Sex and Sigmund; it's all in the family

THE child custody contest between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, which is reaching its conclusion in Judge Elliot Wilk's Manhattan courtroom, is more than the public catharsis of people with more money and children than sense; it is the comeuppance of psychoanalysis. Never before has the private dialogue between therapist and patient been so exposed to public and judicial scrutiny.

The story so far is that a girl from a rigid Catholic background, Mia Farrow, becomes involved with men whose reputations have been shadowed by diverse tyrannies, from the mafia to child molesting. Rich and resourceful, she falls in love with Woody Allen, enhances her reputation as an actress and acquires a community of children. The first made sense - he is a famous film director. The second made as much sense as W C Fields camping with the Famous Five.

Here is a woman - as a friend of mine puts it - who collects children, but who hangs about with a man who behaves like a peripheral patriarch. Despite this, she went to great lengths to ensure his right to absolute access to her adopted children. Then, it seems, the Farrow family found it necessary to invent safety strategies for the children - by ensuring that he was never alone with a child.

What about Woody? He is a father with a reputation for pursuing girls, whose relationship with his own children has been described as having 'sexual overtones' rather than 'parental overtones'. He did not live with his children or their mother, and his evidence revealed a man who knew little of them.

Enter psychoanalysis. More than half a dozen psychiatrists attend to Woody Allen and the Farrow family. An armada of psychiatrists and psychologists have appeared before Judge Wilk to argue for or against Allen having custody.

But it was the children, not their psychiatric interpreters, who brought Woody out into the open. It was the adopted Korean teenager Soon-Yi, who was captivated by him, took her clothes off for him and then left incriminating photographic evidence where her mother could find it. And it was seven-

year-old Dylan, another adopted daughter, who made allegations about sexual abuse that have been the subject of a police investigation.

The question is whether psychoanalysis is going to protect the father or the children when their testimony seems at odds. Last week, a child psychiatrist told the court that a hospital report, which regarded Dylan's stories as 'thought disorders', could as easily support the conclusion that he had abused her. The clinical psychologist who treated Allen and Farrow's son, Satchel, told the court earlier that a son's need for a father outweighed other concerns. A family therapist argued that even if the allegations of abuse were proved, the film maker should still have access to Dylan, 'dependent on the outcome of therapy'.

'Your assumption,' interjected the exasperated judge, 'is you can force the relationship through therapy. We are not at the point of sleeping with our children's sisters.'

If Allen was found to be an abuser, his family arrangements could be re-interpreted as alibis. His children, who were sent to psychiatrists - his son at three, his daughter at five - could be represented as 'fantasisers' whose mutinies could be read as pathological. His separate living arrangements could be an acknowledgement that he was impossible to live with, or a place away from his lover's scrutiny. And did Allen's lifelong flight into psychoanalysis help him to wise up, or offer him excuses that freed him from blame?

The family dispute at the heart of this case lays bare an epochal struggle within the world of psychoanalysis that began in 1897, when Freud discarded the laments of troubled young women clients because it led him to the 'hardly credible' conclusion 'that perverted acts against children were so general'. Judge Wilk's exasperation with the psychotherapists challenges the alliance between the psychoanalytic tradition and the divine right of fathers that emerged from Freud's recantation.

The judge has not turned the Farrow children's mutiny into a sickness, and he does not see why they should put up with a capricious, careless, self-absorbed and possibly abusive dad if they don't want to. In deciding the care and custody of the Farrows, he also threatens to expose the extent to which psychoanalysis may be determined to efface the sins of the fathers at the expense of the children.