Book Announcement by Louis Rothschild (USA)

This book extends recent efforts to develop a psychoanalytically affirmative portrait of fatherhood through the idea that fathers can be attuned to relational mutuality and intimacy as a source of flourishing. Rapprochement is understood as a sub-phase of child development, and is considered to characterize conflicts between autonomy and dependency across the lifespan. Simply, an often muted and subtle tension between holding and letting go persists. ‘Father’ is understood as an identity as well as a parenting function.

With material that includes the grief of failed reunion, Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities mediates its particular stories through 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.

https://firingthemind.com/product/9781800132382/

Louis Rothschild Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Baltimore County, Maryland. Specializing in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, he also provides supervision, writes, and occasionally reviews manuscripts. His publications have ranged from quantitative to qualitative, social-cognitive to psychoanalytic, and clinical to philosophical. Most recently, he penned an epilogue for Salman Akhtar’s edited book, Truth: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms, and co-edited Precarities of 21st Century Childhoods: Critical Explorations of Time(s), Place(s), and Identities with Michael O’Loughlin and Carol Owens.

Louis Rothschild, Ph.D.
Baltimore County, Maryland, USA
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