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Louis Rothschild, "Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities" (Karnac, 2023)
01:07:56
An interview with Louis Rothschild
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Welcome back to New Books and Psychoanalysis, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Our guest for the episode is Dr. Louis Rothschild. Dr. Rothschild is a clinical psychologist specializing in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. His publications have ranged from quantitative to qualitative and clinical to philosophical. He is the past president of the Rhode island local chapter of the Society for Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology division 39 of the American Psychological Association. He joins us today to talk about his new book, Rapprochement Between Fathers and Breakdowns, reunions, potentialities, published 2024 by Carnac. Louis, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Thank you, Christopher. It's a pleasure to be here.
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B
As this is a psychoanalytic podcast, we begin with the same question. As far as we can know our motivations, what motiv you to write the book?
- [02:09]
C
As far as. This is a wonderful frame for the answer, of course, a lot motivated me to write it. I would say the usual ambivalence was surfing around for several years and feeling the way the culture was shifting. I think we often, if we're raised academically well, find ourselves taking our bubbles for granted. And so much of feminist theory, so much of psychoanalytic theory that just seems normal, suddenly felt like a minority opinion. And that, I think, may have been a straw that broke the camel's back in a good direction, gave a why now Meaning to some work that had been percolating for a long time. Three of the chapters are of course republished. So first one, I think, you know, being in early 2000s, so really in the last 15 years, I was moving towards the goal of the project, but I gathered more material that was needed and the process of distilling, I think was motivated by that sense that things I take for granted are actually a minority opinion.
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B
We talk about earlier publications. I think one of the chapters was in the book by Grossmark and Reese, which was one of the early books on this podcast. So it's all coming together.
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C
Fantastic.
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B
Yeah, they were one of. We mentioned Tracy Morgan, the founder of the podcast. I think she did that interview very, very early on. Let's start broadly with you. You write in the book that you're, you're. One of your goals is to deconstruct a static concept. And then I heard you present on the book the central argument to free compassion from I think sexist ideologies might read my handwriting. Can you talk about that, that central argument and what we're deconstructing in the book?
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C
Yeah. Sexist nomenclature. Right. Early we learn, you know, big boys don't cry and you know, the sense that compassion, you know, if we cry out for mom and so we want to be held if we do we ever cry out for dad. Can we imagine a father that, you know, is holding his child. We spoke right at the start of the interview about, you know, these koala bear changing tables and the idea that that might be normative to find in a men's room is somewhat bizarre. So I think wanting to deconstruct gendered binaries, that fathers can be both tender and strong, that any individual. Right. This we speak of what's dissociated father and what's repudiated. And to think that, you know, as Adrienne Harris says, that, you know, gender can be a soft construct. It doesn't have to have such hard edges. And I think to continue laboring in that vein is absolutely central to the project.
- [05:37]
B
Well, yeah. And you write in the book about, you know, how we understand masculinity and one of the ways which is masculinity as valued by other men. And I hadn't thought of it that way. That was a sentence that really sort of floored me. And I have come across noticed, but then also even more directly probably really in the past five years in my practice, men coming and saying, I I am disoriented. To masculinity in or words like that really sort of. Sort of lost to it. And then of course, you know, fathers and sons has you talked about, you know, being in the bubble of our own training or our own silos. Certainly the bulk of my training focused on the mother and the transference. We're going to pre edible, pre verbal, maybe, you know, intrauterine induced feelings. The mother, the mother, the mother. And then I think it's one of the blurbs on the back of the book says, where have the father's gone? They used to be at the foundation of psychoanalysis.
- [07:02]
C
Right? That's absolutely right. I mean, Octar's writing there on the back of the book and Solomon's saying, you know, that's where psychoanalysis begins. Right? Totem and taboo and whatnot, the object relations. We make this maternal turn and you know, this idea that in the pre edible space, if. And this is my riffing on Winnicott's distinction where he says that being is maternal and doing is paternal and that these states of mind can be held by mothers and fathers. Right. So here's an idea that in that maternal transference there can be something of a father's attitude. And to try to break that down, to situate that, I think is made possible in the postmodern frame, which is, of course, you use the word disorienting right there. I'm reminded of Carlos Stranger's work where he says, you know, we're no longer dealing with presenting problems of repression, we're dealing with presenting problems of disorientation. And that is the central malady of postmodernism, where we're living in a nobrow culture. Where are our standards, where sort of safe margins, if you will. And to find that much more fluid.
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B
Right. There was an article in the New York Times last week, I think, about modern dating and who pays for the first date, because that is no longer, you know, how does. How is that navigated. What I think is interesting about the. The being and. And doing is the sort of switch in Freud in the way that what's get what is in a sense repeated. So the ego ideal from on narcissism is initially set up as both parents. And at one point he says, I think it was probably initially the mother. And he says it's. It's the parents, but then the culture at large. But then we get to the primal horde and the father, and so the mother disappears from the ego ideal. Whereas transference begins as the father and then is taught primarily as the Mother. And of course, the mother can be the ego ideal and the father can be there in the transference. Speaking of Winnicott, you take Winnicott's well known phrase and apply it to dads and you ask, what is a good enough father? And I think, of course we don't get with the good enough mother has become, you know, it's just there, it's sort of in the world, the good enough mother, but we don't consider the good enough father. So for you, what is your idea of the good enough father?
