as self-splitting. The woman with daddy issues, the men with daddy issues, they tend to split themselves. But just to refresh your memory, splitting is a primitive defense mechanism. It's a defense mechanism employed by toddlers and infants and that's why we say that it's an infantile defense mechanism. Splitting also known as dichotomous thinking simply means that people see the world in terms of black and white, evil versus good or wrong or right. Dividing the world into two opposing mutually exclusive camps is splitting. When you do the same thing to yourself, you are self-splitting. So for example a typical woman with a borderline personality disorder, she would tend to describe herself simultaneously as a whore and a princess, a slut and a diamond. She would then slice off the bad aspects of the self-perceived, bad and shameful aspects of her personality and behaviors and she would say that's not me, that's when I'm drunk, that's just a phase, that's just a passing state of mind. At the core I'm pure, at the core I'm unadulterated, at the core I'm honest and sincere. Yes, I've cheated on all my boyfriends and husbands but there wasn't me. This is a process of self-splitting. Men with daddy issues would do the same. They would say I have high moral standards except when I'm confronted or I have anger issues but except for this I'm a swell guy or I usually behave this way except when I don't. So it's like splitting yourself into I call it self-states. People with daddy issues have self-states and notice that I'm not using the word women with daddy issues because as I've said it's common among men even more so than among women. Back to Freud, what else? This guy has put his finger on every conceivable issue in psychology. It's mind-boggling. The genius of this man is mind-boggling. He got many things wrong and consequently he's not being taught in the majority of universities in the West but he got so many things right. One of the things he got right is what he called the father complex. Now the father complex preceded actually what later came to be known as the Oedipus complex, the Oedipal complex. The Oedipus complex is a young boy's attraction to his mother and feelings of competition with his father. A young boy as he matures, evolves and so on falls in love with his mother. He develops infatuation and limerence with his own mother the only female around and of course he competes for her with the only other male around the father and this is known as the Oedipal complex. Now there are no studies, no experiments and no tests that has substantiated any of this but it kind of tends to reason, it's plausible. Freud initially focused on boys and he said boys had daddy issues and then he later tied it in with the Oedipal complex. It was Jung actually, Carl Jung, his disciple and then his adversary. Carl Jung had suggested that girls have the same problem. He called it the electro complex. He said that the girls develop a competitive streak with their mothers. They fall in love with their fathers and then they compete with the mother. Exactly as a boy falls in love with his mother and competes with his father, a girl falls in love with her father and competes with her mother and the electro complex and the Oedipal complex lead to severe problems with fathers in both cases. In Freud's theory of psychosexual development, both the Oedipal and the electro complex arise between the ages of three and five years old. In other words during the formative years and again according to Freud if this issue is not resolved by the end of this stage of development by the end but by let's say age six children become fixated on the opposite parent sex. And according to Jung, girls do the same. So both boys and girls become fixated on the opposite sex parent and competitive and adversarial with the same sex parent. This is a lifelong condition, a mother fixation, a mama's boy and a father fixation, which leads to daddy issues. And of course this reflects upon later life adult relationships. Now we do have studies. There's a small bibliography in the description to this video. Down, down, description is down. Thank you very much. So there is a small cohort of studies that had shown for example there is a strong correlation between promiscuity, promiscuity and sexual recklessness in both women and men by the way. When the father is absent or when the father is not good enough we'll discuss what kind of father engenders these responses later in life. We'll discuss it a bit later. But generally speaking when the father is not there emotionally and physically people both men and women tend to develop promiscuity and sexual recklessness, feelings of inadequacy, a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem and a quest to find father substitutes later in life. Now mind you the promiscuity and sexual recklessness are more common among women and the lack of self-confidence the quest for validation and for substitute father figures that's more common among men. What do women with daddy issues, what are they looking for? What do they want? They want care including financial care which is why it's very easy to confuse women with daddy issues with gold diggers or sugar babes but gold diggers and sugar babes don't have daddy issues they have money issues women with daddy issues also seek money from older men but they do this because it's a sign of caring it's