When Fathers Fall Silent

This chapter examines how music can function as a transitional cultural object for adolescents confronted with paternal absence, silence, or trauma. Rock albums such as The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here often resonate with young listeners who grapple with ambivalence towards fathers marked by emotional withdrawal, disillusionment, or the scars of war and loss. These works provide symbolic containers for experiences of grief and longing that cannot be articulated directly, allowing adolescents to project, play, and process powerful unconscious feelings through sound and narrative. Building on Freud’s reflections on schoolboy psychology and André Green’s concept of the “dead mother”, extended here to the emotionally absent father, the chapter explores how paternal silence creates a psychic wound that may be mediated through artistic identifications. Musical themes become akin to dreams: not simply expressions of repression but creative forms that shape psychic development, offering continuity where rupture threatens. By linking clinical encounters with cultural texts, the chapter highlights the ways music allows adolescents to work through disappointment in the paternal imago. In this intersubjective space, culture operates as a transitional object, enabling mourning, survival, and renewed connection.