Books on toxic fathers will help in developing your understanding of your childhood experiences is the first step to healing. When you start to understand how your father affected you, it will help you to become more motivated to find ways to remove the damage.
The more you know about what has happened to you and how your father has affected you, the more you will know what needs changing.
4 Books on Toxic Fathers
This book is about the impact of a father’s absence on his daughter. Whether a father is there physically but absent emotionally, a narcissist, absent through divorce or separation, or if he passed away, the book highlights the psychological, emotional and sometimes physical implications it would have on her.
Written by Susan E. Schwartz, she give it through the perspective of a Jungian analytical psychology.
Taken it from a Jungian analytical perspective is really useful because:
– your life history is important for understanding why you are the way you are
– that you are also influenced by other factors that you might not be consciously aware off i.e. religious beliefs or myths etc
To help you understand this better, she provides case studies and life like examples of the effect this has on daughters.
It does have mainly positive reviews on amazon. The people that gave a lower mark unfortunately didn’t say why they didn’t like it.
I will be reviewing this book separately, hopefully in the future.
Quite simply written and not academic in any way. However, she says that the information is just to be educational and supportive which is healing in itself.
It is more directed at those who have no idea what a Narcissistic father is and needs information on what signs to look out for, what their traits are, and how they could affect your family.
As well as signs of Narcissistic fathers, it covers topics such as information on the scapegoat and the golden child or in other words the favorite and the child that’s treated the worst. She also ends by providing some simple steps on how you can start to heal, especially if you doing this on your own without the support of a therapist.
If you are a stickler for grammar, you may not like this book as well as some reviewers have highlighted this as an issue. I didn’t notice it myself.
I managed to find this one by Larry Elder. By the way, you can find the audio version of this book but it’s under a different name Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives…Eight Hours
This book is different to the rest as it is more a personal memoir where Larry talks about his relationship with his father and how it developed.
Larry and his siblings experienced a lot of physical and verbal abuse from his father which led him to not talk to him for 10 years aged 15 years old.
When he did start to talk to him, they had a conversation that lasted about 8 hours which Larry’s father explained why he was the way he was. This led to Larry changing his feelings about his father.
She begins by explaining what a narcissist is and how narcissistic fathers affect their children.
What is different about her book is that is as she differentiates between having full-blown Narcissistic personality disorder and having narcissistic traits. Both can be really destructive for your well-being.
She provides strategies to cope with your narcisstic father also how to decide if you want to go no contact.
Hope you find these useful. Please note that if you purchase any of these books using the links that I have provided through Amazon, I earn a small commission which doesn’t cost you any extra but helps me to continue to provide free content.
On a whole, there isn’t a lot of books out there on Toxic Fathers. Even the ones that are there, most of the books on Toxic fathers are written for fathers and daughters.
There isn’t much out there for fathers and sons. I did manage to find one but it was written 11 years ago. If you know of any, please comment down below.
What to do next
Feel free to share with someone else that you believe needs therapy. You never know that this may help them to make their minds up!
