Maternal Subjectivity Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue on Maternal Subjectivity: An Essential Link in Relational-Social Psychoanalysis

This article begins with an overview of the historical treatment of maternal subjectivity within psychology, psychoanalysis, and feminism, discussing the inroads that have been made to support the subject status of mothers themselves, as well as where these improvements are incomplete. Also considered are the invited papers appearing in this special issue of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and the ways in which they unfold new iterations of theorizing maternal subjectivity. Particularly, this paper introduces the concept of matrescence—the developmental process of becoming a mother—into the psychoanalytic lexicon. Doing so allows further discussion of how the mother’s subject status can elaborate the lineage of the feminine and co-created, relational, and social aspects of identity. Recognizing the mother is not an individualistic pursuit, a competition between mother and baby for whose experience gets to matter; rather, recognizing maternal subjectivity is inherently a recognition of linking. It is essential to the development of relational psychoanalysis and, this paper argues, an essential link in considering the oft-neglected socio-cultural aspects of the psyche.

Shadow Maternal Subjectivities

Shadow maternal subjectivities manifest in complexes deadly for children, but are born of trauma and patriarchal oppression of mothers. If maternal subjectivity is the Self that is informed by the psychological and physical experiences of giving and nurturing the life of a child, and shadow is a Jungian concept that refers to the unconscious aspect of the personality that contains all the elements of ourselves that we deny, repress, or disown, shadow maternal subjectivity is the destructive life-taking energies of a mother. These shadow subjectivities at times come alive in complexes. Complexes, another concept developed by Carl Jung, are unconscious emotionally charged and organized sets of memories, fantasies, and behavior patterns constellated around a core element. Enough stress can manifest a shadow mother complex, when maternal shadow energies fuel a complex that overwhelms consciousness and causes mothers to act out in their relationships with her children. There are several ways shadow maternal complexes manifest, such as the vampire mother, the depressed/addicted mother, the puella aeterna mother, the Aphrodite mother, the Munchausen by proxy mother, and the devouring mother. This paper explores these complexes and how a patriarchal idealization of motherhood precludes mothers from admitting their own finitude or any negative maternal feelings. At times these repressed negative feelings, or shadow subjectivities, become destructive, sometimes fatally. What is required is a greater range of acceptance of maternal subjectivity.

Matrescence as a Theoretical Space for Renewal: Discussion of the Special Issue on Maternal Subjectivity

The concept of matrescence, akin to adolescence, has renewed our theoretical understanding of maternal subjectivity. Over the past two decades, there has been increased attention given to addressing reproductive psychological issues and maternal mental health, acknowledging the profound changes mothers undergo. This special issue explores matrescence as an important yet overlooked developmental phase, rich with opportunities for personal growth and societal transformation. Maternal subjectivity continues to require thorough documentation, investigation, and innovative theoretical frameworks. This discussion reviews recent efforts in psychoanalysis to shed light on the complexities of maternal subjectivity in the modern era and to point toward future research and action.

Grandmaternal Subjectivity: A Conversation with Jessica Benjamin

In this conversational interview with Jessica Benjamin, who herself is a grandmother of feminist and relational psychoanalysis, we explore the scopic field of grandmaternal subjectivity. Starting with Benjamin’s recognition theory and thirdness, we consider how interrelated these positions are with maternal subjectivity, and then expand out to other layers of recognition by and of grandmothers, emphasizing where the grandmaternal can foster a sense of innate goodness in the mother through recognition. Benjamin is clear to not exclude fathers or grandfathers in her recognition of multiple subjectivities. She also considers the ways in which generational distance and age play a role in emotional regulation around young children, and broader social issues pertaining to recognition. We conclude with a consideration of lineage and relating through differentiation on both a personal and professional register.