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C
You mentioned, you know, my saying that if we're so concerned about how we're seen by other men, other people, as being strong enough, manly enough, whatever it may be, I think how can someone tolerate getting in touch with failing their own ego ideal, noticing their own clay feet, stumbling, bumbling and being uncertain, while simultaneously doing their best to be as certain as possible and get things right? In that sense, a capacity to work creatively with frustration tolerance, I think becomes essential to be engaged in relationships that, you know, recognize the developmental movement in children, the fluctuation within our own selves. Right. You know, did I get home from work after having a really hard day? Do I need a snack? Am I more available? Where's my partner at? Is my partner there? You know, all these sorts of questions. How many kids are in the house? What's going on at a given moment? And I think to even notice when we don't have the resourcefulness to feel flexible and how to work with that and tolerate that. So, you know, I think a jazz metaphor comes to mind as opposed to simply playing classical music and having a sense of this will go like this and this is how it's supposed to sound.
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B
Well, when you talk about tolerate, and I'll move into the book here, but to go back to sort of the beginning, two quotes from the classical literature that I love to put side by side. So this is Freud talking to hd you know, in her book Tribute to Freud, he says, I must tell you, I do not like to be the mother in the transference. It always surprises and shocks me a little. I feel so very masculine. And then we have Ferenzi, who writes, the analyst's behavior is thus rather like that of the affectionate mother who will not go to bed at night until she has talked over with her child all his current troubles, large and small fears, bad intentions and scruples of conscience, and has set them at rest. So Freud saying, I don't like to be the mother in the transference, and you have And I want to read this because it was really beautiful. From talking about Abraham and Isaac, you write, the failure of Freud to mentalize a soft heart as an essential component of adult masculinity that is needed in the relational space between a father and son emanates from his own family history to the extent to which vulnerability and tenderness are denied as legitimate components of a masculine identity. Freud's work is centered around identifications with aggression. I thought that was just. Yeah, I just. I loved that passage.
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C
I'm sort of enjoying as well that while you're speaking, if I'm hearing correctly, it sounds like there's a cat in the background. There is. And I'm thinking stereotypically, right. You know, Freud would punctuate his sessions with his chows and, you know, and sort of stereotypes and differences between dogs and cats and the sounds that they make. And talking about this paternal. Maternal transference is evocative for me. And, you know, there's something about that that feels poetically timely with this interview. Yes. So thank you.
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B
In the interview, it'll be Christopher and Lew and. Oh, that's interesting. The cat is Miles, named after Miles Davis. Now. Now we have Jack.
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C
Yes. Perfect.
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B
Perfect. So perfect.
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C
I don't know HD very well, but I heard one talk where there was this idea that she would say something at times and Freud would get so animated that he was like, jumping up and down in the consulting room. And this whole idea of even hovering attention and, you know, the surgeon's scalpel suddenly is put into a different light by what HD had to say about her time with him. And, you know, and so it's. It's hard to know if the sort of paternalistic Freud that we're up against, you know, where does that begin and end in reality? And I'm certainly, you know, at least have some uncertainty about that. I'm certain of that. Al Rosarin has a paper where. Is cited in my book, where he did a lit search of how many times. I think the idea that a man could cry shows up in Freud's writing. And, you know, he basically comes to the conclusion that in Freud, tears are solely reserved for women. And, you know, and so it's interesting, of course, there's also Sandra Gilman's work where Gilman sees Freud fearing anti Semitism and not wanting to look feminine as a Jew and so wanting to look as a man, and so making a gender dichotomy in parts fueled by his own concerns about anti Semitism in a Jewish science, which is a whole nother level of looking at this or a lens at which it can be explored about why, you know, Freud ends up saying, I really want to feel like the guy here.
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B
And what's so interesting is the Freud of HD is very warm and she calls Freud midwife to the soul, which.
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C
I think is elegant.
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B
Oh, I do too.
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C
Right. But the, you know, sort of question that you're asking then, you know, forensic, you know, sees these sort of dissociated aspects in Freud and tries to challenge him on this. And Freud seems to have some difficulty sitting with some aspects of himself. Right. We might say that things that weren't as well integrated as they might have been.
