Reading a bit like Iron John at times, Erikson places great emphasis on a man’s relationship with his father. In describing Luther’s, he quotes a passage from Tom Wolfe:
From the beginning . . . the idea, the central legend that I wished my book to express had not changed. And this central idea was this: the deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living was man’s search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.
-Thomas Wolfe, The Story of a Novel, p.39
I suspect there is a LOT of truth wrapped up in this.