The Father Wound: Recognition, Repair & the Inner Father — A Four-Part Psychoeducational Series
by Lyna Tevenaz Jones, M.A.
A Four-Part Depth Psychological Exploration of the Father Wound,
the Paternal Function, and the Development of the Inner Father
Online Workshops
Part I: The Personal Father
Thursday October 8, 2026 | 4–6 PM Pacific Time
Part II: The Father Complex
Thursday November 5, 2026 | 4–6 PM Pacific
Part I: The Father Archetype
Thursday December 3rd, 2026 | 4–6 PM Pacific Time
Part II: The Integration Process
Thursday January 7, 2027 | 4–6 PM Pacific Time
Why can the relationship with our father continue to shape us long after childhood has ended?
Why do some of us struggle to feel recognized, legitimate,
or confident in our place in the world?
Why might paternal absence, criticism, rejection, overprotection,
or emotional unavailability affect not only how we relate to our father,
but how we approach visibility, authority, risk, achievement,
and our own capacity to act?
Depth psychology suggests that our experience of the father does not remain confined to the external relationship.
Through the father complex, our experiences of being seen, encouraged, protected, challenged, rejected, criticized, or overlooked can become organized into an inner psychological reality
that continues to influence how we experience ourselves and the world.
The father is also often one of the child's earliest significant relationships beyond the primary maternal dyad.
Developmental and psychoanalytic perspectives suggest that the paternal function can play an important role in differentiation, exploration, autonomy, and the child's gradual movement toward the world beyond the earliest relationship.
The father may therefore become associated not only with our experience of Father, but with our developing sense of whether we can venture outward, trust our capacities, occupy space, and find a legitimate place in the larger world.
From a Jungian perspective, however, the personal father does not exhaust the meaning of Father.
Behind the personal relationship lies the Father archetype: a much larger symbolic pattern
associated with authority, structure, protection, orientation, limits, challenge,
and initiation into the world.
When these paternal functions have been insufficiently available, the task of healing is not simply to understand what happened with our father.
It is to recognize where the father wound continues to organize our inner life, differentiate the personal father from the Father archetype, and gradually develop within ourselves the recognition, structure, agency, and inner authority we may once have sought outside ourselves.
Much of the existing literature on the father wound focuses on paternal absence, rejection, emotional unavailability, the father complex, or the impact of the father-daughter relationship on later relationships with men.
This seminar proposes a broader hypothesis: what if the father wound affects not only our relationship with Father, with the Masculine, but also our relationship with the world?
This four-part workshop series offers a depth psychological exploration of the father wound, the father complex, and the role of the paternal function in psychological development and individuation.
Drawing from Jungian psychology, psychoanalytic thought, developmental psychology, attachment research, and contemporary fatherhood research, participants will explore how experiences with the personal father may become organized into an enduring father complex and shape our relationship with recognition, legitimacy, exploration, competence, agency, authority, and our place in the world.
The series will also distinguish the personal father from the Father archetype and explore how paternal functions that were insufficiently available in childhood may gradually be developed and integrated within the personality.
The exploration will include the work of Carl G. Jung, Linda Schierse Leonard, Susan E. Schwartz, Michael J. Diamond, Daniel Paquette, and contemporary research on paternal development and the father-daughter relationship.
To preserve the intimacy and integrity of the learning container, registration for this series will be intentionally limited.
The Series
Series Registration
Participants may register for individual workshops or for the complete four-part series.
Individual Workshop Registration — $55
Complete Four-Part Series — $200
Registration includes live teaching, workshop recordings, PDF presentations, reflective exercises, and access to the private Q&A discussion space following each session.
A four-part depth psychological exploration of the father wound and the ways our early experiences of the paternal can shape our relationship with identity, self-worth, authority, belonging, recognition, and our place in the wider world.
Across four monthly sessions, we will explore the personal and archetypal dimensions of the father wound: the impact of an absent, rejecting, emotionally unavailable, critical, intrusive, or wounded father; the development of the father complex; and the ways these early experiences may continue to live within us long after childhood.
Drawing from Jungian and depth psychology, attachment and developmental perspectives, we will also move beyond the personal father to explore the archetypal paternal and the possibility of developing an inner relationship with the functions that may have been missing or insufficiently available to us.