- [16:42]
B
Right, right, right, right. So it's to go back to just, you know, men relationship to other men. You know, as we said, you know, I worked in a restaurant, we put a baby changing table in the men's room and it caused all sorts of consternation. But then I've had the sort of the. A similar thing happened where working with someone who has always been on the phone because they work, let's call it Lehman Brothers, right. Because that doesn't exist anymore. But they work in this corporate world and look, they get there at seven, they can't leave until nine at night. That's that world. But they can carve out time to have their session. And the question was, well, where, where can I go for, you know, privacy? Have a, you know, private space to talk and stuff like that. And I said, and I know this because I know that all businesses have to have it, big businesses. And I said, what about the lactation room? He's like, what? And I said, yeah. I said, your business by law has to have a room for lactation. He was like, no, women work here. And I'm like, great, it'll be available every week. And he was really resistant to it. And eventually he's like, oh yeah, this is a completely private room that I can use.
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C
Which is amazing, right? I mean, when you think about how the office, or lack thereof, you know, can have a component of the transference, right. To enter a lactation room, you know, I immediately start to think object relationally of, you know, who's sucking, who's getting suck.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And it also reminds me of a client of mine, man. You know, and the guy said that one of his first associations about entering treatment was that it would be like going into a bath and that if he got into the bath, he would turn into a woman. Right. Almost like, you know, sort of, sort of like contagious magic kind of Thing of like, right. What does it mean to enter a lactation room and you know, this sense of cooties or crossing a barrier or, you know, one's identity and in many ways, right, to allow yourself to associate, be vulnerable enough in a relationship to really allow yourself to tremble in session, even if over the phone.
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B
Right. So I want to ask you about, from the book, who or what is the father of the mother's mind?
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C
So I think I used an example from where the Wild Things Are, right. You know, Max says to his mother, I'll eat you up. Right. And you know, before his big adventure, after being sent to his room, he threatens to eat his mother. And as I say, right. Mother doesn't say, well, just wait until your father gets home, young man. She sends him to his room. And if, you know, playing with Winnicott, if doing is paternal, that sort of external limit setting, assertive quality could be seen as father emerging in mother's mind in some way. And you know, so there I also play with the opposite of, you know, what would it mean to consider the mother in a father's mind. Right. And you know, you mentioned the lactation room. I, I know at least in California, at some point, you know, they were talk about breast envy, womb envy, whatever, that they were making prosthetic breasts that you could take pumped milk and put them into so that a man can actually breastfeed. Right. It sounds very bizarre in many ways. And I, you know, think that we know from Harlow that you can, you know, as monkey work with the teammates. You could separate the nipple and the milk and the hug the terry cloth covered pseudo monkey and stress the little baby monkey, see which way it goes, right. He goes for the hug when forced that way. And, you know, this idea that fathers could hug and hold, that mothers could also help with agency and movement, that, you know, I would also want to say that holding itself could be seen, you know, is also an action. Right. So it's difficult to talk about these, you know, doing being how they obviously are integrated in a way that would be seamless and yet we can gender them and, and dichotomize them. And trying to affirm both sides of a dialectic isn't so simple. And so I think we can talk about father in a mother's mind, but ideally it wouldn't be so clunky. Right. So there's a way that our language leads to reification and what without putting language on it where it looks like the teammates and Harlow's experiment where you've got the milk and the hug completely separated, whereas in nature they're completely intertwined and we wouldn't really understand separation. I think the same can be said for our language. Right. We end up talking about this stuff as though it's gendered or passive or active as opposed to existing as a whole with different points of emphasis, I would say, in different moments.
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B
Yeah. When you in. In the. So for the, for the listeners, the, the book uses incredible. You have where the Wild Things Are, the Giving Tree, the Trumpet of the Swan, Finding Nemo, all these really accessible stories to talk about these different relationships and. And the Sendak you had you made the observation. Sailing away affirms mastery. And one of the questions that I've been known to ask at some point in treatment is I always, I will ask people tell me about learning how to ride a bike. And that memory is. Is really fascinating because it's the first time you're. You're given something and it is almost always, oh, my father taught me, my uncle taught me. It's almost always the father who gives the bike. It's never. Not a family member like a neighbor would never give a kid a bike. And that sense of freedom and sailing away, it's a memory that just tends to open up a lot in session. And I had never thought about the mastery piece of it.
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C
But that sense of being able to stabilize the bicycle and know that your feet are turning, those balance cuddles and that you, you know, I can remember looking, you know, literally with this whole idea of reproach, mom looking back over my shoulder and seeing that my father was no longer holding on to the bicycle seat and being shocked because he had been running behind me. Right. And that moment of like, wait, I got this. You know, that is such a powerful thing. And I'm also complicated by the. The fact that my mother was more of the sports aficionado in the family, that she taught me how to shoot a basketball, for example. And so while I can see my father helping me learn how to ride that bike in that memory, I also see my mother saying, you know, this is where you want to hit the backboard.
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B
Wow.
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C
And so that. That's complicated in some way, right? Because, you know, now we can say, oh, well, there's Title 9 WNBA and whatnot. But some years ago it was a little different, I guess. And she has a story that I think in elementary school she struck a guy out who later went to play for the mlb. And you know, the girl, the pitchers mound struck this kid out and he went to the pitchers Mound and decked her, knocked her flat. And then she said that she stopped playing baseball. And, you know, at school after that. Wow. So, you know, the. The. That sense of, oh, I was struck out by a girl. Right. Humiliated. That kind of aggression, I think, is really. That reactivity is so much to work with there.
