My Father before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other throughout Their Lives

My Father before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other throughout Their Lives by Michael J. Diamond. New York: Norton, 2007, 239 pp.

In My Father before Me, clinical psychologist Michael J. Diamond explores the reciprocity of the father-son relationship from a psychoanalytic perspective. Diamond's central concern is the mutual influence of the father and son on each other through the life cycle: "It is a complex interaction during which the father influences the way his child develops, and simultaneously, his son affects the way that his father handles his own parallel transitions" (p. 8).

It's refreshing and humanizing to view fathers as a work-in-progress through their own lives; not just that we are always in the process of becoming fathers as our children grow, but also that as men we face our own developmental challenges.

Diamond is most interested in the ways that these father-son developmental challenges occur in tandem. Fathers introduce toddlers to the world but toddlers introduce fathers to the world, too; we help children learn to regulate their affect, and in so doing we struggle with confusing feelings and impulses ourselves; the adolescent struggle with identity evokes the father's ongoing struggles with...