Finding Mother, Finding Ourselves: An Essay Inspired by Vissing’s “The Impact of Negation of the Maternal Body”

This paper places maternal subjectivity in an embodied, intersubjective context through the use of personal narrative. In response to the work of Helena Vissing (this issue), who lodges a critique of how psychoanalysis has negated aspects of maternal experience, it both extends and challenges her ideas, reacting to the disembodied nature of her critique and relocating it into the realm of an autobiographical story. It also problematizes cis-heteronormative biases in scholarship around maternal subjectivity through the inclusion of queer experience and queer family configurations in the narrative.

Maternal Subjectivity Behind the Couch: The Analyst’s Secondary Dependency and Its Implications for Political Psychoanalysis

In the international discussion on psychoanalytic technique, there is a controversial discourse on the use of the countertransference. In this paper, I discuss positions that recognize the shared experiences of regression of analyst and analysand in the analytic process, focussing on undifferentiated affective states in the analyst and their effect on the process. Starting from the metaphor of the maternal analyst, I think about these positions through the prism of the current discourse on maternal subjectivity. The naturalization of motherhood and the consecutive denigration of secondary dependency of actual mothers on a facilitating environment is described and compared to the position of the analyst in the regressive process. Referring to feminist and psychoanalytic literature on motherhood and reproductive labor, I discuss reasons for resistance against the recognition of secondary dependency. I argue that the patriarchal structuring of society and psychoanalytic culture seems to be a defense against vulnerability and the recognition of emotional needs. I outline the implications of the full recognition of emotional needs of the analyst for our understanding of the psychoanalytic process. In conclusion, the possibility of expanding the concept of the psychoanalytic frame to political circumstances as facilitating environment of the mutual regressive process is discussed.

Developing a Maternal Identity: Theoretical, Developmental and Clinical Considerations

This paper considers maternal subjectivity and maternal identity development through our work in an urban clinical setting where women present for treatment during the perinatal period. Drawing on a rich tradition of psychoanalytic observational research and mother-infant communication research, which supported the relational turn, we aim to shift the lens from mothers as important to their baby’s development, to maternal experiences as essential. Likewise, noting that a mother cannot exist without a baby, real or imagined, we consider the role of a baby in a mother’s own development. Tracing roots of maternal subjectivity in psychoanalytic traditions, while also noting its absence, we hope to offer ways to formulate maternal identity that are clinically useful and grounded in research, and reflective of our contemporary positions. Case examples further illustrate the utility of narrative measures, including the Adult Attachment Interview, in clinical settings.

Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of maternal ambivalence in the Indian cultural milieu through a critical analysis of Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother. These novels illustrate how societal glorification of maternal archetypes imposes significant emotional burdens on mothers who defy established norms, leading to inner conflicts laden with guilt, uncertainty, and the struggle to balance personal aspirations with societal expectations. We demonstrate how the novels subvert the entrenched heteropatriarchal order and advocate for a departure from rigid standards of what Andrea O’Reilly calls ‘patriarchal motherhood’. The article focuses on the mother–child relationship, which is characterised by ‘ambiguous intersubjectivity’ and ethical dilemmas linked to maternal discontent. We argue that a phenomenological exploration of maternal ambivalence, in conjunction with cultural norms, offers valuable insights into the complexities of maternal subjectivity and mirrors the conflicts within the maternal psyche. This approach grounds conceptions of gender and motherhood in lived experiences rather than normative ideals, providing a unique lens to examine social realities beyond individual literary works. We show how maternal ambivalence lies at the heart of the motherhood experience and how these narratives vindicate the individuality and autonomy of mothers.

Subjectivities of highly skilled lead, tied, and equal migrant mothers

AbstractProfessionally mobile individuals tend to migrate for career purposes at the prime age of reproduction. This article focuses on highly skilled migrant mothers from different cultural backgrounds living and working in Geneva. The article argues that they inhabit and internalize their identities as―lead, tied, and/or equal―migrants and this impacts ways in which they come to develop their professional and maternal subjectivities. Highly skilled migrant mothers who identified with their tied migrant status developed a neoliberal professional and maternal subjectivity, whereas those who had internalized the lead or equal migrant ideal subjectivities developed liberal feminist professional and maternal selves. The typology of postfeminist/neoliberal versus liberal feminist migrant mothers' subjectivities helps us to better understand the feminist potentials for migration of highly skilled mothers.