- [25:44]
B
Yeah. We talk about, you know, now we have Title IX and these things. I don't know if you remember, there was a riddle in the 70s that was absolutely baffling that. I mean, it really baffled people. It actually even made it to an episode of all in the Family. And the rule went like this. A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene, and the son is rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, the surgeon looks at the boy and says, I can't operate on this boy. He is my son. How can this be? And it was baffling in the 70s that the surgeon could be the mother.
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C
And so, you know, this whole idea of the social representations that, you know, what Lynn Layton calls the normative unconscious that we internalize. Right. It's like saying, you know, the male nurse joke. So, you know, I. I think Archie Bunker might, you know, have some issues and with that joke or something like that. Well, he couldn't.
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B
He couldn't answer it. He said it was impossible.
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C
Yeah, but that.
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B
That level of blind spot.
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C
Right. And so that a mother could be a skilled surgeon. Right. This sort of being and doing and, you know, code switching, in a sense, that could just be, you know, as normal as coming home from work and back into a home and whatnot. So I do think that, you know, some of the progress that was made in the 70s that, you know, seems to be under threat in the present is remarkable. I been doing some research for the presentation that you attended with Division 39, learning that when this story, Williams doll, about the, you know, the boy that is good at sports, but also wants a doll that he can hold and learn how to parent with that. When that was going to air as part of Free to Be, you and Me, the network did not want to allow it for a fear that showing a boy parenting a baby doll would encourage homosexuality. Right. That any sort of nurturing idea was seen as homophobic, that a man couldn't embody these traits, that it was, you know, dangerous, basically. And that idea that a woman could be a surgeon exists in complete relation to that.
- [28:47]
B
Well, my. My first grade teacher called my parents into a conference because I would walk to and from school with a girl that lived across the street. And we were very good friends. And this is 1971, and the first grade teacher says, you're going to make him gay by. By walking to and from school with the girl across the street. So, Joy.
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C
Crazy. Well, it is crazy. And, you know, I look at Lynn Layton's work with normative unconscious, and, you know, one of the things that she's argued is that this idea that we've become so focused on excelling and being successful that women have done a good job of becoming a surgeon at a point of losing some of the relationality that feminism might have been promoting early on or still might be in some, you know, quadrants. And this idea, you know, within relational psychoanalysis, that mutuality, that thirdness, that being able to mentalize vulnerability and dependency is important, is almost something that is ridiculed in the dominant culture. Oh, you know, so it's like, you can forget about, like, the 70s homophobia. This would make him gay if he walks home with a girl. In some ways, there's the sense that each of you would be on your iPhones walking alone and that no one would need to hold anybody's hand or have a conversation or have any sort of dependent relationship of walking side by side. And, yeah, I think that that sort of alienated atomization and perceiving that is certainly part of what felt evocative in deciding to write, wanting to make a space for avowing that and, you know, saying that men could come together and not just be resentful and anxious like Freud's, you know, primal horde after killing daddy kind of thing.
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B
Yeah, well, I was thinking about, you know, the guy that was, you know, enraged or humiliated with your. Your mom. And this passage, which was actually really timely with a case I'm working on. You write rage is a flight. Rage is a flight response based in fear of annihilation when requests for recognition have failed. And it attempts to. In the attempts to bypass anger and rage is an attempt to avoid feeling fear and abandonment. And, you know, this is circled in red.
- [31:53]
C
Well, I'm glad that, you know, something came across then. It's good. I think it is terrifying that, you know, to have curiosity and uncertainty in moments where we feel so misunderstood. And, you know, and one of the things. I'm not sure if I was thinking this when I wrote it, but, you know, the attempts to not have that conflict. Right. That, you know, occasionally I'll sit down with someone in therapy and say, you know, tell me about, you know, what it's like fighting with your partner. And, you know, it's not gonna lie. But occasionally I've heard, oh, we don't fight. And it's like, what, you. You never step on each other's toes and freak out. Right. I think Howard Kovitz uses that as an example in his Oedipal book that, you know, all it takes is stubbing our toes to lose our sense of object prominence, at least for a moment.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And the idea that, you know, we can get bent out of shape, uncertain, scared, and not be able to bring that into the relationship and. Right. And I do think about either really intense anger or really intense silence, as, you know, that. That sense of trying to say, I don't have any faith that I'm going to be heard and I really want to be heard. And I don't quite know what to do with this. I mean, silence. Not always the case. There's certainly contented silence. I'm speaking more that really insecure silence that feels so heavy. And so. Yeah, I mean, that. That's our stock and trade. Right. Is to try to create more security to deal with these vulnerable feelings.
