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
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of ges ...
.
Concept
Green introduced the concept in an essay which was written in French in 1980, published in 1983, and translated into English in 1986. 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
In psychology, emotional detachment, also known as emotional blunting, is a condition or state in which a person lacks emotional connectivity to others, whether due to an unwanted circumstance or as a positive means to coping, cope with anxiet ...
, perhaps under the influence of loss and
mourning
Mourning is the emotional expression in response to a major life event causing grief, especially loss. It typically occurs as a result of someone's death, especially a loved one.
The word is used to describe a complex of behaviors in which t ...
in her own family of origin. 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
Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism, named after the Greek mythological figure ''Narcissus'', has evolv ...
, contributes to
attachment disorder
Attachment disorders are disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from unavailability of normal socializing care and attention from primary caregiving figures in early childhood. Such a failure would result from unusual ear ...
s, and reveals itself as a major resistance to progress in the
transference
Transference () is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person. Traditionally, it had solely co ...
.
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.
Literary examples
The dead mother complex has been seen as underlying both the novel ''
Gradiva'' and
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...
's essay on it, ''
Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva
''Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva'' () is an essay written in 1907 by Sigmund Freud that subjects the novel '' Gradiva: a Pompeian fantasy'' by Wilhelm Jensen, and especially its protagonist, to psychoanalysis.
The novel is about a young ...
''.
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for '' The Colossus and Other Poems'' (1960), '' Ariel'' (1965), a ...
's writing has been linked to the dead mother complex.
See also
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Further reading
* G. Kohon, ''The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green'' (1999)
External links
Dead Mother Complex
Human development
Psychoanalytic theory
Motherhood
1980s neologisms