The Maternal Experience: Encounters with Ambivalence and Love [1 ed.] 0367223708, 9780367223700

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THE MATERNAL EXPERIENCE

The Maternal Experience explores the powerful and dynamic nature of maternal ambivalence and disrupts the conventional narrative of the mother’s lived experience by arguing that encounters with feelings of hatred are both universal and have the capacity to stimulate and enrich maternal love. The book draws on the author’s personal mothering experiences, those of other women, and examples from film to inspire new introspection about the everyday maternal experience. Lowy takes a psychosocial approach to weave thinking from selected psychoanalytic and contemporary accounts together with personal stories to explore how maternal ambivalence operates and how mothering is sourced in psychic struggles between loving and hating feelings in an atmosphere that is rife with social and personal expectations and prohibitions. By reworking the experience of maternal ambivalence, the book secures an understanding of the mother’s feelings of hatred as a catalyst for her love and allows these maligned and taboo emotions to be named and reframed into acceptable and transformative feelings. Brought alive by examples from film and first-hand experience, this book is fascinating reading for academics and students of psychology, maternal and women’s studies, and sociology, as well as practitioners in the fields of psychology, social work, medicine and counselling. Margo Lowy is a psychotherapist with an interest in mothering and women’s reproductive health. She completed her doctorate and her research master’s at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, investigating the fields of maternal ambivalence and infertility.

Women and Psychology Series Editor: Jane Ussher Professor of Women‘s Health Psychology, University of Western Sydney

This series brings together current theory and research on women and psychology. Drawing on scholarship from a number of different areas of psychology, it bridges the gap between abstract research and the reality of women’s lives by integrating theory and practice, research and policy. Each book addresses a ‘cutting edge’ issue of research, covering topics such as postnatal depression and eating disorders, and addressing a wide range of theories and methodologies. The series provides accessible and concise accounts of key issues in the study of women and psychology, and clearly demonstrates the centrality of psychology debates within women’s studies or feminism. Other titles in this series: Bodies that Birth Rachelle Chadwick Just Sex? 2nd edition Nicola Gavey Domestic Violence and Psychology Paula Nicolson Women, Sex, and Madness Breanne Fahs For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Women-and-Psychology/book-series/SE0263

THE MATERNAL EXPERIENCE Encounters with Ambivalence and Love

Margo Lowy

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Margo Lowy The right of Margo Lowy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-22370-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-22374-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-12434-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my wise and imperfect father who taught me the truth and power of contradiction.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1

2

3

4

5

6

ix

Preamble: the myth

1

Opening: lived experience, storytelling and maternal ambivalence

3

What is maternal ambivalence? Conf lict, contradiction, confusion and the maternal ideal

17

History of thought on maternal ambivalence: locating the mother’s voice amid patriarchy, taboos and feelings of ambivalence

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Donald Winnicott’s good-enough mother: transformation through maternal love, failure, repair and moments of hatred

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Melanie Klein: there’s no love without hate—movement between the rigid paranoid-schizoid and the integrated depressive position

93

Wilfred R. Bion: learning from experience as a source of maternal change, understanding and wisdom

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viii

Contents

7

Conclusions: the experience of maternal love and hate

Bibliography Index

160 166 179

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank each woman who has shown the courage to ref lect with me on her mothering and who has received what I have had to say with humility, compassion, curiosity and a nod of understanding and still wanted to know more. To those who couldn’t imagine or countenance my message, it inspired me to question further. To others for whom this topic has given pause to think, you are the daughter or the son of a mother, maybe the partner of a mother, or someone who mothers, and I thank you. I thank Jane Ussher for her feedback and for guiding me throughout this process and for sharing my fascination with this topic. To Eleanor, Danielle and Alex, thank you for being willing and available to answer my questions. Annie, Annie, David, David, Hilary, Lara, Lisa, Lorraine, Nollaig and Shterny, thank you for taking the time to read, contemplate and comment on my book I am forever grateful for my Australian support team—you know who you are. To Jackie, who has shown me what mothering is. To mum, you are an inspiration; to my devoted in-laws and siblings, you each enrich my life. To my children and their partners, to my grandchildren, to my nephews and nieces, and to others who spent many days in our home, I still learn from you all every day, and you remind me to laugh. To my husband and my partner in parenting and in life, David, we are in this together. I thank you for understanding the value of this work for me and for humanity.

PREAMBLE The myth

Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of the harvest, Demeter, is playing peacefully in the fields with her friends when she is lured by the beauty of the narcissus flower and then abducted by Hades to his kingdom in the underworld. When her mother realises that she is missing she embarks on a frantic search for her. She becomes increasingly anguished as her quest yields nothing and eventually becomes so disturbed and disinterested in the harvest that the fields of the earth become barren. Meanwhile, Persephone is miserable and pines for her mother and refuses all food. Hades is informed about the struggle on earth, and he agrees to send Persephone back to her mother. However, before Persephone leaves to return to earth, Hades implores her to eat four pomegranate seeds. This sentences her to live out her life in the corresponding proportion—four out of the twelve months in the underworld and the balance of eight months on earth with her mother which Demeter accepts.

By starting with a myth, I am positioning storytelling as pivotal to the examination of mothering and the mother’s experience of her loving and hating feelings which is the inspiration for this book. A myth is a holder and conveyor of living experience and a powerful catalyst for an unconscious f low of images, thoughts and feelings which elicits psychic imaginings and identifications. Myths can be understood on many levels including those of a literal, psychic or symbolic nature and, as they are transmitted and retold over the generations, they are continually transformed as each storyteller ascribes personal meaning to them. In this tradition, I have drawn on and shaped this legend of Demeter and Persephone to extend my understanding of mothering and maternal ambivalence. The invocation of this ancient Greek myth invites a link to three of the guiding principles of this book. First, I am aware of the irony of beginning a book about maternal ambivalence with a myth. Maternal ambivalence, which I designate as the mother’s

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loving and hating feelings about her child, is a taboo subject which is ironically also a routine part of mothering and is not a myth. This idea binds and shapes the book. Second, Demeter’s maternal experience unfolds as a guide to wise mothering, as she struggles with f low, darkness and an acceptance of both her own and Persephone’s fate. I maintain that the experiences of suffering and anguish that Demeter endures as she searches for Persephone, together with the momentary feelings of hatred that are prompted by the girl’s decision to eat the four pomegranate seeds, strengthens and transforms Demeter’s feelings of maternal love. On Persephone’s return Demeter is confronted with a young woman who has cavorted in the underworld and as such is markedly different from the innocent girl that she recalls playing in the fields with her friends. Demeter is compelled to confront Persephone’s new maturity and to renew a connection with her by embracing f luidity, adjusting her expectations, and accepting that her daughter now moves between light and darkness, as symbolised by Persephone’s covenant to spend eight months on earth and the remaining four months in the underworld. This myth contains many lessons about the sustaining, transforming and forgiving power of maternal love which warrants the facilities of perseverance, hope and f lexibility as the mother embraces her losses, feelings of bewilderment and the unknown. Demeter’s feelings of hatred are intensified as Persephone’s experience reminds her of both her own darkness and the reality that she is not privy to the secrets of her daughter’s underworld. Demeter, as a wise mother, realises that her salvation lies in adapting to this new relationship with her child as she learns to live with difference and to bear and integrate feelings of deep love together with her passing hatreds which marks the realisation of her maternal ambivalence. Third, by drawing on this ancient myth I am upholding the relevance of ageold wisdoms that emerge in these stories to contemporary life and their value to our current understanding of human experience. The repetition and retelling of such stories reveal psychic patterns which are transferred across the generations and become part of both the unconscious and literal cultural mores. Demeter’s encounters exemplify a wise mother’s struggle and reconciliation with her maternal loving and hating feelings.

1 OPENING Lived experience, storytelling and maternal ambivalence

My suspicion that an untapped area exists in the mother’s experience, related to unnamed feelings, inspired me to investigate maternal ambivalence, the coexistence of the mother’s loving and hating feelings. This resulted in a fresh understanding of mothering and a reframing of the conventional perception of everyday mothering. I focus on the uncomfortable truth that momentary feelings of maternal hatred both exist and are a catalyst for the mother’s experience of her love. Stories from film and personal experience are weaved together with the work of selected psychoanalytic, feminist and contemporary social thinkers to form a psychosocial framework which informs the language of maternal love that I am shaping. This language champions the development of a maternal voice in which the productive possibilities of the mother’s prohibitive hating emotions can be freed despite restraints of a social and emotional nature. By advancing the seemingly contradictory notions that love and hate belong to the same register, as they both favour the value of f luidity, connection and transformation, I disrupt a fundamental belief about the position and usefulness of the mother’s hating feelings. This notion of f low challenges notions of rigidity and disconnection, which are secured in a resistance to change and stif le maternal growth.

Naming maternal ambivalence Maternal ambivalence, the mother’s loving and feelings towards her child, is a pervasive and central, while hidden, part of mothering. The limited amount of work on the topic is most likely fuelled by the taboo nature associated with admissions of maternal feelings of hatred. A recognition of these hateful feelings, while generally momentary, provokes thoughts about how a mother learns to live with her complicated maternal experiences. Ref lections about mothering inspire an understanding of the dynamic between the mother and her feelings

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of maternal ambivalence and invite the articulation of a language of maternal love. Two examples from personal observation demonstrate a mother’s typical encounters with her feelings of maternal ambivalence: The 2-year-old toddler, his newborn sister and his mother are at the park. The mother reminds her son to stay close by and not to not climb the slide while she changes her newborn’s diaper. After sixty seconds, she turns around to check on him, and she cannot find him. She is seized with fear. She looks up and sees him at the top of the slide. She experiences overpowering love for him as her fear penetrates her being; this fear also contains hatred as she imagines him lying motionless on the ground after he falls from the top of the slide. This is maternal ambivalence. The mother collects her intoxicated 16-year-old daughter from a party. The mother experiences total love and relief as her daughter is now safely with her. She also experiences hatred as her daughter has exposed herself to danger and has broken her promise that she would not try alcohol. The mother is both horrified and gripped by her experience of maternal ambivalence. These mother-and-child exchanges illustrate the powerful impact of storytelling as a carrier of lived experience. I draw repeatedly on film and first-hand encounters to develop an insight into the mother’s everyday reality and the feelings of love and hatred that her mothering inspires. This book explores the emergence of maternal ambivalence in its social and psychic manifestation. A paucity in the examination of maternal ambivalence is redressed in Rozsika Parker’s work (2005) and her insistence that both loving and hating feelings are a pervasive and creative part of mothering. I extend Parker’s thinking in an investigation of the transformative impact of hatred within the dynamic of maternal love. These f leeting feelings of hatred generally unfold in the hiatus that exists between the mother’s actual experience of her mothering and her expectations which are fuelled by her own inner illusions and her understanding of socially acceptable conduct which vary across society and time. Mothering is deeply impacted by these intense and myriad social expectations, which are embodied in the maternal ideal. This includes a perpetuation of secrecy surrounding the notion of maternal ambivalence which is maintained both by society and by the mothers themselves. Parker’s formative contribution to an understanding of maternal ambivalence has elicited an interest in this dialogue while inspiring other thinkers to maintain the conversation. Her narrative is continued through the work of maternal thinkers, including Joan Raphael-Leff and Barbara Almond and a number of contemporary writers. My personal and professional experience informs my belief that encounters with feelings of maternal hatred are an essential and a potentially enriching aspect of maternal love. These feelings of hatred are generally momentary

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and are accompanied by an overlay of past internal and external experiences and invite maternal feelings including shock, astonishment, embarrassment, surprise, shame, remorse and confusion for the mother. If these feelings can be thought about and responded to rather than repressed, they can be a source of learning and transformation. An alternative discourse to the accepted maternal lived experience is proposed in this book which questions the traditional taboos around maternal ambivalence and mothering and invites a more truthful and open engagement with maternal struggle and a wider spectrum of feelings, including disturbing ones.

Maternal hatred This book invites thoughts about an enigma that pervades the notion of hatred in the context of maternal ambivalence. A primal unconscious fear seems to exist in both the social and the maternal imagination, namely, that an acknowledgement of the mother’s hating feelings will kill or destroy her child, or expose something monstrous about her true inner nature. This returns us to the difficulty, which Parker indicates, in granting the notion of hatred a place in which it can be explored rather than immediately expelled. This difficulty is aggravated by the complications that arise from clearly enunciating expressions of both maternal hatred and love. While the thought of maternal hatred may be abhorrent and heinous, it is not deadly, though the word hatred is imbued with extreme power. I suspect that in the social and personal imagination, notions of maternal hate and cruelty are conf lated such that a psychic link is formed which fuses images of maternal hatred with deep pain and suffering being inf licted on the child. While both maternal hatred and cruelty are taboo subjects, I draw attention to a fundamental difference between them. Cruelty, defined as “the state or quality of being cruel” (Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2020, June 18, 2020), connotes a fixed and unforgiving condition which characterises a person as being cruel, that is, one who is “disposed to inf lict suffering; indifferent to, or taking pleasure in, the pain or distress of another” (Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2020, June 18, 2020). This is discrepant from the meaning that I ascribe to maternal hating feelings which are secured in momentary and f luid emotions that hold the potential for maternal growth, ref lection, learning and empathy, and as such are a catalyst for feelings of maternal love. This understanding of the dynamic of maternal hatred is fundamental to the language of maternal love that I am shaping. I have noticed a curious and recurring phenomenon during the process of writing this book. Whereas a mention of maternal hating feelings seems to grip and stun people and trap them in moralising, society is more freely able, despite some reticence and judgement, to consider concepts such as maternal guilt, shame, depression, resentment, rage and anger. Although these expressions are synonymous to and often elicit hating feelings, they are less dangerous and can be named. While the term hatred is provocative and leads the discussion to an uncomfortable place, it equally has the agency to move supposed truths and to

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disrupt the fiercely guarded narratives that pervade the maternal discourse. A deliberation of the mother’s feelings of hatred ushers in a conversation of a language of maternal love, which holds a compassion for and an understanding of these hating feelings, and grants them a place and a name. These opinions about hatred are disrupted by David Mann, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has done clinical and academic work on love and hate to develop his argument. Mann makes a convincing argument that indifference, a static, paralysing emotion that defies movement and growth, rather than hatred, is the opposite of love. He defines indifference as “the absence of connection, or even the absence of a wish for connection” (2002b, p. 45), and Max van Manen extends this by describing it as “the refusal to dwell together . . . the failure to recognize the other human being in a genuine encounter or personal relation”. Mann considers that feelings of hatred elicit a passionate and f luid energy and have the capacity to fuel loving feelings.

Reflections about mothering and the place of maternal ambivalence This book is grounded in the conviction that feelings of maternal ambivalence are not only to be expected but can be worked through to improve the experience of mothering. An investigation of the powerful, dynamic and shocking nature of maternal ambivalence as the mother struggles with her loving and hating feelings towards her child unfolds. A maternal perspective is used to substantiate a thesis around mothering which explores the notion of maternal ambivalence and the possibilities of maternal hatred as a transformative catalyst for maternal love. Although expressions of feelings of maternal ambivalence are predominantly taboo, they are also a pervasive part of the mother’s everyday interaction with her child and are sustained over her maternal life span in varying forms. Although these feelings are usually experienced by the mother as a disturbing and distressing aspect of her mothering and are often dismissed as a shameful aberration, they warrant a more profound exploration. This book upholds the relevance of these dark and troublesome feelings to an understanding of the lived maternal experience. I draw on the thinking of Thomas Moore in his book Care of the Soul (1994) and his assertion that “All mothering, whether in family or individual, is made up of both affectionate caring and bitter emotional pain” (Moore, 1994, p. 43) to advance an understanding of the maternal experience. Moore expresses a particular interest in the value of honouring symptoms. The definition of honour is “great respect or esteem” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2011), and a symptom is “a sign or indication of something” (Macquarie Dictionary Online, June 18, 2020) which in this context I use to apply to feelings that the mother experiences about her mothering. My understanding of Moore’s reasoning is that he is emphasising the importance of being attentive to and observing maternal feelings, such as despair and hopelessness. There is a focus on being curious and heeding feelings,

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rather than judging or dismissing them, in order to comprehend what is being revealed in the suffering (Moore, 1994, p. 10). This fosters an approach which upholds a compassion for and a mindfulness about what the mother’s actions may reveal about her underlying maternal feelings. As such it provides an opportunity to reveal an understanding of the mother and her lived maternal experience. These feelings as carriers of maternal ref lection, understanding and learning are sources of maternal transformation and wisdom. This study of mothering and maternal ambivalence uses a psychoanalytic framework sourced on the work of three notable thinkers: Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, and W. R. Bion. The hiatus that exists between maternal reality and expectations and its impact on mothering is continually revisited. An understanding of the mother and her feelings of hatred and love develop from advancing an insight about the mother’s lived experience. This unfolds as both a site of analysis and a point of identification through which an embodied expression of mothering can develop. I do not explore the impact of the continuing development of new forms of technology, such as the social media platforms of Facebook and Instagram on mothering, though there is little doubt that it deeply affects the contemporary maternal experience. While the advancement of such technology allows mothers to be more connected, it can also intensify difficulties, as it often invites an unchecked gush of personal feelings which are left unprocessed. This can fuel feelings of maternal inadequacy, loneliness, self-hatred and recrimination for the mother who may feel alienated and alone. My own anecdotal experience reveals that many people do not understand the meaning of the term maternal ambivalence. When I attempt to explain my work, the response is passionate, not neutral. Those who are aghast at my proposition become overwhelmed and are unable to tolerate any ref lection about maternal hatred. Indeed, they may deny their mother’s feelings of ambivalence or moralise about the topic. Others profess interest in reading my work and learning more. On a personal note, my life has been marked by the birth of three children in three different decades of my life—my twenties, thirties, and forties. This time span and the different relationships that I have with each of my children have prompted an interest in the diversity of feelings that each new mothering experience brings. With hindsight, my first two mothering experiences with my sons held latent feelings of ambivalence that I now understand were too socially and psychologically dangerous for me to contemplate. My experience with my daughter has been different. Her teenage years corresponded with the writing of a doctoral thesis on maternal ambivalence which released a new understanding for me and enabled me to engage with, rather than suppress, my hateful feelings about mothering. The rules of engagement have altered. My work as a psychotherapist has indicated to me that intense and conf lictual maternal feelings are continually present in the mother’s active and unconscious experiences, and her relations to them are often ambivalent. During a motherand-infant group that I conducted in 2010, I observed an unease and discomfort

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in the new mothers, which seemed to arise from unrelenting social pressure and an inability to engage with what I understood to be conf licted mothering experiences. There was also joy and love in their mothering, but these mothers were unable to contemplate, much less articulate, the ambivalence of their experiences. These personal and professional experiences coincided with my interest in cinema—a term which I use interchangeably with film in this book—as a storytelling medium and as an expression of lived experience. The conf luence of these dynamics offered ways for me to explore the maternal. The relationship between the maternal and cinema came together for me as a Jewish woman when I viewed Sophie’s Choice (1982) in 1983. The pivotal scene was the moment when Sophie, a young Polish woman, f lanked by her two children, is interrogated by a Nazi officer about whether she is Jewish or Polish. He sneers at her contemptuously while forcing her to choose between the life of her young son or daughter. When she refuses to choose, the officer threatens to sentence both children to death, and Sophie cries to him to take her baby. As the little girl is taken away screaming, Sophie’s shattering occurs. At that moment, a perpetual link between cinema and the maternal was forged for me. The feelings incited by the terror of that scene have continued to haunt me. On one level, there is my identification with a young mother at the hands of a Nazi soldier, which is a central part of my historical narrative as a Jewish girl growing up in the Holocaust-rooted Jewish community of Sydney, Australia, in the 1960s and 1970s. This was amplified by my status as a new mother of a 3-year-old son and the realisation of the responsibilities and the love that this entailed. I experienced a collision of many feelings. I was impacted by both the burden and power that mothering requires—the desire to love and protect one’s child, together with the vulnerability and mutual dependency that is demanded by that love. After much ref lection, which was incited by the viewing of the film, it became clear to me that maternal love presents a conundrum. It necessitates a fundamentally hateful aspect, as the mother is a hostage to her love for her child. At that time, in 1983, I only had one child; ref lecting on this now, I realise that the scene may have provoked a latent fear related to having another child. I believe I registered an unconscious danger in having to choose. A prolonged period of unexplained infertility followed. The moment of Sophie’s shattering marks a recognition about what being a mother means for me. The horrific scene irredeemably fused the well-being of the mother and her child in my mind and vanquished the notion of psychic maternal freedom as it became startlingly evident that the mother is eternally bound to her child and altered by motherhood. This prompted a deep curiosity about the mysterious and enduring power of maternal love which drives the mother despite many obstacles. While the fragmentation that Sophie experienced at the hands of the Nazi guard has captured my imagination and disturbed me, the use of the word choice warrants investigation. Sophie’s supposed choice occurs in the context of an

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extremely brutal and cruel Nazi regime, which is irreconcilable with the acceptable tenets of modern civilised society, and as such poses questions about whether choice actually existed for Sophie. Be that as it may, the notion of choice resonates closely with the mother’s everyday experience and has stirred my interest in the bewildering and insurmountable choices that confront the mother daily and affect her being. These choices are generated by overf lowing feelings of love together with other troublesome emotions such as shame, guilt, blame, powerlessness, frustration, loss, anxiety and maternal hatred. The memories of Sophie’s torment prompted a protracted period of emotional unrest for me as I ruminated about and absorbed the shock and horror of her terror and impossible choice. This tapped my own fears of having to manage such a dilemma as the scene continued to destabilise and haunt me. I avoided viewing the film again for many years because it was an acute reminder of the futility of Sophie’s choice, which was destined to mark her emotional death together with a primal ambivalence, as she would hold deep feelings of hatred as well as profound love. She would experience hateful feelings about herself, her surviving child and the one she sentenced to death, for forcing her to make this choice and for prolonging her life of suffering. Equally, her own life force and her will to live and care for her surviving child pushed her to make that choice rather than to choose death for both children. The ref lections of Sophie’s Choice cement my belief that cinema is a suitable way to capture and understand lived experience. This realisation provoked deep thoughts and questions for me about the complexities of emotions that mothering and experiences of maternal ambivalence invite. These psychoanalytic notions are revisited continually in this book as film emerges as a powerful storytelling medium and broadens an understanding of the maternal in its psychic and social formations. My fascination with Sophie’s Choice and my own emotional reaction to it are articulated in the thinking of Agnieszka Piotrowska in the introduction to her anthology Embodied Encounters: New Approaches to Psychoanalysis and Cinema. She insists that film can provoke profound and distinct bodily and emotional reactions for the viewer “without an actual embodied touch taking place” (2015, p. 6) which is reminiscent of my response to Sophie’s Choice. By asking the question of whether it is “not one’s unconscious with the archive of all these dis-remembered memories that makes us have different bodily and emotional responses to a film” she shapes a narrative which highlights the way that people are moved unconsciously to identify with a film and its energy. This reiterates the conf luence of film, lived experience and the psyche which I advance in this book.

Lived experience This book is sourced in the belief that lived experience offers a profound insight into an understanding of human interaction. To bridge psychoanalysis with an exploration of lived experience, I draw on Max van Manen’s thinking in his

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book Researching Lived Experience (1990), which advances a psychic and social understanding of the maternal by integrating phenomenology, the study of lived experience, with the language of psychoanalysis and the creativity of storytelling. He investigates the nature and meaning of everyday experience as a source of thoughtfulness and questioning about one’s life, as it offers “the possibility of plausible insights that bring us in more direct contact with the world” (1990, p. 9). The impact of lived experience is extended to the creative medium of storytelling as Van Manen poses a rhetorical question: “Aren’t the most captivating stories exactly those which help us to understand better what is most common, most taken-for-granted, and what concerns us most ordinarily and directly?” (1990, p. 19). Storytelling arises in this book in many forms, including first-hand maternal narrative, Greek myth and film which form expressions of lived experience and offer ways to understand mothering. Van Manen nominates storytelling as a “poetizing” project and postulates that although cinema, a technologically inspired storytelling medium, is distinct from poetry, they share the capacity to deeply affect their recipients and to extract and preserve the “impact of the original experience” (1990, p. 13). He advocates the use of artistic endeavours, including that of cinematography, as a way to discover human experience in a “condensed and transcended form” (1990, p. 19), a meeting when human beings “are naturally engaged in their worlds” (1990, p. 18) which aligns with an examination of the mother in her lived social context. Van Manen observes that inquiry into these everyday lived experiences is exploratory, and, as such, never reaches resolution, a view compatible with the discursive and inquiring dialogue that guides this book. This returns us to the link between lived experience and creative mediums, such as storytelling and cinema, in their capacity to invite an understanding of the maternal.