- [34:00]
B
Yeah. Yes. That is our stock and trade. And I think that the. The father and and son piece. There's an observation I think I'm gonna have to paraphrase. I can't find it in my notes here, that individuation is never about the father. Is that. Is that. Am I remembering that right?
- [34:24]
C
Yeah. I'm not sure offhand, which is great. I mean, you know, it's like, let's, you know, say yes to Miles and play some jazz. But I think that, you know, Freud. I'm thinking of Freud saying, you know, father's a model to get rid of. And also imitate and, you know, also the Winnicott's idea of the false self. You know, we sort of fake it until we make it and hopefully, you know, realize that we can actually be seen and allow ourselves to be seen and be caught and begin to realize that, you know, it doesn't need to be a cheat sheet after all, it can be a study guide. And these small shifts in orientation, you know, can allow us to feel more secure. I think that in my mind, an individuation should have everything to do with the kid being able to, you know, refuel, too. Right. That the attachment research really shows that when we can feel secure, we can separate. I think that what I was probably referring to in the book, or what you're referring to here, Christopher, is that the original idea that the mother bond was regressive. Right. If you're Walking home with your girlfriend, you're going to become a homosexual, right? That, you know, this maternal feminine space is something to be afraid of. So then father is seen as, you know, this sword bearer that, you know, cuts that regressive bond and frees the child to move into the world. Right. What I'm arguing about is that that sexist dichotomy is a mirage in its own right. You know, A we know that the attachment strings needn't be severed. They can be reworked over the lifespan than are. And this idea of having this clean and tidy break and going off to live your life, it would be, you know, that Max never sails home. Right. Why bother? And so that. That sense that liberating the kid from this regressive maternal bond is the path to individuation, I think that's just patently false.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah, it's interesting because I found the passage, individuation is about mothers, not parents. And again, that goes back to sort of the ego ideal, which was about parents, and then gets whittled down only to. To the father. And then this is, I thought, was really interesting. It's sort of in the same vein of the good enough mother, good enough father. You write. A father's role is rendered invisible. And I. And I thought, of course, that in.
- [37:22]
C
The current.
- [37:24]
B
Discourse the invisible work of motherhood is being talked about a lot like the father's work is never talked about as being invisible and that. That both can be invisible. I think it's really interesting just because. Well, now that you've got me with the jazz, in my mind, I'm going to bring in another player here only because of the sort of, the strength in which he says this, because the book is, you know, the Reunions. And this is Andre Green. And I actually heard him give this lecture and he was so forceful. And I don't know that I agree, but I want to sort of get your take on this. He writes, there's a difference between mothers and fathers. Children may have been abandoned by their mothers for many, many, many years while somebody else takes care of them. One day, God knows why, the mother comes back, the children love her again as if nothing had happened. They forget because she came back. In my experience, it's very different from abandonment by the father. This is never forgiven. They're not able to resume love for the father. We have many experiences of fathers who have abandoned their children and the child was raised by the mother. And as a result of the analysis, the grown child wants to know. The father finally arranges a Meeting. And they see each other once and twice, thrice. No more, no more. Finished. They have given up any hope of being accepted by the father. That's never been my experience, but it was so shocking to me that Green just said it. He said, the abandoned father is never forgiven.
- [39:15]
C
Well, you know, it's a very provocative passage that you just read. I find it compelling in a lot of ways, and it takes me in many directions. Right. There's the neurobiological of, you know, knowing that a baby's, you know, able to recognize the language that they hear when they're in utero. And, you know, that sense of literally being in the mother's body has to account for some sort of attachment. So I think that, you know, there's that factor. And I also think, along the lines of Carol Gilligan, that in a sexist culture, women are socialized to be more relational and men are socialized to be more agentic, you know, similar to Winnicott's being and doing. Then if I really haven't learned how to relate, if I haven't learned how to play jazz, well, if I'm more of a classical musician, and I'm certainly in a place where it would help, it would behoove me to be able to play jazz. Right. Kid shows up, he's been estranged for years, and I'm so clunky that I really don't know how to do that. That it would almost be like saying to a patient, I'm sorry that you feel that way. Right. Sort of shutting things down. And. And there's really not room to explore in such an impasse. Right. I mean, it's as if there's been an alliance rupture. And I'm sort of riffing with Green and thinking if the father really hasn't been socialized in repair, or even recognizing that alliance rupture is a thing, you know, like I can imagine a father being like, what do you mean? I didn't go anywhere. I've been here all the time. And, you know, not hearing the defensiveness of that, not hearing the pain related to that, and just, you know, being in this sort of abject denial that any sort of reconciliation really isn't going to be very possible in that kind of space.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah.
- [41:29]
C
And. And so I do wonder about our sort of cultural gender norms that might really facilitate or not facilitate that. And also the sense within those that father's supposed to be the protector who makes sure the home is safe. And if he is split and left mom alone, then there's that wave like mom was always in danger because you left or something like this.
