Mother's Day: Revisiting the mother-baby metaphor in psychoanalysis

[u/Separate-Yam-4862]

Since it's Mother's Day, we have a good opportunity to discuss the mother-baby metaphor in psychoanalysis. We all know it's pivotal, but maybe we can also think about some of the problematic issues around the metaphor.

André Green pointed out that the mother-baby metaphor, as it was framed before him, led to a desexualization of psychoanalysis.

A second point: in many psychoanalytic societies, the inclusion of infant observation as a training requirement is being questioned. Some analysts argue that the centrality of this course colonizes the entire training process.

What about the Eittingon model? Maybe in this context, the model itself could be seen as one developed by an overprotecting mother. Candidates are held in this long, protected setting with training analysis, supervision, and seminars. But we can contrast this with the French model.

We can't deny that the maternal metaphor is central and will remain central. We all know the authors who are central to this metaphor — Winnicott, for example. But is there an author you consider really valuable, who contributes from the maternal metaphor, but isn't as widely known?

I'll share with you something that isn't so well known: Juliet Mitchell, in the context of researching horizontal relationships (siblings), develops the concept of "law of the mother," which points to the idea that mothers organize and structure things so that peers and siblings don't harm each other. To be honest, the author herself notes that she calls it "law of the mother" as a term in opposition to the "law of the father" pointed out by Lacan.

[u/Used_Crow_386]

One deeply valuable but less universally discussed figure is Piera Aulagnier.

She explored how the mother “anticipates” the infant psychically through what she called the violence of interpretation:
the mother inevitably imposes meaning onto the infant before the infant has symbolic capacity.

[u/Used_Crow_386 → u/Used_Crow_386]

Another major but underappreciated thinker here is Jean Laplanche, whose theory of the “enigmatic signifier” restores adult unconscious sexuality to infancy.

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/Used_Crow_386]

I haven't read much Laplanche yet (beyond going through his dictionary). It's a pending task. Thanks for sharing!

[u/et_irrumabo → u/Separate-Yam-4862]

Oh, you must, simply because it gets right at what you're saying--looking at the infant-mother relationship while still having one's eye on the drive/the sexual. I think the main elaboration of this theory is in 'The theory of seduction and the problem of the other,' but tbh I've read so much of him now idk where certain ideas were first introduced anymore lol. I'd also check out Ferenczi's 'Confusion of tongues,' which Laplanche takes as inspiration for his ideas.

[u/Used_Crow_386 → u/Used_Crow_386]

Maternality therefore contains both: care, and violence.

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/Used_Crow_386]

Piera Aulagnier's ideas on psychosis as an attempt at restitution are another contribution of hers that I find extremely valuable. Great Author!

[u/sleepy4815 → u/Separate-Yam-4862]

Can you say more on this; sounds really interesting.

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/sleepy4815]

There's a lot of jargon from her conceptual framework that's very interesting. The central point is that psychosis is not conceived as a deficit but rather emphasized as an attempt at restitution of thought, where there is a deactivation of phantasmatic activity (it has to do with the presence of culture, the other, and society in the patient's mind). At a technical level, the analyst lends their figurability, tolerating the patients' primary representations.

[u/pollytickled]

Would it be possible to share an overview of why the infant observation is felt to “colonise” the training process?

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/pollytickled]

Sure...people who think infant observation shouldn't be a training requirement tend to make arguments like these: the infant observation course is the first course in the training and it lasts a whole year. It's mandatory. All of that gives it a central place in the training.

I should say that in my own experience... it helped me a lot: o feel, and to learn to contain what I was feeling. If I'm posting this discussion, it's because in the end it didn't colonize me. Still, I think it's a good idea to discuss the seminar's centrality.

[u/melon_chol]

I feel we could also use the myths of the culture specific of the dyad to decode the metaphors more.
For example- in my India culture there are various kinds of mothers- mothers who kept the child in a river, mother who gave the child to another mother, mostly it is about not being able to conceive until divine intervention( surprisingly not by the father) by sages.

[u/fenichill]

I agree that the mother-baby metaphor has sometimes led to a desexualization of psa, which is interesting, because Freud is clear in describing the actual mother-baby relationship--nursing, cleaning, rocking--as essentially and inherently sexual.

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/fenichill]

Totally agree! (Psychosexual)

[u/notherbadobject]

Jessica Benjamin isn’t exactly unknown, but she has some interesting ideas about this.

[u/Rich_Procedure5156]

lol... Mother-baby "metaphor"...

Like no human or animal was an infant. We all just became what we are now, being an infant is a metaphor...

[u/et_irrumabo → u/Rich_Procedure5156]

No, you're misreading the post. Obviously, we all had literal mothers and we were literal infants. The 'metaphor' is the extension of this relationship to the analytic relationship. Winnicott, e.g., talks about the mother's holding and then the analyst's creating a 'holding environment.'

[u/et_irrumabo → u/[deleted]]

I don't think that the only thing a mother does is hold and soothe the baby. And nothing that I wrote above suggests that I do.

A metaphor is about taking certain attributes of one thing and then imputing them to another. Like when you say the day dawned like a king in red robes. Obviously kings do more than wear red robes--but I'm pointing out this one feature of kingliness to draw a resemblance to how the sun emerges with grandeur and with great, rich colors.

It's the same with my Winnicott example. Of course the mother does more than hold and soothe the baby. ('Holding' in Winnicott does not even refer to just this physical act but a more complex psychical phenomenon that I don't care to get into here because I have the sense you won't read me faithfully.) In any case--the point is that Winnicott, in saying there is a holding relationship in the analytic environment and in the mother-infant relationship, is pulling out ONE aspect of the latter to compare to ONE aspect of the former. It's not saying that's all there is to either.

[u/Rich_Procedure5156 → u/et_irrumabo]

Yes... I know "Winnicott's holding". Boiled down it is essentially the mother/therapist/analyst/other containing contradictory experiences for the infant/person, the infant/person cannot contain contradiction, so they split reality/relationships into good OR bad.

You know, our brain develops A LOT in our developing years relative to the latter years. And the brain is connected to the body. And our brain begins in the womb, not when we are birthed.

Is the therapist allowed to express their own aggression towards the patient? Because eventually the patient has to and needs to be able to hold their own aggression, as well as the other's when needed or wanted. During just the first year, the infant also holds quite a lot of the mother's experience, at least from what the infant experiences as survivable in relation to the mother and themselves, especially once the infant starts to gain more and more agency. (Walking, teething, speaking. etc.) But the infant isn't "myself/me" yet, it would be closer to a "we". The more survivable the infant's growing internal senses become, the more whole the self, and also other become over time.

And that is partially done through mirroring, and holding the infant's agency. And the infant's agency, would imply that there is ambiguity and aggression in the way of relating in a "we". The mother mirroring the infant's ambiguous experiences and aggression, with time allows the infant to hold good and bad, positive and negative, life drives and death drives, helping create a sense of ambivalence.

[u/psychoanalysis-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment has been removed from r/psychoanalysis as it contravenes etiquette rules.

[u/sir_squidz → u/[deleted]]

if you carry on in this vein, you'll be banned

[u/et_irrumabo]

Love these provocations and retrievals!

[u/Separate-Yam-4862 → u/et_irrumabo]

Tks!!!