a sign of love money is a love substitute so if the man gives them money he loves them he cares for them protection approval acceptance understanding sacor support validation adoration attention worship old unconditional love this is what women are looking for in older men women with daddy issues but it goes even deeper women with daddy issues would usually use older men as a kind of reality testing they would adhere to the way the older men view as the world and this creates cult-like situations where the older man is the cult leader the younger woman with daddy issues is a cult follower or a cult member men on the other hand men with daddy issues they are looking to be pampered they're looking for safety they're looking to regulate the sense of self-worth they're grandiose many of them are narcissistic and they're also looking for conditional love in both genders men and women there's one commonality one common denominator what i would call a dead father not dead you know quotation marks not really dead physically andrei green in 1978 coined the phrase dead mother to describe a mother who is not good enough mother who is absent selfish depressive parentify instrumentalizing using provides conditional love love conditioned on performance etc etc this kind of absent selfish mother is also insecure and doesn't allow the child to separate from her to set boundaries and to become an individual there was a dead mother similarly i think there is a dead father it's a father who is absent a father who is selfish father who is a walkaholic preoccupied with other things a father who doesn't know to express emotions and love or doesn't feel emotions in love a father with an insecure attachment style father who is avoidant paranoid dismissive fearful a father who is antisocial psychopathic or narcissistic a father who is merely grandiose a father who doesn't interact well socially with his own children with other people that would be a dead father and such a dead father would affect the socialization process of his children the main socialization agents are mother in the early years and father after age six father teaches his children both male and female how to function in the world anything from gender roles to sexual scripts to social scripts to proper behavior sublimatory channels behaving in socially acceptable ways suppressing impulses urges and drives etc etc this all comes from the father he also teaches his children skills and talents anything from playing baseball to fixing the electricity so the father is the conveyor everything that society has to offer and a father who is not good enough does a bad job of this he doesn't socialize his children properly and this gives rise to anxiety people who are socially inept for example autistic people narcissistic people they are psychopathic people they're highly anxious the dead mother prevents the child from separating setting boundaries and becoming an individual the dead father the father who is absent the father who is selfish the father who is preoccupied this kind of father prevents the child from developing full fledged object relations object relations and the ability to gainfully interact with other people self-efficacy autonomy and agency that dead father and the dead mother create stilted arrested development children similarly a mother or a father who are disproportionately close to the child extremely close who are incestuous whether emotionally or let alone physically this kind of fathers and mothers have the same effect ironically so being too distant being too detached being unattached has the same effect like being too close for comfort breaching the child's boundaries violating the child in every which way especially sexually or erotically with incestuous undertones or overt insist this complex of dead mother and dead father shatters the core beliefs the narratives that the children have children with dead fathers and dead mothers they have the difficulty to maintain stable core beliefs about their identity this is called identity disturbance about who they are about their sense of self-worth consequently they're unable to trust other people and they feel that they are not in control of their lives and actions they have an external locus of control because they are so anxious because they are so insecure they develop repetition compulsions the the children of dead fathers approach and then avoid or they become abusive abuse is a way to test the resilience and veracity of a relationship children of dead fathers girls women with daddy issues and men with daddy issues or mothers boys they have insecure attachment styles they have an impaired reality testing but they also have what Bianca Rodriguez the licensed marriage and family therapist calls an impaired intimacy template they don't know how to do intimacy to cut a long story short they're likely to have what i call an intimacy cloud they're likely to spread their intimacy among dozens of people and not to get really deeply intimate with any one of them which leads of course to behaviors like extra dyadic or extra marital affairs cheating betrayal of all sorts switching between partners rapid switching rapid cycling between partners recycling of partners and hovering etc etc the intimacy cloud is very common among women with daddy issues and men with daddy issues Amy Rollo which is a psychotherapist and owner of the heights