The Telemachus Complex

Recalcati, a Lacanian analyst, reads the myth of Telemachus as a diagnostic figure for the present-day clinic. Where Freud placed Oedipus, the son who rises against the father to take his place, Recalcati turns to the son who scans the horizon for a father who has not returned, and who must decide what to do with an inheritance no longer guaranteed. The book argues that paternal authority has not merely weakened; it has evaporated, leaving symbolic law without a credible bearer.

From there Recalcati asks what remains once prohibition and tradition can no longer be assumed: how desire passes between generations, how a child becomes an heir rather than a mere descendant, and why the appeal to the father is a demand for testimony rather than for command. For clinicians it supplies a frame for patients caught between refused authority and a longing for orientation. Polity issued Alice Kilgarriff's English translation in 2019.