Use of film Film is used in this book to enliven and integrate theoretical ideas, as it addresses the dilemma of maternal ambivalence in its social and psychic realm. A number of films are drawn upon to portray mothering as a diverse experience which, while informed by cultural differences, sustains many commonalities. By offering a living and sensitive portrayal of the maternal experience, film can be channelled to explore human behaviour because its almost universal appeal invites messages to be translated across cultures and time. Film as a creative endeavour inspires curiosity and presents and generates associations that enable viewers to participate in the story, relive or recreate personal maternal encounters and promote questioning and thoughts. In fact, my response to viewing Sophie’s Choice in 1983 became a formative and elemental impetus in the writing of this book. By drawing on film, together with personal narrative and theoretical argument, an understanding of the mother and her lived experience is advanced. The meaning ascribed to the films analysed is transmitted through an examination of the maternal, which returns to a psychoanalytic insight and an awareness of

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the importance of social context. This close engagement with film analysis as an integral part of book’s structure allows a specifically cinematic analysis to develop—as opposed to one which is purely narrative—and invites a deeper interaction with these concepts. The maternal and film are both experiences which have indistinct beginnings and endings. In film, as in mothering, the viewer enters the cinema with history, expectations, prejudices and personality attributes which provoke defences, including idealisation, projection and introjections, that affect her experience of the film. Often, the film does not finish for the viewer when the credits appear on the screen at the end, because the processes of digestion, ref lection, dreaming and discussion continue beyond this time. Thoughts and feelings remain in the unconscious and can potentially be retrieved at any time when triggered by an experience. Extracts from film are woven throughout the book to extend the psychoanalytic thinking. As a carrier of lived experience and a social representation, film has the potential to effect transformation in the viewer. This powerful storytelling medium inspires a rich source of material as instances of maternal love are translated into a wider social and emotional conversation. In these films, experiences of maternal love are portrayed together with experiences of the mother’s ambivalence, suffering, reparation and wisdom. The films used in the book portray the diverse nature of mothering in which experiences of maternal ambivalence are a transformative part of the mother’s relationship with her child. Two of these films, A Happy Event (2011) and The Hedgehog (2008), portray white, heterosexual, middle class mothers in the Western cultures of France and the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. A Happy Event traces maternal experiences through the eyes of a new mother, whereas The Hedgehog depicts different versions of a mother and the way that she approaches her mothering. While How to Make an American Quilt is set in the specific cultural setting of a small town in California in the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century, aspects of the film are applicable to other places and times. As the quilt is crafted by a group of white and African American women between their forties and eighties, stories are recounted about their current and past lives. Transformative experiences of mothering unfold and the importance of storytelling and ritual to their lives is demonstrated. Lady Bird (2017) is set in 2002 in Sacramento, USA, in a lower middle class family that is beset with pressing financial pressures and traces the changing relationship between a mother and her daughter. Incendies (2011) is a cross-generational story that takes place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country and depicts maternal love and hatred in its most base embodiment, as incidents of incest and rape are revealed. An examination of the 2010 documentary Babies inspires ref lection about how mothering is lived out in diverse cultures. The film examines new mothering in the distant locations of Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco and provides a clear indication of how experiences of mothering differ across cultures. Cinematic examples in which blatant instances of

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maternal ambivalence become a central aspect of the film include Mildred Pierce (1945), Mommie Dearest (1981) and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011). The formulation of the language of maternal love unfolds through the work of the theoretical thinkers which is synthesised with examples from film and personal narrative. The medium of film affords the viewer an opportunity to identify with the characters on the screen and engage with the complexities of human nature. It also inspires ref lection about social constructs in which maternal emotional reality can be challenged and transformed. The content of this book and, in particular, the analysis of film material serve as a reminder that mothering is lived out in an array of cultures in which individual difference prevails. Mothering is an experience marked by diverse cultural difference and as such warrants an intersectional approach which upholds an understanding that the meaning and feelings that the mother experiences will vary according to her class, race and cultural background. This respect for cultural diversity is returned to in a discussion of the mother-and-child interactions where the matter of gender surfaces. For the purposes of this book, the pronoun used to refer to the mother is she, and the pronouns for the child are either she or he (he is favoured when there is potential for confusion between the mother and the child). My ongoing awareness of the importance of not universalising mothering is balanced with my understanding of the mother which is informed through my middle class background and my own maternal and life experiences. I borrow from Joyce Edward’s paper (2003) in which she describes the “intact” mother as the one whose love for her child “is ordinarily sufficient to outweigh her hatred” ( Edward, 2003, p. 252). The conditions for mothering that she has “in mind” (2003, p. 257) assume a “healthy mother with a healthy child, who has . . . emotional support and . . . favourable environmental circumstances” (p. 253) which she regards as “good health, needed emotional support, sufficient finances, adequate housing, and a healthy child capable of eliciting and taking advantage of her offerings (Edward, 2003, p. 253). Edward adds “too many mothers lack a favourable context in which to raise their children” (2003, p.  257). Edward reminds us of the need to be constantly mindful of the diversity as well as the psychological and environmental impingements and opportunities that mothering holds. These ideas will be extended and exemplified through personal experiences and cinematic scenes. Furthermore, a mother’s experience with each child is unique. An appreciation of these distinctions demands a persistent and critical self-awareness and monitoring, which prepares a way to navigate both the cultural variety and the uniqueness that is mothering. Following these opening pages, Chapter 2 introduces the notion of maternal ambivalence as a pervasive and transformative, while unacceptable, aspect of the maternal experience. The contribution of Rozsika Parker (1997, 2005), an English psychotherapist who is the seminal author of maternal ambivalence and who articulated the central significance of maternal ambivalence to mothering, is established and explored. This book draws on Parker’s definition of maternal ambivalence as the mother’s experience of loving and hating feelings sitting

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together, a universal and potentially creative part of the maternal experience. I advance Parker’s understanding of maternal ambivalence by repositioning maternal hating feelings as an enriching part of the dynamic of maternal love. While everyday experiences of mothering can provoke intense and difficult maternal feelings, these equally have transformative potential when the mother is open to engaging and struggling with her emotions rather than denying them. David Mann’s articulation of indifference as a paralysing and deadening phenomenon elicits thinking about the vital energy that both maternal love and hatred possess and introduces the argument that indifference, rather than hatred, is the antithesis of love. This chapter introduces Daphne de Marneffe’s work on mothering, and the implications of the difference between the illusory notion of having as opposed to the real life experience of caring is explored as the mother continually faces the moral dilemmas that expectations and reality invite. In the early twenty-first century, Barbara Almond (2010) and Joan Raphael-Leff (2010) produced key works specifically about maternal ambivalence. The course of feminist thinking since the late twentieth century is examined in Chapter 3 in order to develop an understanding of how traditional social structures, with a focus on patriarchy, have impacted mothering and feelings of maternal ambivalence. The scholarship of Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly as proponents of maternal theory, alongside the work of other prominent feminist thinkers, is addressed. Recent work attests to an increasing interest in the subject of maternal ambivalence. I examine four contemporary articles specifically about maternal ambivalence. Tatjana Takševa (2017) writes about Bosnian rape victims who decide to mother their children. Petra Bueskens’ edited collection Mothering & Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives (2014c) features papers by Nollaig Frost, Rivka Tuval-Musiach and Shirit Shaiovitz-Gourman, and Katie Wright and examines the emergence of thinking about maternal ambivalence. Nollaig Frost examines the way that introducing a second child into the family propels the mother to rework her expectations of herself and accept her feelings of maternal ambivalence. Rivka Tuval-Musiach and Shirit Shaiovitz-Gourman explore the nature of maternal ambivalence in a small group of Israeli mothers, and Katie Wright’s article shows the way that theatre is used to convey feelings of maternal ambivalence in the public arena. These papers are supplemented by recent maternal literature which advances an interest in the subject of maternal ambivalence as a core aspect of everyday mothering. They include thinking about daily disruptions to mothering, the ethical position of maternal care and the impact of maternal expectations, which can become catalysts to maternal love. Interest in diverse aspects of the maternal are evident in the recent anthology compiled by Rosalind Mayo and Christina Moutsou (2017a) and the thinking of Jacqueline Rose (2018), Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) and Sarah LaChance Adams (2014). This chapter also investigates the socially constructed expectations about mothers embodied in the maternal ideal and the complexity involved in articulating the experience of loving and hating maternal feelings. The importance of representing mothering  as  a  diverse

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experience which demands an intersectional approach is examined and corroborated in a review of the film Babies. D. W. Winnicott’s thinking about the notion of hatred as a transformative force continues to emerge in Chapter 4. His term good-enough mothering refers to the mother’s capacity to shape a facilitating physical and emotional environment, in which she can both hold her child and adapt to his needs, despite perpetual struggles with maternal hateful feelings. Winnicott insists that the good-enough mother is able to resist the need for perfection, as she withstands, and makes use of her failures, to enhance her mothering. The idea of the potential space as a safe psychic area in which the child can play while his mother is present but not intruding on him is developed. Winnicott emphasises the importance of the mother’s enjoyment of her child despite the challenges provoked by her mothering. Maternal feelings of hatred are prompted in the mother, which, while difficult to bear, also vitalise and transform the mothering experience and become essential to an understanding of maternal love. The mother negotiates issues of dependency and distance between herself and her child in a social environment which is often taxing for her as she faces the reality that, ultimately, she is the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p. 15). The distinction between maternal rage and hatred is formulated as a developmentally sound notion, as is the value of ref lection in mediating rage and its transformation into a useful experience. This chapter shows how good-enough mothering and maternal holding demonstrate maternal love and can transform maternal hating feelings into loving expressions. Winnicott’s thinking is exemplified through personal experience and maternal encounters in the films Mildred Pierce, Lady Bird, How to Make an American Quilt and The Hedgehog Chapter 5 explores Melanie Klein’s contribution to an understanding of the maternal experience emerging from her core belief that an individual endures a persistent struggle from birth between hateful and loving feelings. She nominates two psychic positions, the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive, through which both adults and children continually move. In the initial paranoid-schizoid position, love and hate remain separate and secured by rigid defences, whereas, in the depressive position, hatred and love exist together, representing an experience of ambivalence. Her thinking on the internal object and the interaction between a person’s internal and external world informs an understanding of the mother’s negotiation of her loving and hating feelings and how her mothering is affected. The mother’s movement between these two positions is further complicated by a combination of her unique history, the intricate relationship with her child and external social forces. An adherence to the maternal ideal both guides the mother and exerts pressure on her to deny her hateful feelings that, paradoxically, sustain her in the paranoid-schizoid position which compromise both her vitality and her emotional investment in her mothering. Despite extreme difficulty for the mother as she experiences the pain provoked by the collision of these emotions, her internal good object is secured along with her maternal loving feelings which prevail over her feelings of hatred.

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The chapter explores the struggle that the mother faces as she recognises her hating feelings, and how these experiences inspire her to discover new ways to engage with her child. Feelings including guilt, loss, mourning, hope, reparation and self-acceptance colour the maternal experience as the mother faces a lifelong struggle to both hold onto and release her child and to see him as separate from herself. This investigation of the mother within her social and psychic context informs an examination of her lived experience of maternal ambivalence in which loving and hating feelings dwell together. The mother’s hatred becomes a transformative aspect of her maternal love when a f luidity allows her to access her losses and repair them. This dynamic is crucial to an understanding of a maternal language of love. The sustaining and transformative force of love which can endure through both everyday and intense maternal feelings of hatred is explored in the films Lady Bird, A Happy Event and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Chapter 6 continues to examine the maternal experiences of loving and hating feelings through the work of W. R. Bion. An analysis of different stories of mother-and-child interactions emphasises the value of learning from lived experience, which facilitates profound emotional change in the mother, as opposed to artificial or intellectual interaction which impedes her growth. A reliance on feelings and ref lection, which returns to early experiences of maternal reverie and containment, allows the mother to respond rather than react to her child as she processes his unbearable experiences and returns them in a way which he can bear. The mother’s struggle and her engagement with her child’s projections as a way for her to understand his communications, and to learn about her mothering, are addressed. Her capacity to respond with patience, to be curious and to tolerate what Thomas Ogden (2004a) refers to as a “not knowing” while resisting the urge to exert power over her child (Symington, 1990), promotes her maternal development and f luid relationship with her child. The notion of a maternal waiting space provides an opportunity for the mother to pause, reflect and use previous learning experiences to transform her hating feelings. An understanding of the mother and her realisation of maternal wisdom, through an emergence and engagement with hating feelings, is examined through Bion’s thinking in this chapter and makes a critical contribution to the articulation of a maternal language of love. Bion’s focus on the impact of lived experience is substantiated in the thinking of Lisa Baraitser, a contemporary thinker and writer on maternal ambivalence. Baraitser reworks the notion of interruption as a central aspect of the mother’s living experience and a site of potential renewal and transformation, and in doing so she extends the notion of interruption beyond mere aggravation. Mothering can be considered as an experience of continual messy interruption. While these interruptions often elicit psychic disarray and momentary feelings of hatred in the mother, they also urge her to keep moving forward and to renew her connection with her child, keeping her from falling into indifference. Everyday lived examples of recurring interruption surface in the cinematic and first-hand encounters in this book to demonstrate

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that interruptions are catalysts for transformation and have a prominent place in the language of maternal love I am developing. Baraitser’s work on mothering reveals it as a laden and impeded experience which echoes the nature of the judgements that surround it. Moreover, Neville Symington’s work on the detrimental impact of maternal ideals and moralising and the learned experience as a site of profound transformation is developed. The films Incendies and Mildred Pierce are used to explore Bion’s notions. Chapter 7 returns to the notion of maternal ambivalence and the language of love. I contend that the experience of mothering is marked by f lashes of hatred, taboo and silence, which unfold in an atmosphere of onerous and stif ling social expectations. This reality demands a more liberated and genuine maternal voice. Despite the difficulties that confront the mother as she struggles with abhorrent feelings and experiences of emotional pain, renewed experiences of love provoke her to discover ways to transform her maternal hateful feelings into loving ones. The mother’s capacity to maintain f luidity, as opposed to rigidity, is central to her capacity to endure and transform her hateful feelings. This f low is revealed in both the theoretical work and the examples of lived experience addressed in the book, and it shapes an understanding of a new theorisation of the experience of maternal love which inspires experiences of maternal wisdom. My argument significantly reframes the problem of maternal ambivalence, presenting hating feelings as an essential and transformative part of maternal love.

2 WHAT IS MATERNAL AMBIVALENCE? Conflict, contradiction, confusion and the maternal ideal

This chapter addresses the emergence of maternal ambivalence as both a taboo and an essential part of mothering. It introduces Rozsika Parker’s (2005) seminal contribution to an understanding of maternal ambivalence as a potentially creative aspect of mothering. While there is a dearth of research specifically about maternal ambivalence, by encouraging the conversation about the presence and power of these dark feelings and their contribution to maternal love, the opportunity for the mother to claim her voice is enhanced. Parker’s formative contribution to an understanding of maternal ambivalence has elicited an interest in this dialogue while inspiring other thinkers, notably Joan Raphael-Leff (2010) and Barbara Almond (2010), to maintain the conversation. The literature includes work on the difference between the realities and illusions about mothering and the complexities imposed by the socially prescribed maternal ideal. An examination of this literature supports the claim that tension between feelings of love and hate is a perennial part of the mother’s everyday experience and that an understanding of the transformative possibilities of hatred is a central part of the language of maternal love I am formulating.

Reflections about the mother Everyone has a mother. Every person, living or dead, was born to a mother. The child’s emotional awareness of his mother’s presence and absence endures in his mind as he negotiates the emotions that the hiatus between these two extremes provokes. One’s inner psyche is deeply affected by one’s relationship with one’s mother. The mother-and-child relationship is the primal connection, the child’s first playground. The mother and her infant have been described as the “first couple in love—the first loving couple: the mother and her infant, and the infant and its mother—which form the basis of all later exchanges” (Solomon, 2002, p.  56). It

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is a cyclical relationship in which the mother and child continually inf luence one another. It is not a simple relationship; rather, it is probably one of the most complex and least understood. It is full of love, hate, misgivings, judgements, lack, energy, nothingness, fullness and deprivation. It is a psychic conundrum. The idea of maternal ambivalence is a contradiction in terms. How can the loving mother also be hateful and entertain the existence of a dark part of her inner self ? Mother is a figurative and evocative term: it’s a noun, a proper noun, an adjective and a verb. The loving mother is an established and comforting image. The wicked mother or witch mother is despised. Mother and child are part of a unit; there cannot be a child without a mother, and there cannot be a mother without a child. Maternal ambivalence, whilst a function of the mother, unfolds in the relationship between the mother and her child as they impact each other. Maternal ambivalence as a vital and pervasive but mostly hidden part of mothering can incite diverse responses in the mother, including pain, discomfort, surprise, and guilt, together with feelings of uncertainty. Typically, mothers and society collude in obstructing a narrative of maternal ambivalence which results in a lack of understanding about its essence and the dearth of literature about it. A process of expansion and contraction symbolises the mother’s experience as she alternates between holding onto and releasing her child, both physically and emotionally, throughout her life. It is often judged in diametric terms, as either good or bad, black or white, right or wrong. On one hand, society— including the mothers themselves—is comfortable in this space. On the other hand, contemporary motherhood may be requesting a new charter, a reinvention that does not sanitise but that is genuine, one that rests on thoughtfulness and authenticity.

The problematic and compelling force of the maternal ideal What does it mean to a woman to “become a mother”? Maternity is an experience of body and of mind in equal measure, consciously experienced but also resting on unconscious beliefs, expectations and anxieties. Life events can greatly influence it, but, as we shall see, it is rooted in early infancy, in the first exchanges with the mother. (Mariotti, 2012a, p. 1)

There are various ways and myriad circumstances, both cultural and psychic, in which to articulate maternal experience. Much of this experience is informed by the maternal ideal, which is a cultural expectation that directs the way that mothers are supposed to act and to be in society. It is based on the notion of a mother as a fully caring, available and self less being. This manifestation of the societal ideal has been transmitted culturally through generations, and while there has been some variation, it has remained fairly constant. This socially prescribed standard provides a compelling and problematic force for mothering. On

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one hand, it offers a way to help the mother navigate the path of motherhood by proposing a socially acceptable framework that can guide her. On the other hand, an externally imposed prescription of how a mother is supposed to be can denude her self-confidence and can aggravate her feelings of self-hatred, particularly when she fails to realise expected levels of behaviour or when the process is not authentic. When the mother measures herself against this ideal, she lives in a situation of perennial judgement and expectation, which often results in a loss of confidence in her mothering. The maternal ideal is elusive and solicits an impossibly high benchmark: The representation of ideal motherhood is still almost exclusively made up of self-abnegation, unstinting love, intuitive knowledge of nurturance and unalloyed pleasure in children. (Parker, 2005, p. 26) This is further complicated by a contradiction in which cultural changes that affect the mother’s life are simultaneously paired with traditional and increasingly “ossified and stereotyped” maternal representations of ideal motherhood ( Parker, 2005, p.  26). This emerges in the template of the maternal ideal that reinforces either the all-loving and all-giving mother or its antithesis, the selfish, denying mother, and the dynamic between them. The notion of the maternal ideal as a construct involving expectations about maternal behaviour, which is upheld in society and by mothers themselves, and is crucial to an understanding of the mother’s negotiation of her loving and hating feelings. The mother is bound to this ideal by powerful psychic and external forces which affect the way that she negotiates her maternal experience. The ideal, while invisible and indomitable, provokes the mother to feel shame and guilt and to have doubts about her mothering. A rigid adherence to the maternal ideal prompts defences that support the mother’s naive urge to achieve perfection or to avoid its nemesis, which hinders an acknowledgement that she sometimes holds hateful feelings about her child. This may be a painful admission for the mother, who is confronted with a simultaneous desire to both protect and exact revenge on her child. I maintain that the mother’s entrapment in the maternal ideal is an obstacle to an honest acknowledgement of her feelings. There is a tension generated for the mother by her imaginings, which is exacerbated by the maternal ideal and her belief that a good mother has purely loving feelings and a bad one harbours exclusively hating feelings and that these images cannot coexist. This dynamic occurs in the context of the maternal ideal, which supports bifurcated perceptions of mothering and invites an exploration of the notions of ambivalence in which the mother’s loving and hating feelings are synthesised. The maternal ideal can be considered as a function of a social system in which cultural mores and ideals around mothering are immersed in long-held unconscious beliefs which are deeply imbedded in the social fabric. These cultural codes are composed of the external expectations that are placed on the mother together

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with what she believes is required of her. She is expected to be warm and available as opposed to being cold and hard. A large part of society, including most mothers, complies with these fundamental beliefs, with the culture employing defences to preserve the status quo. Defences abound in society, and at this wider societal level the maternal ideal could be considered as a container or a maternal repository for them (Ashbach, Schermer, & Grotstein, 1987). Hinshelwood (1987) postulates that cultural idealisation further entrenches the maternal ideal, as members of the community both identify with and believe that they possess and embody this kind of goodness. This perpetuates a cycle as the representation of cultural goodness, together with the merit of adhering to the ideal, is fortified, and the mother feels increased unconscious and conscious pressure to sustain it. Consequently, the mother feels both soothed by and fastened to defences which surface as rules of conduct which convey what is expected from her and what is socially and morally right or wrong. Although these codes are imposed on the mother partially to help to limit her anxiety, they ironically promote it by discouraging the integration of right and wrong. An inability to reconcile these differences impedes the mother’s emotional growth and learning and the development of what Alford refers to as “reparative psychology and morality” (1989, p. 83). Barbara Almond, a psychotherapist and author who writes about maternal ambivalence in her book The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Mothering (2010), describes the pressure that society imposes on the mother and the way that it upholds the myth of the mother as either perfect or terrible, which ignores the existence and value of the notion of ambivalence. By invalidating the coexistence of both sides of motherhood, this ideal cleaves the maternal between a good, caring, present mother and a bad, vile, absent witch. The impossibility of attaining either the perfection or its nemesis prompts an argument for the acceptance of the concept of ambivalence. A rejection of ambivalence undermines the likelihood of maintaining authentic rapport between mother and child, placing added pressure on the mother for harbouring her negative thoughts and for being less than perfect. Parker (2005, p. 24) argues that society must accept responsibility for upholding a culture that is uncertain about the value of maternal ambivalence and either idealises or denigrates the mother. The free discussion and exploration of shameful feelings are discouraged, which, in turn, inf lames further shame. Acceptance, recognition and an attempt to understand these hateful feelings obstruct the vicious cycle for the mother and will help her to ameliorate her painful feelings. Almond takes a similar stance: I believe that the place we, as a society, have to start is with the recognition of the enormous pressures mothers face and the normality of the wide range of feelings they experience towards their offspring. We have to start with the recognition that there are many different ways to mother, that each mother-child is unique. (Almond, 2010, p. 230)

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Paradoxically, while the maternal ideal is unattainable, it continues to dominate the maternal presence. A cauldron of emotions fuels the mother’s innate knowledge of what Parker alludes to as an “underlying awareness of the ‘imperfect’ impulses in all mothers” (2005, p. 3). According to Parker, in the minds of many mothers there is an understanding that these impulses mean that perfect motherhood is inaccessible, and guilt and feelings of persecution are equally persistent and are exacerbated by these ideals. The result is a powerful burden for mothers to endure. Almond locates an important distinction for the mother who struggles between “trying to do it right” and feeling that she must “love doing it right” (2010, p. 229, emphasis in original). These words highlight a fundamental maternal struggle in which a difference emerges between the mother’s attempts to do what may be considered to be acceptable according to both a social and a personal standard of mothering and her realisation that she falls short of that standard. Daphne de Marneffe (2004), a psychotherapist and author who explores the conf licts and joys of mothering, reinforces the impact of the maternal ideal as a social and psychic measure for maternal behaviour in her incisive argument about the distinction between maternal having and caring (2004, p.  236). The notion of having is aligned to the mother’s hopes and dreams, as her expectations about mothering are satisfied because they are based on imaginings that belong to her internal world. Maternal expectations are fuelled to a considerable extent by familial and cultural mores and the mother’s previous personal experiences of being mothered. The mother’s illusions are typically incompatible with caring for her child and the daily real-life experiences that mothering entails. While caring prompts everyday maternal struggles and attendant feelings of love, frustration, hatred and joy, it is often inconsistent with perceptions about her life with her child which emerge in the context of complex and often contradictory wider societal ideals and imaginings. This is further complicated by the fusion between the mother’s reality and her fantasy, which culminates in confused and problematic maternal feelings. These complexities result in a hiatus between maternal having and caring, in which momentary maternal feelings of hatred foment, as the mother continually negotiates the inconsistency between her child’s behaviour and her own hopes and expectations. By monitoring and engaging with her hateful feelings, the mother can develop an awareness of the distinction between maternal caring and having and the differences between herself and her child, which are a vital part of the formulation of the language of maternal love. The concept of maternal caring, as already mentioned, evokes something in the mother beyond having and her illusions. De Marneffe (2004) specifies that caring involves more than birthing the child and a perfunctory and robotic discharge of duties and roles. Patsy Turrini and Dale Mendell (1995) offer a blunt description of what caring involves at a physical and emotional level and how it can defy a mother’s internal image of herself and provoke feelings of ambivalence: Caring for children requires the capacity to accept dirt, various body products, hostility, and hatred. The typical adult woman with her neat, clean,

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nonaggressive ego ideal is frequently at a loss in the face of the hostility and aggression of the normal infant and toddler. . . . Disciplining and limiting children’s behaviour conf licts with the ideals of giving, soothing, and frustrationless mothering. ( Turrini & Mendell, 1995, p. 101) This representation, while directed at mothering an infant or a toddler, is a metaphor for what maternal caring requires over a mother’s lifetime as her child transitions through his life stages. Caring requires that the mother negotiate her long-held fantasies with a real child who may fulfil some expectations and deny others and who constantly forces her to confront her real self, including parts of herself that she may not like or that she has previously been able to conceal. Her caring is oriented to the present and to the reality that mothering is being with and caring for her child as a living experience. This generates an internal shift for the mother who must negotiate movement away from a focus on the future and her illusions towards practical caring for her child. The mother’s experience is subjected to continual f luctuations as her expectations, hopes and reality interact and can incite feelings of hatred. When the mother can be resourceful in the face of these challenges by calming her hating feelings and nourishing her loving ones, she can withstand the struggles and learn to accept her feelings. De Marneffe advocates the mother’s acceptance of her loving and hating feelings and the attendant contradictions as a place from which “creative understanding and construction can grow” (2004, p. 140). She proposes that the mother’s more complete engagement with all her feelings, including those of frustration and suffering, promote a more authentic connection with her child which allows for transformation and growth in the relationship. De Marneffe insists that the experience of unpleasant feelings that emerges in relation to one’s children is the place “where the real human work gets done, where the emotional action is” (2004, p. 124). She considers that experiences in which mothers allow their children to “get under their skin” are an opportunity to facilitate maternal change rather than avoid emotional experiences in which intimacy is sacrificed “for the sake of predictability and emotional control” (2004, p. 124). The distinction between the fantasy and the reality, the illusion of what her baby is in her mind and what caring for a baby actually involves, continually resurfaces for the mother as her child matures and may provoke feelings of disappointment, anxiety, fear and hatred in her. The mother is faced with confronting and managing feelings that are elicited through having and caring and the constant slipping that she experiences between the two states. The reality of lifelong mothering demands an ability to continually reconcile expectations with reality which is affiliated with a realisation of maternal wisdom as the mother learns from her living experience. Dinora Pines, a seminal author of women’s psychic experiences of reproduction, addresses the hopes and the consequent struggles that many women experience, particularly in their initial mothering. She suggests that, at the point of the

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birth or sometime soon after, the mother realises that her idealised picture of her baby will need to be modified, that her baby is real, not a fantasy, and that she must now commence a relationship with an actual baby (Pines, 1978, p. 21) and must adjust accordingly. Pines proposes: The task a woman has to accomplish in pregnancy and motherhood is to integrate reality with unconscious fantasy, hopes and daydreams. She has, in addition, for the first time to meet the demands of a helpless dependent creature who represents strongly cathected areas of self and non-self, and many past conf lictual relationships. (Pines, 1972, p. 342) Mothering is complicated by the mother’s efforts to manage the confusion of her maternal experience which is dominated by the reality that while her loving feelings are sometimes tested, and the maternal ideal may dictate that she always loves her mothering, that this is an impossible demand. Society has difficulty granting the mother a licence to hate. For the mother, the pressure to reach impossibly high levels emanates from inside and outside as society and the mother collude to attain the maternal ideal. The maternal ideal is central to an understanding of the maternal experience, and while it is characterised as a social construct, it is also fused with the mother’s experience of her internal world. The notion of the maternal ideal and the attendant taboo placed on a discussion of maternal ambivalence endure in this book.

