"...From a structural point of view, this reversal of the primal myth explains several typical contemporary phenomena on the gender level. Contemporary sons have great difficulties in regarding their fathers as representatives of ancient patriarchal authority. As a consequence, the security and protection associated with that authority has disappeared, resulting in ever-increasing levels of anxiety and thus aggression in the sons. The absence of the possibility of identifying with the symbolic function itself condemns the contemporary male to staying at the level of the immature boy and son, afraid of the threatening female figure, which once more assumes its atavistic characteristics. These sons are just wandering around, staying forever in the same position, owing to the lack of an identificatory figure; thirty-year- old kids and adolescents of forty are no longer the exception. On the psychopathological level, we are confronted with a new category: the so-called borderline state. From our point of view, this is the hysterical subject stuck at the preoedipal, anxiety-loaded level. For lack of a masculine identificatory figure, a number of men proceed in the opposite direction and become perfect... mothers. Recent developments in this respect can literally be seen on the screen. In Kramer vs. Kramer (Rober Benton,1986), it sufficed for the hero to take the motherly role, but later, Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus) required a complete metamorphosis of a man into a woman."

Paul Verhaeghe