The Telemachus complex : parents and children after the decline of the father / Massimo Recalcati ; translated by Alice Kilgarriff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Recalcati, Massimo, author.

Contributor:

Kilgarriff, Alice, translator.

Standardized Title:

Complesso di Telemaco. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Parent and child.

Father and child.

Physical Description:

vi, 165 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

English edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2019]

Summary:

Fatherhood today is in crisis. Fathers have gone missing, or have become their children's playmates, and the symbolic authority of the father has lost its power. What remains of the father today in the wake of this decline, and what should the relation between children and parents now be? In addressing these questions, Massimo Recalcati draws inspiration from the story of Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. The Telemachus complex is the reverse of the Oedipus complex. Recalcati argues that children are possessed not just with a desire to annihilate their father, as their key rival in the contest to win the mother's love, but also with a longing for a father-figure, as someone who brings meaning, structure and order to their lives and who imbues them with a sense of the future. This fresh and insightful account of the changing relations between parents and children in the era of the decline of the father will be of great interest to a wide general readership.

Contents:

Introduction. 1 The law of the word and the new hell : Praying is no longer like breathing

Aphonia and the father's amnesia

The hell of Salò

The law of the word

How do we transmit the word of the law?

We are a scream in the night

Escape from freedom

The fantasy of freedom as a hypermodern fantasy

Mass freedom

Dying to work. 2 The confusion between generations : The parents' task

The law and the laws

Adulterations

Transgression or an appeal to the law?

A new discontent of youth

The trauma of the non-existence of the sexual relationship

Femicidal violence

The technological object and depression in young people

Evaporation and invention. 3 From Oedipus to Telemachus : Four kinds of child

The child-as-Oedipus

The anti-Oedipal child

The child-as-Narcissus

The child-as-Telemachus. 4 What does it mean to be a rightful heir? : Inheritance as reclamation

An excess of memory

The anti-melancholy of Jesus and Nietzsche

Negation of the symbolic debt

Telemachus is the rightful heir

What does inheritance mean?

Recognition of the symbolic debt

The symbolic difference between generations

Act, faith and promise. Epilogue: reading pain on the leaves. Notes.

Notes:

"First published in Italian as Il Complesso di Telemaco © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano, 2013"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version: Recalcati, Massimo, author. Telemachus complex

ISBN:

9781509531714

1509531718

9781509531721

1509531726

OCLC:

1090278884