Search results for ""Author Massimo Recalcati""
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Son's Secret: From Oedipus to the Prodigal Son
This new book by Massimo Recalcati focuses on the psycho-social life of the son. Comparing and contrasting the tragic story of Oedipus by Sophocles and the parable of the prodigal son, Recalcati argues that all common parenting strategies, whether authoritarian or democratic, are attempts at sealing the fate of sons – that is, they are designed to ensure that sons realize the dreams and fantasies of the parents. But all that sons want – and this is their secret because they generally do not want, or are unable, to confront their parents directly – is to be recognized as unique, as different, as independent, free-thinking individuals who are able to chart their own path in life, rather than extensions of their parents' fantasies. The parents' task is to acknowledge this, and to create the space for this desire to flourish. Continuing his remarkable reflections on parents, children and family life, this new book by one of Italy's leading and bestselling public intellectuals will be of interest to a wide general readership.
£12.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Enduring Kiss: Seven Short Lessons on Love
The kiss is the image that, perhaps more than any other, encompasses the beauty and poetry of love. Every love is required to maintain the kiss, to make it last. When they kiss, lovers carve out their hiding holes, finding their peace from war. When they kiss, the noise of the world is silenced, its laws broken, time is stolen from its normal continuity. They fall together in their distinct, embraced tongues. The kiss joins the tongue that declares love with the body of the lover. And the extinction of the kiss and, most importantly, of the desire to kiss one’s beloved announces the demise of love. In this short book, Massimo Recalcati – one of Italy’s leading intellectuals and bestselling authors – offers seven brief lessons on the mystery and miracle of love, from the serendipity of the first encounter to its end or its continuation over time, as mysterious and miraculous as the first encounter itself.
£12.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Mother's Hands: Desire, Fantasy and the Inheritance of the Maternal
In this book the bestselling author and psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati offers a fundamental re-examination of what ‘being a mother’ means today, in a world where new social and sexual freedoms mean that motherhood is no longer the sole destiny of women. Questioning the belief that a mother’s love is natural and unconditional, he paints a more complex and troubling picture of the mother–child relationship, observing that mothers may even resent their children as a result of unresolved conflicts between different dimensions of love. The mother’s hands not only nurture but can also potentially harm. Recalcati argues that it is precisely in these competing demands that motherhood fulfils its function: only if the mother is ‘not-all-mother’ can a child experience the absence that enables it to access the symbolic and cultural world. Recalcati cuts through conventional wisdom to offer a fresh perspective on the changing nature of motherhood today. An international bestseller, this book will appeal to a wide general readership, as well as to students and scholars of gender studies, psychoanalysis and related disciplines.
£14.39