Difficulties with naming maternal feelings of love This discussion of maternal ambivalence elicits thoughts about how maternal feelings of love are articulated. There is a lack of clarity linked to the precise expression of these loving feelings, which is likely connected to a difficulty in securing concise words to enunciate such an imprecise and diffuse topic. Mann, Parker and Almond comment on this phenomenon, while de Marneffe embarks on a lengthy discussion about it in her work about maternal desire. Mann and Parker both suggest that the difficulty in the expression of loving feelings is linked with a reluctance to examine hatred. Mann refers to the scarcity of references to love and hate, particularly love, in the psychoanalytic literature. He extends this to include his perception that the profession of psychoanalysis has difficulty in focusing on the problem of love, as he insists that “to have problems with love also means having problems with hate” (Mann, 2002a, p. 3). While Parker makes an extensive exploration of troublesome maternal feelings and their creative potential, her depiction of loving feelings is less descriptive. She suggests that the difficulty remains in the articulation and expression of the phenomenon of love beyond mitigating hating feelings, which is a curious and notable phenomenon. Perhaps the intensity of enunciating love, as with the experience of maternal love, also calls for hatred. Almond’s notion of motherlove

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addresses this gap in her expression of maternal loving feelings as they conf late with feelings of maternal hatred. By devising the term motherlove, which is applicable specifically to the mother’s capacity to love, Barbara Almond contributes to the articulation of this maternal experience. Almond declares that while motherlove is “the bright side of maternity” (2010, p. 37), there are accompanying maternal feelings of ambivalence. She insists that while motherhood is “primarily an experience of fulfilment, growth, and, in some cases, healing and redemption” (Almond, 2010, p. 12), that it is “not an unambivalent state but rather in its good and rewarding moments a nourishing and joyful one and in its darker moments an opportunity for thought, compromise and growth” (Almond, 2010, p. 37). Almond maintains that maternal loving feelings usually endure over hateful ones and that, in “all but the most extreme cases, substantial motherlove survives at the core of the relationship” (2010, p. 21). She describes a physical and psychic maternal energy which both moves the mother and is “fueled by intense biological strivings inextricably bound to powerful psychological wishes” (Almond, 2010, p. 24). This analysis of maternal love signals an understanding of its complexities and its possibilities for transformation and renewal. This conversation is advanced by de Marneffe’s (2004) investigation of the notion of maternal desire. She argues that while mothering incites intense and complex loving feelings, that equally a deficiency exists in the enunciation of these emotions. Her account inspires ref lection and a further search for words to describe the sensations elicited by maternal love, together with a need for a fuller expression of these feelings. Her claim that “we do not to know how to think about the desire to mother” (de Marneffe, 2004, p. 20) echoes a more general problem in the gathering and expression of these maternal loving feelings. De Marneffe (2004) argues that desire, which she describes as “a rush of connection, a feeling that both deepens and exceeds us” (2004, p.  91), is central to the maternal experience. While this description of maternal desire communicates the intensity of the mother’s feelings which hold a longing to nurture and to connect with her child, I argue that the term desire disregards the important link with feelings of ambivalence that she upholds. I argue that the term passion is favourable to desire because it encompasses both the pain and suffering that is consistent with the experience of mothering while being sympathetic to the sensory aspects of the yearning and connection that desire demands. Passion has its etymological root in pati, (Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, 1951), which is aligned with patience, presence, stillness, suffering, and waiting and an emphasis on the present time which is consistent with the notion of maternal caring expressed in this book, all of which return to the experience of mothering and maternal ambivalence. De Marneffe’s work inspires a valuable conversation in which the narrative of maternal feelings of love is debated and advanced and an articulation of maternal experiences and questions about love, mothering and care can promote an understanding of the mother’s experience of her ambivalence.

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Parker: disrupting beliefs about mothering In her seminal work Torn in Two (2005), Rozsika Parker argues that the mother’s ambivalent feelings are a ubiquitous and potentially creative part of her mothering. I extend her definition of maternal ambivalence, in which she describes loving and hating feelings sitting together, towards one which locates hatred as a transformative part of maternal love. While the notion of maternal hatred elicits both intrigue and horror, this critical examination reveals it as both a central and potentially meaningful part of maternal love when the mother is able to engage with her feelings rather than deny them. Furthermore, a child is aware when his mother attempts to hide her feelings from him, and this disturbs and undermines their truthfulness of their relationship. This truism demands that a mother be vigilant and curious about her dark feelings and use them to foster an awareness and an understanding of herself and her child. By reworking the topic of maternal ambivalence, I shape a commentary which encourages continual, enthusiastic and curious debate about the specific language of love and calls for this discourse to be challenged and augmented. I expect that this book will provoke discussion, ref lection and further literature about maternal ambivalence and that it will establish a place for maternal hatred and its function as a transformative component of maternal love. Parker’s thinking provides a springboard for my understanding of maternal ambivalence as an essential but relatively unexplored aspect of the maternal experience. Torn in Two (2005) weaves together data she obtained from interviewing mothers and notes from her clinical experience as a psychotherapist. She draws from a wide range of material, including psychoanalytic, feminist, historical, philosophical and social-theoretical concepts and explores maternal ambivalence from the mother’s point of view. Her thinking invites an authentic experience of mothering in which the mother is urged to acknowledge and embrace her struggles and feelings of ambivalence rather than disconnect from them. The concept of being a mother can prompt confusion. The mother carries her baby; she gives birth and life while expelling what was once part of her. She is expected to love and care for her child as she navigates the exacting, turbulent and satisfying rigors of mothering. Many mothers maintain a secrecy related to their deep-seated and conf licted maternal feelings, which can lead to a loss of authenticity in their relationship with their child. There are a limited number of structured avenues available for mothers to claim their negative feelings about their maternal experiences. Consequently, an exploration of the structures relating to maternal ambivalence is necessary and beneficial. This book draws on Parker’s definition of maternal ambivalence as “a complex and contradictory state of mind, shared variously by all mothers, in which loving and hating feelings for their children exist side by side” (Parker, 1997, p. 17). Maternal ambivalence is a f luid dynamic in which feelings of love mitigate hating sensations. Feelings connected with maternal ambivalence are complicated, diverse and conf lictual, with society playing an integral role in maintaining

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the taboo that exists around them. There are abundant difficulties in attempting to articulate this intensely emotional topic that could potentially unravel a fundamental part of the social fabric: that all mothers can hold hateful as well as loving feelings for their children. In a journal entry, Adrienne Rich powerfully describes the contradiction that ambivalence presents: My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. (Rich, 1995, p. 21) While Parker’s notion of maternal ambivalence as conf licting components sitting together and remaining in opposition has merit, Mann adds another dimension to this argument. He suggests that instead of love and hate being in opposition, they actually “passionately bind the subject to the object” (Mann, 2002b, p.  45), in this case fusing the child and mother together. Mann considers that the “opposite of love is not hate but indifference” (2002b, p. 45) and contends that indifference evokes an experience of disconnection that debilitates feelings, undermines the possibility of transformation or repair, and denudes a sense of hope. Van Manen extends this by describing it as “the refusal to dwell together . . . the failure to recognize the other human being in a genuine encounter or personal relation. Indifference is a failure or crisis of the ‘we’” (1990, p. 108). By locating indifference, rather than hatred, as the opposite of love, Mann upholds the value of relating and the destructive effect of refusal or inability of the mother to connect. It is likely that current social attitudes are often more at ease with the concept of indifference, which is consistent with maintaining taboos in which abhorrent feelings can be disregarded and blocked, rather than dialogued with. This introduces another dimension into the study of love and hate and poses the persuasive argument that danger exists in indifference rather than in the dynamic of hate. While hateful feelings are menacing, they uphold connection, which invites the potential for hope and reparation. On the contrary, indifference defies connection, and undermines the possibility of an emotional meeting and engagement, which means it is oppositional to love which is a connective phenomenon. This distinction can provoke ref lection about the relating and transformative possibilities of the hating feelings that belong with ambivalence. While it seems that a fear exists about the danger of these abhorrent feelings, an engagement with both hateful as well as loving feelings is a potential narrative for mothering. Mann’s postulation that “The pendulum of love and hate never seems to stop. Perhaps love and hate are the only true perpetual motion” (2002a, p.  8) attests to the importance of the f luidity and the dynamic nature of both of these sensations in contrast to stagnation, which is the marker of disconnection and indifference. An explication of the nature of love is also problematic despite its recognition as a fundamental part of the mothering experience. Hester Solomon, in Mann’s

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compilation, asserts that “feelings of love are almost always found in combination with other emotions such as possessiveness, jealousy, resentment, tenderness, pride, loyalty, longing, admiration, desire” (2002, p. 54), and she continues that the existence of love generates the opportunity for paradox and contradiction to f lourish. The exploration of love and hatred evokes ref lection about the enigmatic nature of maternal love and an accompanying insufficiency in its expression. The problem in the articulation of maternal loving feelings is most likely related to a difficulty in accessing and developing appropriate language with which to precisely describe these feelings. In his discourse on parenting, van Manen refers to “something that must be brought back, recalled or recollected from original experience .  .  . [rather than something] we can discover, construct, or identify by naming or conceptualizing it” (van Manen, 1990, p. 50). He alludes to a presence rather than an entity, behaviour, feeling, or emotion, an experience which is paradoxical as it is essentially a mystery, while knowable, and its expression needs to be sustained and furthered with language that is cognisant of what is both pre-linguistic and mysterious. Van Manen examines what he considers to be a knowing mystery about parenting which can be considered an ethereal quality about maternal feelings. While the sensitivities elicited by maternal love are beyond doubt, difficulties emerge in finding words to fulfil and adequately enunciate these feelings. The uncanny and everyday nature of these sensitivities contributes to the shaping of the language of maternal love. Parker alludes to a related difficulty in her quest to define maternal ambivalence. She considers substituting the idea of blended feelings, a concept which is often confused with ambivalence, rather than naming hatred (2005). However, she expresses concern that the notion of blending may diminish the energy that hatred provokes. This is suggestive of Parker’s resolve to reach and explore the powerful emotions that are provoked by hatred, despite their unsavoury nature. Parker’s work addresses the universality and potential creativity that comprise maternal ambivalence, together with its taboo nature. She insists that the mother’s experience of her ambivalence urges her both to think about her infant and to engage in all her feelings as a pathway to a deeper understanding of herself and her child. In her search for a definition of maternal ambivalence, Parker reveals a struggle to find the right words to describe this enigmatic phenomenon. In her search for alternative ways to express it, she experiments, for example, with positive and negative; however, she insists that no other words “capture the power of ‘love’ and ‘hate’” (Parker, 2005, p. 6). This admission echoes the potency in the concept of maternal ambivalence. Parker alludes to misunderstandings which most likely arise from the unacceptable nature of and fears about hatred. She continues that this results in confusion about ambivalence, notably when it is used to describe “mixed feelings” (Parker, 2005, p. 7, emphasis in original). Parker adopts the concept of ambivalence that has been developed by psychoanalysis describing conf licting impulses about the same person coexisting and in opposition to each other, which presumes a dynamic tension between the opposing parts. However, there is a problem with attributing mixed feelings  to

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maternal ambivalence as it dilutes the intensity of both the loving and hating sensitivities, which are both present and require separate consideration. Maternal ambivalence is founded on arguably one of the most intense human emotions—a mother’s love for her child. While I claim that this depth of feeling must also hold a darkness, the concept that a mother—the child’s protector and carer—can possibly have hateful feelings for her child is unnatural and monstrous. It is a contradiction. According to Almond, there is an important distinction between holding hateful feelings for one’s child, as opposed to anyone else. She declares that having hateful feelings for anyone besides one’s child, while unacceptable, can be tolerated. In contrast, harbouring hateful feelings for one’s child is considered “immoral, unnatural, and evil” (2010, p.  2) and this view would most likely impede a mother’s admission or exploration of her hateful feelings.

Parker: creative potential of maternal ambivalence Parker’s narrative focuses on the creative potential of maternal feelings of ambivalence, which are linked closely to the mother’s capacity to ref lect on her experiences and her relationship with her child. Through her insistence that the mother can hold hateful as well as loving feelings for her child, she reworks the possibilities: maternal ambivalence, despite—even because of—all the distress it can engender in mothers, may have a transformative and positive impact on the mother and, hence, on the work she has to do. (2005, p. 18) In what she describes as “the very anguish of maternal ambivalence itself ”, Parker locates “a fruitfulness for mothers and children” (2005, p. xiv). She refers to beneficial aspects in a mother’s experience of her ambivalence, including the ability to stimulate the circulation of passions and to generate separation and unification, resulting in the individual growth of both the mother and child. However, a considerable part of this richness refers to the mother’s ability, through her feelings of maternal ambivalence, “to know herself and to tolerate traits in herself she may consider less than admirable—and to hold a more complete image of her baby” (2005, p. 22). The achievement of a fuller vision in which the mother can engage with all her feelings, both loving and hating, propels her to understand her child and herself better, which may alleviate the mother’s need to idealise or denigrate herself and, by extension, her baby. While Parker maintains that the mother’s engagement with all her feelings offers an improved understanding of herself and her child, and is the site of her maternal transformation, a maternal ref lective capacity is also demanded. However, she attests to the extreme difficulty for the mother in acknowledging “that she hates where she loves” (Parker, 1997, p. 20). Parker indicates that the “suffering” of ambivalence forces maternal ref lection, and she continues that the mother’s ability to think about her child is “arguably the single most important aspect of mothering” (2005, pp. 8–9). She

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speaks of the distress that mothers endure when they are confronted by their “aggressive fantasies” and “violent impulses” and argues that while some can tolerate this, others find it “unbearable” (Parker, 1997, p. 28). Parker’s core notion of maternal ambivalence and its potential as a creative force poses a question about the nature of the mother’s awareness of her hateful feelings and the way that she processes and manages them. She argues that the problem is not the ambivalence itself, rather it is the mother’s capacity to “manage the guilt and anxiety” that it provokes (2005, p. 8). While I agree with Parker’s sentiment on the impact and power of maternal guilt, I do not advance this as a central aspect of my work. Parker draws an incisive distinction between the mother’s awareness of her ambivalence and the ambivalence itself. She argues that more weight needs to be given to the latter in its capacity to “provoke consciousness of what is going on between mother and baby” (2005, p.  169, emphasis in original). Her statement suggests that while the mother preserves and is mindful of her feelings of ambivalence, these sensitivities can be advanced as a tool to understand her interactions with her child. A shift in consciousness is provoked for the mother as she moves from an immersion in her own feelings about her maternal ambivalence towards an awareness of the dynamic between herself and her child that is potentially creative for her. This movement involves the mother’s recognition of both her ambivalence and the various verbal and nonverbal communications that occur between herself and her child that f luctuate according to circumstance. Parker’s statement also hints at a deeper issue related to the mother’s expectations of herself and her feelings of ambivalence. It is likely that if the mother can release herself from her self-judgement, rather than being mired in it, this will liberate her to move to a less moralising stance when connecting with her child. Parker’s focus on the mother’s consciousness of her maternal ambivalence also exposes a question as to how she manages her recognition and expression of those feelings of ambivalence towards her child. Although a mother needs to acknowledge her ambivalence, the way that she articulates, communicates, and understands this—and whether and at what stage she reveals this to her child—is beyond the scope of this book.

Raphael-Leff: healthy maternal ambivalence Maternal ambivalence is also a response to differing and often contradictory needs that constitute the dynamic between mother and child. Almond postulates that the needs of mothers and their children often do not align and that it is “this conf lict of needs that leads to maternal ambivalence” (2010, p.  38). A potential mismatch exists between the physical and emotional demands that continual caring for a child requires and the satisfaction of the many maternal desires, feelings, and expectations, both internal and external. Joan Raphael-Leff, psychoanalyst and renowned author on pregnancy and mothering, explores the mother’s experience of her ambivalence as a function of both her inner world and her “child’s affective communication” (2010, p. 1). In her paper “Healthy Maternal

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Ambivalence”, Raphael-Leff makes a prescient observation about the existence of their disparate needs by insisting that while the expectations of mothers have undergone a massive change over the last forty years, those of babies have remained unchanged over “the millennia” (2010, p. 7). This statement highlights one of the struggles that confronts the contemporary mother as she attempts to reconcile the widening gap between her infant’s traditionally unaltered need for attention and her own f luctuating needs. Raphael-Leff addresses an omission that she observes in the psychoanalytic literature in its failure to focus on the experience of the mother as a “person in her own right” (2010, p. 1), which indicates an interest in the way women have been traditionally stripped of their subjectivity. She postulates that, historically, an idealisation of the mother-andinfant bond has led to an exclusion and under-exploration of painful maternal experiences, such as persecution, resentment, and hatred, resulting in maternal pressure to hide “conf lictual and painful feelings” (2010, p. 1). Raphael-Leff proposes that maternal experiences are clustered together according to particular mothering orientations, and to demonstrate this premise she nominates four maternal groups (2010, p.  7). Raphael-Leff ’s Facilitator idealises her mothering and has rigid expectations for herself and her baby, whereas the Regulator outsources her mothering as a way to maintain control which may offer her a way to avoid a closeness and possible mutual dependency with her child and to shun the dirty and exhausting aspects of mothering. The Reciprocator represents the mother who is able to tolerate her feelings of ambivalence as a result of an evolved understanding of herself and the complexities of mothering. She is f lexible and empathic and can adapt to the needs of herself, her baby and her greater family. The Conflicted mother f luctuates between idealising and feeling persecuted as she alternates between “maintaining an ideal of maternal perfection and rebellion against its demands” (2010, p. 9). Rather than securing these categories as rigid structures for infant and mother interaction, they provide a useful guide to the dynamics of all maternal stages, and they can be reworked to inform an understanding of the vicissitudes of everyday mothering and the value of holding loving and hating feelings together as demonstrated by the Reciprocator. Raphael-Leff ’s work brings together the internal and external exigencies of mothering and the importance of connected rather than disconnected experiences of mothering. She identifies the importance of f lexibility in mothering and the dangers of trying to attain ideal motherhood and favours the need for ref lection and acknowledgement of maternal difficulties. Her thinking normalises the maternal experience of ambivalence and encourages further examination and makes a valuable contribution to the narrative of maternal ambivalence which will now be extended into a more specific discussion of maternal loving and hating feelings.

The tumult of mothering Everyday mothering both elicits and is a cauldron for the strong impulses that transpire when maternal loving and hating feelings gather. Parker argues that a

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fuel called “preservation love” (2005, p.  24) exists for the mother, which safeguards her loving feelings and tempers her hateful ones. Ruddick describes the prism of powerful emotions that everyday mothering can provoke: “Mothers’ feelings towards their children vary from hour to hour, year to year. A single, typical day can encompass fury, infatuation, boredom, and simple dislike” (1995, p. 70). Parker describes the incongruous and powerful forces that manifest together or separately in everyday interaction and impact the mother-and-child dyad: I refer to the f leeting (or not so f leeting) feelings of hatred for a child that can grip a mother, the moment of recoil from a much-loved body, the desire to abandon, to smash the untouched plate of food in a toddler’s face, to yank a child’s arm while crossing the road, scrub too hard with a facecloth, change the lock against an adolescent, or the fantasy of hurling a howling baby out of the window. (Parker, 2005, p. 5) Almond extends this argument by linking aggression with maternal ambivalence. While my argument does not focus on particular forms of maternal ambivalence, Almond’s use of aggression depicts the potent nature and the emotions that it incites. By describing aggression as “one of those societal problems that fills us with outrage and horror, even as some part of us secretly understands its normality” (2010, p. 4), Almond locates an undermining of the social taboo that surrounds maternal ambivalence, hinting at both a disdain for and an understanding of a mother’s feelings of aggression towards her child. Through her commentary on aggression Almond exposes the complexity of the coexistence of disturbing and ordinary maternal feelings that incite the mother to simultaneously identify with and to harbour shame about her hating feelings by describing the hating side of ambivalence as “the crime ‘that dares not speak its name’ of our time” (2010, p. 4). These maternal feelings of self-rebuke and distress are magnified by social expectations of the mother. A combination of these personal and social factors provokes a dynamic that disturbs the mother’s ability to struggle with her hateful maternal feelings. I claim that this results in an impeded maternal experience for the mother, who becomes disconnected from her true feelings. Almond contributes to this dialogue by warning the mother against suppressing either love or hatred, which she considers will lead to “depleted and rigid relationships in which the other person is not experienced in his or her full emotional reality” (2010, p. 8). This is evocative of Mann’s description earlier of a paralysed state of indifference in which splitting and denial dominate. This is in accord with Melanie Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position in which partial rather than whole objects are experienced, which will be examined in Chapter 5. A movement towards Klein’s depressive position (1984, 1997), where love and hate are experienced together, is indicative of a state of integration in which an experience of ambivalence involving maternal struggle and authenticity can be endured. Parker relates the importance of a mother being aware of “her own turbulence” (1997, p. 26), which can

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be understood to mean that she is engaged and connected with her tempestuous feelings rather than splitting from them. Parker contends that maternal hateful feelings are a source of creative engagement and a potential for growth. Her ideas inspire a full discussion of the notion of hatred and its transformative capacities in the context of maternal love. Indifference is a corrosive and deadening force which requires further investigation in the narrative of maternal love and hatred. While many forces—within the mother and in wider society—conspire to stymie the development of a robust discourse about maternal feelings of ambivalence, one of the intentions of this book is to expose the normalcy of these feelings and to contribute to the continuity of the conversation. Parker explores the social and personal impact of the mother’s experience of her hating feelings. She describes the mother’s uneasy predicament as she sustains strong, loving feelings in the midst of hateful feelings that are frequently concealed. Parker also alludes to the taboo, reinforced by the mothers themselves, against revealing the dirty and unseemly parts of motherhood: “The denial of ambivalence . . . is not imposed on mothers by a fearful and punitive society. It lives in all of us” (2005, p.  47). She also warns of the danger of maternal “repressed unconscious” hatred (1997, p. 28) in which an inconsistency prevails in the mother’s behaviour that the child registers even though she tries to hide her hateful feelings from him. When these hateful feelings are used to understand mothering, rather than to reinforce a taboo around them, it is likely that a more positive and healthy relationship can develop within the mother herself and between her and her child. These disturbing experiences may surface in the mother as feelings, such as guilt, anxiety, shame, confusion, despair, anger, and frustration, and as a consequent struggle as she attempts to understand the intensity and eruptions of her emotions. I focus on Parker’s work which reframes mothering to emphasise the role of maternal ambivalence as a central and creative component of the mother’s experience. Her thinking meets with my conviction that mothering is a complicated phenomenon requiring deep examination, which unfolds as both a springboard for the refinement of my ideas and a point of difference. I concur with Parker’s thinking that value exists in articulating the full maternal experience, including its unseemly parts, and that the mother’s hating feelings hold a creative capacity as a source of renewal and change. However, I extend her thinking to argue that these hating feelings, which are most often momentary and are vibrant and connective, are a catalyst for her experience of maternal love. By drawing on theory and examples from lived experience, including the creative medium of film, I demonstrate how these maternal feelings of hatred are harnessed to facilitate the mother’s loving feelings, which are fundamental to the language of love which I am developing.

Conclusion This chapter examines key elements of maternal ambivalence, the mother’s experience of her loving and hating feelings towards her child. Parker is the

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seminal thinker of maternal ambivalence which she considers to be a pervasive and potentially creative part of the maternal experience. A mother’s engagement with, rather than a denial of, her complicated and troublesome maternal feelings provides a way for her to access her transformative potential. A discussion of the work of traditional and contemporary thinkers together with examples from film and personal experience fosters an understanding of the transformative and vital impact of these hating feelings and facilitates the development of a maternal language of love. To illustrate this dynamic I return to the story in Chapter 1 of the mother’s experience of her toddler climbing to the top of the slide in the park and extend it to the toddler’s injury-free descent down the stairs accompanied by his mother. I imagine that the mother’s horror at the prospect of her toddler falling from the slide and its possible dire consequences incited deep feelings of maternal hatred. Equally, her relief at his safe return to her provoked myriad feelings including relief, compassion and gratitude, together with a surge and a renewed and deeper sense of maternal love in the realisation of what she could have lost. Parker’s ideas are extended to examine the transformative and enriching contribution of the mother’s f leeting feelings of hatred to her maternal love. The next chapter extends an understanding of maternal ambivalence by tracing the development of views about mothering from the latter part of the twentieth century until the present time. An examination of motherhood studies during this time is sourced in the feminist work of Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly and in the ongoing conversation about the difficulties of mothering which are exacerbated by a system that favours patriarchy and disregards the diversity of the maternal experiences. Parker’s innovative work on maternal ambivalence transformed the maternal narrative by insisting on the presence of the mother’s hating feelings, which has resulted in a small amount of literature specifically about ambivalence and, in particular, the impact of the maternal ideal. The current commentary enunciates many of the problems that mothers face while challenging the traditional silence that has pervaded mothering and encouraging the emergence of a new maternal voice and an awareness of the diversity of each mother’s experience, which are foundational to the language of maternal love which I am proposing.