- [41:54]
B
Well, the father as protector. There's. And I couldn't find it. I remembered it right before I got on the interview. I'm like, I can't find it because it's in the standard edition somewhere. But you know, Freud says there's no need in childhood greater than the need for the father's protection. And I think that I respond to that in the same way I respond to Green with the fact that these statements are, are just laying down as fact. There is no need greater. Andre Green. Abandonment is never forgiven. So whenever there's something in the literature that isn't ambivalent, I'm always paying attention to it.
- [42:33]
C
Well, yeah, I mean I do like the idea of Salman Akhtar just put this book out where I was fortunate enough to be able to write the epilogue on truth. And it really ends with the sense that this poetic attitude of uncertainty, of finding small truths as opposed to large truths. And I think that it's a, you know, in the scientific method as well, right? We say like, well this seems to be the case. If we can prove otherwise, we'll revise this, right?
- [43:00]
B
As far as we know.
- [43:03]
C
It'S not like it's muddle headed poetry. I mean we're also talking about hard science. The same rules apply. And, and so there is a sense where like it's always this way, you know, I mean I, I want to go to a psychoanalyst, I don't want to go to an astrologist. And you know, there I play with like Nietzsche, with the Dionysian as being the sort of poetic attitude and the Apollonian being the hard truth. As to gloss on your example here though, you know, it's Scheingold's work, you know, father, don't you see I'm burning kind of thing where it's really taken, you know, Freud's humiliation where he, you know, pees on his parents floor, right? And father says, Jacob says, you know, the boy's not going to amount to anything in, in response to this. And so you know, I, I started to interpret it that way and think like, you know, the child also needs to be protected from that aggression, right? And to find father to be safe and not to be this rejecting fear based, you know, presence that is terrified that because, you know, the kid pees on the floor that he's not going to amount to anything. Right? You know, so that's not father as protector of the family, but to be protected from disregulation and that's often where we hear things in therapy. Right. You know, dads come home from work, they're depressed or angry, and, you know, it doesn't go so well.
- [44:41]
B
Yeah. Boy, there's so much in the book I'm just. I'm just sort of going through. I make sure he's like, I want to get everything, which I know is impossible, but I still want to.
- [44:55]
C
Well, actually.
- [45:00]
B
Here's. This is because of, you know, putting these things together. Can you talk? Because I thought, wow, this is. I've never seen these put together. This is going to be big question, but what is the relationship between Peter Pan, Frankenstein, and Ferency's wise baby? Because this all comes in chapter eight.
- [45:21]
C
Yeah. So. Right. In 30 seconds or less.
- [45:25]
B
But I just realized I tend to do this. I. I pull out these massive themes like, oh, that's very cool.
- [45:31]
C
So, Well, I. I think that. Right. The wise baby is talking to parents to try to reverse the situation of, you know, not being mentalized well, being really pushed out in some way and speaking to the, you know, truth to power. Right. And I do see Frankenstein and Peter Pan as being very related in a sense, that each is abandoned. Right. And the Peter Pan story, when John, Michael, Wendy, and everyone else is leaving Never Neverland to go back to London, and Peter doesn't want to go, we find out that he doesn't want to go because the last time he tried to return home, the window was barred. And there's a whole passage about another kid sleeping in his room. It seems like the mother might have had a second baby or something. And they're sibling rivalry in a sense of abandonment, all these complicated feelings to work through. But Peter feels exiled and not welcome back home, and so he says, I'm not giving anybody a second chance after this. And you know, Frankenstein as well, Right. That his creator's horrified is, you know, Dr. Frankenstein recognizes what his hubris has done as soon as his creature opens its eyes. And he's the me. You know, the whole book is about exile. And. And so I think that that wise baby is an exiled creature that is attempting homecoming, and that it's really about trying to mentalize that for all of them, you know, Peter Pan, Frankenstein, the wise baby. That. Right. It. You know, there's that old therapy joke, if a tree falls in the forest, it helps if I'm with someone else who can verify that I've actually witnessed and heard something. Right. That the wise baby can't be having a monologue from the mountaintop. The wise Baby needs to know that it's been heard and witnessed, or else, you know, we. Right. Go beyond the pleasure principle, as it were.
- [47:53]
B
Well, in talking about this, the. The. Well, sort of everything in the 70s, the. One of the things that's really incredible about this book is the amount of research that goes back, back, back. I mean, you talk about the. The possession of a working knowledge of Western religion, 13th century, Oedipus, the way that that myth has shown up. It's. You. The. The frame for all of this is really. It's just. It's just incredible. And then using things like, you know, call your father, or that we have to call the boy's father, or the phrase a man's got to do what a man's got to do, that I don't know if we have a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do.
- [48:42]
C
Can you talk that last one. I'll give, you know, credit to a patient, you know, that he had just become a young father sitting in my office, and he, you know, looked at me and said, you know, man's got to do what a man's got to do, and then paused for a good poignant moment and then looked at me and said, what does that even mean? You know, and. Right. Because it just brings up some abstract idealization that, you know, can only ape in some way and based on some caricature that we're carrying around.
