Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons

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.

‘After its foundational preoccupation with a child's relationship with his or her father, psychoanalysis took a radical turn towards the maternal, a turn that lasted for over half a century. Louis Rothschild's book is both an outstanding representative of the subsequent 'return to the father' and a unique explication of psychoanalytic thought on its own. Crisscrossing between mythology, fiction, film studies, children's literature, and contemporary psychoanalytic praxis, Rothschild unveils a portrait of fatherhood as an amalgam of strength and tenderness that spurs the offspring's autonomy while allowing on-going dependency as well. The word' rapprochement' in the title of his book embodies not only the blend of firmness and compassion in fathering but also the heuristic benefits reaped by psychoanalysis' interaction with related disciplines of humanities. This is a book of great literary elegance and impressive psychological wisdom.’

• AcknowledgmentsAbout the authorIntroductionPart I - Fleshing out fathers and sons in familial contexts1. Finding a father: Repetition, difference, and fantasy in Finding Nemo 2. It is still hot: Wild things across centuries of childhood3. The Giving Tree and spaceship dreams: Terrestrial embodiment and ethics of the outsidePart II - Sons and flight lessons4. Icarus as falling forever: Unearthing the maternal in father hunger and endeavor excitement5. Coercive elements and the threat of child sacrifice: The Lego Movie6. On hunger and freedom: Huck Finn’s Pharmakon7. Stealing a bad feed in the night kitchen8. Peter Pan dances with Frankenstein: Wise babies facing/not facing challenges of integrationPart III - Fathers and homecomings9. Abraham’s and Isaac’s fear and silence10. Ulysses beached: Absence and faith in transformations11. Father to the good-enough man: Vulnerability in The Trumpet of the SwanFurther thoughtsReferencesIndex