Symbiosis with the mother is just as important for the baby as the exit from it is for the teenage girl and adult woman. What is the meaning of the merger and why is it so difficult to separate, says children’s analyst Anna Skavitina.
Psychologies: How and why does the symbiosis of a girl with her mother arise? And when does it end?
Anna Skavitina: Symbiosis usually occurs immediately after childbirth or after a few weeks. The mother perceives the newborn as her continuation, while she herself becomes a baby to some extent, which helps her feel her child. The merger is biologically justified: otherwise, the baby, whether a boy or a girl, has little chance of surviving. However, in order for the child to develop motor skills and the psyche, he needs to do something himself.
Ideally, the exit from the symbiosis begins at about 4 months.: the baby is already reaching for objects, points to them. He can endure short-term dissatisfaction when he does not receive a toy, milk, or immediate attention. The baby learns to endure and tries to get what he wants. Every month, the child endures frustration longer and acquires more and more skills, and the mother can step away from him, step by step.
When does the branch end?
A.S.: It is believed that in adolescence, but this is the «peak» of the rebellion, the final point. A critical view of parents begins to take shape earlier, and by the age of 13-15, the girl is ready to defend her personality and is able to rebel. The goal of rebellion is to realize oneself as a different person, different from the mother.
What determines a mother’s ability to let go of her daughter?
A.S.: To give her daughter the opportunity to develop without surrounding her with an impenetrable cocoon of care, the mother must feel like an independent person, have her own interests: work, friends, hobbies. Otherwise, she acutely experiences her daughter’s attempts to become independent as her own uselessness, «abandonment», and unconsciously seeks to stop such attempts.
There is an Indian proverb: «A child is a guest in your house: feed, learn and let go.» The time when the daughter begins to live her own life will come sooner or later, but not every mother is ready to come to terms with this thought. To safely survive the destruction of the symbiosis with the daughter, the woman had to successfully emerge from a symbiotic relationship with her own mother. I often see entire “Amazon families”, chains of women of different generations symbiotically connected with each other.
To what extent is the emergence of purely female families due to our history?
A.S.: Only partly. Grandfather died in the war, grandmother needed her daughter as a support and support — yes, this is possible. But then this model is fixed: the daughter does not marry, giving birth “for herself”, or returns to her mother after a divorce. The second reason for symbiosis is when the mother herself finds herself in the position of a baby (due to old age or illness), and the former adult position loses its attractiveness for her. She is well in the state of «second infancy.»
The third reason is when there is no man in the mother-daughter relationship, either emotionally or physically. The girl’s father can and should become a buffer between her and her mother, to separate them, giving both freedom. But even if he is present and expresses a desire to participate in the care of the child, a mother prone to symbiosis can eliminate him under one pretext or another.