family counseling in houston texas says that there are three tests as to whether you suffer from these issues one you are being anxious when you are not with your partner two you need lots of reassurance that the relationship is okay repeated reassurance number three you see any negativity as a sign that the relationship is doomed this is known as catastrophizing so we have a whole monopoly a whole gamut of behaviors which are actually very common in borderline personality disorder it is an open question whether what we call daddy's issues daddy issues i'm sorry daddy's girl mama's boy whether this is not actually borderline personality disorder a form of emotional dysregulation narcissism borderline they may be facets of one and the same thing we are beginning to believe the recent research shows that overt narcissists are probably primary psychopaths and the only true form of narcissism is compensatory what used to be called covert fragile shy or vulnerable narcissists now the covert narcissists is not easy to distinguish or differentiate from the borderline i have a video which deals with this and so i think it's a safe bet to say that most women with daddy issues and many men with daddy issues are actually grandiose borderlines either outright borderlines or covert borderlines in other words it's a borderline it's a borderline issue which involves emotional dysregulation affect dysregulation problems in relationships recklessness problems in regulating empathy and acting out the compensation and so on and so forth everything that we usually describe when we when we discuss borderline personality disorder similarly the dynamics of the relationship of women with daddy issues resemble very much the carpman drama triangle the carpman drama triangle there's a video on this channel dedicated to it but generally speaking it involves three people there's the abuser the victim and the rescuer or fixer or savior and they interchange they switch the roles that's that's what most people and self-styled experts online don't realize the roles are switched all the time the victim becomes an abuser the abuser becomes a savior the savior becomes an abuser and the savior becomes a victim that's the carpman drama triangle is very very fluid and very dynamic and it characterizes the relationships of women and men with daddy issues again tangential to bordering on borderline personality disorder when do women and men develop daddy issues what gives rise to daddy issues what is the etiology of daddy issues i've mentioned already unhealthy clothes bonds some teenage girls would tell you that they are daddy's girl and it would tell you this proudly this is an important determinant of their identity you ask them who they are and daddy's girl and these are favored they've been favored they're the princesses daddy took good care of them spoiled them and bribed them very often there's inappropriate behavior between daddy's girls and daddy and it could spill over into seriously unpleasant situations even illegal situations such as incest but that's rare what is much more common is an incestuous erotic overtone parentifying the girl the girl becomes daddy's second wife or first wife and colludes with daddy against mommy mommy is the bad guy mommy is the cause for father's pain and hurt and depression and the girl takes it upon herself to parentify daddy or to become his spouse his real spouse it's an exceedingly unhealthy dynamic this type of clothes bonds these girls as i said are put on a pedestal they're pampered they're spoiled they're worshipped idolized they're princesses and they feel that they resemble their daddy's the most compared compared to the other siblings these are golden girls golden children and they're rewarded by daddy they emulate daddy they imitate daddy they always agree with daddy they support daddy always never mind what and daddy rewards them for this very often with material goods they are also they tend to be also physically attractive they are treated by their daddies as a date or a romantic partner this leads to severe mental emotional and sexual issues later in life if it escalates to actual sexual abuse it's detrimental to the woman's ability to maintain a healthy relationship healthy adult relationship with an intimate partner of the opposite sex so unhealthy clothes bonds is the first reason for first part of the etiology for daddy issues the opposite i mentioned before is equally true a daddy who is not supportive who is not attentive who is distant and remote and detached who doesn't pay attention any attention to his girl doesn't provide her with any feedback and doesn't constitute a male role model she would then seek attention compulsively with other men in her life trying to make up for the attention deficit in early life there's no validation no sac or no help no holding no containment no hugs no emotional expression it's like the father has never been there is absent preoccupied detached away selfish self-centered and so the two situations bonds which are too close bonds which are too distant both of them lead more or less to the same outcome a compulsive pursuit of male attention and male gratification especially with older males which is a good definition of daddy issues sexual abuse is the most extreme for young children are vulnerable they are they trust their parents they don't have appropriate boundaries their parents