3 HISTORY OF THOUGHT ON MATERNAL AMBIVALENCE Locating the mother’s voice amid patriarchy, taboos and feelings of ambivalence

Maternal studies since the latter part of the twentieth century are marked by a demand for a more genuine discourse about the mother’s experience. This chapter addresses the evolution in the thinking about mothering in Western society since that time and provides a historical context in which to examine the surfacing of feelings of maternal ambivalence. Motherhood studies during this period are inspired by the work of Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly and comprise a wide body of literature and commentary about the maternal experience. This relies principally on the work of feminist thinkers and is dominated by a belief in a patriarchal system with its tendency to marginalise women. The discussion of patriarchy which limits the perception of the mother to a predominantly white, middle class, educated, married Western woman is a reminder of the perils of universalising both the experience of mothering and by extension, any terms used to apply to it. Each maternal experience is unique and is impacted by many variables including cultural setting, time period and individual distinctions. While inferences can be drawn, a mindfulness about individual mothering differences must be maintained. Although the discourse on maternal ambivalence is still limited, Parker’s work initiated a change in this narrative by suggesting that feelings of hatred belonging to the mother not only exist but are creative. By popularising the use of the term maternal ambivalence, Parker’s reasoning has stimulated a movement towards a new conversation about mothering. A review of the contemporary literature reveals that ideals about mothering are recurrent features in the work that scrutinises maternal ambivalence. I draw on two recent studies, Tatjana Takševa’s (2017) article on Bosnian women who decide to mother their child born of rape, and Nollaig Frost’s (2014) paper on welcoming a second child into the family, to demonstrate the importance of the mother’s capacity to shift and temper her expectations about her mothering and herself. In both papers unfamiliar circumstances compel the mother to use

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her lateral thinking and feelings to reframe her previous expectations to match her current reality. The importance of expectations in the maternal experience is also emphasised in Rivka Tuval-Mashiach and Shirit Shaiovitz-Gourman’s (2014) paper, which studies the impact of the maternal ideal on a group of new mothers. Katie Wright’s paper (2014) uses theatre to address and bring maternal feelings of ambivalence into the public arena. Present day literature questions the impact of taboo and silence on mothering, which returns to the impact of the maternal ideal. Jacqueline Rose’s 2018 book, Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, shapes a striking and unfettered exposé of the emotional and physical toll of mothering. She devotes a full chapter titled “The agony and the ecstasy” to a narrative of the maternal experience which echoes the sentiment of this book and its insistence that the mother claim her voice (Rose, 2018, p. 179). This conversation is continued as the social notion of care is applied to mothering and is exposed as a vice which has the potential to both trap and stif le as well as to nourish the mother. These pieces support the emergence of a more convincing and coherent conversation about mothering, in which the surfacing of uncomfortable feelings, including maternal hatred, warrants expression. The intersectional approach that this discourse assumes emerges in the examination of the film Babies which positions new mothers in four discrete localities and supports the recognition of the diversity of the maternal experience. This chapter contributes to the formulation of a maternal language of love, which is f luid and embraces the mother’s hating feelings, while it upholds an awareness of maternal diversity, a questioning of the maternal ideal and the mother’s need to claim rather than silence her voice.

Motherhood studies in feminist literature since the late twentieth century Studies of the course of mothering since the latter part of the last century were initially dominated by the thinking of feminist writers and their insistence that the maternal experience unfolds in the context of a patriarchal society and the attendant assumption that men have emotional and physical control over women. This narrative is now being questioned as a shift in thinking about mothering is occurring. While the work of contemporary writers espouses ideas about the difficulties and contradictions that mothers face, it also continues a quest to explore and question the traditional ideals, myths and values that embody the maternal experience. The potency of the patriarchal notions which continue to impact the mother’s internal and external perceptions of her mothering, are now being threatened by changes in the social and economic position of women. Although there is pressure to maintain the status quo, it is clear that the restricted perspective of the current Western mother needs to be redressed, as a more accurate profile is emerging which incorporates, for example, African American, single, working, lesbian and non-middle class women. This change is integral to an understanding of mothering in the present cultural context.

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The changes over the last half century in feminist literature are addressed in the foundational thinking of Adrienne Rich (1995), feminist author, poet and mother, and Andrea O’Reilly (2010), a prolific writer and agitator for the maternal, and are augmented by the work of a small number of feminist philosophers and scholars of motherhood. The evolution of the studies of the maternal is due to a large degree to the seminal work of Rich, whose revolutionary ideas have been central to developing the historical and current narrative about motherhood. O’Reilly has made a notable contribution by coining the term motherhood studies and propelling a campaign for this growing movement which expresses a passionate interest in the maternal. Many of these studies (Ruddick, 2007; Parker, 2005; O’Reilly, 2010) dare, in Jacqueline Rose’s words, “to speak the unspeakable” (2018, p. 47) by calling attention to the fact that what is regarded as motherlove is often, whether consciously or not, permeated by powerful negative and conf licting emotions which returns to thoughts about the notion of maternal ambivalence. This work has identified both a transformation in feminist thinking and an interest in the way that matters of maternal love and care can be explored theoretically. It continues to incite dialogue about the social and psychic evolution of the mother and her feelings of ambivalence, as a new maternal voice emerges. The history of feminist maternal thinkers, which originated and developed in North America (O’Reilly, 2010, p. 4) in the latter part of the twentieth century, is marked by ferment and change. Much of the canonical scholarship that exists today in motherhood studies, an area of study initially founded on candid ref lections about the conditions of patriarchal motherhood, has disputed the tenets of these ideologies which are sourced in the pivotal assumption that men have emotional and physical control over women. Patrice DiQuinzio (2007) brings notions of the maternal and feminism together by arguing that mothering is both “an important site at which the central concepts of feminist theory are elaborated, and a site at which these concepts are challenged and reworked” (2007, p. 545).

Twentieth-century maternal agitators: the foundational work of Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly and their cohorts Adrienne Rich is at the forefront of twentieth-century maternal thinkers, and her work is an inf luential and widely studied part of maternal literature. In her seminal book Of Woman Born, (1995), which was originally published in 1976, Rich integrates her own experiences of mothering with a social discourse as she names and explores her own feelings of ambivalence and alludes to the intense feelings of love and hate that mothering provoked for her. She makes a distinction between the institution of mothering and its patriarchal core which “aims at ensuring that that potential—and all women—shall remain under male control” (1995, p.  13) and maternal reality which she describes as “the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children” (1995, p. 13). Historically, the concept of patriarchy has been accompanied by a power imbalance and a fraught relationship between men and women. Rich alludes to the

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confusion that arises for men that is sourced in an inclination to both fear and revere women. She postulates that this is based on the female superior biological ability to bear and nourish children, together with a “magical power” that the male ascribes to her (1995, p. 13). It is likely that the patriarchal ideology, which is steeped in man’s need to dominate women, is located in a quest to rebalance this supposed feminine supreme power. This has been complicated by patriarchy’s historical refusal to countenance maternal reality such as “illegitimacy, abortion, [and] lesbianism” because they threaten the status quo (1995, p. 42). Rich expresses curiosity about the way women’s lives and their power base have been impacted by the intrusion of patriarchy. Her comment “We do not actually know much about what power may have meant in the hands of strong, pre-patriarchal women” (1995, p. 13) indicates Rich’s interest in the impact that patriarchal restrictions have historically imposed on the emotional and social lives of women and mothers. Rich’s focus on the effects of patriarchy and the accompanying power struggles prompts ref lection about how these social structures have affected the mother’s experience and her feelings of ambivalence, and the restrictions it has imposed on her maternal voice. While Rich’s thinking provoked an extensive analysis of woman’s emotional and social predicament in the late twentieth century, Andrea O’Reilly’s work has been at the forefront of maternal feminist literature as she traces and sustains the conversation and debate about the maternal. Her term motherhood studies is assigned to the new scholarship which became apparent at the end of the twentieth century with the aim “to reclaim power for mother” (O’Reilly, 2010, p. 802). In addition to writing about and assembling much of the feminist maternal literature, O’Reilly founded the Association for Research on Mothering, The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, and Demeter Press, the first feminist press on mothering. In her 2007 anthology, Maternal Theory, O’Reilly compiles the work of significant critical maternal thinkers and incorporates many aspects of the current and historical discussion. Contemporary writer Petra Bueskens remarks on O’Reilly’s inf luence in “articulating feminist mothering in theory and practice” (Bueskens, 2014b, p. 30) and in generating a global movement of motherhood scholars, activists, writers, bloggers and artists. O’Reilly has written comprehensively about Rich’s inf luence on the maternal dialogue including the problems that have transpired since the latter part of the twentieth century in the maternal feminist literature and the struggle with traditional patriarchal attitudes and linked social structures. While O’Reilly applauds Rich’s accomplishments in interrupting the previous patriarchal discourse, she demonstrates concern about the tendency of some feminist thinkers to strand their discourse in the negative and oppressive features of patriarchy. Rather, O’Reilly advocates a reworking of the narrative to extend the possibility of female empowerment and social change. A late twentieth-century collection of papers called Mothering and Ambivalence compiled by Brid Featherstone and Wendy Hollway (1997) investigates a myriad of issues that impact mothering from a feminist and psychoanalytic perspective.

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These papers include studies of both maternal and paternal ambivalence, concerns emerging from circumstances including separation and divorce, domestic and emotional abuse, and other studies relating to attachment, loss and gender. Some of these essays are developed through therapeutic intervention, including one-on-one and group encounters, and are used as a tool for practical and academic endeavours. In “Introduction: Crisis in the Western Family”, Featherstone applauds the contribution of these papers to the ongoing maternal conversation. These articles alert the reader to relevant maternal issues such as the impact of cultural diversity on the lives of mothers and their children and the importance of considering underlying psychic dynamics as a catalyst for transformation. The twentieth-century maternal narrative focused on redressing the problems that the patriarchal system imposed and the mother’s struggle to emerge from its shackles. This has prompted a discourse of blame and judgement, which is sometimes coloured with hints of feminine victimhood and passivity. A change is emerging in the current maternal conversation, as the authentic, unseemly and messy aspects of the mother’s experience are being disclosed and the hateful parts of mothering are being acknowledged amid a curiosity and awareness of its psychic and social roots. This thinking encourages the mother’s participation in speaking and disseminating her maternal voice. The surfacing of a small amount of literature specifically about maternal ambivalence has prompted an interest in these maternal feelings of hatred and their productive potential. The language of maternal love that I am developing advocates that the mother claim her full voice rather than censor the hateful aspects of it, despite the struggles that this imposes on her.

Current literature on maternal ambivalence Current literature on maternal ambivalence is emerging from the conf luence of Parker’s thinking, conversations that are challenging the entrenched notions of the maternal ideal and endeavours to silence the maternal voice. While there has been a traditional paucity in the literature specifically about maternal ambivalence, Parker’s formative thinking has incited an increased interest in it. This is conspicuous in contemporary studies, some of which specifically target the phenomenon of maternal ambivalence whilst others scrutinise its place as part of the mother’s experience. These works attest to an interest in maintaining a conversation about maternal ambivalence, with the impact of the maternal ideal securing a prominent position in the dialogue. The recent research of Tatjana Takševa (2017), Nollaig Frost (2014), and Rivka Tuval-Mashiach and Shirit Shaiovitz-Gourman (2014), demonstrates the reparative potential of maternal feelings of ambivalence as the mothers in their studies confront and adapt to circumstances that emerge as a result of extreme and everyday mothering encounters and the restrictions of the maternal ideal. Katie Wright’s article (2014) demonstrates how a play about the mother’s daily struggles, called Mum’s the Word, communicates psychic and cultural messages about the reality

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of feelings of maternal ambivalence. Rosalind Mayo and Christina Moutsou’s (2017a) collection of papers enhances an understanding of maternal ambivalence and the daily experiences of mothering that prompt it. Tatjana Takševa’s paper (2017) investigates maternal ambivalence through the narrative of Bosnian women who make the decision to mother their children born of rape. It relies on recorded personal interviews of thirty mothers and advances an understanding of the place of maternal ambivalence and how it informs the mothering of this group of women (Takševa, 2017, p.  152). This qualitative study determines that despite the impossible circumstances around the conception of her child, the mother is able to process her hateful emotions and prioritise feelings of maternal love. Takševa postulates that because these children are born as a result of rape, the mother is less burdened by the rigours of the maternal ideal, which frees her to more fully engage with her genuine and uncensored maternal emotional feelings. She argues that maternal clarity about the source of her maternal ambivalence exempts the mother from customary idealisations about her mothering, notably the expectation of having to be a self less and loving mother. Takševa continues that this promotes an engagement with a full range of maternal feelings including negative emotions such as hostility and aggression. Not unrelated to this is the way that the mothers in this study report giving themselves time to ponder their decision about keeping their child, which grants them patience as they process their feelings of love for their child, as opposed to Western expectations of full and instant maternal love and connection. Takševa reports that the mother’s access to, and acceptance of, her ambivalent feelings, instils a sense of maternal agency, while favouring a healthy emotional separation within the couple, which facilitates an honest, committed, compassionate and reciprocal relationship. This study demonstrates that a sensitive and truthful understanding of a difficult situation allows feelings of maternal hatred to enrich and transform mothering. Nollaig Frost wrote a paper based on a small longitudinal study of seven professional women who were six-months pregnant with their second child at the time of the first interview. She conducted individual semi-structured interviews every three months over one year in London. Frost deduced from this study that mothering a second child helps a mother to confront the ideals of motherhood, as it forces her to juggle the real and conf licting needs and demands of both children. She reasoned that the mother’s struggles often emerge as a conf lict between her loving and hating feelings (Frost, 2014, p. 354) as she tries to please and care for her two children simultaneously. These attempts foster a realisation that she cannot be a perfect mother to both, so she ultimately must abandon the fantasy that she is, or can be, a perfect mother. This reckoning is both painful and liberating for the mother and is ultimately productive as it sanctions her to find a way to accept the reality of her mothering and to be more realistic and compassionate with herself. Frost uses this routine experience of mothering a second child to explore and reframe the surfacing of the mother’s hateful feelings as an opportunity for maternal growth and self-acceptance.

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Tuval-Mashiach and Shaiovitz-Gourman’s paper draws on their research (2014, p.  361) which investigates the lived experience of maternal ambivalence and the impact of cultural ideals about mothering on the mother. Their qualitative research studies twenty-eight Israeli mothers between the ages of 25 and 40, who have two young children that are both under the age of 6. They use Parker’s work to define maternal ambivalence as the mother’s simultaneous positive and negative emotions towards her child (Tuval-Mashiach & Shaiovitz-Gourman, 2014, p. 360) and contend that the mother’s acknowledgement of her feelings of ambivalence and the varying emotions that mothering prompts are crucial to her mothering. Tuval-Musiach and Shaiovitz-Gourman explore the dynamics elicited by the mother’s internal and external adherence to the maternal ideal. They argue for the development of a maternal psychic exchange, which they propose will enable the mother to shape a personal ideal and to ascertain which values she wishes to maintain and which she decides to abandon. The writers assert that the mothers in the study who have a capacity to be f lexible and to engage with and to tolerate their feelings of maternal ambivalence also experience a corresponding improvement in their well-being and in their ability to separate from their child. Despite the small sample size and limited age range of the children used in this research which they make reference to, Tuval-Musiach and Shaiovitz-Gourman canvass some key concepts and broaden the literature about maternal ambivalence. They point out that their study is contextualised for time and culture, and they call for further research regarding the mother’s acknowledgment of her ambivalence as a crucial aspect of her maternal development. Katie Wright’s paper draws on the creative medium of theatre to inspire further dialogue about maternal ambivalence. In her article “Mum’s the Word: Therapy Culture and Maternal Ambivalence” (2014), Wright traces the genesis of the play Mum’s the Word which culminates in the monologues of six women who bring their genuine maternal experiences of ambivalence into the public arena of stage. In a series of confessional narratives ( Wright, 2014, p. 446), the actors release their inhibitions about their mothering and feelings of ambivalence using humour and satire. In her paper Wright makes a therapeutic and social analysis of the play and the audience responses which: ref lected the ambivalence of maternity, with mums who loved their children but were conf licted and desperately desired autonomy; and it challenged the idealization of the maternal with depictions of lonely mums, angry mums, and sad mums. (Wright, 2014, p. 454) Wright remarks on the “shifting cultural climate” (Wright, 2014, p. 450), which allows personal feelings such as those of maternal love and hate to be expressed. This demonstrates the value of creative medium, such as theatre and film, to forge a discourse about the historically taboo topic of maternal ambivalence.

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Rosalind Mayo and Christina Moutsou’s anthology The Mother in Psychoanalysis and Beyond (2017a) augments and supports my understanding of experiences of maternal ambivalence. This collection assembles a rich collage of everyday experiences, both fraught and nourishing, which are sourced in psychoanalytic, cultural and personal perspectives. In their chapter “The maternal: An introduction”, Mayo and Moutsou express the “difference and complexity, uncertainty, messiness and difficulty, helplessness and vulnerability” (Mayo & Moutsou, 2017b, p. 9) of mothering. Lucy King (2017) describes feelings of shock and loss that she experiences as a new mother when confronted by the hiatus between her maternal hunger for a child and the real responsibility and accompanying feelings of anxiety, guilt and fear that mothering sometimes elicits. This mirrors my work on the difference between the ideal and the actual experience of mothering. Jane Hayes (2017) offers valuable insight by detailing her own extremely different maternal experiences, the first joyful and the second marred by the ravages of postnatal depression. This attests to the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of mothering and its tendency to elicit maternal hating feelings. Melissa Benn (2017) examines the taxing relationship between mothering and working life and describes her own experience of feeling torn between them. These varied and real experiences convey an understanding of, and promote an honest conversation about, present-day issues of everyday mothering and feelings of maternal ambivalence as maternal voices are claimed rather than silenced. These contemporary studies focus on the notion of maternal ambivalence and support the emergence of a more open conversation which favours the mother’s engagement with her full range of feelings including the hating ones, while challenging traditional mores, notably an adherence to the maternal ideal and the limiting impact of the mother’s drive for perfection. The secrecy and taboo which continue to dominate views of mothering are questioned as a more authentic maternal experience in which a mother gains her own agency is fostered. The importance of maternal emotional fluidity unfolds in instances such as a mother’s decision to rear her child born of rape and the more everyday occurrence of introducing a second child into the family, which urge the mother to find innovative means to reconcile her struggles. This creativity is echoed in Wright’s article, as theatre becomes a carrier of the mother’s voice which recounts her real and unrestrained everyday maternal experience. Maternal struggles such as the hiatus between imagined and real experiences and work pressures prompt momentary feelings of hatred. These themes inform the language of maternal love that I am developing.

The contemporary maternal voice In addition to these works which expressly research maternal ambivalence, there are other thinkers who examine how fraught emotional experiences of mothering are impacted by social structures and beliefs which elicit maternal feelings of hatred. More often than not, these feelings remain unnamed and silenced. Contemporary thinkers, including Jacqueline Rose (2018), Susan Douglas and

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Meredith Michaels (2007), and Susan Maushart (2000, 2007) examine the shroud of secrecy, taboo and expectations that limit mothering. I draw on Rose’s discourse in its capacity to gauge and articulate the mood of many mothers, albeit at times in confronting ways, as she encourages the mother to speak her voice. Rose explores the deleterious effect of secrecy which inhibits the mother’s capacity to disclose her hateful feelings. Douglas and Michaels write about the silence, taboo and ideals that pervade mothering. Maushart restates Rose’s narrative about the value of being honest about the struggles of mothering. Social perceptions of caring and its links with mothering, which extend an understanding of maternal ambivalence, are explored in the work of Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) and Sarah LaChance Adams (2014). This literature urges the emergence of a new maternal voice which favours more genuine mothering which is core to the language of maternal love.

Breaking the silence: the mother’s passage through blame, hate and secrecy: Jacqueline Rose Jacqueline Rose’s book Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (2018) is an incisive gauge to the issues that dominate the current maternal conversation. She describes the psychic and cultural dynamics which fuel the mother’s feelings of ambivalence as she struggles with conf licting feelings of love and hate and the punishing social and emotional judgements that align with “the pernicious weight of the ideal” ( Rose, 2018, p. 188). Secrecy, taboo, expectations and the mother’s discomfort with her failures are signalled as features which inhibit an honest discourse about authentic maternal feelings including those of hatred. Despite the troubling shroud of silence and ideals that pervade mothering, Rose entreats the mother to claim her voice. She advances an understanding of the mother’s complicated psychic and social experience by drawing on the raw language and descriptions that drive Elana Ferrante’s novels (2005, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2015, 2016). Rose frames an intense and persuasive argument which elicits ref lection and curiosity about the mother’s experience and enriches the maternal language of love that I am shaping. Rose’s narrative inspires ref lection and curiosity about the mother’s daily struggles, expectations and her experiences of love and hate as she maintains a conversation about mothering. Rose launches a stinging diatribe about the mother’s internal and external environment and the way that they impact her maternal experience. She asserts that society lays the blame on the mother for many of the resentments, conf licts, blame, cruelty and judgement that abound while charging her with the impossible task of repairing many of these social and inner failures: Because mothers are seen as our point of entry into the world, there is nothing easier than to make social deterioration look like something that it is the sacred duty of mothers to prevent. . . . This neatly makes mothers

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guilty, not just for the ills of the world, but also for the rage that the unavoidable disappointments of an individual life cannot help but provoke. (Rose, 2018, p. 27) She explores the deep recesses of the maternal experience and alludes to the bifurcation and idealisation that this silence elicits as she decries the imposition of silence and secrecy that pervades mothering: Above all, whenever any aspect of mothering is vaunted as the emblem of health, love and devotion, you can be sure that a whole complex range of emotions, of what humans are capable of feeling, is being silenced or suppressed. (Rose, 2018, p. 86) Her description of hate as “a form of energy, never so destructive for mothers, indeed for anyone, as when it is internally silenced or unthought” (Rose, 2018, p. 131) articulates the importance of the mother’s awareness of, rather than suppression of, her maternal hateful feelings. While Rose is sympathetic to the mother’s plight, she also determines that much of the responsibility for claiming her voice belongs to the mother herself. She entreats the mother to claim rather than silence her voice, and to articulate the “unspeakable” (Rose, 2018, p. 47) aspects of her mothering, as a way for her to understand and see herself more honestly. While she concedes that the external world impacts the mother’s perception of herself, “since seeing oneself depends at least partly on being recognized by others”, she also queries the mother’s reluctance to confront experiences which are beyond “what many mothers can bear to know or think about themselves” ( Rose, 2018, p. 126). Rose’s emphasis on the mother’s need to locate and express her real feelings as opposed to hiding them fosters an experience which cultivates maternal agency and authenticity and undermines duplicity and collusion. Rose maintains that rather than viewing maternal failure as a catastrophe, it is preferable to consider it as central to mothering. This argument is a core aspect of the maternal language of love in which a mother’s constant repair of her failures is a crucial and transformative part of her mothering. However, it is difficult for the mother to understand the value of her mistakes in the context of the expectations of the maternal ideal, which often fuel feelings of frustration, confusion and ambivalence. Rose articulates the mother’s experience as she struggles to reconcile the conf licting reality that her child elicits both supreme feelings of love and anger for her (2018, p. 126). This is exacerbated by the societal and personal demands placed on the mother “to be respectable and unexplosive” (Rose, 2018, p. 126) which returns to the impossible maternal situation in which she is compelled to navigate the confusion inspired by the meeting of weighty social expectations, feelings of deep love and momentary expressions of hatred. Elena Ferrante, modern day successful author, has written a compelling series of novels which are set in and around Naples, Italy, from the mid-twentieth

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century. A female voice relates a web of individual, family and social suffering, which erupts in a cultural background of depravity, power, loss and love. An understanding of the maternal experience is evident as Ferrante chronicles stories of violence, greed and moral decay in which base, fragmented and dark elements of mothering are revealed together with expressions of deep maternal love. Her raw language both resonates with and assaults one’s equanimity in its truthfulness and psychic depth, and her novels are a tribute to Rose’s belief that mothers “are not in f light from the anguish of what it means to be human” (2018, p. 117) as she solicits attention to the dark underside of mothering. I contend that the massive female readership of Ferrante’s novels which Rose refers to indicates an identification with and a curiosity about the brutal truths that drive mothering, both about the unseemly, dirty and evil everyday maternal struggles and about the profound exhibitions of love. While Rose’s thinking could be dismissed as merely an attack on the way that the mother is treated in society and an account of her difficulties, this would undermine the value of her words as a carrier of the maternal discourse. Her narrative names maternal realities, including the existence of maternal loving and hating feelings, the mother’s psychic and external struggles and the ravages of judgement, while demanding a clear and honest maternal voice, which abhors secrecy and silence, as the way forward for the mother to bear the failures and the dark aspects of her mothering. Through her writing Rose assigns herself the task of breaking the maternal silence and encouraging mothers to escape from the chains that bind them. This maternal freedom of speech and thought and the articulation of hating feelings support the language of maternal love that I am developing.

