All about my mother

In an interview, the XNUMXth Dalai Lama was asked what he thought could save humanity. His answer was: “Mother.” This word echoes in the heart of almost every one of us with a complex, sometimes contradictory range of feelings: love, resentment, gratitude, irritation, the desire to prove something, tenderness, disappointment, pain. All this is intertwined in our soul into a ball so tight and dense that sometimes we are unable to unravel it.

In modern psychoanalysis, disputes about which of the parents is more important for human development still do not subside: father, mother, or both. Different psychoanalytic schools hold different points of view, but the very emotional richness of the topic suggests that it is one of the main and defining for each of us.

Supporting role

It is to psychoanalysis that we habitually attribute the idea that all the difficulties, vicissitudes, successes and failures of human life depend on our relationship with our mother. But Sigmund Freud himself, the founder of the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, put her figure in second place, giving the first to her father. The development of a boy or girl, according to Freud, depended entirely on how they overcame the Oedipal conflict centered around the figure of the father.

Interestingly, Freud, who gave a woman the right to sensuality, for the first time in the history of Christian culture, recognized the naturalness of her sexuality, was still not ready to realize and justify her independent role even in such a matter as raising children.

It is also interesting that after the death of Freud, this idea of ​​his rather quickly transformed into the opposite: it is the mother, and no one else, who is responsible for the mental development of the child, and the psychological health of her children, their successes and failures depend only on her wisdom, skills and psychological health. .

Responsible for everything

It was this point of view that the English psychoanalyst Melanie Klein turned into a theory. She turned to the intrapsychic development of the infant during the first year of life, a time that Freud did not think about, considering it not very important. According to Melanie Klein, the father does not play a significant role in the life of the child, his growing up and development is completely dependent on the mother.

The system of views proposed by Klein was called “the theory of object relations”: its essence is that for the mental development of a person, his relationship with the primary object of affection, that is, with the mother or the figure that replaces her, is of decisive importance. Even how a child will perceive his father primarily depends on his relationship with his mother.

The views of Melanie Klein had a strong influence on the feminist movement in England and the United States. At that time, women in all areas of human activity, including psychoanalysis, sought to prove their equality with men, and in some areas – for example, in raising children – to win the right to be in charge.

The theory of object relations is still one of the most popular among psychoanalysts, and through them – in our minds. Although over time it, like any teaching, has undergone changes.

good enough

The English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott took the next revolutionary step in understanding motherhood as a special sphere of human activity. In 1949, he introduced a new concept of “good enough mother” into psychoanalysis, removing from women’s shoulders the burden of exorbitant responsibility that (according to the theory of object relations) every woman had to feel when having a child.

“Good enough”, in Winnicott’s understanding, is one that is able to feel the baby and adequately satisfy his needs, without introducing excessive fears or desires into this process. Winnicott was one of the first to describe that special state of merging with the child in which every new mother finds herself: it is easily accessible to any woman if she trusts her feelings and body and if she is not fooled by rigid directives about exactly how she should act.

Feeling the child as an extension of herself allows the mother to respond to his signals and best satisfy all his needs – physiological and emotional. The revolutionary nature of Winnicott’s ideas is that he gave a woman the opportunity not to strive to be perfect, but allowed her to be just good enough.

From now on, mothers have the opportunity to make mistakes and correct their mistakes, without being tormented by remorse because they “badly fulfill their motherly duties.” This relieved the women of an excessive burden of responsibility and allowed them to behave more naturally with their children. Winnicott gave the mother the right to feel tired, irritated, but at the same time retain the understanding that all these feelings are inherent in her, like in any other person, and in no way detract from her maternal virtues.

Need a third

The period of mother-infant fusion is important, but if it is too long, it hinders the development of the child: the mother may unconsciously keep him in a state of infancy, partly afraid of exposing the child to frustration, partly obeying her narcissistic desire to keep him only for herself, not to share him with anyone. anyone, even his father.

The mother-child bond is so strong that it can be difficult for a mother to start letting go of her child in time, to give him the opportunity to experience frustration that is important for development. And then the help of the third is needed – the father. According to French psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall, a mother can help her child become an independent person and feel that life is a creative and exciting adventure only if she is in contact with a third party – the child’s father.

If there is a loving and sexually satisfying relationship between the parents, then the feminine in the mother begins a gradual process of separation from the child, seeking pleasure with the man. The same process brings the woman back to thinking about continuing her career and self-realization. All this “makes room” for the father, who begins to play a more prominent role in the infant’s mental world, thereby supporting his exit from the merge with the mother’s world.

One of many

So on whom – from the mother or from the father – do our life successes and misfortunes depend? It seems that today the question is different. Our society is moving towards a greater range of relationships and less rigid roles. The human world is not limited to two dimensions, and in this multidimensional world there are at least three axes: child, mother, father. In fact, there are even more of them: brothers and sisters, grandparents – they all show the child different types of relationships …

Modern psychoanalysis has long abandoned the idea that all the misfortunes in a person’s life occur only because his mother in childhood did not love him the way he should. And this, on the one hand, makes life easier for women who can finally breathe, freed from the burden of exorbitant guilt for everything that happens in the lives of their – even quite adult and independent – children.

On the other hand, such a view no longer gives us the opportunity to conveniently explain any of our problems as a lack of motherly love, forcing each of us to consciously and creatively relate to our own lives.