18th October 2025 Lecture

The Seminal Father of Reparative Masculinity - Karl Figlio

To be held online from 10.00am to 12.00noon on Saturday 18th October 2025, by Zoom. Attendance is free of charge for all FPC members and will count as 2 hours CPD. The lecture will not be recorded. To book a place please email admin@thefpc.org.uk 

In this paper, I will focus on masculinity in the depressive position as Melanie Klein conceived and understood it, with particular reference to reparation as its principal feature. Depressive phantasy and thinking centre on the creation, sustenance, and reparation of life under the aegis of the good object. Depressive anxiety expresses concern for the state of the good object in the midst of the ambivalence that threatens it, and depressive guilt presses for reparation. In my view, there is a uniquely masculine reparation based on seminal ambivalence and seminal reparation, which has been eclipsed by the phallic posturing of masculinity that is common in culture and in psychoanalysis. It attracts attention because it is noisy and it defends against the far greater tragedy of depressive collapse into desolation. I examine the ambivalent relationship of the boy with the interior of the mother as the site in which life and the undermining of life occur, and the site of his seminal reparative reaction to his ambivalence. He finds support for his seminal reparative impulse in a similarly reparative father – himself in a paternal, reparative lineage – and is sensitive to any unsteadiness.

Karl Figlio is a Clinical Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Senior Member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of the BPF and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Masculinity: From Toxic to Seminal was published by Routledge in 2024. He is working on book with the working title, Depressive Collapse and the Seeds of Hope.

The Seminal Father of Reparative Masculinity.pdf

Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Masculinity - Order Form with discount code.pdf