Comment on Herzog's Fathers and Play”

Along with the pleasure of being here today and discussing Dr. Herzog's stimulating work, I am also forced to face some pain, as a son, as a father, as a psychoanalyst. I happen to have been a discussant in 1992 when Dr. Herzog was invited by the Montreal Children's Hospital, at a time when my children were young. Then, I was very confident that my new paternity would erase all the pains around growing up with my father. A few years later, with my kids being themselves now young adults, I feel more humble in addressing the topic. Some aspects have been even more painful for me as a father: motions that I had been successful at defending against as a son called for new psychic work in their new and augmented edition.

So, in empathy for Ray and for Dr. Herzog, keeping in mind my patients who all have some call to a father figure in their discourse, I have entitled my discussion “Hungry for what?”

How do boys and girls become potent men and women without being destructive and murderous? How is the wish to kill transformed successfully into a fantasy that can be played with and be enriching to the internal world? What is the contribution of the father in this process? How do boys and girls call to the father so that he helps them along the way? Dr. Herzog has been exploring these questions for many years in the analytic Spielraum with boys and girls, men and women of all ages, paying primary attention to the individual and to the analytic experience while making sure that the nomethetic does not silence the idiographic. As we can see today, he speaks from his clinical experience and moves carefully to the more abstract and normative level of theory. He has emphasized a key