Dead mother complex
{{Short description|Psychoanalytic phenomenon expressing the sudden anticathexis of the child by its mother}}
The dead mother complex is a clinical condition described by André Green involving an early and destructive identification with the figure of a "dead" – or rather depressed and emotionally unavailable – mother.
Concept
Green introduced the concept in an essay which was written in French in 1980, published in 1983, and translated into English in 1986.Green, A. 'The dead mother', in On Private Madness, London: Hogarth Press, 1986, pp. 142-173. Translated by Katherine Aubertin from 'La mère morte', Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort, Éditions de Minuit, 1983. He described the dead mother complex as involving a mother who was initially emotionally engaged with her child, but who then "switched off" from emotional resonance to emotional detachment, perhaps under the influence of loss and mourning in her own family of origin.P. Mariotti, The Maternal Lineage (2012) p. 325 The impact on the child, when it finds itself unable to restore a feeling contact, is the internalisation of a hard unresponsive emotional core, which fosters a destructive form of narcissism,J. White, Generation (2013) p. 36 contributes to attachment disorders,P. Shaver, Attachment in Adulthood (2010) p. 378 and reveals itself as a major resistance to progress in the transference.
Later writers have argued for differentiating a range of responses within the dead mother complex, reserving the name dead mother syndrome for the most acute form.P. Bennett ed., Montreal 2010 (2012) p. 1633
Literary examples
The dead mother complex has been seen as underlying both the novel Gradiva and Freud's essay on it, Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva.John O'Neill Freud and the Passions (2010) p. 177
Sylvia Plath's writing has been linked to the dead mother complex.{{Cite journal | last=Schwartz | first=Susan | title='Dead Mother' Effect on a Daughter | url=https://www.academia.edu/3721066/Dead_Mother_Effect_on_a_Daughter | journal=Academia.edu | via=academia.edu}}
See also
References
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Further reading
- G. Kohon, The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green (1999)
External links
- [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3435300328.html Dead Mother Complex]