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When thinking about the role of the father in the psychoanalytic literature and wider society my starting point is the term epistemic injustice (see Briggs, 2022, 2023). There has never been enough attachment and psychoanalytic literature, or trained practitioners, focused upon the role as traditionally defined. By the time our consulting rooms began to see the diverse incumbents of the modern role we should have been playing conceptual and meta-theoretical catch-up. When thinking about the articles in the splendid special issue of this journal—”Fathers” (Attachment, 16(2), 2022)—we can see epistemic injustice beginning to be addressed. Aysha Begum is to be heartily congratulated for bringing together writers who have given words to a wide range of experiences and issues concerning the role of the father in modern society. Conceptual catch-up is underway. On several occasions in the issue the idea is raised of a coming together with psychoanalysis to marry recognisably similar ideas. Being a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist, with a previous background teaching a history of Eastern and Western ideas, the thought of such a coming together is extremely interesting. In this very brief response to the issue my aim is to highlight just some of the conceptual dilemmas I see as needing to be thought through, to begin closing the apparent gap between attachment-based psychoanalysis and psychoanalysis.
Although not using this terminology, Foucault (1961, 1979) nevertheless saw epistemic injustices as tantamount to social prejudice. His concern was gay people who he saw as being in this way disadvantaged, and open to personal abuse and social discrimination in employment and housing markets, education, and health care etc. Once they had a language to describe experience this helped lawmakers bring in anti-discrimination on statute books. The sociologist Miranda Fricker (2011) makes the same case for women subject to sexual harassment in the 1960s. I