Taboo and masks Other contemporary thinkers echo Rose’s discourse about the mother’s quest to own her voice and to speak the truth about everyday mothering, including its uncomfortable aspects, while she battles the seductive urge to remain silent and maintain the social ideal. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels examine the taboo and secrecy of modern mothering, and Susan Maushart draws on the metaphor of a mask to symbolise the mother’s desire to hide her maternal difficulties. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels (2007) detail the phenomenon of “New Momism” in a passionate piece which exposes the representation of mothering in the early part of this century as untruthful and abounding with taboos. They object to the images that display the fully fulfilled, always present and devoted mother, who consistently puts her child first while balancing the demands of mothering with her personal needs. They criticise the role of the media in colluding with these impossible expectations and their tendency to foster unrealistic maternal portrayals. This includes magazine articles that depict celebrity mothers with perfectly attired and content babies, and the current digital media sources, such as Instagram and Facebook, which encourage myths about mothering that multiply on a daily basis. Their pithy comment “Here’s the real beauty of this

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contorting contradiction. Both working and stay-at-home mothers get to be failures” (Douglas & Michaels, 2007, p. 626) succinctly describes the pain and vice of motherhood and is a metaphor for the contemporary struggle of maternal reality in which feelings of ambivalence f lourish. In “Faking motherhood: The mask revealed” Susan Maushart asserts that women themselves collude with the secrecy and taboos that mark mothering (2007, p. 473). In this heartfelt appraisal of mothering, Maushart maintains that mothers resort to strategies such as donning masks and using silence to hide the true difficulties and complications of their real lives. Her statement “Unmasking motherhood means accepting that we are all of us making it up as we go along, and wishing we knew better” (Maushart, 2007, p. 480) is a clever analysis of the layered experience of mothering. It pierces to the maternal core by disclosing mothering as a random and unruly but f luid process which defies prescriptions. Her reasoning that as mothers we are “all making it up as we go along” is both acerbic and profoundly wise as it returns to the reality that mothering is a series of humbling and speculative experiences which are perpetually grounding. She emphasises that all mothers both share and are at the mercy of these capricious encounters. This essay lays maternal frailties bare and normalises the daily realities while undermining the traditional silence and pretence which both imbue mothering and secure it to the maternal ideal.

“Care, caring, care. Burdened words, contested words” The fraught and many-layered notions of caring and its social and emotional concomitants are explored by contemporary writers Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) and Sarah LaChance Adams (2014). They examine the notion of care and mothering and the implicit social and emotional message that these two co-exist. The notion of dispensing care and the reality that most of the childcare falls to the mother are central to an understanding of mothering, the impact on maternal well-being and the mother’s experiences of ambivalence. The existence of this literature and its call for a maternal voice, including an examination of full feelings, including love and hate, attests to the need for a more profound examination of maternal ambivalence, which I am effecting in the language of maternal love. A recent book by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa disrupts the traditional concepts of care. She argues that feminist theory has impacted traditional ideals. “Certainly any notion that care is a warm pleasant affection or a moralistic feelgood attitude is complicated by feminist research and theories about care” (2017, p. 2) as the dispensing of care is replete with deep and dissonant feelings. Her description of care informs an understanding of maternal ambivalence and the contradiction which is central to it in which loving feelings in the form of caring necessarily coexist with instances of maternal hatred: Care, caring, care. Burdened words, contested words. . . . To care can feel good; it can also feel awful. . . . So while ways of caring can be identified,

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researched and understood concretely and empirically, care remains ambivalent in significance and ontology. (2017, p. 1) While these emotions sometimes sit well together, at other times, the difficult feelings, including tension, bitterness, shame, guilt and hatred, struggle against each other. In the instance of maternal love these hating feelings transform and manifest into maternal love. LaChance Adams proposes a form of ethics specifically for maternal care. She combines the notion of care ethics, which satisfies the mother’s needs to care for herself and her child, together with the ethos of traditional ethics which, upholds the right of the individual to maintain personal liberty, to create a third ethical position. LaChance Adams acknowledges the particular seriousness and the tension of the maternal struggle, and her narrative demonstrates compassion and insight about the struggles that mothering provokes. She invokes the familiar maternal vice in which “satisfying the needs of the other can be as vital as fulfilling her own” (2014, p. 25) as the mother wavers between, and is tormented by, unsuccessful attempts to satisfy caring for both herself and her child. She also addresses the continual disruptions to the mother’s “sense of self-coherence” (2014, p. 6) that mothering incites and the ever-changing dynamic in which the mother’s mood colours, and is coloured by, her social environment. She favours an understanding of the layered meaning of mothering and attendant feelings of maternal ambivalence, rather than oversimplifying it to a cause-and-effect dynamic. LaChance Adams develops a meaningful investigation and articulation of the complex feelings and difficulties of everyday mothering which are based on this specific maternal care ethic. Her essay informs an understanding of how feelings of maternal ambivalence are elicited. These studies elicit ref lection about questions such as: How does the mother cope with the protracted experience of caring? What happens when she doesn’t feel like caring? How does she navigate the vice that mothering provokes between expectations and reality? These papers are evidence of the emergence of a maternal voice in the current literature. They return to the antithetical foundation of the maternal language of love which I am developing which contends that a mother’s hateful feelings are a productive and enriching part of her loving feelings. Their thinking supports my premise that the mother’s f lexibility and awareness of her feelings of ambivalence both undermine the oppressive power of the maternal ideal and have transformative implications for the mother’s fulfilment of her love. I extend this to argue that value exists in questioning the enduring judgements and punishing beliefs that pervade mothering. This investigation of the maternal contemporary literature provides a context for, and returns to, many of the themes and questions which inform the language of love that I am developing. A rethinking of the experience of mothering is facilitated which prompts a more authentic discourse, one in which maternal hating feelings sit together and work in tension with loving feelings, as the

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mother does not only tolerate, but can work with and benefit from, her troublesome feelings in a creative way. It reveals that there is a shift in an understanding of the feelings that characterise maternal ambivalence to consider it as an inviolable part of mothering. The tone of the maternal voice that constantly resurfaces in my argument is bound in my assumption that if mothers can recognise and engage in these feelings of maternal ambivalence as a part of their mothering, rather than being fearful, ashamed and resistant about them, that this can transform their mothering.

The film Babies: an intersectional approach to mothering This discussion of the unfolding changes in the maternal literature and thinking is grounded in the belief that while mothering is a universal practice, each experience is different and cannot be generalised. These assumptions about the maternal experience favour an intersectional approach and are articulated in this statement by Mayo and Moutsou: “Maternal care is recognized now as a set of ideas, behaviours, beliefs, and practices, which vary across time, cultures and communities and contexts” (2017b, pp.  5–6). The interaction of internal and external forces impacts a mother’s response to her mothering and relies on many variables. According to Parker, these include the mother’s “unconscious processes, her physical health, her economic, social and family situation, the availability of emotional support and, of course, the specific psychological contributions of her own children” (Parker, 2005, p. 89). Almond postulates that the uniqueness and circular nature of each mother-and-child dyad results in a multitude of different mothering experiences and, equally, a wide range of maternal feelings towards each child which varies over time. Her assertion that a recognition by society, and by the mother herself, that there are many different and acceptable ways to mother and that the mother is exposed to an inordinate amount of pressure as she mothers is crucial to an understanding of the maternal experience. The importance of adopting this intersectional approach, which respects cultural diversity between and within cultures, is a fundamental assumption of the language of maternal love that I am developing. The 2010 film Babies exemplifies both the diverse nature of the maternal experience and a vista of real and nascent mothering practices. It traces the daily life of four mothers and their babies in four countries, up to the time that the infants reach toddlerhood. While each of the four mothers are depicted as attentive and loving, there is a pronounced cultural diversity in the way that each dispenses her care towards her child, which supports adopting an intersectional approach to an understanding of their mothering. This is accompanied by a subtle narrative as a stream of images and interaction f lows through the film. There are few spoken words. By eschewing most verbal commentary, and relying on music, sounds from nature and from the babies themselves, including their cries, shrieks and babbling together with a few utterances from the mothers in their native tongue to their infants, the film conveys simple experiences of mothering. A

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rhythm is elicited in the film as mothering proceeds free of the social prescription and judgment that spoken words often carry. The absence of commentary, natural sounds, the f low of images and the innocence of the babies conf late to deliver a genuine and fresh demonstration of mothering which is a suitable position from which to develop the language of maternal love which is core to this work. Two of the mothers live in rural settings, a village near Opuwo in Namibia and a hut near Bayanchandmani in Mongolia, and the other two are in the urban locations of a high-rise apartment building in Tokyo, Japan, and a home in San Francisco, USA. A narrative about each mother’s experience emerges through scenes from everyday life. These moments capture instances of engagement between each mother and her infant at particular phases as they proceed through newborn, crawling and toddling stages.

Mothering in rural settings A primitive village in the desert is the home to the mother and her infant in Namibia. They are part of a community of females and their children, and no men are present in the scenes set in this village. The women and children wear minimal clothing; they decorate themselves with ornamental jewellery, such as beads, bangles and hair braids, which are most likely handmade. The mother sits on the ground talking and laughing with the other women as she lovingly tends to her baby with a calm and confidence as she is surrounded by her other children and animals from the village. Her holding and soothing of her baby is accompanied by tender and curious maternal gazes, and she relies on what is available in nature to fulfil her tasks, such as using a dried tree conifer to clean her infant’s dirty bottom. When her infant is old enough to crawl she is free to roam on the bare earth, to play with objects that she finds on the ground by putting them into her mouth, and to interact with older children and animals as her mother watches. The mother has a f luid and relaxed approach to her mothering which seems to fit seamlessly into her daily chores as she manages to juggle mothering her infant together with her other children without fuss. This is displayed in her ability to accomplish her manual work while carrying her baby on her back and in the ease in which she breastfeeds her infant and an older sibling simultaneously. These activities are carried out predominantly in the outdoors in a primitive lifestyle, which has probably been unchanged over many generations. Everyday maternal life in Mongolia is represented as combining modern advances, such as electricity and access to current-day hospitals, together with practices that have most likely been handed down from the mother’s ancestors. Much of her mothering takes place inside her hut as she cares for her baby while attending in an orderly manner to other tasks such as cooking, cleaning and tending to her older son. Life outside and inside the hut is blurred as unsecured cattle roam outside while smaller animals freely enter the home. In one scene a rooster jumps onto the bed where the baby is lying as the mother continues her outdoor chores. In another a cow puts his head into the bucket of water that the baby is bathing in before the

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mother shoos the animal away. When the infant can crawl, he is able to wander in the yard by himself amongst larger animals. Such instances of freedom are contrasted with practices of tightly securing an infant with ties and swaddling cloth up until the time he is mobile. There are tender moments in the film between the mother and baby, for instance when she bathes him, rocks and sings to him as he sleeps and as she talks lovingly to him when he is lying down and he gazes at her and babbles back. A relaxed atmosphere prevails in the home as the mother attends to her tasks in a measured and caring manner. Her mothering is depicted principally as a self-contained experience, with the exception of some involvement from her partner and a home visit from the community baby nurse. A large communal feast at the home, which is marked by people arriving on horseback, traditional tunes and food, is an indication that customary lore is observed.

Mothering in urban settings Mothering in a high-rise modern apartment building in the crowded metropolis of Tokyo is presented as busy and scheduled. In spite of this hurried atmosphere there are scenes of the mother affectionately feeding her newborn on her bed as a cat steps around her. The mother uses rattles and other toys to amuse her infant and talks in a soft reassuring voice as her baby plays with some handiwork. The mother and daughter go on walks, alone and with other mothers, and they attend organised activities including playgroups in a Tokyo high-rise apartment, outings to the zoo and music classes under the guidance of a teacher. The baby’s father is present to help his partner. The mother in San Francisco lives in a home with modern conveniences and, as in Japanese mothering, the American mother focuses intently on her infant’s care. She is shown tending to household chores, including cooking while her daughter watches from her swing and grocery shopping while her infant sits in the cart. Maternal enjoyment is palpable as the mother breast feeds her baby on the bed, reads to her and bathes with her. While most interactions between mother and infant are one-on-one, there are some scenes that involve her partner and her baby, and other scenes involve the father playing with and caring for his daughter. The extended family is also featured a few times in the film. Moments in the film in which she talks to both the nurse at the baby health centre and the instructor at her infant’s gym class and in which she is portrayed reading a book called Becoming The Parents You Want To Be indicate that she places value on the opinion of outside experts and that she takes the tasks of mothering seriously. This earnest approach also intimates that she most likely feels pressure to mother in a socially acceptable way which can be realised to some extent though outside resources.

Differences in rural and urban mothering Mothering in the rural environments is depicted as primarily f luid and wholesome experiences, free from much of the burden of social pressure and ideals, in contrast

50 History of thought on maternal ambivalence

with the more structured city existence. Rural mothering is marked by a reliance on age old maternal practices most likely handed down from mother to daughter. There is a seamless interaction between outdoor and indoor life as livestock, plants and crops provide the necessary food for their existence and non-domestic animals form part of their life. A maternal ease emanates from these mothers, which is suggestive of a reliance on innate capabilities and a secure maternal knowing which minimises the inf luence of the social ideal. There is also a relaxed timelessness in the way that these mothers dispense their care to their infants as their mothering fits smoothly into their lives and schedule. Both infants play with what is accessible to them, including water, nearby animals, and other children. While the mothers in the USA and Japan exhibit a caring and enjoyment of their infants, they seem to regard their mothering as a vocation to which they devote singular energy. This manifests in a more rigid and regulated approach to their mothering and most likely an increased social pressure, in comparison with the rural mothers.

The value of Babies Babies emerges as a springboard for my succeeding psychosocial study of maternal ambivalence. It foreshadows many notions that I will examine, notably Bion’s thinking on maternal wisdom and knowing, and his emphasis on the value of lived experience, and Winnicott’s good-enough mothering. While the film is not a means of exploring maternal hating and loving feelings, it offers a view of raw maternal experiences that are not disturbed by dialogue or commentary, and so they retain their integrity and are not clouded by prejudice. Babies is valuable for my study because it supports an intersectional approach to mothering. It serves as a reminder that while each mother is presented as being loving, attentive and caring in her own way, each experience of mothering is different and emerges from a diverse geographical and cultural region, which endorses the importance of an awareness of cultural diversity in any examination of mothering. I draw on this film as a non-judgemental platform from which to launch my language of maternal love. It is a carrier of many of the recurring themes of this language including maternal f low, timelessness, knowing, play and enjoyment. The glimpses of various lived maternal experiences are in accord with the value that I place on respecting cultural diversity and the cruciality of learning from lived experience. The scenes of the film surface in an uninterrupted f low of images which merge easily together and mirror the emphasis on f luidity that is central to the language. The encounters between mother and infant, particularly those from the rural areas of Namibia and Mongolia, provide a baseline from which to measure other maternal experiences. The way that each mother engages with her infant in a hands-on and heartfelt way provides a smooth transition into Winnicott’s thinking in the next chapter. While life in Namibia is presented in the film as rudimentary with few modern conveniences, the mother’s care of her infant is redolent of Winnicott’s notion

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of unintegration (1988, p. 97), which is marked by a timelessness and a relaxed f low between the couple. The mother in Mongolia is represented as fulfilling her daily activities with a rhythm and an ease of purpose which is characteristic of good-enough mothering. Mothering in Tokyo is depicted as scheduled by commitments, which is fitting of the nature of a busy and crowded city. Instances of play, a central aspect of Winnicott’s thinking, emerge in both structured activities such as attendance at playgroups and music classes, and the use of toys as a medium for the mother to engage with, enjoy and teach her child. While the mother in San Francisco is portrayed as being devoted to her daughter, she also reveals a reliance on outside experts to guide her mothering. Winnicott warns against this as it undermines the mother’s capacity to be satisfied with being good-enough and puts pressure on her to align to maternal ideal.

Conclusion In this chapter, a more coherent understanding of the current positioning and embodiment of maternal ambivalence unfolds in the context of both changes and the sameness that colour cultural perceptions of mothering. The emergence of a new maternal voice which upholds f low and the mother’s truthfulness about her feelings of hatred and the struggles that her mothering places on her challenges the sustaining role of the maternal ideal and the attendant taboo and secrecy which pervade her daily experience. The importance of an intersectional approach to mothering is emphasised. These comprehensions are pivotal to the language of maternal love that I am developing. The next chapter investigates Winnicott’s thinking of the good-enough mother who prepares a f luid facilitating physical and emotional environment for her child while she holds him and adapts to his needs and repeatedly mends her own failures. The relationship between the mother and her child emerges in Winnicott’s potential space, where he can safely play and develop, as his mother is present but does not interfere with him. Winnicott locates a place for hatred in the maternal experience which becomes a transformative part of the mother’s feelings of love.

4 DONALD WINNICOTT’S GOODENOUGH MOTHER Transformation through maternal love, failure, repair and moments of hatred

The thinking of Donald Woods Winnicott, a renowned English paediatrician and psychoanalyst, has had a significant international impact on the understanding of mothering. Since the middle of the twentieth century Winnicott’s innovative ideas, expressed in a compassionate and straightforward manner, have been widely accessible to both his professional colleagues and to mothers. He makes a substantial contribution to my understanding of mothering through his account of the good-enough mother who is able to bear her momentary feelings of hatred and transform them into love. Winnicott’s good-enough mother is adaptable, present, patient, reliable and attuned enough to shape a f luid and safe space for her child to thrive. She relies on humour, enjoyment and creative play to endure and repair her failures as she shuns perfection and is both genuine and engaged in her experiences of ordinary mothering. The presence of these maternal qualities enough of the time signals the mother’s f lexibility and her capacity to be accepting of herself and her child. This in turn enhances a more robust maternal inner self which allows the mother to tolerate the confusing and difficult feelings that her maternal hatreds provoke. This dynamic is crucial to the maternal language of love that I am developing. In this chapter I re-examine Donald Winnicott’s thinking of the goodenough mother, with a close scrutiny of the transformative function of maternal hatred. While Winnicott nominates hatred as a part of the mother’s everyday reality, this chapter reassigns it a more central place in the maternal experience. It explores the seemingly contradictory notion that the mother’s acceptance and use of her hating feelings, which is closely linked to her capacity to remedy her failings, enhances the realisation of her good-enough mothering and is potentially transformative. A curiosity about the sensuality of the mother’s love and the tension generated as it interacts with her taboo hating feelings, invites an examination of how the mother tolerates both her own destructive tendencies

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and those that she directs towards her child. Maternal love is revealed as an intense and f luctuating emotion, which is sometimes frightening and gruelling, often pleasurable and at other times more ordinary. Film and first-hand accounts are used to enliven an understanding of Winnicott’s thinking through lived experience. I draw on Winnicott’s work about the dynamic of the mother’s feelings of hatred to advance the formulation of the language of maternal love. His article “Hate in the countertransference” first published in 1949 marks him as an early proponent of the controversial and taboo subject of maternal hatred. Winnicott addresses his understanding of the diversity of feelings and hints at the potential for maternal ambivalence that mothering inspires: “[It’s a] pretty crude affair. There’s possessiveness in it, appetite, even a ‘drat the kid’ element; there’s generosity in it, and power, as well as humility” (1991, p.  17). His chilling warning that “babies do not remember being held well—what they remember is the traumatic experience of not being held well enough” (1988, p. 63), reminds the mother about the infant’s right to take his mother for granted, while still expecting good-enough mothering in return. This exemplifies the disparity that is an enduring part of the mother-and-child relationship which the mother must learn to accept. While the dynamic of failure and successive repair are positioned as essential to Winnicott’s good-enough mothering, equally the mother’s experience of her imperfections provokes maternal feelings of hatred which are potentially transformative and a conduit for her maternal feelings of love. Further discussion of the reality of maternal hating feelings surfaces in Erna Furman’s work as the mother is faced with continual physical and psychic losses while she negotiates closeness and distance between herself and her child, notably her realisation that she must be the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p. 15). The distinction between maternal rage and hatred which allows the latter to be is advanced as a developmentally sound notion emerges in the work of Elsa First (1994), Laurence Green (2006) and D. W. Winnicott (1969). This conversation defends the relevance of feelings of maternal hatred to the discourse of mothering and the development of language of maternal love.

The good-enough mother In this section I examine Winnicott’s notion of good-enough mothering and support it with examples of lived experience from film and personal encounters. Mothering, as a continual process of mending failures, can provoke maternal hateful feelings. The mother’s capacity to be good-enough is marked by her ability to repair and work with these failures, as Mariotti articulates: The “ordinarily devoted” mother is a woman who is able to process all these momentous changes, and when she cannot do it, she is able to accept and work through her limitations and failures. (Mariotti, 2012b, pp. 48–49)

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This requires the attributes of patience, attunement and presence as the mother shapes a facilitating and relaxed space between herself and her child. Winnicott nominates the term good-enough mothering to describe the special but ordinary way that a mother prepares a suitable facilitating environment specifically for her child in which she can amend her maternal failures and mitigate her maternal hatreds. She creates a safe psychic arena, the potential space, as she nurtures her infant and sustains repetitive care towards him as she holds him physically and emotionally. Maternal capacities including reliability and acceptance are cultivated in an atmosphere of unintegration, which is marked by relaxation, f low and openness and which favours creativity and transformation. The good-enough mother’s identification with and attunement to her infant allows her to adapt to his needs when appropriate, while she unconsciously engages in a process of constantly repairing her failures through a process of trial and error. Paradoxically, the experience of mending and learning from her mistakes provides the good-enough mother with the confidence to confront the reality of her mothering and to continue to learn about her child. Winnicott upholds the importance of maternal ref lection, which prompts response rather than reaction, and he urges the mother to enjoy her mothering and to resist the temptation to pursue perfection which he regards as “dead, useless, and mechanical” (1991, p. 27). His thinking on maternal pleasure and enjoyment is critical to an understanding of mothering, and he links the mother’s physical and emotional handling of her child with her ministration of love and tenderness. Enjoyment is linked with humour and laughter, and these capacities are central to the mother’s ability to tolerate and transform her hateful feelings and sustain her good-enough mothering. The mother’s early experience of initial absolute devotion to her infant is followed by her child’s increasing independence which inspires maternal feelings of love and hatred. The good-enough mother’s loving feelings allow her to mediate her hatreds, which are continually provoked by both internal dynamics and the demands of the maternal ideal as the mother struggles to maintain her satisfaction with her mothering. This returns us to an examination of Winnicott’s use of the word enough as in “good-enough mothering”. The term upholds the integrity and worth of everyday ordinary mothering and questions the high expectations placed on mothers by the culturally prescribed maternal ideal. These socially imposed standards foster moralising and undermine her capacity to mother freely and to believe in herself. An understanding of how the mother realises and maintains her good-enough capacities is fundamental to the language of maternal love. I draw on lived experiences of mothering from personal life and film to demonstrate the contribution that Winnicott’s thinking of good-enough mothering makes to advancing the language of love. The recount of an infant’s afternoon breastfeed demonstrates how an everyday but special task encapsulates the emergence of maternal love and emotional understanding in a facilitating environment. An encounter from the French film A Happy Event follows the experiences of first-time mother Barbara during the first year of her infant’s life. It illustrates the f low between the generations when Barbara, in the midst of struggling with

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her own mothering, returns to the home of her middle-aged mother, Claire. A rejuvenated relationship f lourishes between the two women as Claire’s motherly care towards Barbara together with a genuine admission of her own maternal failures releases a space for good-enough mothering. Arguments between mothers and their adult daughters in the film How to Make an American Quilt demonstrate that a mother’s recognition of her own failure can elicit repair and renewal, which are crucial marks of good-enough mothering. A renewed dynamic emerges which nourishes, restores and transforms their relationship and moderates feelings of maternal hatred. The mother’s capacity to use her maternal failures as a source of repair and self-ref lection has a transformative impact on her experience of her love while mediating her feeling of hatred and is indicative of good-enough mothering. A first-hand and everyday experience of breastfeeding a newborn demonstrates how a mother’s physical and emotional holding of her infant, together with her willingness to remedy her mistakes, fosters an atmosphere of maternal love as instances of maternal failure and repair emerge. Good-enough mothering unfolds through the mother’s adaptation, attunement, patience and reliability towards her newborn which demonstrate her emotional and physical presence and which are core elements of the maternal language of love that I am formulating.

