Product Description
James M. Herzog's Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children will quickly take its place both as a landmark contribution to developmental psychology and as an enduring classic in the clinical literature of psychoanalysis. We live in an era when a great many children grow up without a father, or, worse still, with fathers who traumatically abuse them. Yet, society continues to ignore the emotional price that children pay, and often continue to pay throughout their lives, for this tragic state of affairs. Father Hunger will change this situation. First drawn to his topic by observing the recurring nightmares of clinic-referred children of newly separated parents - nightmares in which the children's fear of their own aggression was coupled with desperate wishes for their fathers' return - Herzog went on to spend more than two decades exploring the role of the father in a variety of naturalistic settings. He discovered that the characteristically intense manner in which fathers engaged their children provided an experience of contained excitement that served as a necessary scaffolding to the children's emerging sense of self and as a potential buffer against future trauma. A brilliant observer and remarkably gifted, caring clinician, Herzog remains true to the ambiguities and multiple leves of meaning that arise in therapeutic encounters with real people. He consistently locates his therapeutic strategies and clinical discoveries within a sophisticated observational framework, thus making his formulations about father hunger and its remediation of immediate value to scientific researchers. A model of humane psychoanalytic exploration in response to a deepening social problem, Father Hunger is a clinical document destined to raise public consciousness and help shape social policy. And in the extraordinary stories of therapeutic struggle and restoration that emerge from its pages, it is a stunning testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 3 reviews)

A Remarkable Exploration by tunafish (boston)

5 Stars
April 01, 2005
Herzog is both an explorer and a guide, accompanying people into the deepest, often most frightening, parts of themselves. His work with patients not only speaks to the power of deep therapeutic experience with an open, real and honest therapist, but to the hope that is possible for those who have suffered terrible trauma, provided that they have someone loyal and steadfast to join them. Herzog does not shy away from the hard issues surrounding gender, homosexuality, aggression and violence. His writing is evocative, at times speaking directly, at times informing by including the reader in the experience of his relationships with his patients. Finally, "Father Hunger" is not only a must read for therapists, and a must read for all who care deeply about fathers and fathering. This is a book that helps the reader know the value of having, and of being, a father.

Reactionary and Radical

5 Stars
March 17, 2003
Herzog's book shows him to encourage severe regressions with his patients, to poetic, moving and -- though it makes me uncomfortable to write this -- convincing effect. Herzog implies that homosexuality is a symptom of father hunger, at least for heterosexual men, and his evocative and elusive text makes a good case. Because Herzog is clearly a Winnicottian, he is untouched by the broader social perspective of, say, the interpersonalists. This is unfortunate but by no means takes away from his achievement. This book needs to be critiqued, but it also needs to be read. Those who have fled the Freudian perspective would do well to look here to see what an original, compassionate, and brave soul can do with the most painful, destructive, and frightening areas of self that other therapies neglect, avoid, or explain away.

elegantly written and original

5 Stars
March 31, 2002
This exploration of father hunger begins with the painful stories of children and ends with the transformation of those stories into journeys of hope and personal discovery. Dr. Herzog lets the children lead the way in his sessions with them, and he organizes his book around their words and play. From a seven year old opera singer's immersion in her father's holocaust history to an eight year old boy's confrontation with the meanings of masculinity in his struggle with a make-believe lion, these patients emerge from suffering through creative play with a sensitive, adventurous analyst. Dr. Herzog deserves high praise for his insistent pursuit of the painful parts of his own past as important clues to his patients' experiences. And yet, we come away from this book in awe of the patients. Where in the psychoanalytic literature can we claim to find the same? This is an original and inspiring book.

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