the parents are the one who should set boundaries to start with and so some adults cross this line it could be a parent parent they could be a parental figure an avuncular uncle a neighborhood authority figure a teacher these are all in the child's mind perceived as father figures and so sexual abuse of minors especially by men creates extreme emotions dysregulated overwhelming emotions in children not the least of which a shame and guilt children of course cannot blame adults for for anything that happens because adults are godlike adults are divine adults are infallible they never commit mistakes children are dependent on adults they are dependent on adults for life for food for shelter they can't afford they can't afford to perceive adults in their lives as evil it's too threatening such children tend to blame themselves they take on the responsibility for everything that happens a divorce or a sexual liaison children want to love these parental or paternal actually um figures authority figures or real family members they they want to love them they want to spend time with them they want to play games with them they want sometimes to care for them or to want to be cared for but the pain of the abuse the violation of the boundaries the fear the disgust they're there they're always there and they impair impair and hamper any ability to interact properly with father's figure father figures that carries on later into adult life when these women and men are unable to interact with older men in appropriate ways and so they either sexualize the relationship with older men or they become defiant and reactant and consumatious they hate authority and they attack older men or they try to imitate and emulate older men and they lose their identity altogether they become copies or clones of selected older men the self-blame the guilt the shame the trauma the neglect all these carry on into adult life absentee dads um deadbeat dads dads but also emotionally absent dads dads who are never around fathers who are work shifts or work away fathers with left the family drug addicts alcoholics dads who are physically distant or workaholics emotionally distant emotionally unavailable they live the same wounds as well because they create an insatiable need for validation and attention later in life validation and attention from older men women and men with daddy issues compulsively seek a substitute father later in life women offer sex to older men in order to gain the feeling of approval advice company to somehow compensate for the lack of physical and emotional intimacy that she had craved as a child and was denied so there's a trade an explicit trade off here women with daddy issues offer sex almost instantaneously to older men they know that sex is a hook they're going to captivate the older men get him addicted and then he's going to function as a father he's going to care for the woman with daddy issues you don't know he's going to offer money there's a love substitute he's going to protect her he's going to be around all the time adoring her and worshiping he's going to pay her attention he's going to solve all her problems magically there's magic in the air with an older man because it's a regression to early childhood and a second chance to have a father who this time might be a good enough father it is therefore very crucial to have the right kind of father or not at all and this is a point that i've made in another video on this channel when i discuss the rules of fathers are fathers necessary can fathers be good enough mothers if the father is an absentee father if the father is an incestuous father if the father is a bribing father if the father parentifies his daughter or his his son doesn't matter the wrong kind of father better off without a father either you have the right kind of father or no father at all in both cases the psychodynamic psychological outcomes are good but if you have the wrong type of father psychological outcomes are seriously bad there were there are many studies and i i'm i refer you to a few of them in the description now there are many studies that show that there are fewer behavioral problems in children who spend time with fathers but the missing part is it has to be the right kind of time it has to be quality time and precious few fathers if any offer this kind of time if you have a father in your life and he offers you a lot of time but it's a wrong kind of time it's an invasive time it's a demeaning and degrading time it's time for criticism it's time for control power plays and mind games and if it's a father who is reluctantly with you because you know he has to be with you it's like a chore this kind of father would have a detrimental effect on your personal development and growth throughout the lifespan there's no healthy dynamic with this kind of father it increases negative behavioral problems if the father is physically abusive which a large proportion of fathers are that compounds the problem there's evidence pretty conclusive evidence that daddy issues can traumatize adolescents can lead to anxiety depression and social withdrawal which is mistaken for social anxiety or social shyness adolescents also tend to mimic aggression and violent behavior so an antisocial father an aggressive criminalized or violent father would breed the same behavioral outcomes in his son the daughter on the other hand would