An episode of feeding Before the feed commences, the mother rearranges the physical space of the room by moving the pillows and arranging the footstool. This ensures that these items are in a suitable place for a comfortable feed, as an adaptation to her infant’s needs is foremost in the mother’s mind. After this preparation, the mother picks up her baby carefully and cuddles her as she begins to whimper; she then tries to help her to attach to the breast by remaining relaxed and holding her in a suitable feeding position. After a few moments, it becomes evident that something is unsettling the infant as she encounters several failed attempts at connecting with her mother’s breast. The mother notices that her infant’s frustration is mounting as she squirms and whines. At that point, she expresses some of her breastmilk onto her finger, and then rubs it gently inside her infant’s mouth. The taste of the milk soothes the baby and coaxes her to latch onto the breast. At the same time, the mother made sure that her breast does not block her infant’s breathing, as her nose must be clear for the feed. The infant’s difficulty in attaching to the breast is a reminder that good-enough mothering relies on a sensitive adaptation to the baby’s needs and is a process of continual failure, missteps and repair, in which the mother’s imperfections are vital to her adaptation as “an essential quality in the environment that facilitates” (Winnicott, 1986, p. 151). The careful attention to the preparation of the room demonstrates the importance of maternal attunement and adaptation as a facilitating space is shaped for this particular infant. This echoes Winnicott’s thinking on the facilitating space as a source of authentic human interaction that is secured by the mother who is

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the expert on her baby. He attests that good-enough maternal care is not about teaching or learning but is a natural process “which makes her able to care for her infant without learning . . . the essential richness of this intuitive understanding . . . is that it is natural and unspoiled by learning” (Winnicott, 1988, p. 16, emphasis in original). This links to Winnicott’s discussion in which he urges the mother to believe in herself as the specialist of her own child. Good-enough mothering is reliant on the mother presenting the world to her infant in a human and steady way as she is absorbed in “going on being herself ” (Winnicott, 1990, p. 88) rather than in trying to attain an externally perceived perfection. This feeding experience echoes Winnicott’s ref lection about the mother’s belief in herself and the transformative value of imperfection in its capacity to provoke adaptation and reparation between mother and infant. In this experience, the infant’s discomfort inspires her mother to discover a way to adapt to her needs. By rubbing breastmilk into her mouth, the mother finds a way to relax her. This action nourishes the loving feelings within the nursing couple and helps to mitigate any potential feelings of hate and frustration that may emerge from the difficulty of the feed. The incident also invites thoughts about the value of maternal patience and endurance as the mother uses her infant’s initial inability to latch onto the breast as a possibility for learning rather than as indication of her maternal failure. It exemplifies how an ordinary maternal encounter can be repaired through human connection and f luidity which promote loving feelings rather than alignment with the rigid nature of the maternal ideal which does not countenance the value of maternal failure. This returns to Winnicott’s use of the word enough which favours the ordinariness of mothering and questions the high expectations placed on her, which tend to foster moralising and to undermine her capacity to mother freely. By replacing the quest for maternal perfection with one which tolerates imperfection, a belief in the mother’s own innate mothering capacities, which Winnicott’s terms as the mother’s “intuitive understanding” (1988, p. 16) is prompted together with the realisation of a more authentic mothering. After a few moments, the infant is securely sucking at her mother’s breast and a rhythm is established as she begins to drink lustily, and her whole body heaves with satisfaction. The mother is aware of her baby’s measured sucking, “There is the movement that belongs to the mother’s breathing, and the warmth of her breath” (Winnicott, 1988, p.  99). Feeding is a process between a mother and infant in which familiarity and reliability, together with maternal responses, are a refuge of safety and warmth for the both, and contribute to the mother’s sense of herself as a good-enough mother—it is as an experience of psychic and physical holding. By embodying an expression of being held and feeling loved by his mother, it creates a “sensation of personal ‘realness’” for the infant (Minsky, 1998, p. 51), “of ‘life being worth living’” (Minsky, 1998, pp. 51–52), which nourishes the mother. The infant’s wellbeing is dependent on the mother’s capacity to be herself and to be comfortable and alive in her own body as she listens for his cues. The feeding relationship explicates an understanding of the broader loving mother-and-child relationship, which he describes as “a matter of infant-mother

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relationship, a putting into practice of a love relationship between two human beings” (Winnicott, 1991, p. 30). The mother’s physical ministrations have a profound psychic component which Winnicott describes as “psychological matters for the infant” (1991, p.  183), invoking his dictum that a mother’s love is initially expressed through her physical care of her baby and her ability to adapt and adjust to her failures. Her physical holding of her infant has a profound sensual and emotional component which Winnicott describes as “a form of loving . . . perhaps the only way in which a mother can show the infant her love” (1960, p. 591), and as the infant gets older, this is widened to “the whole of the adaptive care of the infant, including handling” (Winnicott, 1986, p.  27). Winnicott’s thinking encapsulates the mutual physical and emotional interaction and caring that are sustained between the good-enough mother and her infant in the facilitating space. A relaxed f low of milk and tenderness continues between the newborn and her mother, evoking Winnicott’s notion of unintegration, an atmosphere which is characterised by ease and f luidity. As the mother gazes at her infant, she holds her in a secure and snug manner and waits patiently for a sign that she needs to burp. When the infant stops drinking and seems to be struggling with wind, the mother removes her from the breast. The mother then firmly places the small body on her upper chest with the infant’s head facing backward over her shoulder, pats her back to ease her tummy, and waits calmly for her wind. After she burps, the mother places her on the other breast, and she continues to feed. After a few minutes, the infant begins to show signs of drowsiness and disinterest in the feed. To remind her to swallow, the mother tickles her on her cheek just near her ear as she watches lovingly as her infant’s eyes glaze over and she slowly falls asleep. The mother relates an experience of contentment as she takes a few moments to absorb the mutual experience and to enjoy watching her infant’s eyes open and close as her euphoria is evident. The mother understands that her baby is full and satisfied with food and warmth and decides that she now requires holding and sleep rather than feeding. This illustrates the maternal capacity to be attuned to, and to care for, the particular needs of an infant at a certain time, which is fuelled by an understanding of what to do “at a deeper level” (1988, p. 61). It also demonstrates the non-verbal communication that transpires between the nursing couple, echoing Winnicott’s declaration, “The main things that a mother does with the baby cannot be done through words” (1988, p. 61) as a mother’s care for her baby occurs naturally because of her devotion. While this particular feed is a mutually enjoyable and lively experience for both infant and mother, not all feeding encounters are as smooth or satisfying. As a mother struggles with many aspects of her lived experience, questions are provoked about how she manages the failures and losses inherent in her mothering to ensure that she sustains maternal good-enough care often enough to continue to nourish the bond with her infant. The mother develops an awareness that there is a diverse spectrum of sensitivities which are continually provoked between herself and her child. These include hating feelings, which while painful also

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prompt the good-enough mother to try to understand them and extract their value as they enhance her loving feelings. In his 2004 dissertation about Winnicott and Buddhism, Ratner refers to the importance of the mother’s willingness to survive, if not entirely accept, primitive thoughts and feelings in herself and in her child. Mothering is a finely tuned process, which relies on order and repetition to foster reliability, trust and acceptance in the couple, as the mother adjusts to, and identifies with, her baby and his needs. This feed is a living experience of the way that good-enough maternal qualities, such as attunement and presence, equip the mother to endure and mediate rather than be overwhelmed by her maternal difficulties as she accepts her missteps and works with them. The exchange exemplifies the shaping of a facilitating environment between a mother and infant and contributes to the articulation of the maternal language of love.

New mother: struggles and renewal A Happy Event traces the everyday pressures and joys that unfold for Barbara, a young French woman in her early thirties and the protagonist of the film. It is set in Paris in the early twenty-first century and offers a realistic portrayal of the changes that impact Barbara as a first-time mother as she transitions from being a single woman who is completing her doctorate, through her pregnancy to the emotional and physical adaptations that full-time mothering commands. She experiences a range of feelings including intense love, elation, loneliness, boredom and frustration, as she realises that her life is irrevocably altered and that she needs to accept and adjust to her new reality. An experience of good-enough mothering occurs in the film when Lea, Barbara’s daughter, is about 11 months of age. While A Happy Event is principally focused on Barbara’s relationship with Lea, the following interactions between Barbara and her own mother, Claire, demonstrate that maternal struggles and incidents of good-enough mothering continue through life and hold the potential to renew and nourish a relationship. At this time Barbara is struggling with her mothering to such an extent that she makes a heartfelt but painful decision to remove herself from her home so she can have a reprieve. This difficult choice is followed by encounters between Barbara and Claire, when the young woman arrives at the doorstep of her childhood home. The two women take the opportunity to rework their relationship in a timely manner over the next few days. An atmosphere of openness, f luidity and acceptance unfolds which facilitates reparation and meeting between mother and daughter, as Claire’s admission of moments of maternal hatred and past failures inspires good-enough mothering. Barbara knocks at her mother’s front door in the daytime and her mother, Claire, opens the door. As Barbara stares at her, Claire gazes back with what appears to be an understanding and accepting smile. The mother gives her daughter a warm and welcoming hug and then closes the door firmly behind her as if to leave the world outside. In the next scene Barbara is in her girlhood

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bedroom sitting at her desk and looking through her drawers. She finds a pair of round dark-framed glasses and puts them on while staring at herself in the mirror. She removes them and returns them to the drawer and then finds a tin of her weed, which presumably has been there for a long time. This is followed by an image of her slowly smoking it and looking pensively out the window with the snow falling outside, which evokes a sense of serenity and timelessness. Claire then enters Barbara’s bedroom and glances at the tin of weed. She picks it up, smells it and asks Barbara whether she would like some weed tea. Moments of intimacy and understanding arise between Barbara and Claire while they sit at the kitchen table together drinking the tea and laughing. Humour disarms tension and is a catalyst for connection, play and enjoyment. In their exchange, mother and daughter reminisce about their shared past as Barbara probes for details of her childhood and demands that her mother finally talk to her as an adult. Claire’s confession that she always considered Barbara to be painful releases a space for an open conversation and reveals Claire’s willingness to explore both her past failures and the accompanying dark feelings of her mothering. Claire’s admissions equally liberate Barbara to engage and deliberate about her own maternal failures and truths. A transformative experience takes place as the couple speak freely to each other and air their past differences in a f luid atmosphere with an unhurried dialogue which contains many pauses. Claire understands that her adult daughter needs a safe space to think, feel and regenerate, knowing that while her mother is nearby and accessible that she will not intrude on her unless invited. During her stay at her mother’s home Barbara uses the opportunity to ponder, to rest, to cry, to laugh, to enjoy long baths, to play on her childhood swing and to share her mother’s bed, as she accepts care from and shows care towards her mother. These moments of repair, restoration and f luidity mark Barbara’s experience in her mother’s home as Claire is able to demonstrate good-enough mothering towards her daughter. Feelings of mutual forgiveness and transformation transpire through instances of play, softness and warmth as mother and daughter discover new ways to engage through moments of mutual holding and enjoyment. Despite previous disquiet in her relationship with her mother, Barbara’s decision to return to her mother’s home for respite also unfolds as an opportunity to correct unresolved difficulties in her relationship with Claire which may have been restimulated by Lea’s birth. The new relationship with her own mother prompts Barbara to ponder her own maternal failures and experiences of repair and loss and renewal that mothering elicits. This excerpt from A Happy Event illustrates how notions advanced by Winnicott, notably enjoyment, play, humour, ref lection and holding, nourish and open the connection between mother and child as experiences of failing and loss transform their relationship. The image of the two women sitting and drinking weed tea together at the kitchen table as they reminisce exemplifies how Winnicott’s good-enough mothering operates. While their laughter and the consumption of weed tea loosen their inhibitions, an underlying process is occurring.

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Barbara’s accusations cause Claire to rethink her own mothering of Lea and its hateful aspects. The time together in the family home provides an opportunity for Barbara to receive the mothering that she needs to mother Lea, while it renews Claire’s love for her daughter. The conf luence of these past and current encounters elicits transformation which is a marker of good-enough mothering and the maternal language of love I am developing.

Maternal failure and repair in How to Make an American Quilt Two separate arguments between mothers and adult daughters in the film How to Make an American Quilt become experiences of repair and transformation. The film recounts the events around the crafting of a quilt and takes place in Grasse, a small American town in California at the end of the twentieth century. A group of elderly women reconvene as they have for many years in the summer. At this gathering they are joined by Finn, the narrator of the film, who is the granddaughter of one of the members of the quilting bee. Finn is interviewing members of the bee for her master’s thesis while she is contemplating whether to marry her fiancé. Stories of the women’s past loves and struggles are recounted and weaved into the events of their current lives, as memories of past betrayal, loss, love and hatred are voiced and reconciled.

Sally and Finn’s restorative encounter A restorative encounter occurs between the narrator Finn, who is in her late twenties, and her mother Sally, when the latter makes an unexpected visit to the quilting bee. Finn and her mother greet each other warmly, and there is a naturalness and an aliveness between them. They sit on a rocking couch on the porch of Finn’s grandmother’s house and have a drink together. A space of relaxation and enjoyment prevails as they chat and smile, and there are noticeable relaxed pauses in their conversation. This is disturbed by Sally’s unexpected news that she is going to remarry Finn’s father, who she divorced when Finn was a young girl. The atmosphere changes from one of warmth and ease to one replete with Finn’s anger and moralising. Finn expresses shock and hurt at the ironic timing of this decision, which she claims robbed her of a steady and intact childhood as it forced her to grow up in a broken home. She chastises her mother for expecting her to be immediately accepting of this shock announcement and declares that she needs time to absorb the news. She also accuses her mother of unbalancing her over the years. This vigorous exchange between mother and daughter demonstrates typical misunderstandings and expectations that pervade the mother-and-child relationship. Finn’s communication to her mother is emotional, clear and honest, while focusing on her own needs and conveying a judgmental tone. Sally responds to the accusations by asking Finn to give her some leeway and while admitting that she may have been erratic and irresponsible she asks her daughter whether she wants to “tie her up” and make a “slide show” of her

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crimes. Finn’s mother’s honest admission of her own failures and drawbacks is a reminder of Winnicott’s words about the good-enough mother who is human, rather than perfect, and who, by displaying a vitality and creativity, is trying to sustain an engagement with her child. This retort disarms Finn as she realises that her mother is both acknowledging her f laws and is attempting to understand the anger and distress that she is experiencing. Finn’s mother is an ordinary woman who makes everyday mistakes in her mothering and is willing to admit to them as she endeavours to put herself in her daughter’s place, which is reminiscent of Winnicott’s good-enough mother’s ability to identify with her child “and so to know what the infant is feeling like” (Winnicott, 1991, p. 45). Sally’s words, which show that she is attempting to understand her daughter rather than to defend herself, effect a change in the mood as Finn softens and relaxes. This altercation opens a f luid space where mutual love, forgiveness and reparation transpire from a situation of conf lict, which prompts a movement towards a deeper conversation about Finn’s future. Sally demonstrates a capacity to think about, rather than react to Finn’s outburst, as she admits to her past deficiencies while remaining calm. She hears her daughter’s complaints and rather than returning the attack and potentially deadening the atmosphere, Sally elects to soothe her daughter and to continue to be present and adult. Feelings of hope, acceptance and renewal unfold through Sally’s good-enough mothering and add to the language of maternal love.

Anna and Marianna: the yellow flowers An incident of maternal failure and repair occurs in How to Make an American Quilt during an argument between Anna, designated as the master quilter of the group, and her daughter Marianna who is in her early forties. These moments reveal that momentary feelings of maternal hatred, when accompanied by experiences of failure and reparation, can both threaten and enrich maternal love. In this interaction Anna loses her temper with Marianna then she stops to ref lect on her outburst which prompts a change in her as her feelings of fury move towards reconciliation. This illustrates that maternal ref lection is a productive way to allay a mother’s hateful feelings and to prompt an experience of mutual forgiveness, as a mother shifts from a reliance on rigidity, which is mired in rules and arrested in the past, towards a more f luid space in which hope and reparation can emerge. A heated exchange is precipitated in the quilting bee by Anna’s refusal to allow yellow f lowers in one of the quilt patches because she insists that they disrupt the balance of the entire work. When the decision to exclude the yellow f lowers is challenged by a group member Anna responds with an angry retort which demonstrates her initial intransigence and wish to exert her power as group leader. Marianna then intervenes in the conversation and castigates her mother for prioritising rules and warns that sometimes they have to be broken to preserve the liveliness of a work. In order to emphasise her point about the value of vitality and f low Marianna repeats her rejoinder in French. This

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use of French further inf lames the situation and evokes a derisive retaliation from Anna who expresses infuriation at Marianna’s use of what she refers to as “French crap”. This acrimonious conversation hints at other more deeply entrenched psychic and intrapsychic issues between mother and daughter as maternal feelings of both hatred and love emerge in their interactions. Their argument indicates that Anna favours rigidity and adherence to rules, whereas Marianna upholds f low and vitality. The mother’s tendency towards inf lexibility is possibly a reaction to her own rule breaking in her past which Anna refers to in a subsequent conversation with Finn. Anna knowingly warns the younger woman about making foolish and regrettable decisions, which could refer to Anna’s prior decision to rear Marianna, who was born out of wedlock, as a single parent. This would have been a challenging choice for a young unmarried African American woman in the second part of the twentieth century in the United States. Her decision would most likely have attracted community moralising and precipitated a shameful, lonely and difficult existence and stimulated raw and deep wounds for Anna. These early experiences may explain Anna’s current reliance on order and stability as a means to restore and maintain balance in her life. Anna’s charged response at Marianna’s use of French also hints at maternal feelings of ambivalence. Because French is a language that is foreign to Anna she may once again feel marginalised and reminded of the humiliation and adversity that she faced while raising Marianna. Anna may also feel unappreciated by Marianna for the sacrifices that she made for her, coloured with some feelings of maternal envy for her own past lost opportunities and freedoms. Equally, Marianna’s ability to be open to experiences such as travelling and learning a new language likely prompt Anna’s maternal pride and love. Anna’s initial explosions of anger test her capacity for self-ref lection and move her to understand that she must accept that Marianna has her own opinions. Ironically, by recognising that Marianna has her own voice, Anna can release herself from relying on her daughter’s compliance and depending on her for having her needs met. This urges a self-recognition for Anna, which helps her to stay connected with her own emotions. Equally, it incites a healthy separation and f low, rather than an inf lexibility, between mother and daughter. This dispute prompts Anna to recognise that her dependency on rules limits her, and she begins to accept the value of ref lection, together with an ability to embrace difference, notably Marianna’s. This exchange is followed by a mutually forgiving conversation between mother and daughter as Anna expresses approval of Marianna’s patchwork. Anna tells Marianna that her craft work is good, which incites an acknowledging smile from Marianna and signals feelings of warmth and reparation between them, as well as the daughter’s concern for her mother’s feelings. By praising Marianna’s handiwork, Anna may also be expressing satisfaction on a symbolic level, related to the way she has raised Marianna and the work they have done together as mother and daughter to heal their relationship.

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Connectivity and f luidity prevail in these interactions as Anna bears the strains of the momentary hating feelings that emerge in the argument about the inclusion of the yellow f lowers which becomes a catalyst for the resurgence of her maternal loving feelings. Anna’s experience of good-enough mothering demonstrates how facilities such as differentiation, thinking and forgiveness can elicit the productive capacity of maternal failure and repair. This dynamic returns us to an understanding of the language of maternal love in which the mother’s failures incite both feelings of hatred and equally elicit feelings of compassion as she yearns to make things right with her child.

The potential space of unintegration and play The complexities of good-enough mothering in the facilitating environment are extended through Winnicott’s notion of the potential space, a site in which a loving relationship between mother and child elicits mutual and individual growth. This is an area of f luidity where judgement is minimised, and softness and trust emerge between mother and child as her holding reinforces her maternal feelings of love and satisfaction with her mothering. An atmosphere of relaxation, which Winnicott (1988, p. 97) calls unintegration, prevails as the child is free to play, while he is paradoxically alone in the presence of his mother in the knowledge that she is close but not impinging on him. Winnicott locates play as central to the mother-and-baby interaction: Then there is playing. I do not mean fun and games. The interplay of mother and baby gives an area that could be called common ground . . . the potential space . . . the symbol of trust and of union between baby and mother. . . . So: not to forget playing, where affection and enjoyment in experience are born. (Winnicott, 1988, p. 100) These notions of f luidity, holding, satisfaction and play that are upheld by Winnicott are attributes of the potential space. Winnicott (1969) links the discovery of the self to creativity and to playing as a carrier of the child’s external communication about his internal world. By being alone in the presence of his mother the infant is free to “discover his own personal life” (Winnicott, 1990, p. 34) which fosters trust as he internalises and hold an inner image of his mother with which he can connect during her physical absence. The mother demonstrates patience, non-intrusiveness, and curiosity towards her child as she realises a state of waiting and an acceptance that her child is separate from her. Elsa First explores the emerging dynamic as the mother remains alongside her infant: It is the mother’s ability to hang-out contentedly preoccupied alongside her baby, while going-on-being her own alive self, and without necessarily

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engaging the baby. Mothers would, however, need to be able to imagine their babies at rest as selves with their own subjectivity, in order to leave them appropriately alone. (First, 1994, p. 152) This description summons Winnicott’s notion of unintegration, “a capacity to be apart from others—not actively relating, though neither withdrawn nor craving, simply relaxed, as-if-held” (First, 1994, p. 151). I present two experiences of unintegration in the potential space. I begin with a first-hand encounter between a mother and daughter as the latter prepares to go to bed during her final weeks of her schooling. The second is an incident from the French film The Hedgehog, as a relationship between the concierge of an apartment building, Renée, and a young girl, Paloma, who is a resident, f lourishes.

Bedtime routine At about nine o’clock one evening, a mother lay on her daughter’s bed as she watches her daughter’s nightly routine. There is little conversation as the girl puts on her pyjamas, brushes her teeth, removes her make-up and prepares her school bag for the next morning while muttering a few complaints about school. The mother recounts that her own thoughts drifted as she relaxed and lost an awareness of time. The daughter suggests that the mother stay in her room so they could watch another episode of their favourite television show together. The mother agrees and they lay on the bed next to each other, absorbed in the television programme. According to the mother, this activity connects them, as they are able to share in the suspense of the programme together, while allowing her to wander in her own thoughts. This returns to the mother’s capacity “to be” in the potential space, while “letting life f low naturally” (Ratner, 2004, p. 219). There is an environment of f lux as the mother and daughter vacillate between merging and separating from each other, which is marked by bouts of silence and limited exchanges. While Winnicott concentrates on infant play, this is extended to an instance of play in the older child and the pleasure that this mother experiences as she watches her daughter’s daily and ordered ministrations as they share the enjoyment of a television programme. While the television show inspires emotions, including happiness, anxiety and sadness, the expression of those feelings becomes a vehicle for enjoyment and connection as the programme becomes a catalyst for mother and daughter to learn more about each other as differences and commonalities surface through viewing it together. This experience exemplified Winnicott’s recommendation that a mother: be ready waiting, without hurry, fuss, or impatience, for the baby’s playfulness. It is this, above all, which indicates the existence of a personal inner life in the baby. If it meets in yourself a corresponding playfulness the inner

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richness of the baby blossoms out, and your playing together becomes the best part of the relationship between the two of you. (Winnicott, 1991, p. 79) This encounter demonstrates the shaping of a potential space of meeting between mother and child which is buttressed by the mother’s good-enough maternal capacities. Her patience, engagement, innovative play and an ability to forge a favourable separation and an unintegrated space between herself and her daughter inform the language of love.

The Hedgehog: play and unintegration in the potential space The gradual shaping of a potential space is further examined in the film The Hedgehog through the developing relationship between 13-year-old Paloma and Renée, her mother figure who is the concierge of her apartment building in Paris. Paloma Josse lives with her parents and much older sister who are unable to bear her eccentricities, notably her constant reliance on recording the lives of those around her with a video camera. Mme Josse spends most of her time tending and talking to her plants and welcomes the growing relationship between her youngest daughter and the concierge. A loving connection, on both a profound psychic and physical level, emerges between the concierge and Paloma in the facilitating space of Renée’s apartment. The apartment becomes a secure and welcoming environment for the girl as instances of maternal failure are repaired through maternal reliability, f luidity and presence. As a mother figure Renée fulfils Moore’s description of women, who despite being non-biological mothers, are crucially important in their role as serving “as mothers for us” (Moore, 1994, p. 40). This is a reminder of the significance of maternal interactions that occur with people other than the child’s own mother which supports the notion that when the biological mother cannot supply everything to her child, another maternal figure can help. In an initial exchange, Paloma knocks on Renée’s door to make a request. Renée, haltingly, invites Paloma inside for a cup of cocoa. Paloma enters the room and looks around. Renée is mindful not to interrupt Paloma’s narrative as she realises that Paloma wants to talk and that she needs to listen. When Paloma finishes talking, Renée pauses and then comments that Paloma’s visits give them a chance to become acquainted. Paloma then asks whether she can return to Renée’s apartment at a later time. Renée deliberates and then replies in the affirmative. These moments demonstrate Renée’s ease with, and reliance on, ref lective spaces in her dialogue with Paloma. By pausing, rather than making a hurried response, Renée takes the opportunity to patiently think and wait before making a response, which gives her time to demonstrate her interest in Paloma and to acknowledge the girl’s words without giving an opinion or interfering with her f low. This exemplifies Renée’s good-enough mothering as she displays presence and focus with an attendant patience and curiosity. Her non-intrusiveness

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is consistent with Winnicott’s thinking on the mother who shapes a safe space for her child where he can be left alone to play and to be productive, as the mother is emotionally present but not actively engaging or interfering with him. Winnicott’s sentiment about the indivisibility and circularity of the mother’s physical and emotional ministrations to her infant is echoed in Renée’s care towards Paloma. Renée demonstrates an understanding of Winnicott’s (1988) tenet about the power of the mother’s attention and non-verbal communications to her child. This is endorsed in the rich, non-verbal elements of their communications in which smiling and facial expressions relay their feelings and understandings to each other. The affectionate and accepting nature of their relationship resonates in their conversations, which proceed over warm drinks and Renée’s acknowledgment that they now have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with each other. Renée’s willingness to welcome Paloma into her apartment and Paloma’s speedy acceptance indicate a mutual eagerness to learn about each other and to begin a relationship. As they sit together at the table, they look closely at each other, which provokes a sense of spatial and physical connection. The togetherness that is forged at the kitchen table in Renée’s apartment relies on a presence and an emotional meeting, which is exemplified by Renée’s measured and thoughtful responses to Paloma and the ability of the two to relax together, often with few, if any, words. The relationship and the surroundings of Renée’s apartment shape a facilitating space as a site of refuge in which both trust and aliveness are free to develop safely. A calm, unhurried atmosphere is revealed, which contributes to a f low and rhythm in their exchange and speaks of the primal connection and understanding that exists between them. These qualities endorse the play, ease and f low that infuse the connection between Renée and the girl, and signal the mutual understanding, attention and curiosity that goodenough mothering requires which are fundamental attributes of the language of maternal love that I am developing. The potential space emerges as a site of play and transformation as moments of humour and mutual pleasure pervade Paloma and Renée’s developing relationship. The interactions that develop in Renée’s apartment herald it as a safe space of relating and f luidity as Paloma and Renée are free to be themselves and to play there without outside intrusion. They shape an accepting atmosphere where they laugh and enjoy themselves as they discover new aspects of themselves and each other while nourishing each other emotionally and physically. A dialogue between Paloma and Renée about chocolate as a sweet, enjoyable and transformative substance is a metaphor for the sweetness of their evolving relationship. Paloma stares shyly at some chocolate on the table and asks Renée if she can have some, which generates a discussion about whether chocolate is best eaten slowly or crunched with one’s teeth. The girl’s suggestion that Renée allows the chocolate to melt in her mouth continues as a discourse of the transformative nature of chocolate, which is dependent on how it is eaten. Play, through laughter and a togetherness, is sustained as they discover a commonality in their love of chocolate and an affiliation through exploring its qualities. While a discourse about the possible ways that

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chocolate can be savoured may seem trivial, it symbolises the comradeship that is developing between Renée and Paloma. It demonstrates the way that everyday experiences of mothering, such as a discourse about chocolate, can pave the way for way special moments to emerge as the mother and child can play creatively and explore the different ways to eat chocolate. The discussion ends with Renée agreeing that changing the way one bites the chocolate renews the experience, which echoes the nourishing and transformative relationship that is intensifying between them as they engage with and learn from, and about, each other. Winnicott’s thinking of the centrality of maternal pleasure is palpable in these moments, and they evoke his warning that mothering without enjoyment becomes mechanical, useless and dead. Paloma and Renée’s mutual wonder and delight in chocolate, and the conversation that they share about it, become a conduit through which they can learn about each other and experience mutual enjoyment. Chocolate, as a sweet and indulgent food, inspires pleasure and sensuality with a trace of prohibition. This echoes the relationship that is growing between Renée and Paloma, which includes both elements of enjoyment and a hint of the forbidden, which exists in a relationship between a concierge and a resident. The atmosphere of pleasure and playfulness that prevails as Paloma and Renée laugh and enjoy chocolate together, while deliberating about its qualities and its transformative characteristics as they drink tea together, is witness to the vitality of their relationship. The development of the maternal space and Renée’s role as mother prevail as she exhibits the maternal capacities of reliability and care towards Paloma. This is indicated by Renée’s willingness to continue to open her home to Paloma and to engage with her on the girl’s terms. Renée’s decision to be consistently available to Paloma recalls Erna Furman’s narrative (2001) of the mother who remains at home in suspended waiting, ready and willing to respond to her child’s needs. The importance of play as a transformative agent is revealed through moments of humour and laughter that emerge in further exchanges in Renée’s apartment. Humour is a crucial tool for relieving maternal tension, and it signals the presence of an unintegrated space which is a conduit for relating and mutual enjoyment. Paloma insists on interviewing Renée with her video camera in the apartment, despite Renée’s reluctance. As Paloma urges her to talk about herself, Renée, while visibly irritated, complies with her request and commences with an amusing and self-deprecating discourse. She describes herself as a short, ugly and overweight concierge who has never studied, has bunions, and, sometimes in the morning when she wakes, has breath like a mammoth. Renée continues that her life is modest, unobtrusive and inconsequential and she spends most of her time watching television with her plump, lethargic cat, in an apartment which reeks of beef stew. An easy engagement and acceptance are intensified, as they are able to be together, laughing and playing and enjoying each other in the relaxed atmosphere that they have forged. The jokes that Renée makes about her bad morning breath and her appearance provoke girlish giggles from Paloma as they sustain a pleasurable and warm connection. Renée’s humanity is revealed as she relates in a genuine way to the young Paloma, which invites a mutual meeting

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and balance  between them. This evokes Symington’s (1990, p.  102) thinking about the connection that is generated between the personal centre of two people which is transformative and exclusive of power dynamics. The unintegrated nature of the potential space and its f luidity allows for an atmosphere in which judgment can be minimised and softness and trust can emerge more easily between mother and child. This atmosphere, which relies on the mother’s ability to hold her child, reinforces maternal feelings of love and satisfaction with her mothering. However, the potency of the potential place also relies on the mother’s ability to work with her failures and to facilitate her infant’s movement from absolute to relative dependency. While the dynamic of failure and successive repair are positioned as essential to good-enough mothering, equally the mother’s experience of her imperfections provokes maternal feelings of hatred which are potentially transformative and a conduit for her maternal feelings of love. The good-enough mother uses her failures and feelings of hatred as a conduit for her love as she enjoys and plays with her child and creates a f lowing environment in which other qualities such as understanding, acceptance and curiosity thrive. As the good-enough mother garners her sensitivities to nourish these feelings of love for her child, her ability to access f low facilitates her to forgive herself and her shortcomings, which helps her to regulate herself and to cushion her hating feelings. Self-acceptance, a marker of good-enough mothering, is intimately connected with accepting her child. These features are carriers of the language of maternal love that I am developing.