Disciplining the disobedient Black maternal subject: the assimilatory pedagogies of public suffering and punishment

Drawing feminist analyses of the affective work of shame, compassion and pain into dialogue with Black political theory's critique of the ‘ordinary’ spectacle of Black suffering and death, this article theoretically examines the disciplining of Black maternal subjects who behave badly in Nordic public space. Considering media coverage of two separate instances from 2019 where Black mothers are either threatened by the risk of death or succumb to death, this article analyses how the racial logics of national assimilation locate these women as deviantly unassimilable subjects who are swiftly made culpable for the conditions of their own suffering.

#MADRES. Parodic Motherhood Discourses on Peruvian TikTok

TikTok’s increasing cultural pervasiveness, leading to a myriad of practices and discourses, has turned the platform into a rich digital field site to interpret local dynamics. Here, we analyze visual and textual discourses on (urban) Peruvian TikTok as sociocultural processes to reflect on popular media cultures and contribute to media studies and anthropology. This study examines 80 videos and more than 10,000 user comments around the content of two young male Peruvian digital creators—@mikkele and @zagaladas, who upload humorous, parodic clips of themselves re-enacting their mothers—to better understand how motherhood is articulated, exposed, criticized, accepted, and contested. Filled with intergenerational tensions and gender differences, these videos and their comments are fruitful terrain to explore both legitimized and rejected maternal subjectivities. We focus here on three emerged themes: “the unfair, aggressive mother,” “technology in dispute,” and “madre latina vs. madre gringa.”

The Ambivalence of Mother Love: Navigating Maternal Subjects Through the TV Drama A Love for Dilemma

The TV drama A Love for Dilemma (2021) has sparked widespread debates on motherhood and gender in China. This article explores the intricacy of the show’s representation of “bad mother.” While conventional perspectives often view motherhood as a realm of private intimacy, insufficient attention has been given to the distinctiveness of Chinese-style motherhood and its intersection with family, neoliberalism, and state politics. This article addresses the importance of analyzing the televisual representation of motherhood to gain insight into how the interplay between patriarchy, the market and the state configures maternal subjectivity, particularly under the leadership of Xi Jinping. By examining the emotional meaning of motherhood produced by the TV series, this study unveils the inherent contradiction of mother love as a site of political investment. It argues that the ambivalence surrounding mother love stems from its entanglement with patriarchal expectations, the burdens of emotional labor, and the state’s vested interests.

‘A Child Is Being Eaten’: Psychoanalysis in Times of Antiblackness

Géza Róheim's psychoanalytic, colonial archive is one of the few attempts to document the psychic life of subjects living under settler colonialism. Historians of psychoanalysis have examined Róheim's contributions to the psychoanalytic study of Aboriginal childhood, as well as his exploration of Aboriginal maternal subjectivity. However, Róheim's account of Aboriginal maternal cannibalism needs more attention, as accusations of cannibalism often accompanied cruel colonial policies targeting Aboriginal families. This paper contextualizes Róheim's psychoanalytic insights on the unconscious motives of cannibalism and infanticide amongst Aboriginal mothers and seeks to rethink Róheim's psychoanalytic archive from the point of view of hunger, to explore what it can tell us about the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and colonialism, as well as the relationship between psychoanalysis and its colonial past.

