"He describes his father "like not having a father"." Like not having a father! Like not having a father. Like not having a father. Like not having a father. Like not having a father. Think of that. Like not having a father. Like no father. No father. This has to be an extremely important statement from this man. My guess is that he wants to be the father he never had and wants to be (identify with) the children he and his wife will make, the children who will finally have a father--hopefully him. But this is, of course, not so secure a project when it arises from pre-reflective unconscious motives since he is possibly trying to have more fatherhood than he or his wife are able to comfortably accommodate. His wife is feeling the urgency of his neediness from his father deprivation. His grief for his father and his denail of that grief I think could perhaps be the motive that gives his desires for fatherhood such a compelling force. The force of such compulsion may be diminshed by bringing to consciousness the futile longings for a father he didn't have (by helping him grieve) as well as his likely angry protests in having been left as a fatherless child himself (by helping him claim his own right to feel entitled to be cared for). This is only a hypothesis. It is not possible to know if any of this pertains to your case. But you are looking for ideas and suggestions as you and your clients discover their truths. So what I have given you are simply possibilities that you may or may not deem advisable to explore further.
His needs are paramount in my opinion. That is, the urgency and compulsiveness of his prssure toward his wife that she be pregnant are a plea for help so he may better be able to come to terms with his strongly felt feelings of deprivation of fatherly love.
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