The Dead Father: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry

What is the significance of the Father in psychoanalysis today?

This book constructs a much needed framework to allow psychoanalysts to consider the difficulties of a generation without a solid anchor in the Father. The Dead Father: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry provides a necessary addition to decades of work on the role of the mother in development. The editors bring together world renowned scholars to discuss current observations in their fields, in terms of the Father’s changing but essential functions, both in the lives of the individual and collective. Divided into four parts, chapters focus on:

• The Lost Father
• The Father Embodied
• The Father in Theory
• Father Culture.

Exploring the role of the father in individual psychology, everyday interpersonal and social experience and cultural phenomena writ large, this book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, as well as psychologists, social workers and scholars in the humanities.

Lila J. Kalinich is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, where she has included Lacan and contemporary philosophy in her teaching for many years. She is also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and is in private practice.

Stuart W. Taylor is a member of the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is on the faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia College, where he teaches Freud to undergraduates. He is also in private practice.