Redeeming aspects of deficient mothering: The Hedgehog This relationship that develops between Paloma and the concierge elicits curiosity about the girl’s relationship with her biological mother and how it contributes to an understanding of good-enough mothering. Exchanges between Paloma and her biological mother, Mme Josse, demonstrate the value of not being dismissive of a mother who demonstrates a scarcity of good-enough maternal capacities. I argue that despite the evident deficiencies of the relationship between Paloma and her biological mother, Mme Josse, there are sporadic moments of connection and f low which can be transformative. The mother and daughter relationship is introduced as one which lacks rhythm, as the couple struggles initially to find each other and then to connect in a meaningful way. The film begins mysteriously, with the screen initially shrouded in darkness, which is replaced by a source of light and some fumbling activity. There are no words and the light source is revealed as a torch—then a hand appears, followed by a checked shirt. There is noise from something being assembled, which later manifests as a video camera, and the face of a young girl appears. She has blonde, wavy shoulder-length hair, and she is wearing glasses. A play ensues between darkness and light, which creates shadows on her face. She begins talking and introduces herself as Paloma, an 11-year-old who lives in an apartment building in Paris. Paloma begins to talk softly, and a woman’s voice is heard in the

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background calling her. The girl continues to whisper while the woman’s cries intensify and asks where she is. Paloma then stops talking and covers the light from the torch as if she is hiding. A door opens into the room, the voice repeats Paloma’s name, the door closes, and the voice begins calling out to her once more. This scene signals the erratic and obscure way that Paloma and her mother engage during the film. Paloma takes strenuous steps to hide from her mother, which I consider to be her way to try to relate to Mme Josse through childlike play. Mme Josse makes feeble attempts to find her by calling her name rather than making a determined search for her. Mme Josse’s incessant calling out to Paloma signifies a mother who does not understand the importance of being available to her child without intrusion. This recalls Winnicott’s work on the mother who shapes a space for her child to play in which she is present and available if necessary, but not invasive. This possibility is lacking in this encounter as Mme Josse is portrayed as an interfering mother who is unable to regulate herself or to be attuned to her child. Later moments in the film divulge that when Mme Josse finally locates Paloma, she is unsure how to connect with her, even though Paloma is clearly searching for a maternal presence. This exchange between Paloma and her mother reveals a lack of fit between them as the girl successfully eludes her mother’s search and Mme Josse remains emotionally distant from her. The encounters between Paloma and her mother extend beyond the portrayal of a faltering relationship in which a mother’s behaviour is distant and erratic. In a subsequent dialogue with the concierge, Mme Josse discloses another part of herself as she registers that something is missing in her relationship with her daughter. One day, as the concierge delivers a parcel to the Josse’s apartment, the concierge enters into a conversation with Paloma’s mother. Mme Josse confides to Renée that she finds Paloma odd and they discuss the youngster’s habit of hiding. When Renée admits that she is aware that Paloma likes to hide, Mme Josse appears startled that the concierge is privy to this knowledge. While she seems to be registering this surprising disclosure, Mme Josse checks twice whether Paloma had confided this information to Renée. This prompts an opportunity of ref lection for Mme Josse as she processes the concierge’s comments and realises that Renée has some intimate knowledge about her daughter, which I consider provokes an experience of acute maternal reckoning for Mme Josse. She takes a few seconds to absorb this news, and then Mme Josse asks Renée whether Paloma can visit her apartment from time to time. This signals that Mme Josse has taken this opportunity to think rather than to react as she processes this new knowledge about the friendship being forged between her daughter and the concierge. This request may have self-centred, intuitive and nurturing components. On the one hand, by removing Paloma, who is quite irritating, to Renée’s care, it relieves Mme Josse of some of the responsibility for her daughter. However, it is likely that Mme Josse’s request for Paloma to spend more time with Renée also reveals hints of good-enough mothering and an intuitive side, because it marks Mme Josse’s realisation that Renée can offer Paloma the mothering that she is missing. It may also be a way for Mme Josse to reconcile Paloma’s growing need

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for independence by doing her best to ensure her daughter’s safety by keeping her within the confines of the building. I assert that the relationship between Mme Josse and Paloma, while indicative of maternal distance, does not demonstrate an experience of indifference, as some maternal connection and mutual interest are demonstrated between them. The maternal experiences in these exchanges highlight that hating and loving feelings are part of the maternal experience. Mme Josse’s description of Paloma indicates that she has difficulty in understanding or tolerating a daughter who is a little peculiar. This results in a space between mother and daughter in which the mother moralises rather than claims her daughter, which provokes rigidity and counters Winnicott’s potential space of f low and forgiveness. By labelling her daughter, Mme Josse compartmentalises and judges her rather than engaging with her oddities as a way to learn about and connect with Paloma. Mme Josse is more than likely mired in her own expectations and needs for her daughter to be a certain way, which provokes f lashes of maternal hating feelings. This film depicts Mme Josse as a mother who is unable to countenance her daughter’s underworld, represented by Paloma’s quirky side, so Mme Josse chooses to remain distant from her. Winnicott’s good-enough mothering demands that a mother forges a space of ref lection in which she can patiently think about her mothering and respond to her feelings about it rather than react to them. This thinking includes an understanding of the impact of her own expectations and those of the maternal ideal on her mothering and an awareness of obstructions that exist between herself and her child. Good-enough mothering emerges in a f luid space that allows the mother to be aware of, and to limit, her moralising, which incites a f low between her loving and hating feelings. These interactions demonstrate how incidents of faulty mothering, such as those demonstrated by Mme Josse, can inspire a movement towards maternal wisdom and the articulation of a maternal language of love. I borrow from Symington’s (1990) idea of wisdom as a rich store of emotional knowledge that relies on learning from experience, which is a f luid notion. While Mme Josse exhibits judgment of and a misunderstanding towards Paloma, which are rigid notions, equally, some of her interactions with Paloma demonstrate hints of connection, which are suggestive of an emotional sensitivity and f luidity and signal the potential for maternal wisdom. I draw on Moore’s discussion (1994, p.  6) about the value of honouring symptoms, which invites ref lection and an understanding about what faulty mothering may be communicating, which I posit necessitates a release of judgment. Mme Josse’s symptoms, including her disinterest in Paloma, her excessive love for her plants, and her f lightiness, exhibit the likelihood that mothering is difficult for her. I contend that Moore’s notion of honouring symptoms invites a sympathy and an understanding of Mme Josse’s plight, which is consistent with an awareness of the restrictions of moralising. In abandoning judgment about Mme Josse, her endearing and childlike qualities are free to emerge. This returns to the importance of maintaining and respecting the difference and difficulties that mothering brings. Mme Josse’s depiction

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as an aimless and f lighty character in the context of Renée’s mostly steadfast and attuned mothering also contributes to the development of a maternal language because it supports the notion that when one mother cannot supply everything to her child, another maternal figure can help. I consider that, despite Mme Josse’s deficient behaviour, she demonstrates some mothering capacities, which invite the possibility that she may be able to care for Paloma in the future. This signals both hope and an acknowledgement of Mme Josse’s ambivalent feelings about her mothering. I propose that Mme Josse’s maternal encounters, while f lawed, make a valuable contribution to the maternal language of love and wisdom, as they are a reminder of the importance of hope and potential, the need to respect and explore maternal frailty and symptoms, and the transformative value that instances of tension and ambivalence can provoke.

The drama of dependency As the mother struggles to maintain her composure and her capacities for openness, acceptance and good-enough mothering she is constantly confronted by her failures which often elicit feelings including maternal frustration, rage and helplessness that challenge the f luidity of the facilitating space. The mother’s f low is compromised, as an inf lux of momentary maternal feelings of hatred are prompted by the recognition of her own and her child’s reaction to her episodic maternal failures. This causes her to brace herself rather than to access her f luidity. Issues related to dependency complicate the mother and child dynamic as the process of psychic and physical separation between them prompts a struggle for the mother as she must adapt to changes and her expectations about mothering are tested. The infant’s movement from an initial state of unity with his mother towards a separation from her marks the beginning of a lifelong interdependent series of adjustments between them. Paradoxically the child can only reach independence through these experiences of dependency. As the process of separation between mother and child unfolds the child’s initial intense dependence on his mother, nominated as absolute dependence by Winnicott, lessens. The mother’s experience is coloured with feelings of ambivalence as she continually loses and regains her equilibrium throughout her mothering as her child’s growth prompts a f luctuating dynamic as he holds onto, and releases his mother, depending on his psychic and physical needs at the time. While the child’s initial and almost complete physical and emotional dependency on the mother seems to be the prevailing factor, a more complex dynamic exists for the mother, as she must manage the paradoxical notion of her own dependency on her child and the feelings this elicits for her. Green’s work on the distinction between developmental aggression and rage is drawn on to demonstrate how maternal expectations can thwart a process of healthy dependency between mother and child. An examination of the conf licts elicited by dependency enhances an understanding of the facilitating space beyond its status as a site of safety, attunement, meeting and play. Struggles escalate for the mother as she reconciles her child’s

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psychic and physical separation, which prompts her to surrender some ties and rework others. A bittersweet (Furman, 2001, p. 40) process emerges as the mother realises that she is the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p. 15) by her child and she must reconcile contrasting and at times disturbing emotions, such as pride and resentment about her child’s growth. Winnicott’s narrative together with personal and cinematic examples further the argument that the mother’s psychic conf licts relating to dependency prompt maternal hating feelings which necessarily become a productive part of the goodenough mother’s expression of her maternal love. I will draw on what I refer to as experiences of maternal collapse, instances of maternal rage and the mother’s experience of accepting that she is destined to be left by her child one day and that she will need to explore other possibilities for maternal renewal. This narrative of dependency and the feelings of momentary hatred that emerge for the mother and their productive capacity are illustrated through film and personal experience and are fundamental to the shaping of the language of maternal love.

New mother’s struggle with dependency Winnicott explores maternal dependency and the conf licts that arise for the mother, particularly in her early mothering. He dedicates his book The Child, The Family, and the Outside World (1991) to the “young mothers who are having their first and second babies, and who are necessarily themselves in a dependent state” (1991, p. 11) and examines the emotional and social challenges that arise for new mothers as they encounter an experience of arguably the most primal dependency. Dependency issues that mark first-time mothering are demonstrated in the film A Happy Event as Barbara’s raw maternal experiences are sensitively portrayed. While this film focuses on dependency in new mothers, Barbara’s experience can be adapted to the challenges that persist in all stages of mothering. The film shows Barbara struggling with the dependence and the demands that her newborn imposes, as she tries to adjust to the mayhem that constitutes hands-on everyday life with an infant. Images of an ordinary day soon after Barbara returns home from hospital after giving birth portray her failed attempts to drink a cup of coffee, to have an undisturbed shower and to pacify her screaming baby. Formative maternal experiences such as these are frustrating and pose a threat to the mother’s capacity for ref lection while testing the expectations she may hold about mothering. Lea’s incessant crying challenges Barbara’s patience and overwhelms her to such an extent that she is unable to tolerate either her own or Lea’s anxieties or to understand her own entangled feelings and reactions. A cycle is established as Barbara’s inability to soothe Lea fosters a maternal rigidity and, as a result, she holds onto Lea more intently. As she cradles Lea in her arms while the infant screams it is likely that she’s trying to ward off unexpressed emotions including maternal feelings of persecution and hopelessness. In the next scene Barbara attempts to find an answer to Lea’s crying in a book called Why is Baby Crying? This prompts a conversation about the

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vice that continually confronts the mother as she is caught between her belief in her genuine mothering capacities and the pressure to conform to what society proclaims as the best way to mother. On the one hand by turning to a book for advice Barbara is demonstrating a willingness to learn from others and is engaging in the possibility that she may glean some useful answers or suggestions from it. However, this approach has potential perils. It may be difficult for the mother to ascertain which help she is willing to accept from outsiders—including professionals, friends, and family—and what she wishes to reject. The title of the book, Why is Baby Crying?, asks a question which is suggestive of a pursuit of strategies and advice, rather than an exploration and understanding of feelings. It is likely that this mechanical and intellectual approach, while furnishing some answers for Barbara, will also reinforce an unattainable expectation that she ought to have the right answers which detracts from the value, wonder and curiosity that is mothering. Winnicott’s thinking is helpful as it encourages maternal ref lection and attunement to emotions enough of the time, which allows the mother to begin to process her complicated feelings and responses in a patient way which also promotes self-acceptance. By upholding moderation Winnicott is equally reinforcing the futility of both the goal and existence of perfection. Winnicott’s good-enough mothering invites a continual learning process as the mother balances the benefit of outside help with the reality that it can interfere with her mothering and that it may undermine the value of her struggle. It encourages the mother’s belief in herself and a commitment to protect both her relationship with her child and an awareness of her own emotions.

Transformative possibility of maternal feelings of hatred The mother’s feelings towards her infant are affected by many prior experiences and sensations including her dependency on her own mother which are established before she embarks on motherhood. The mother’s conscious and unconscious memory of her own dependencies endures throughout her lifetime and, when provoked, can elicit hating and loving feelings in her. As she raises her child the woman’s feelings towards both her own mother and her infant can become mixed and confused and may undermine her ability to process her feelings of ambivalence. Further perplexities arise from both the power imbalance and the circular nature of the mother and child relationship. The child’s dependence on his mother provokes diverse and contradictory maternal feelings including intense love, hatred, fear and suffocation. These difficulties are intensified by the mother’s position in society which Winnicott suggests may be lost or missing in the understanding of motherhood and his curiosity about whether it is “unrecognized precisely because it is immense” (1991, p. 10). This prompts ref lection about the mother’s position in, and contribution to, society and how social expectations, notably the maternal ideal, can affect and undermine her belief in herself and her capacity to mother. While the child’s dependency on his mother and her resulting hateful feelings are a critical and fertile part of the

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maternal experience, equally, they are intensified by a fear and secrecy around their acknowledgement. Winnicott (1949) examines the transformative possibility of these hating feelings which elucidates an understanding of maternal ambivalence. Winnicott’s controversial article “Hate in the countertransference” (1949) argues that feelings of hatred are an everyday part of mothering. By exposing these hateful feelings as central to mothering, Winnicott’s work marks a revolutionary incursion into this taboo and important subject of maternal ambivalence. He offers reasons as to why everyday scenarios incite feelings of maternal hatred, including “the baby is not her own (mental) conception” (p. 73); “he is ruthless, treats her as scum, an unpaid servant, a slave” (p. 73); and “he is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubt herself, but eats well with his aunt” (p. 74). He argues that while everyday maternal reality can elicit hate in the mother that these feelings have potential benefit when the mother’s awareness of her feelings of hatred allow her to confront, rather than avoid or sanitise, the unsavoury aspects of her mothering. Winnicott is critical of the notion of maternal sentimentality and insists that it is a useless emotion which creates havoc for the infant and mother because “it contains a denial of hate” (1949, p. 74). This discussion links to reaction formation, a defence which occurs when the mother attempts to hide her real feelings, including her frustrations and hatreds, from her child. This generates a falsehood between them, which provokes confusion and uncertainty for the child who senses a dissonance and unease with his mother and a recognition that something is awry with her. While Winnicott is addressing early experiences, his comments can be sustained for the duration of the mothering experience. In the article Winnicott also alludes to his own personal experience as he scrutinises feelings of hatred that he experiences towards a child that he takes under his care. While Winnicott is not a mother—and the child is not his own—his comments are insightful in investigating maternal feelings of hatred. He states, “The important thing . . . is the way in which the evolution of the boy’s personality engendered hate in me, and what I did about it” (1949, p. 73). By acknowledging his feelings of hatred directly, Winnicott enables both himself and the child to learn about their feelings of hatred and ruthlessness and to not fear them. While it is not suggested that a mother express her feelings of hatred directly to her child, the value of maternal ref lection and the mother’s acknowledgement and acceptance of these feelings within the context of her love most likely enriches her mothering. Winnicott’s work on the existence and the productive possibility of maternal hatred is irrevocably linked to his concept of good-enough mothering, and this relationship is fundamental to the language of love that I am developing. Laurence Green (2006) makes an important contribution to an understanding of the productive role of maternal hatred through the distinction he makes between rage and developmental aggression. He argues that while feelings of rage obstruct thought and incite feelings of helplessness, developmental aggression motivates the individual to engage with his feelings of hatred and to

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use them to ref lect and to release expectations that the other person “change to meet our need” (2006, p. 191). Green’s thinking can be extended to the tension arising from dependency issues that are generated between mother and child. Mothering invites moments of unfulfilled expectations and frustration, which fuel maternal feelings of helplessness and dependence, as the mother is invested in her child acting in a way that is acceptable for her. This upsets the balance in the couple because it empowers the child, which intensifies further unmet maternal expectations and disappointment and elicits further maternal rage. Green argues that a recognition, ref lection and ownership of hateful feelings, returns the power to the self, which promotes differentiation and successive selfrecognition. For the mother, this means that she can meet her own needs rather than relying on her child for this, which improves her capacity to stay connected with her emotions and releases her dependency on her child to meet her needs. Winnicott makes a further exploration of the potency of maternal hatred in his 1969 paper “The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications”. He draws on the psychoanalytic relationship to detail his deliberation about “the positive value of destructiveness” (1969, p. 715) and insists that it provides a valuable opportunity for maternal growth as the mother is compelled to tolerate her child’s offensives on her. Elsa First describes this dynamic as the child’s attack on his mother’s ability to be a “competent” mother (1994, p. 155). This prompts thoughts about the good-enough mother’s capacity to withstand her child’s behaviour as she maintains her composure in face of her child’s assaults, rather than being threatened or damaged by his expression of pain or anger towards her.

Maternal rage I draw on an encounter from Parker’s book about a mother’s reaction to her teenage daughter’s delayed homecoming one night (2005, p.  106) to illustrate encounters with issues of maternal rage and dependency. This example furthers an understanding of the transformative nature of the mother’s experience of her hatred and offers valuable insight into the transformative power of developmental aggression as opposed to rage as experiences of mending and failure unfold for the mother. In Parker’s narrative, a mother expects her daughter to arrive home at eight o’clock one evening. By ten o’clock she is frantic and goes to the fair to search for her daughter whom she meets “sauntering out the gates” (Parker, 2005, p. 106). The mother reacts by yelling and screaming, which indicates her inability to remain calm and adult in the situation and which can be considered to be an unsuccessful maternal response. However, instead of a retort and a fight, which the mother anticipates, her daughter apologises for being late. This marks a shift in their relationship, as the mother experiences surprise at her daughter’s apology and a recognition that this signals change for them, which she must adapt to. Eventually, the mother realises that she needs to “stand back” (Parker, 2005, p.  106) from her daughter and give her more freedom. The mother’s initial

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reaction was a mixture of rage, which was fuelled by her daughter’s defiance, combined with fears for her safety and followed by relief. The mother’s fury that her daughter did not meet her expectations by coming home on time, was attended by both an obstruction to her thought process and a recognition that she was no longer able to control her daughter. While the mother was initially overwhelmed by feelings of rage buoyed by feelings of helplessness and her unmet needs, she shifted towards a space of ref lection as she calmed down and was able to access reasoning. In accordance with Green’s analysis, the mother uses her feelings of hatred in a positive way to access her attunement to, and understanding of, her daughter and to comprehend that she had made a mistake by reacting rather than responding calmly. The mother’s recognition of her mistakes allows her to move forward and to understand her daughter’s perspective, rather than remaining paralysed in her expectations and wounds arising from her unfulfilled needs. This becomes a transformative experience as it alerts the mother to change her expectations of her daughter and to grant her more freedom. The mother’s willingness to recognise her own failures and to accommodate change indicates a wish to accompany her child in her passage towards independence, rather than driving the process. This marks the mother’s new confidence in her child’s ability to venture out beyond her and a future hopefulness for the relationship. The maternal ability to access good-enough mothering fosters a shift towards a more positive interaction as the mother acknowledges that she needs to stand back from her daughter. Through this encounter, the daughter learns that she has a mother who is both real and imperfect, who is able to be herself as opposed to “acting the part” (Winnicott, 1990, p. 88, emphasis in original). This refers to Winnicott’s belief that the mother’s failures make her human and is furthered in his endorsement that: “There is no question of perfection here. Perfection belongs to machines” (1990, p.  87) which enhances a more authentic and alive engagement between mother and child. Green considers that the mother’s familiarity and ease with her feelings of aggression help to sustain her aliveness and resilience, described by Elsa First as an ability to “be a person first” (1994, p.  160). This thinking illustrates the importance of the mother’s awareness of the disjunctions between herself and her child. By developing an acceptance of these differences, the good-enough mother is able to respond rather than react to her problems with her child’s behaviour, which enables her to recognise and engage with her own failures. By accepting and learning from her hateful maternal feelings rather than resisting them, her feelings of love can strengthen. An understanding of the centrality of this good-enough mothering dynamic is fundamental to the shaping of the language of maternal love.

Difficulties in movement from absolute to relative dependency: the film Mildred Pierce One of the main psychic difficulties facing the mother emerges in her continual movement away from, and towards, her child which is a lifelong process.

