Too warm, too soft, too maternal

Abstract

As a therapist becomes a mother, calling the experience emotionally difficult can be a serious understatement. The major transformation of one's self and identity, and managing these momentous changes, can be more challenging than ever expected. Both therapist and patient's individual ideas of an imagined or fantasized mother, as well as our past and imagined experiences of being mothered, came to powerfully affect us in the room. Maternal ideals and aspirations are deeply rooted in the unconscious feminine superego and contribute to humanitarian concerns and caring responsibility, and the development of discipline and ethics in the succeeding generation. Internalization of the ideal mother is linked to wishes for an ideal family. Entering motherhood promotes deep psychological changes in a woman during pregnancy—a woman confronts psychological and physical transformations and prepares herself to become a mother in order to take care of a helpless and immature baby, in need of protection.