The Maternal Metaphor in Feminist Scholarship

Abstract

Numerous schools of psychoanalytic thought inform contemporary feminist scholarship. This paper examines how two schools, object relations theory and work of Jacques Lacan, can be useful to the feminist enterprise. It focuses especially on the theme of the maternal: while the stated schools conceptualize this theme differently, both rely on the notion of an internalized maternal metaphor held within the child's unconscious. This internalized metaphor thus constitutes a common terrain uniting feminists who draw on object relations theory to those indebted to Lacan, scholars who otherwise feel they have little in common.