try to gratify such a such a father and inadvertently with slide into overt sexuality she would try to use or leverage her sexuality to kind of pacify and placate a violent or aggressive father these dynamics are very sick spending a lot of time with father is not always ideal quality time of the right kind with a healthy mentally healthy dad whose behaviors are functional and proportional this is the key father's involvement in children's development can negatively actually impact his children and the sad and bad news is that most fathers are dead fathers wrong fathers because society society had indoctrinated men for example society tells you the prevailing culture tells you as a man you should never show emotions or you should suppress certain kinds of emotions you should never cry you should always be strong you should never show weakness and vulnerability you should not pamper or spoil your children in any way shape or form so better be harsh and deductic and disciplinarian tough love societal and cultural edicts and brainwashing had have rendered most men totally dysfunctional as fathers they failed to find the balance and so they damaged their children much more than they helped them in this power matrix between fathers and children the children are always disadvantaged there's a power of symmetry the father is stronger more knowledgeable has access to more resources and can deny them to the child children with daddy issues both men and women tend to become passive lifelong they adopt a victim stance a position of victimhood in a skewed power matrix they even push their partners to abuse them reactive abuse they use projective identification to restore the comfort zone where father was all powerful and they were meek and helpless when a woman with daddy issues teams up with an older man she tries to recreate this dynamic when a man with daddy issues and obeys his boss or admires a role model or defies authority he tends to recreate the same power matrix that had characterized his adolescence these issue these issues carry forward they characterize the totality of one's life possessiveness suspiciousness jealousy and control these are the hallmarks of daddy issue relationships on both sides by the way the older man usually suspects the younger woman of manipulation or deceit he regards her as a sugarbeam or a gold digger it's in his mind he can't get rid of this suspicion he also assumes that she is playing the field cheating on him and so most older men in these dynamics become highly possessive suspicious constricting and jealous it's all about control the women on the other hand with daddy issues who are in relationships with older men they tend to interpret money giving and jealousy as forms of love if he's jealous and possessive he must be serious about me he loves me if he gives me money he cares about me he wants to protect me he wants me to feel safe and happy these are of course extremely sick foundations for extremely sick relationships that have no future separation insecurity also known as abandonment anxiety in men and women with daddy issues leads to clinging coercion triangulation and emotional blackmail it is the woman with daddy issues who display codependent and borderline behaviors she would become needy clinging she would try to coerce the older men into specific behaviors for example giving up on on his job and staying only with her never traveling she would try to constrict his life she would usually triangulate with other men to get a rise out of him to provoke him to jealousy and to reacquire or reclaim her and she would use emotional blackmail to obtain goods and services this all leads to drama women and men with daddy issues are drama queens and kings in this sense again it's very akin to borderline personality disorder drama is a tool it's a way to avoid loneliness facing oneself it's a form of self-harming and self-trashing the older men in a relationship with either younger men or younger women romantic or business wise educational any type of relationship the older man becomes weaponized he becomes the equivalent of a razor or a cigarette a way to self-harm a way to self-trash self-harming and self-trashing has two functions one to drown out negative affectivity to drown out pain and hurt and fear and anxiety when you self-harm you have no time to focus on what you what you're feeling what your emotions are and so the second function of self-harming is to feel alive borderlines describe self-mutilation cutting for example as a reviving experience experiences makes the feel alive or come alive and similarly when they cut they also don't feel the inner turmoil in tumult that they're usually exposed to when they are not self-mutilating teaming up with an older men either romantically educationally business wise as a guru as a cult leader you name it any any emotional investment in an older men any catexes in an older man is the exact equivalent of cutting or self-mutilation it is not the way of nature it is teaming up with death impending death as older men die sooner it's a fact of nature it's teaming up with death in order to feel alive and this need to be closer to death in order to feel alive is because in early childhood with the wrong kind of father the only way to feel alive was to sacrifice yourself to deny yourself to break your own boundaries to cease to exist which is a good definition of dying