The adult figure in the path of identity building of the young: the roots of an educational discomfort and the return of his father in education

The authority declined in the different historical eras, has always been characterised as a problematic element with which to give life to a scientific-cultural reflection of confrontation between the actors in the family context of the same: the parental figures and the related educational responsibilities. The question, which aims to trace a possible solution, focuses in particular on the crisis of the paternal code triggering a more complex fracture in the authoritative representation of the figure of the father. The demand for authority, although it is the crux of the crisis of the father figure, can be found in the rich bibliography that finds maximum representation in what Pati calls the excess of isms: ‘Authoritarianism is domination, subservience, instrumentalization; it does not lead to independence, to responsibility, to self-government: it demands blind obedience, uncritical adherence, passive acceptance of the dictates of the strongest’ (Pati, 2008, p. 17). True authority, therefore, eschews the excesses, which as such constitutes those -isms to which its alteration is due: authoritarianism and permissiveness.