What’s the Emergency in Maternal Emergence? A Response to Hoskins-Murphy’s “Close to the Bone”

ABSTRACT In response to Nicola Hoskins-Murphy’s paper, I wonder about the limitations of and contradictions embedded in the formulation of a maternal that requires foreclosure of a longed-for emergence of self and endless sacrifice in service of meeting the child’s needs, and I offer a framework for a meta-examination of the structures – mythological, psychoanalytic, political, historical, and economic – that shape such maternal formulations. I examine the sense of threat that circulates in the paper around the desire for and fear of this “emergence” and wonder how a greater awareness of the social dimension the mothers and their sons are situated in might help shift its presence. I argue that there are unique new challenges to maternal subjectivity posed by children in later adolescence and in the transition to young adulthood which need further theorization in general, and suggest that feminist critical voices can support emergence that deviates from and coexists with nurturance of children, especially but not only in this developmental period.

Maternal subjectivity of Indian Muslim mothers: reflections on the hijab and education

Most theories of motherhood, across different societies, tend to be anchored on the child’s needs. This results in mothers either idealised or blamed for the impact they have on their child. In all this theorising, I have found that maternal voice is absent, creating a gap in our understanding of maternal subjectivity. This article is part of the larger doctoral work focused on Indian Muslim mothers, building on Benjamin’s work that argues for mutual recognition of the other in a dyadic relationship as a subject. A psychosocial lens is used to explore the maternal experiences of raising adolescent daughters in contemporary times where the Muslim identity is frowned upon and their cultural practices are a matter of debate. In politically charged contemporary India, where religion is a prominent source of conflict, an Indian Muslim woman, doubly marginalised due to her gender and community, which is in a minority, would find it difficult to find a voice as a mother. Her reflections on hijab and education are highlighted in this article as she mothers and makes an attempt to provide a voice for herself and her daughter. It is proposed that her understanding of the relationship with her mother can be crucial to her negotiation of the current dilemmas of wearing a hijab and the significance of religious and secular education. The voices were captured in in-depth interviews conducted in the capital city of Delhi and have an implicit cultural flavour of North India.

How do you manage? An auto-ethnographic inquiry into contemporary maternal labor

PurposeThis article tackles the intersection of mothering and labor through the author's own experience as a feminist mother/manager from Istanbul, Turkey. It aims to revisit the first years of motherhood, exploring the struggle to invent a peculiar maternal subjectivity in opposition and negotiation with the patriarchal institution of motherhood, the new definition of maternal labor in a highly digital, neoliberal context and the issue of marital fairness in a dual-income heterosexual marriage.Design/methodology/approachThe article presents an autoethnographic, retrospective and introspective inquiry into the first seven years of the author's mothering experience in order to offer an in-depth exploration of the various aspects of contemporary maternal labor.FindingsThe article shows how maternal labor has shifted in nature and expanded in scope in a contemporary non-Western context. It investigates the dissolution of the spatial, temporal and sensorial boundaries between the managerial labor dedicated to the workplace, and to the family. Highlighting the similarities of the two forms of labor, the article manifests the materiality, tangibility and visibility of maternal labor.Research limitations/implicationsFurther intersectional studies shall be beneficial to redefine maternal labor in different contexts.Practical implicationsDeparting and diverting from the terms “invisible labor” and “mental load”, the article suggests a shift in terminology to stress the multifaceted medley of managerial tasks mothers undertake today.Originality/valueThe article provides an original take on maternal labor through the first-hand experience of a middle-class, professional mother from Istanbul, Turkey.

The effects of COVID-19 on imagined reproductive futures

Macro-level crises affect individual lives and behaviors. One of COVID-19’s many effects was to disrupt the way people imagined their own and their children’s’ futures or imagined reproductive futures. Using 65 interviews collected between March and July 2020 with mothers who experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period at the onset of COVID-19 in the US, this study examines two elements of reproduction and futurity; first, how the pandemic exacerbated health, economic, racial, and global emergency stressors to create unique reproductive experiences and nuanced imagined reproductive futures. Second, I use Lee Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism amidst COVID-19 to inquire whether reproduction maintains a compulsory sense of optimism amidst periods of social disruption. I find that despite the various stressors and in addition to the shared disruption of the pandemic, there remains a widespread maternal optimism about reproduction across birthing people with different intersectional social identities. Diverse imaginations of futurity are likely to impact reproductive practices and the meaning-making associated with them; in this research, I use maternal subjectivities to illustrate how narratives and experiences of reproduction are contextual, and offer a distinct avenue toward theoretical analyses of futurity.

