Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons

Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities

Louis Rothschild (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2023
Phoenix Publishing House (Verlag)
978-1-80013-238-2 (ISBN)

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Through the examination of clinical material, myths, literature, and personal reflections, Louis Rothschild takes a psychoanalytic lens to fatherhood. His work illuminates fatherhood as a time of potentiality and active development for both parents and children while simultaneously revealing nurturing capacities as central to masculinity.

Following Freud’s rather cold conception of fathers and a relative neglect of their role in psychoanalytic theory is a challenge to continue more recent efforts to develop a psychoanalytically affirmative portrait of fatherhood. Here, fathers are attuned to relational mutuality and intimacy as a source of flourishing. Rapprochement is understood as a sub-phase of child development marked by a dramatic expression of conflict such as, “Hear me, see me, give me space, don’t give me space.” In addition, rapprochement is considered to characterize conflicts between autonomy and dependency across the lifespan. An often muted and subtle tension between holding and letting go persists. Working with what is felt entails entering a never fully completed negotiation marked by misreadings, bias, and illusion. ‘Father’ is understood to be a name pointing to a parenting function. With material that includes the grief of failed reunion, particular stories are mediated through thinking alongside philosophy and psychoanalytic theory in order to further explore the difficulty of integrating nurturing capacities into conceptions of masculinity. As a critique of gendered rigidity, a case is made for a social surround that declares mutual vulnerability to exist in a state of permanent inquiry and relational curiosity. Such openness can function to aid parents, clinicians, and respective community members to privilege the development of increased frustration tolerance. By extension, a good-enough father is one who recognizes breakdown, a need for refueling, and possesses and practices a willingness to encounter uneven rhythms in human dimensions.

This thoughtful work brings fresh insight into the role of the father and masculinity and is essential reading for mental health professionals.

Louis Rothschild, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in the greater Baltimore, Maryland area. Specialising in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, his publications have ranged from quantitative to qualitative and clinical to philosophical. After obtaining his PhD at the New School for Social Research where he published on the relationship between essentialist beliefs and prejudice, he completed a fellowship at Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior. There, his categorical interest turned from the social to psychiatric taxonomy, focusing on the relationships between personality and chronic depression. Once in private practice, his writing returned to the intersections between critical theory, psychoanalysis, gender theory, and pop culture that piqued his interest as an undergraduate in San Francisco. Those varied interests have led to his first book Rapprochement between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities forthcoming with Phoenix in addition to a co-edited volume, Precarities of 21st Century Childhoods: Critical Explorations of Time(s), Place(s), and Identities. He is a past President of the Rhode Island local chapter of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39) of the American Psychological Association, and served as a member of the steering committee for the 38th annual spring meeting of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, which took place in New Orleans, his birthplace. There, he was able to feature one of his paintings entitled “Ghosts and Guardians”, and helped to plan and deliver a featured panel on the impact of slavery in the United States. His website is www.louisrothschildphd.com.

Acknowledgments

About the author

Introduction

Part I - Fleshing out fathers and sons in familial contexts

1. Finding a father: Repetition, difference, and fantasy in Finding Nemo

2. It is still hot: Wild things across centuries of childhood

3. The Giving Tree and spaceship dreams: Terrestrial embodiment and ethics of the outside

Part II - Sons and flight lessons

4. Icarus as falling forever: Unearthing the maternal in father hunger and endeavor excitement

5. Coercive elements and the threat of child sacrifice: The Lego Movie

6. On hunger and freedom: Huck Finn’s Pharmakon

7. Stealing a bad feed in the night kitchen

8. Peter Pan dances with Frankenstein: Wise babies facing/not facing challenges of integration

Part III - Fathers and homecomings

9. Abraham’s and Isaac’s fear and silence

10. Ulysses beached: Absence and faith in transformations

11. Father to the good-enough man: Vulnerability in The Trumpet of the Swan

Further thoughts

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	25.11.2023
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	406 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Entwicklungspsychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Klinische Psychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Psychoanalyse / Tiefenpsychologie
ISBN-10	1-80013-238-7 / 1800132387
ISBN-13	978-1-80013-238-2 / 9781800132382
Zustand	Neuware