Hi David,
Your father certainly had/has some problems, both with himself and being a parent. I'm sorry for what you must have been through. I think I know how a lot of that feels.
I'll tell you what works for me: It doesn't matter what the label is, as most labels are subjective, anyway. What matters is the perspective you can bring to what you saw, and were subjected to, as a child. Perhaps your therapist was more about trying to get you to see that things shouldn't have been this way, and it's not your fault that they were, than he or she was about categorizing your father's behavior. In my own therapy, it's been a huge and long-term issue that much of what I saw as "wrong with me" wasn't in any way wrong with me. I developed certain responses to the environment I grew up in. Those responses were natural and logical consequences of the expectations put on me. It wasn't hard to figure out how I "got" the way I am. What has been extremely hard is accepting that the environment itself was far from healthy, so the responses weren't too healthy, either.
Speaking from experience, I would say that perspective is hard to maintain. On the one hand, we hate people who hurt us. On the other, the parent-child relationship is very deeply programmed into us. It's a hard bond to break, and personally I think it should be broken only as a means of survival. I think that a lot of the people here would disagree with me on that one.
I can't answer the question, "Are my parents toxic?" I can say they seem unhappy, and your father seems pretty disturbed about some things. I can't imagine they created a good environment for children. But you're here now, and you're working on it, and I think a certain amount of forgiveness and generosity of spirit are absolutely essential to exorcising the demons of childhood. Most parents do the best they know how to do. As adults, we can look back and wonder why they didn't try to do better, we can learn to comfort the wounded children we were--and in many ways still are--but that doesn't destroy or negate the imperfect love your parents probably felt, and feel, for you. Could it have been better? Absolutely. Could it have been worse? Probably. I would say that for me, therapy is largely about keeping that in mind while learning to be kind to myself and--most important--learning to evaluate myself according to what is important to me, not what was important to them, long ago. It's harder than you might think to tell the difference.
Keep posting, and keep working with your therapist.
Best,
daylily