Rapprochement between fathers and sons:
A virtual book talk
1.5 CE Credit will be provided to SPPP Members
***This session will be recorded***
***This session will be made available for on-demand CE credit***
Date: February 11, 3:00 PM Eastern Time
This virtual talk is based in Louis Rothschild’s recently published book Rapprochement between fathers and sons: Breakdowns, reunions, potentialities. There, fatherhood is shown to be a time of potentiality that can facilitate active development for both parents and children that hinges upon capacities that avow nurturing as integral to masculinity. Additionally, ’father’ is understood to be a name pointing to a parenting function. In and through pleasures and anxieties found in activity, rapprochement is understood to be a sub-phase of child development marked by a dramatic expression of relational conflict, and to also characterize conflicts between autonomy and dependency across the lifespan where an often muted and subtle tension between holding and letting go persists. Through examination of clinical material, myths, literature, and personal reflections, this talk moves from Freud’s rather cold conception of fathers to more recent efforts to develop a psychoanalytically affirmative portrait of fatherhood. With material that includes the grief of failed reunion and attention to child sacrifice, 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.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this program, participants will be able to:
- Differentiate hegemonic masculinity from relational models of masculinity in order to frame ego-syntonic aggression as a presenting problem.
- Discuss the concept of rapprochement as a childhood developmental marker and as an aspect of normal adult development.
- Identify the value of cross-disciplinary study in regard to the conceptualization and management of transference-countertransference enactments.
Presenters:
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 psychoanalysis, and clinical to philosophical. Most recently, he completed the book Rapprochement between fathers and sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities in addition to penning an epilogue for Salman Akhtar’s edited book Truth: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms, and co-editing the 2023 Gradiva nominated Precarities of 21st-Century Childhoods: Critical Explorations of Time(s), Place(s), and Identities with Michael O’Loughlin and Carol Owens. Outside of his professional life, Louis has a fondness for tennis, triathlon, and kitchen based culinary play.
Dennis Debiak, Psy.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Philadelphia and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He was the first chair of SPPP’s Committee on Sexualities and Gender Identities (SGI), a two-term board Secretary and President of the Division in 2017 and 2018. He is a founding board member and one of the first graduates of the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia (IRPP), where he serves as faculty, supervisor and analyst of candidates. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Widener University’s Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology. He is a proud member of Philadelphia-based Insight For All (IFA), which provides pro bono psychoanalytic treatment to formerly homeless individuals.
