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On the day I first opened Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities, my son turned fifteen months old. My happiness in being a new father and enjoyment of our parent-child relationship informed my reading of this work. Gratitude, joy, and care similarly permeate Rothschild's contribution, helping bring to life the essence of his ideas. The book seeks to conceptualize good-enough fatherhood, depicted by Rothschild as a mutually co-occurring and organic process wherein room is made for difference and understanding, flexibility is practiced and communicated, and relatedness is supported through not just the tolerance of breakdowns and limits, but their utilization. Surprise and dependability are similarly juxtaposed. “A good-enough father is one who is willing to encounter and engage in serious play with the uneven rhythms found in the human dimensions of misreadings and uncertainties that may be considered symptoms” (p. 187).
To navigate this journey, Rothschild utilizes works of art alongside clinical material as lenses through which to elaborate a psychoanalytic understanding of fathers, sons, and their interwoven development. Three sections organize the eleven chapters of the book, with each segment depicting an aspect of father-son maturation, from placing them in specific developmental encounters across the lifespan as well as exploring the dual and, at times, dueling challenges of individuation-attachment and independence-dependence. Along the way, Rothschild brings a unique flair to the page, traversing literature, myth, and music as he seeks to capture the vitality of good-enough fathering. The resulting analysis is a Willy Wonka-esque ride of wonder and brilliance, rollercoasting around through expansive associations and probing examinations. These artistic and narrative adventures, spanning from Frankenstein to the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac to Finding Nemo to E. B. White's novel The Trumpet of the Swan, are kaleido