This series is ultimately concerned not only with understanding what was absent, but with discovering what can still be developed within: an internal source of recognition, structure, protection, direction, authority, and affirmation.
Four monthly live sessions | Recordings included
This is a psychoeducational series and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or mental health treatment.
SESSION I — THE PERSONAL FATHER
Father as Other and Our Introduction to the World
The first session begins with the personal father and his place in early psychological development. While psychological theory has historically emphasized the mother-child relationship, the father represents a distinct and important relational presence in the developing child's world. As one of the earliest significant figures outside the primary maternal dyad, he may become an important experience of otherness, differentiation, and recognition beyond the maternal relationship.
Drawing from developmental psychology, attachment and fatherhood research, and psychoanalytic theories of thirdness and the paternal function, we will explore the father's role in the child's gradual movement toward the external world. Particular attention will be given to research on exploration, challenging play, manageable risk, autonomy, and the activation relationship - the ways fathers may encourage the child not only to feel safe, but to venture beyond what is familiar and discover their own capacities.
We will examine what may happen when these paternal functions are disrupted through physical or emotional absence, rejection, criticism, passivity, overprotection, authoritarianism, inconsistency, or a failure to recognize and encourage the developing child.
At the heart of this first session is a foundational question: What did our earliest experiences with Father teach us about ourselves- and about the world we were preparing to enter?
Learning objectives:
- Understand the role of the father in a child’s psychological and emotional development.
- Explore how the father-child relationship differs from other early relationships.
- Learn about the importance of paternal presence, involvement, and emotional connection.
- Identify different forms of father wounds and how they may develop.
- Recognize some of the ways early experiences with our fathers can continue to influence us in adulthood.
In our first session, we will establish the psychological foundations of the father wound by exploring the significance of the father in early development and the formation of the self.
While the mother often represents our first relational world, the father may become one of our earliest significant encounters with someone who is other than Mother. Symbolically, this relationship can help shape how we experience ourselves in relation to the wider world: whether we feel seen, recognized, welcomed, protected, valued, and entitled to take up space within it.
Drawing from Jungian and depth psychology alongside developmental and attachment perspectives, we will examine how experiences with an absent, rejecting, critical, emotionally unavailable, intrusive, idealized, or wounded father may become internalized and continue to influence identity, self-worth, belonging, authority, relationships, and our expectations of recognition.
We will also begin differentiating the personal father from the archetypal paternal, creating the foundation for the larger movement of the series: from understanding what happened in our relationship with the personal father toward discovering the paternal functions that can still be developed and reclaimed within the psyche.
Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 5:00–7:00 PM Mountain Time
Recording included with registration.
This is a psychoeducational workshop and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or mental health treatment.
SESSION II — The Father Complex
When the Personal Father Becomes an Inner Reality
Our relationship with our father does not remain confined to childhood.
Over time, our experiences of being loved, recognized, encouraged, criticized, rejected, feared, idealized, or overlooked can become part of an enduring inner psychological pattern that Jungian psychology calls the father complex.
In this session, we will explore how the father complex develops and how it can continue to influence our thoughts, emotions, relationships, choices, and perceptions long after our relationship with the personal father has changed or ended.
In this session, we will examine both the positive and negative poles of the father complex, including the different ways paternal experiences may become internalized and unconsciously repeated in adult life.
We will also explore how an unresolved father complex can become activated through relationships, authority figures, achievement, approval, and other areas of adult experience, sometimes leaving us responding not only to what is happening in the present, but to an older psychological reality that remains alive within us.
Through understanding the father complex, we begin to distinguish the father we actually had from the psychological Father we continue to carry within.
Learning objectives:
- Understand what Jungian psychology means by the father complex and how it develops.
- Distinguish between the personal father and the internal psychological patterns associated with him.
- Explore the positive and negative expressions of the father complex.
- Recognize how the father complex may become activated in adult life, relationships, and experiences with authority.
- Identify ways our early experiences with Father may continue to influence thoughts, feelings, choices, and recurring patterns.
SESSION III — The Father Archetype
Beyond the Personal Father
The personal father is our first experience of Father, but he does not represent the full psychological meaning of the paternal. Jungian psychology distinguishes between our experiences with the personal father and the deeper, archetypal pattern of the Father that exists within the collective psyche.
