Finding Our Fathers : How a Man's Life Is Shaped by His Relationship with His Father

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Absolutely excellent. Many works of this subject matter spew forth psychobabble and contain nothing useful or substantial. This book rocks.

Rating:
Summary: Overall a good book, but rather reductionist
Review: I could not relate to the many anecdotes provided by the author/psychologist of this book. Perhaps fathers and sons do have many unresolved issues regarding intimacy, anger, and roles, but it seems to me the author was pretty selective in finding those cases that helped support his views about the problematic father/son relationship. I was close to my father and grandfather, and both were vastly different men in terms of temperament, education, class, and culture, but none had the distinction of being undermined by their wives, or feeling like mechanized machines (even though my father was a machinest in a factory). I think Osherson may have spent too much time doing longitudinal studies at Harvard and too many hours in his office where his anticipations of finding antipathetic father/son relationships ended up as self fullfilling prophecies. Snippets of dialogue from therapy sessions seem to me very questionable in terms of their ecological validity. Additionally, the date of this book 1986 is telling. A lot has happened in the family constellation since then.

Rating:
Summary: Very enlightening
Review: Perfect for the person who grew up in a traditional family (Dad works, Mom raises the kids), probably more than ok for the rest as well. Sam explains several key aspects of the Father/Son relationship that were really helpful to me. A couple, of the many, examples would be: like why we see our bosses the way we do in relation to our relationship with our father, how Dad's relationship to Mom changed when the family started, and why our Fathers saw us the way they did. Plenty of good, without being overdone, aspects of our relationship with our Mothers as well. I felt the book strayed at some points just far enough from the title that it warranted 4 stars instead of 5; like when he discusses in detail some of the failed attempts he and his wife had at having children. The close is strong as he suggests how to heal those wounds we have with our Dads.