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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Family & relationships
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Fathers Who Fail - Shame and Psychopathology in the Family System (Hardcover, New)
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Fathers Who Fail - Shame and Psychopathology in the Family System (Hardcover, New)
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Despite the burgeoning literature on the role of the father in
child development and on fathering as a developmental stage,
surprisingly little has been written about the psychiatrically
impaired father. In Fathers Who Fail: Shame and Psychopathology in
the Family System, Melvin Lansky, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst,
and family therapist, remedies this glaring lacuna in the
literature. Drawing on contemporary psychoanalysis, family systems
theory, and the sociology of conflict, he delineates the spectrum
of psychopathological predicaments that undermine the ability of
the father to be a father. Out of his sensitive integration of the
intrapsychic and intrafamilial contexts of paternal failure emerges
a richly textured portrait of psychiatrically impaired fathers, of
fathers who fail. This portrait revolves around the dynamics of
narcissistic vulnerability, shame, and humiliation in family
systems. For Lansky, shame is "the veiled and silent companion of
the narcissistic injury of men who see themselves as having failed
in the paternal role", and such shame must be understood not only
intrapsychically, but in terms of the regulatory mechanisms and
defensive processes through which the family, as a system,
maintains its narcissistic equilibrium. In explicating the role of
shame as the master regulatory emotion of the sense of self in
relation to others, Lansky masterfully synthesizes an array of
heretofore discrete perspectives: Heinz Kohut's emphasis on shame
as regulatory emotion ensuring continuity of self experience, Helen
Block Lewis's understanding of the relationship between
unacknowledged shame and rage, Melanie Klein's insights into the
role of projective defenses within thefamily, and recent
sociological contributions to the role of shame in conflict
escalation. Lansky welds these and other viewpoints into an
overarching perspective that situates the psychopathology of
impaired fathers within the relational dynamics of the entire
family system, including the nuclear family, the extended family,
and the family over generations. By locating the impaired father's
narcissistic vulnerability within a framework of intrafamilial
conflict and disequilibrium, he is able to show how paternal shame
both defends against, and represents the end-stage of, the
breakdown of family bonds that previously contained paternal
dysfunction. Lansky's probing discussion of narcissistic
equilibrium in the family system enables him to chart the natural
history common to the symptomatic impulsive actions of impaired
fathers. He then considers specific manifestations of paternal
dysfunction within this shared framework of heightened familial
conflict and the failure of intrafamilial defenses to contain
shame. Domestic violence, suicide, the intensification of trauma,
posttraumatic nightmares, catastrophic reactions in organic brain
syndrome, and the murder of a spouse are among the major "symptoms"
that he explores. In each instance, Lansky carefully sketches the
progression of vulnerability and turbulence from the father's
personality, to the family system, and thence to the symptomatic
eruption in question. In his concluding chapter, Lansky comments
tellingly on the unconscious obstacles - on the part of both
patients and therapists - to treating impaired fathers. These
obstacles cut across different clinical modalities, underscoring
the need for multimodal responses to fathers whofail. Fathers Who
Fail cuts across disciplinary boundaries with the authority of a
versatile senior clinician whose experience of several decades has
convinced him that complex psychopathology cannot yield to any
single clinical modality. Bringing within his purview the
conceptual and methodological problems of collecting data about
fathers and fathering, the personality of impaired fathers, the
family systems that sustain and fail them, and the impact of
paternal dysfunction on other family members, Lansky speaks in one
integrative voice to all mental health professionals who wrestle
with the individual, familial, and social dimensions of
dysfunctional fathering. A landmark in the psychiatric,
psychoanalytic, and family therapy literatures, Fathers Who Fail
will be required reading as well for sociologists, family systems
theorists, developmental researchers, and lay readers intent on
grasping the widespread dilemmas and all-too-frequent tragedies of
fatherhood in our time.
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