The Father: Historical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives

By Luigi Zoja

Book Overview

Countless children throughout the world grow up without fathers. In this revised and updated edition of The Father, accompanied by a new preface, Luigi Zoja studies the reasons for this and assesses the contribution of this phenomenon to social and psychological problems.

Using examples from classical antiquity to the present day, Zoja views the origins and evolution of the father from a Jungian perspective. He argues that the father's role in bringing up children is a social construction that has been subject to change throughout history, and goes on to examine the consequences and consider the crisis facing fatherhood today. No other existing book faces the subject of fatherhood from such a broad and multidisciplinary perspective. Covering these issues from historical, sociological and psychological points of view, this revised edition of The Father includes a complete reworking of the final part of the book, focusing on the condition of the father in today's globalized world, and with a particular look at the role historical trauma and grief play in family relationships.

The book will be of special interest to analytical psychologists and Jungian psychotherapists in practice and in training, academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138500917
• ISBN13: 9781138500914
• Release Date: February 2018
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A book rich in ideas

Every once in a while, one finds a book that justifies a hardback cover. The Father, historical, psychological and cultural perspectives by Luigi Zoja, translated into English from the Italian by Henry Martin is such a book. This Jungian analyst's work will become a rewarding companion, returned to and consulted by specialists and laypersons. It is a dense, thought-provoking hive of considerations on the role of males in evolution, and more specifically, males in society in the evolving role of father. It is such a generous book, so full of ideas and explorations, connections and implications, that one can go back, not just to review arguments but to develop one's own questions in terms of western literature and myth, biology and history, about a topic which is so often now only seen as a function of mothering. It is important that this book, weighted with the scholarship and experience of a Jungian analyst with a deep and broad classical training, has been freed through translation to circulate in the international world. In this very moment when men are again resorting to definitions of themselves as warriors, many insights about the power and evolution of the father in western culture could help us to see where we are headed from a psychological standpoint. Zoja makes us realize the power and pathos, the long and never completely secure terms in the invention of this role. The book, starting from prehistory and proceeding to the present father searching for definition, reminds us of how specific culture is and how deep it runs. Zoja's chapters on Greek fathers--Hector, Ulysses, and Aeneas--are stunning intellectually as well as being revelations of underground springs feeding us today. He points to their life-giving truths, while not forgetting their heavy chains. I hope that this book spreads by word of mouth as well as reviews. It is one of those rare discoveries so rich that one does not go there to haggle about differences, but to absorb the many insights that can inform and expand one's own thinking about roles of men and women in today's often shallow and technical debates of political correctness.