- [49:15]
B
Right. And. And then I think that that ties into what you call the man of achievement versus the man of power.
- [49:26]
C
Right. Keats. Negative capability. And, you know, I do like this negative capability, you know, working with uncertainty and being open. And, you know, I. I've read Mike Eigens paper, my session with Andre, where he talks about sitting with Andre Green, and it certainly seems to have been a very open and playful space. And, you know, I. I've never met Andre Green in person, like yourself, hearing this lecture, like I've been sitting in session with him. But I do have that general sense that. That this means that, you know, is helpful. But I. I think there's a caveat from John James Audubon, who says, you know, in regard to illustrating wildlife, when the bird and the manual disagree, believe the bird.
- [50:25]
B
Oh, that's gorgeous.
- [50:28]
C
So we're not saying throw the manual out. Right. But what we are saying is saying is to use the manual in a way that is open enough so that the variation that we encounter, that we can perceive it and work with it. And I'd like to think that Andre Green would agree with that.
- [50:50]
B
I would think so. I mean, I, and I've said this before that the, you know, if I could, if, if, you know, the training, I think start to Finish is like 13 years. If I could only have one moment, it would have been the Andre Green Conference. His, his lecture and the Q A was just, I mean, it stayed with me. I remembered it to call up this passage and that it was in 2004. So. Yeah, and. Well.
- [51:22]
C
Go ahead.
- [51:23]
B
No, no, I was gonna say. And, and just in terms of, of analysts, you know, Eigen and thinking of, of analytic thinkers. Your book turned me on to Ella Sharp, whose I've just started reading. It's incredible.
- [51:40]
C
Well, yeah, Howard Kovitz, who I mentioned earlier with stub your toe, watch your object permanent disappear line, he referenced her in a paper that he wrote for a book on Eigen's work. And in typical Howard style, I don't know that he references Eigen a single time in the paper and that at the same time he manages to completely follow the spirit of Eigen's work. And it was in that paper that he references Ella Sharp that I came across her. And you know, what a brilliant statement, I think. And you know, that's also part of what led to the book, I think, is that, you know, there's no end to this. Right. It's, it's, you know, the ceiling is, you know, whenever I think that, oh, you know, here I'm on terra firma, then it's like look up and there's a whole nother mountain, you know, that's just like jutting out into the heavens. And so, you know, that's a great thing about reading and writing is that, you know, in Eigens language. Right. Contact with the depths. And you know, I think he writes as well about not realizing, you know, what a big thing he had grabbed onto when he started following this. And there's something quite humbling about that, you know, and hopefully as we continue to talk and show up for stuff like this that, you know, you say, right, 13 years and you know, some things stand out more than others. And you know, we do our best to hit good notes. Right. It's not, it's. And it's difficult in that sense, I think that, you know, to have things come across as well as probably Andre Green's talk that you attended. Did it. It sets the bar exceptionally high.
- [53:37]
B
Yeah. But those, those moments, whether in a long training or, or a long analysis are really remarkable. But to, to sort of go back to the book the. Again, this is the way that you're talking about things. The question of who nurtures and who is nurtured and allowing men, fathers into that space. I think it's, I mean, it's obviously always been vitally important, but it really feels important in 2024.
- [54:15]
C
Yeah, I, I think that the idea that a self made man. Right, self made, right. Then you don't need to be nurtured and you've got other things to do besides nurturing. Right. So these things are disavowed, devalued. And it. I was talking with my son the other day. He has a friend who's boxing and we were discussing different ways of training. And when he was a little kid, you know, like so many other little kids that can have access to this stuff, he went to a dojo and, you know, second, third grade doing martial arts and whatnot. And the sensei at the dojo, you know, says first day, right. The best way to win a fight is to not get in one. And that idea of like taking care of yourself, of valuing yourself, of protecting yourself, of negotiating conflict creatively using words, not fists, right. Here's this like black belt guy who is happy to teach how to fight, but is also leading with this peace over power philosophy. And, you know, it seems that often there's this, you know, enactment of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. But, you know, really teach me how to fight. And so, yeah, I think that to be able to have a wider purview where nurturing and being nurtured and vulnerability itself can not be seen as a weakness, To not be living in a killer be killed culture.
- [56:16]
B
Right.
- [56:18]
C
This seems, this sort of civilizing principle seems essential to me.
- [56:24]
B
Yeah. And I'm, I just, I think about. And you can see it. I mean, I think you can find it on YouTube. When they wanted to either I think they wanted to cut funding to the newly formed PBS or they had to defend it. And the person they send to Capitol Hill is Fred Rogers, who just like speaks to the senators in this sort of incredibly nurturing way. And they're like, okay, yeah, you got your money. It's great to watch. It's really good to watch.