Tracing the Figure of Roland Barthes in The Argonauts : A "many-gendered mother" of Maggie Nelson's Heart

ABSTRACT: Roland Barthes is among the thinkers and artists whom Maggie Nelson claims as her "many-gendered mothers" in The Argonauts (2015). This essay foregrounds Nelson's mode of engagement with Barthes's work, proposing that she replicates the active, writerly reading that Barthes himself advocates in S/Z (1970) and elsewhere. Where Nelson expresses deep affinity with Barthes, she also brings herself to his work and pushes against and beyond it. In my analysis, there are four axes to this active engagement with Barthes in The Argonauts : firstly, Nelson establishes Barthes as a foundational figure in her intertextual, queer literary lineage. Secondly, Nelson experiments with Barthes's formal and stylistic innovations. Thirdly, Barthes provides a foil for Nelson's recuperation of maternal subjectivity. Finally, Nelson builds on Barthes's writings on love to attest to the joy and viability of queer kinship. In foregrounding Nelson's (re)readings of Barthes, I elucidate her work and its citational politics, while inviting new perspectives on his. As a reader of The Argonauts , moreover, I find I must comb the text's layers to find meaning, bringing myself to its (typographical) gaps. Nelson's work, like that of Barthes, invites a mode of reading that makes space for dialogue, intimacy, and intellectual innovation.

Negotiating working motherhood and doing work from home at the intersection of class, gender and crisis in India

The paper explores the experiences of Indian middle-class and upper-middle-class women managing working motherhood in the context of pandemic-induced remote work. The increased paid and unpaid work during the COVID-19 crisis amplified the tensions between becoming a ‘good mother’ and an ‘ideal worker’. The collapsed boundaries between work and home, resulting from flexible work that gained momentum in the pandemic, threatened the carefully negotiated boundaries by women. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, the present study investigates how women negotiated the meaning of working motherhood in the face of frequent boundary violations. The findings show how classed and neoliberal maternal subjectivities of Indian working women manifested during the crisis. When forced to integrate maternal with professional, working mothers claimed identities that aligned with middle-class values that were appropriately modern and global, at the same time rooted in patriarchy. Concurrently, the findings reveal the classed and gendered nature of remote work, which manifests as an extension of gendered organization and neoliberal ideology within the homes of working mothers, fortifying their role as caregivers.

Gift or Weapon? Reproductive Decision, the Phenomenology of Pregnancy, and Alien Language in Denis Villeneuve's Arrival

Abstract This essay analyzes Denis Villeneuve's 2016 film, Arrival, and elucidates its strikingly original meditation on the ethics of reproduction and the relationships between and among embodied maternal subjectivity, language, and temporality. Drawing on deconstructive theories of language and relationality as well as on the writing of scholars working at the intersection of reproductive biology and feminist philosophy, the essay argues that Arrival uses some of the generic features of science fiction cinema (alien encounter and time travel) to articulate a feminist and posthumanist philosophy of relation and care. Focusing on the film's language of risk, danger, contamination, and even social disintegration, Arrival prompts us to consider how a particularly suggestive account of the maternal-fetal relationship, and of the process of fostering and becoming a relationally determined being, simultaneously engages with the fraught question of reproductive choice and reproductive justice in our contemporary moment. Meditating on the film's visual, sonic, and conceptual representations of the “placental wall” and of the “parasitical” structure of pregnancy, the essay shows how Arrival parallels feminist readings of the materiality of pregnancy that deconstruct the self-possessed or “virile” subject of patriarchal individualism.