In this session, we will move beyond personal biography to explore the Father archetype and the paternal function. We will examine the symbolic qualities traditionally associated with the archetypal Father—including structure, guidance, protection, authority, boundaries, challenge, and orientation—and consider both their constructive and shadow expressions.
Drawing from Jungian and psychoanalytic perspectives alongside contemporary psychological research, we will explore how paternal functions contribute to psychological development and how our relationship with these qualities may be affected when the personal father was unable to adequately embody them.
By separating the personal father from the Father archetype, we begin to discover that our earliest experience of Father does not have to define our entire relationship with the paternal.
Learning objectives:
- Understand the Jungian concept of the Father archetype.
- Distinguish between the personal father, father complex, and Father archetype.
- Explore the central psychological qualities and functions associated with the archetypal Father.
- Examine both the constructive and shadow expressions of the Father archetype.
- Consider how our relationship with the paternal can develop beyond our experiences with the personal father.
SESSION IV — HEALING THE FATHER WOUND
From the External Father to Inner Authority
The final session turns toward the process of healing and integration. Understanding the personal father, recognizing the father complex, and encountering the Father archetype create the foundation for a deeper question: what do we do with what we have inherited from Father?
Drawing from Jungian psychology and the process of individuation, we will explore what it means to differentiate ourselves from the psychological influence of the personal father without denying the significance of what occurred. We will examine the ways paternal wounds can remain active through internalized beliefs, unconscious patterns, projections, and the continued search for something externally that has not yet been sufficiently developed within.
Healing the father wound does not necessarily require changing, forgiving, reconciling with, or receiving recognition from the personal father. Rather, it involves developing a more conscious relationship with what Father represents within the psyche and gradually reclaiming psychological capacities that may have remained underdeveloped, projected, or dependent upon external validation.
The work ultimately moves beyond the question of what we did or did not receive from Father toward the development of a more grounded relationship with ourselves, our inner authority, and the life we are becoming capable of inhabiting.
Learning objectives:
- Understand the Jungian concept of the Father archetype.
- Distinguish between the personal father, father complex, and Father archetype.
- Explore the central psychological qualities and functions associated with the archetypal Father.
- Examine both the constructive and shadow expressions of the Father archetype.
- Consider how our relationship with the paternal can develop beyond our experiences with the personal father.
What to expect…
Each workshop includes approximately 90 minutes of teaching, reflection, and depth psychological exploration, followed by a private 30-minute Q&A and discussion space for participants.
These workshops are designed to be intellectually rigorous while remaining accessible and grounded in lived psychological experience. Drawing from Jungian psychology, psychoanalytic thought, and clinical understanding, the material will explore both the theory and lived reality of projection as it appears in relationships, attraction, idealization, emotional triggers, conflict, and everyday life.
Participants can expect a combination of:
Lecture and teaching
Clinical and archetypal examples
Reflective questions and journaling prompts
Opportunities for personal insight and self-observation
Guided exploration of psychological patterns and relational dynamics
The emphasis of this series is not on pathologizing projection, but on understanding it as a natural psychological process that can become a powerful catalyst for greater consciousness, psychological integration, and more authentic relationships to self and others.
The final 30 minutes of each workshop will be reserved for private participant discussion and Q&A. This space is intended to allow for deeper reflection, questions, and integration of the material in a more personal and conversational format.
Please note that these workshops are educational in nature and are not a substitute for psychotherapy or mental health treatment.
About me
Lyna Tevenaz Jones is a psychodynamic and Jungian-informed therapist specializing in depth work with adults and adolescents. In my clinical work, integrate attachment theory, internal family systems, archetypal psychology, and affective neuroscience. My thesis research explored how symbolic imagery and active imagination can restore connection to the Self in the healing of childhood trauma and attachment wounds.
Taking good care of your psyche and your body.
This series is offered for educational and self-reflective purposes only.
It is a psychoeducational program and does not constitute psychotherapy, counseling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or mental health treatment. Participation does not establish a therapist-client relationship with the facilitator.
The material explored throughout the series may invite meaningful personal reflection and may bring up emotionally sensitive experiences. Participants are encouraged to attend to their own needs and to seek support from a qualified mental health professional when appropriate.
This series is intended to complement, not replace, individual psychotherapy or other professional mental health care.