- [56:57]
C
You know, and so, right. I start to have like a Mr. Rogers for President thought, you know, and. Right. That, you know, what if our diplomats are, you know, people in charge of our armies could, you know, lead with an open heart. That way, you know, that there would be a radically different sensibility and. Right. It's Tom Hanks, right. Who plays Rogers in the movie the way that that biopic is done showing Mr. Rogers with his puppets and the intensity with which he worked to not enact aggression is almost with an aggressive edge. He made sure not to be aggressive. And his intensity is fascinating to me. Yeah, but, you know, this idea that one could, you know, realize that there was this reactivity and have the security to let it pass and not have to embody it. I think that that's a strong place to stand.
- [58:18]
B
The security to let it pass. That's. That's brilliant. What are you working on now?
- [58:29]
C
It's a great question. And at the moment, I just finished writing a chapter on sadomasochism that should be out, I guess, in the fall. And right now the deck is open. Oddly, I found myself having this memory of having won a case of sarsaparilla with my brother and my father from a radio station when very young and, you know, maybe second, third grade or something like this. And I felt that my father and brother didn't appreciate the profundity of this asparella in the same way that I did. There's a good Oedipal story in this. As a year or two earlier or something like that, I had been reading Stuart Little with my mother. And in E.B. white, Stuart Little, there's the word. He has sarsaparilla. And I had no knowledge of this drink and had this evocative relationship with my mother of. Into the dictionary from the novel, finding the meaning of the word and having this appreciation for sarsaparilla. And then suddenly, you know, out in the wilds of, you know, wherever landscape, we ran into this radio disc jockey and him procuring this case of sarsaparilla, giving it to the three, you know, two boys and the father, and they return home with their prize, you know. And I was exclaiming, you know, mom, mom, we got sarsaparilla, you know. And it was as though I knew, you know, this in a way that it tied me to her. And so I thought, like, I could use that as the foundation for an entire novel. And it's like, dare I write fiction? I don't know. But I'm speaking about it at least. And at the moment, I think that it's really just recognizing that I've been preoccupied with the book and other writing and wanting to downshift. I'm looking forward. There's a Meet the author again at the Division 39 Spring Conference in April where I'll be talking about the idea of Freud's dual instinct theory of, you know, either sex or aggression. And Is there nothing else? Right. So what does a father bring into the dyad? Right. If you're looking at it from this traditional edible perspective. And how do we interpret something like the sarsaparilla story that I've just shared? And so I'm not exactly sure what will be next, but I certainly, you know, don't feel like the book is an endpoint. You know, I feel like it's a nice point. I feel like it joins a good psychoanalytic chorus, and I imagine that, you know, some other work will come along the way. I think that, if I may, when Patti Smith does her cover of Gloria, she speaks about this by saying I needed a scaffold to play with. And there's a way that in choosing to write about fathers and sons, it was simply because from an Oedipal perspective, we're looking at pitched aggression. And trying to situate the aggression within human relationships was the central point. And the gender was almost a secondary component of that, as opposed to, you know, with the aggression being primary. And so I felt like. And really it's reading Jessica Benjamin in, you know, early 90s, late 80s bonds of love, that reproach mob became so visceral for me. And so the idea of that there could be a second look between fathers and sons, as opposed to just having the aggression be the final word. I mean, that. That really gets to the genesis of it for me.
- [62:31]
B
Well, that'll all. I will play off of that as we come to the end of the interview. But my. My first analyst, very much aggression, it's. Aggression is really privileged in, in the school where I trained and, and. And in group, and. And we're like the aggression people. And after years in treatment, I think it had gone. It had become privileged to the point of favored in a way. And I'll never forget because it's, you know, late in the treatment. It's, you know, 15 years in whatever. And he says to our group, almost as if it's for him, stating the office. And he said, wait a minute. He said, aggression is easy. Intimacy is hard. And it. It gave the group permission to have a whole host of other feelings.
- [63:28]
C
Well, I really hope that my book communicates that, because I think. Right.
- [63:32]
B
It does.
- [63:37]
C
Well, thank you.
- [63:39]
B
Yeah. No, this is, you know.
- [63:46]
C
I agree. And, you know, that's what the compassion researchers see too, that in Buddhism that, you know, the first response, the aggression is that. That immediate reactivity, that the compassion is what happens next. And that's the hard work. And to then bring our unconscious conflicts, attachment issues and all of that, you know, through treatment to bear on the simplicity of that. It's definitely hard, grueling and important work.
- [64:14]
B
Yeah. And boy, we could just keep going and talk about the cases that are in the book and everything, but we have to, we have to stop. Boy, I really sound like an analyst, don't I? This is New Books in Psychoanalysis. We've been talking with Dr. Lewis Rothschild, the book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons, breakdowns, reunions, potentialities, 2024 Karnak, an essential book. I do, I'll just repeat, I think it's timely for where we are. And I really, I want to thank you for joining me today and but really for writing the book.
- [64:53]
C
Well, thank you, Christopher. And to Miles as well. This has been delightful. Thank you.
- [64:58]
B
Yes. Miles making his first podcast.