Evening the Score

Abstract

For purposes of tracing some implications of transition from symbiosis to symbolic order, it may be useful to draw a distinction between symbiotic mother and symbolic mother. The symbiotic mother is mother of undifferentiated stage, mother of preverbal era who is not yet other. But, at risk of over-schematization, let us stretch ordinary meaning of symbiosis so that symbiotic mother refers to all stages of differentiation prior to oedipal era. The symbiotic mother would then be mother first imaged as object of wish-fulfillment; mother as self-object in Kohution terms; imaginary mother, in language of Lacan, who mirrors an image of unity to infant; and, even, mother of dual relationship from time advent of speech announces her as other until her fundamental relinquishment in symbolic castration achieved during oedipal crisis. The symbolic mother is not only mother that comes to be known as other by virtue of language and oedipal crisis; she is also, as Lacan phrased it, mother in place of Other, the referring to language and its law-like effects. This is to say that symbolic mother is mother who has all along introduced language and mediated place of Other to father. It is she whose non-narcissistic mode of being in world points child toward father and a future apart from herself. It is this dimension of both mother and father with which child identifies in what Freud called identification with father ... [of] personal prehistory (S.E. 19, p. 31. See his footnote: Perhaps it would be safer to say 'with both parents.' )