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A maternal struggle ensues as the infant shifts from an initial intense maternal dependency on her, which Winnicott refers to as absolute dependence, to a less dependent state known as relative dependency. This movement can incite feelings of ambivalence for the mother as she must adapt to, and tolerate, her child’s changing needs. In the stage of absolute dependence, the mother supports her infant’s omnipotence as she indulges in a state of what Winnicott terms primary maternal preoccupation. Winnicott explains this as the capacity of the mother to identify with, and to adapt to, her baby by being able to put herself “into the infant’s shoes” (1988, p. 36). It is a specialised task that can endure from the last months of pregnancy until the first weeks or months after birth. At first, the mother regards the infant “like a part of herself ” (Winnicott, 1990, p. 85), and he is her sole interest at this time. Winnicott describes maternal preoccupation: This organized state (that would be an illness were it not for the fact of the pregnancy) could be compared with a withdrawn state, or a dissociated state. . . . I do not believe that it is possible to understand the functioning of the mother at the very beginning of the infant’s life without seeing that she must be able to reach this state of heightened sensitivity, almost an illness, and to recover from it. (Winnicott, 1975, p. 302) However, absolute maternal devotion cannot be continued indefinitely, and the infant’s absolute dependence gradually transforms to one of relative dependence as the mother continues to give reliable and f lexible—but not absolute—care to her infant. The mother’s intimate attunement to her infant allows her to perceive that in order for her infant to separate from her, she must gradually fail to indulge his omnipotent demands. A subtle balance occurs as the mother’s failure to adapt to his needs is accompanied by the infant’s corresponding experience of abrogating his omnipotence as part of his growth. Winnicott indicates: In time the baby begins to need the mother to fail to adapt. . . . It would be irksome for a human child to go on experiencing omnipotence when the apparatus has arrived which can cope with frustrations and relative environmental failures. There is much satisfaction to be got from anger that does not go over into despair. (Winnicott, 1988, p. 8) This is succeeded by a period of relative dependency as the mother continues to nurture her infant’s growth towards independence while no longer fully adapting to his needs. In some situations, psychic movement from absolute to relative dependency can be problematic and persist long past infancy if the mother continues to cede to her child’s omnipotence. The mid-twentieth-century film Mildred Pierce

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portrays the relationship between a mother, Mildred and her daughter Veda, as the girl moves through her teenage years and provides insight into the perils and havoc that can ensue when the mother fails to release her child from absolute dependency. Mildred’s efforts to be a perfect, ever giving mother restrict her ability to ref lect on and process any dark maternal feelings. This is counter to Winnicott’s thinking of the good-enough mother who, rather than aiming for perfection uses her failures as a source of learning and ref lection, and can understand and tolerate her hating feelings, while painful, as an opportunity for growth, empathy and differentiation. While Mildred’s lapses signal a deficiency, they equally contribute to the formulation of the language of maternal love by providing a cautionary story of the perils of the maternal inability to emotionally and physically release one’s child. Winnicott determines that by dispensing predictable and f lexible care, the good-enough mother can gradually fail to indulge her infant’s omnipotent demands and thus propel his movement towards relative dependency. As the infant grows, the mother experiences losses and gains and is tasked with navigating a mutual process of separation and a delicate balance between closeness and distance. This thinking about the infant’s movement from absolute to relative dependency is helpful in understanding Mildred’s mothering of Veda which, in its rigidity and unsteadiness, does not meet these requirements. Mildred seems unable to provide the necessary limits in which to restrain the girl’s strong willed, self-centred and devious behaviour. Elsa First, psychoanalyst and writer, explores the dynamic that invites differentiation between the mother and her child. She argues that when the mother upholds a consistent composure towards her child, rather than reacting to his onslaughts (First, 1994, p.  156) then the child understands that his mother can endure his behaviour. This invites both a psychic separation and a secure environment for the couple, as the child’s behaviour does not destabilise the mother. Instead the mother can think and respond in her own time, which creates limits for the child and allows her to remain adult despite his attacks on her. This experience reinforces the mother’s feeling that she is good-enough which generates a productive and safe interaction between them. Joyce Edward (2003) alludes to importance of these boundaries for the child’s adjustment to both family life and her place in the outside world. She elaborates by insisting that the mother’s ability to tolerate anger, both her own towards her child and his towards her and to make demands and impose limitations on him, are “necessary to their offspring’s growth” (Edward, 2003, p. 256). In her 2012 book, Feminism, psychoanalysis, and maternal subjectivity, Alison Stone (2012) explores issues of differentiation and separation and argues for the mother securing a relational point of view. She contends that when the mother can understand that her child’s differentiation from her does not necessitate a rupture, then she will manage her maternal losses, that is, the issues prompted by the separation between herself and her child, with more ease (2012, p. 9). Stone posits that the mother who is able to “adopt a psychical position of being constitutively with the other, [is] able to move between the two sides of the relational

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mother-and-child” (2012, p. 126) and is more able to relate to her child. This signals a f lexibility and a maternal ability to be mindful of both her own and her child’s perspective and feelings. This is contrary to Mildred’s experience as she represses and then sporadically releases her ire towards her daughter which sets up an erratic cycle. Mildred is unable to make use of her outbursts as a way to understand her feelings and as a signal that something is amiss in their relationship, and so she continues to indulge Veda’s problematic behaviour. Intransigent interactions between Mildred and Veda activate a polarising dynamic as control becomes their currency and the potential for Veda’s independence is thwarted. While Veda dictates her needs and Mildred submits to them, the mother uses money to wield power over her daughter and to maintain their connection. Perhaps in an attempt to redress the power imbalance, Veda demonstrates a lack of respect for her mother and her ethic of hard work, as she shamelessly f launts a self-centred lifestyle which revolves around money and social standing. Mildred’s declaration early in the film that her priority is to put her children first becomes a rigid quest to provide financial security for herself and Veda, which she achieves through building a prosperous restaurant business. This success satisfies Mildred’s need for financial security and suffices Veda’s expensive tastes while fuelling her superficiality and snobbery, which is evident in her self-absorption and the air of superiority that she displays towards others. In one incident early in the film when Mildred is financially struggling she orders a dress for Veda that she cannot really afford. Veda refuses to wear it, denouncing it as a cheap rag that she wouldn’t be seen “dead in” as she professes astonishment that her mother could she have bought something for her that is beneath the girl’s standards. Mildred hears Veda’s tantrum, but ignores it rather than responding, which colludes with Veda’s pretensions and undermines a forthright and reliable intercourse between them which would invite a f luidity and mutual separation. Their deceitful relationship is reinforced when Mildred decides subsequently to hide the truth from Veda that she is working as a waitress because she knows that it would provoke her daughter’s scorn. Veda finds her mother’s waitress uniform and realises the truth and then engineers a plan to reveal her mother’s deception. After she confronts her mother about her deceit an argument ensues between them as Veda’s insults about her mother’s family background lead to Mildred slapping her daughter then apologising to her as a cycle of maternal guilt and self-f lagellation is maintained. Rather than exploring Veda’s prejudices with her in a thoughtful manner, perhaps by examining the relationship between hard work and financial gain, which would promote f low and an attuned and dependable mothering, Mildred elects to maintain the status quo. Equally Mildred is unable to register the implications of her own dishonesty which operates as a model of duplicity for Veda which clouds and unsettles their relationship. Mildred’s actions sustain the fixed way of relating to her daughter and stymie the potential to affect change and differentiation between them. A child’s potential realisation of relative dependency relies on the mother’s capacity to be responsible for, and to repair, her maternal failures. Rather than

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acknowledging that she has indulged rather than imposed effective limits on Veda’s behaviour, Mildred continues to collude with the girl’s omnipotent behaviour, until she is confronted with some incontrovertible evidence of Veda’s darkness. When Veda is about 17 years old she makes a taunting admission to her mother that she has embezzled a large sum of money from a wealthy and unsuspecting young man whom she pretended to have fallen pregnant to. Mildred is shocked by Veda’s revelation and she angrily tears up the cheque that the girl received from the young man. The altercation escalates as Veda begins to tell Mildred some of her own beliefs. Veda expresses disdain about the lowly nature of Mildred’s family background and their reliance on manual work, while paradoxically ignoring the reality that her extravagant life style depends on her mother’s physical hard work in a food business with its oily smells that the girl loathes. Veda adds that she wants to escape her mother whom she regards as ordinary and dowdy, adding that despite her expensive clothes and hair styling, Mildred will never be a lady. After making this declaration a scuff le ensues and Veda pushes her mother to the f loor. The incident overwhelms and destabilises Mildred to such an extent that she demands that Veda leave home and she threatens to kill her as she abrogates any prospect of remaining adult in the space. Following the feigned pregnancy encounter Veda leaves home. There is no communication between mother and daughter for a few months and Mildred becomes distressed, so she searches for her and discovers that she is working as a dancer in a night club. This horrifies Mildred who begs the girl to return home. On her return to the house, Mildred returns to indulging Veda’s progressively abhorrent behaviour. Mildred does not have the capacity to move forward and understand the dynamic between herself and Veda, and as a result she cannot move towards an internal integration and resolution. Instead Mildred becomes more internally shattered as the time passes and she clings more intensely to Veda whose behaviour reaches a climax when she murders her stepfather, whom she is having an affair with, in a murderous rage because he is no longer interested in her which subvert her plans. Mildred’s repudiation of her hateful maternal feelings calls for an examination of how a mother manages these commonplace but prohibitive emotions. Both Winnicott and Green explore the mother’s capacity to tolerate her child’s attack on her without being overwhelmed. Green’s thinking advances an understanding of Mildred’s experience, in which her feelings of impotence conf late with her despair at Veda’s repugnant behaviour, as she is unable to use ref lection to quell her frustration with the girl. A transition towards a productive use of maternal hatred relies on the mother’s capacity to access and accept her hateful feelings, which paradoxically offers her a sense of agency as she engages with her true and considered feelings, rather than her expectations about her child. Mildred displays an inability to use thinking to hold her emotions in check while reconciling a real image of her daughter with her reworked maternal expectations. First suggests that the mother’s ability to endure the difference between herself and her child helps her to reduce her

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moralising. Mildred’s inability to own her hateful maternal feelings is linked with an incapacity to embrace f luidity or to accept the losses that good-enough mothering necessitates. Veda’s actions inspire Mildred’s rage to such an extent that she resorts to reaction which obstructs a processing of feelings and an opportunity for understanding and repair and an integration of her hateful and loving feelings. A lack of mutual forgiveness and unbridled expectations from both mother and daughter fuels the rigidity and dissonance between them. Mildred demonstrates a lack of understanding of the importance of basic good-enough competencies including attunement, ref lection and the value of making and repairing her necessary mistakes, resulting in stymied growth for both mother and daughter. While Mildred’s actions run counter to the goodenough proficiencies that are advanced in the language of maternal love, they offer a cautionary warning about the problems that can emerge when behaviours that embody good-enough mothering remain unfulfilled.

Furman’s “mother”: the one who is left The benefit of an understanding of maternal feelings of hatred is examined in the work of Erna Furman, an analyst and writer with an interest in mothering. By naming the mother as the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p.  15), Furman is marking the impact of the child’s timely psychic and physical withdrawal and differentiation from her, which, while necessary for his growth, also elicit intense maternal loving and hating feelings. Furman makes acute observations about the losses that the mother encounters in this separation from her child and insists that they are a core part of her mothering which stir many diverse feelings that the good-enough mother necessarily learns to accommodate. She also cites physical or emotional methods that the mother may employ to impede the process of separation. The mother may refuse to release her child, or at the other extreme, to avoid the pain of being left, she may leave first. She may, for example, not be present to care for her child at important milestones such as starting nursery school or leaving home for college. The mother’s acceptance of and engagement in this notion generates an opportunity for both to experience independence. The mother is obliged to access an internal capacity to balance her feelings of rejection with a powerful love for her child: [She must be] always available so as not to be needed, always there to be left, always bearing the pain and anger at being inevitably rejected, and, at times, feeling the joy at the children’s growing independence and love of life turn bittersweet. (Furman, 2001, p. 40) A perennial struggle emerges for the mother, as she must accept that her child needs the freedom to grow away from her as a separate being. Furman posits

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that the mother’s capacity to allow herself “to miss her child, to feel not needed, and to remain lovingly available for the moments when he chooses to return to her” (2001, p.  39) is essential to this process and summons her capacity to tolerate change. Furman insists that this sentiment spans across the mothering experience: It even continues after the children have moved out to work or study away from home, when every effort is made to keep ready a sleeping space, a special meal, and a warm welcome, and it sometimes shows in tears at a child’s wedding. (Furman 2001, p. 40) The idea that the mother will eventually be left by her child is fundamental to an understanding of good-enough mothering and the language of love that is being formulated. By naming the mother as the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p.  15), a fundamental paradox of mothering is advanced as the one who births and cares for the child is also the one who must be ultimately left. These words symbolise the diametrics of good-enough mothering, such as the pleasure and the pain, the closeness and distance, the loving and the hating and the mistakes and the repair. The mother’s role is to engage with her feelings about being left and to remain adult as she processes them. This bittersweet process demands that she release him in a way that he is both free from guilt and able to sympathise with the difficulty of her maternal task, which Furman claims is signalled by an ability to “thank her at times and increasingly show . . . concern for her” (2001, p. 40). Furman also traces the unique physical and emotional experience of the mother’s “transfer of body ownership” (2001, p.  206). This refers to the mother’s conscious or unconscious investment of her child as part of her own body and the struggles that ensue for her as she adjusts to the loss of what she considers to be part of herself as her child grows and becomes more independent. The mother must struggle with and ultimately abandon this belief as she negotiates her child’s emotional and physical separateness and the losses that they inspire for her. A former closeness to her child, which in some way served as a way of holding herself together, is lost as she must accept that this part of herself now “has become a part of him and ceased to be hers” (Furman, 2001, p. 70). A good-enough mother develops an awareness that while her child’s transitions may incite problematic emotions for her, including hating feelings, she must be mindful of her verbal and non-verbal communications to him. She is willing to manage her child’s movement away from her, in a way that nurtures, rather than impedes his emotional development and nourishes what Winnicott refers to as his True, rather than his False Self. These terms demonstrate the impact that the mother has on the development of her child’s psyche. Winnicott warns against the mother conspiring, deliberately or subconsciously, to create a False Self in her infant. A False Self evolves when the mother prioritises her

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own needs rather than meeting with, and acting on, her child’s gestures. As a result, the child develops an internal world that is compliant to, and solicitous of his mother’s needs, which undermines a genuine ref lection of himself. This is contrary to Winnicott’s True Self in which the mother facilitates authentic communications with her child and is respectful of his need to be different from her. While the mother may experience feelings of loss as her child grows, this does not preclude her pleasure in his development; rather, it demands that she learn new ways to soothe herself as she experiences “the pleasure and the resentment and pain of her position” (Furman, 2001, p. 50). This statement signals the transformative potential of ambivalent feelings in which pleasure, pain and resentment meet. The mother’s acceptance that she can be left by her child is realised as she struggles with her diverse feelings, which are consistent with the healthy development of herself and her child. Conversely, her failure to master these aspects conveys her inner turmoil to her child, which interferes with the development of their relationship and the child’s healthy maturation. This is a complex process and relies on the good-enough mother’s ability to sustain her loving feelings despite the struggle and the paradoxical feelings that mothering evokes in her. Mothering provokes perplexing feelings of both love and hate for the mother as she negotiates her child’s growth and physical and emotional movement away from her. I refer to a personal experience that I faced with my 15-year-old son. I had always maintained a very close relationship with him, and I noticed a sudden change: he stopped communicating with me, and he began relying on his father. While I experienced pain, anguish, and feelings of hatred at “losing my baby”, these emotions equally invited love, in the form of joy and pride, as I realised that he needed to grow apart from me as part of his separation and development and that his father was the right person to accompany him on this forward path. Maternal feelings are also aroused in the universal story of the teenage girl reminding her mother that “it’s my body” during an argument about how she dresses or whether she can stay at her boyfriend’s house overnight. Mothering provokes complicated feelings of both love and hate for the mother as she negotiates her child’s growth and physical and emotional movement away from her. An understanding of these feelings that are attached to the experience of mothering is fundamental to the language of love that is being formulated.

Good-enough maternal transformation in Lady Bird The film Lady Bird is a raw depiction of a mother’s struggle with her feelings of love and hate as she realises that she will be left by her daughter, and her hating feelings are revealed as a central and transformative part of her love. As the film unfolds it demonstrates that ordinary mothering is far from an experience of peaceful co-existence, rather it is a possibility for engagement as maternal shortcomings, misgivings and rigidity meet with f luid, forgiving and hopeful expressions of love aligned to Winnicott’s good-enough mothering. The recriminations, disturbances, secrecy, and incidents of familial and societal

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pressure that pervade the film prompt the mother, Marion McPherson, to source new ways to mother her 17-year-old daughter, Lady Bird. Mrs McPherson’s difficulties are amplified by personal life struggles which are dominated by financial worries in this lower-middle-income family and the weight that her perceived social inadequacy imposes on her. She becomes overwhelmed by maternal feelings of loss and fears for her daughter’s future as she f luctuates between navigating issues of maternal closeness and difference and showing deep concern and love. As Mrs McPherson’s initial efforts to undermine Lady Bird’s right to be different are eventually abandoned she learns that she must adapt to change and ultimately release her daughter when she is admitted to an out of state college while confronting the realisation that she is indeed the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p. 15). The maternal experiences of Mrs McPherson, who achieves maternal transformation, and Mildred in Mildred Pierce, inspire comparison as well as difference, and return to the heart of good-enough mothering and inform the shaping of the language of love. Lady Bird is set in 2002 in Sacramento, California, on the West Coast of the USA in a lower-middle class Catholic family which is beset by financial pressures. It also serves as a wider social commentary about the difficulties and fears that pervade life in cities in USA post 911 including issues with unemployment, violence and financial struggle. Maternal feelings of love and hate unfold as the relationship between Mrs McPherson and Lady Bird is punctuated by mutual tenderness, conf licts, judgment and misunderstandings. The film opens with an image of mother and daughter lying peacefully asleep in a double bed together facing each other which establishes a closeness between them. As they prepare to leave their motel room it emerges that they are at the end of their visit to prospective Californian state colleges. They share a conversation about Sacramento and as Mrs McPherson finishes making the bed in the motel room, Lady Bird enquires why she is making it and the mother responds that she likes to leave it nice. This dialogue is a hint to the differences between the orderly and neat woman who worries about how others perceive her, and the daughter who openly questions this. During the drive home they listen to an audiobook of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. When it finishes an exchange occurs which quickly changes the intimate atmosphere, evident in their shared tears that are inspired by listening to the novel, towards a charged combative space. An altercation begins when Mrs McPherson objects to Lady Bird turning the radio on as soon as the recording finishes as the mother desires some ref lective noiseless space and the girl wants music. This disagreement quickly becomes a heated argument as Lady Bird complains about her boring life, which angers the mother and incites a sarcastic response from the girl who apologises that she is not perfect. This is followed by a maternal tirade about the family’s precarious financial situation, the town’s unemployment and violence, and Lady Bird’s snobbery and self-absorption. Mrs McPherson continues that she strongly doubts that the girl could get into an eastern state college and considering her work ethic that it is more likely that she will go to a city college, then

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to jail then return to the local college. As a final attack Mrs McPherson refers to Lady Bird as Christine, the girl’s given name. Lady Bird previously changed her name from Christine as a sign of her wish to be her own person. This prompts another fight which ends with Lady Bird opening the car door and jumping out. As a result, she breaks her arm and on the plaster she writes “Fuck you mom” which demonstrates both a connection with, and fury at, her mother. This encounter demonstrates a prevailing tension in the film as moments of f luidity continually resurface, and are met by incidents of rigidity. While f low emerges through Mrs McPherson’s capacity to be attuned, present, to enjoy and to use humour and play with Lady Bird, as consistent with Winnicott’s goodenough mothering, equally maternal inf lexibility and judgement fester in the hiatus between her expectations and her actual maternal experience. This recollects Winnicott’s thinking of feelings of hatred that are elicited in the mother as her child falls short of failing to achieve her mother’s “mental conception” ( Winnicott, 1949, p. 73). Mrs McPherson’s mothering is marked with what can be described as a process of ebb and f low as her responses to Lady Bird f luctuate between disdain and deep affection. When the mother is experiencing an ebb, which indicates a f lagging in their relationship, she relies on rigid moralising and an external ideal to support her hating feelings about her mothering. This ebb is then followed, immediately or after some time, by a f low of loving emotions. On one occasion Mrs McPherson and Lady Bird are shopping for a dress for the girl to wear to a Thanksgiving meal with her boyfriend’s family when a quick change in their dynamic occurs. While they are searching for a suitable dress a trite argument ensues which is provoked by Mrs McPherson who is harassing Lady Bird about dragging her feet. These gibes are revealed later as a symbol of Marion’s disappointment that Lady Bird is choosing not to celebrate her last Thanksgiving before going to college with her own family. During the altercation Lady Bird accuses her mother of being passive aggressive and infuriating, as Mrs McPherson complains that her daughter is dawdling and yelling. This turns quickly to shrieks of mutual joy as they find a dress that they both like, which is followed by images of Mrs McPherson staying up late into the night to repair it and then tenderly putting it back into Lady Bird’s room as she sleeps. This exchange demonstrates both the fury and the deep love that is embedded in their relationship, and a mercurial dynamic, as these hating feelings are constantly restored to loving expressions. Many instances of connection, hopefulness and love are dispersed in the film. There is a notable occasion when mother and daughter decide to go and visit some local houses that are for sale which is their favourite shared outing, after 17-year-old Lady Bird seeks comfort from her mother after her first disappointing sexual encounter. A crucial incident occurs towards the end of the film when it is revealed that Mr McPherson and Lady Bird are making plans for the girl to go to an eastern state college without Mrs McPherson’s knowledge because of the mother’s intractable opposition to the idea. While Mrs McPherson maintains that the

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family cannot afford the fees and that Lady Bird is not smart enough to earn a place in an out of state college, it is also clear that she is fearful of losing her daughter and is struggling with a belief that she is being physically and emotionally abandoned by her daughter. After Mrs McPherson discovers her daughter’s deceit in secretly applying to an out of state college she refuses to talk to the girl. Despite Lady Bird’s pleas for forgiveness, including her admission that she is bad and that she never wanted to hurt her mother and her apologies for having academic desires that exceed her mother’s wishes for her, the maternal silence is maintained over an indeterminate time period. During this time Lady Bird achieves milestones including finally getting her driving licence and a new job, turning eighteen and receiving her letter of admission into her sought after East Coast college. Mrs McPherson’s absence during these important passages in Lady Bird’s life returns to Furman’s thinking about the mother who leaves her child first, physically and or emotionally, at certain important milestones. The mother leaves in order to avoid the pain of being left herself as she harbours deep feelings of maternal hatred and resentment as well as love. The film sensitively portrays the psychic and physical experiences of both mother and daughter during this transition period. As Lady Bird prepares to leave home, she meticulously examines the photos and items that decorate the walls of her teenage room before removing them and packing them away in boxes. She repaints the walls of her room with a roller using f lowing and measured strokes as she relinquishes traces of her girlhood while background music about seasons and parting reverberate softly in the background. These images are interspersed by glimpses of Mrs McPherson sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by crushed pieces of paper with her writing on them, which are revealed as failed attempts to write letters to Lady Bird. On her eighteenth birthday Mr McPherson enters Lady Bird’s room with a cake and they sit on the bed talking and the girl expresses a wish that her mother would talk to her again. The situation between mother and daughter reaches a climax during the drive to the airport for the girl’s departure for college. As they arrive at the airport terminal Lady Bird and her father alight from the car. Lady Bird approaches her mother’s window and says thank you for driving her and asks her whether she is coming inside. Mrs McPherson gruff ly replies that parking is too expensive, that her father can take her inside and they are unable to go to the gate anyway. Lady Bird then slams the car door; there are no goodbyes between mother and daughter and Mrs McPherson drives away. After a few minutes of driving Mrs McPherson becomes increasingly upset and her torment and grief are palpable as she experiences an episode of what I refer to as raw maternal collapse as her feelings of hatred prompt both a psychic disarray and the potential for renewal. Mrs McPherson fervently turns the car back to the entrance of the airport and parks it then runs inside hoping to farewell Lady Bird but realises when she sees her husband, who comforts and hugs her, that she is too late. This episode demonstrates familiar maternal struggles with missed opportunities, as Mrs McPherson’s profound feelings of hatred, disappointment and

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sorrow which are marked by the silence and coldness that she had extended towards Lady Bird are transformed into overwhelming sensations of maternal love and yearning. Mrs McPherson realises that she has thwarted her opportunity to farewell her daughter in a loving way and is overcome with a desire to mend her failures. The struggle with her feelings of hatred and her previous rejection of Lady Bird are replaced by a desire for reparation and an acceptance that she is indeed the one who is “there to be left” (Furman, 2001, p. 15). Mrs McPherson’s experiences highlight the acuity of the mother’s pain at the perceived loss of her child and provoke ref lection about how she emotionally releases herself from these losses. If the mother can reconcile that the pain at her loss is secondary to her child’s growth, then she can participate in his development without interfering in it. This also allows her to be creative with her painful feelings about her child’s movement towards independence, as she recognises that there are opportunities for new experiences of growth and agency for herself. Furthermore, the mother’s acceptance of her child’s growth away from her and the painful feelings it evokes is linked to her capacity to forgive herself and her child as she learns to pardon both her reactions to her child’s expression of independence and his striving to be separate from her. Her ability to be truly generous and compassionate in her interactions with her child, which is demonstrated through her conciliatory gestures, fuels a reparatory space between them. Putzel (1993) posits that the mother’s forgiveness releases her child to safely experience a range of real feelings, including his mother’s hurt or anger, in the knowledge that she will not retaliate. The maternal experience of forgiveness is aligned with patience and a climate in which the mother is attuned to and at peace with herself. This generates a rhythm and f low that nourishes their relationship and preserves the mother’s capacity to bear her ambivalent feelings both towards her child and towards herself, which secures a potential hope for their future interaction. These f luid notions of hope, forgiveness, acceptance and patience inspire the mother’s loving feelings. They are carriers of transformation and repair as they cushion her hateful feelings while providing an opportunity for the mother to engage in new and creative ways with all her feelings. This dynamic in which the mother’s good-enough capacities sustain her, as her hateful feelings become a catalyst for her loving emotions is crucial to her good-enough mothering and the formulation of the language of maternal love A parallel experience of reparation occurs for Lady Bird as she commences her new life in college, which summons Furman’s notion of the “bittersweet process” as the child both retreats from her mother and is equally able to show tenderness and an understanding of her mother’s plight. Lady Bird attends a party where she drinks too much and is admitted to hospital. After she is released, she experiences a period of psychic transformation as she reverts to her birth name, Christine; she visits a church and reminisces about past times with her mother. In the final moments of the film, Lady Bird calls home and when no one answers she leaves a special message for her mother. Her message is replete with loving feelings and a wish for restoration as she asks questions about her mother’s earlier

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experiences of Sacramento and she ends the message by telling her mother that she loves her. These words recall Furman’s notion of the child’s desire to thank and exhibit care towards her mother and demonstrate the importance of f luidity, thoughtfulness, tenderness and respect for difference as an essential part of the mother and child relationship. While the film finishes on this hopeful tone, it also holds an uncertainty which is consistent with good-enough mothering as an experience of “not knowing, getting lost, being confused and pressing ahead anyway” (Ogden, 2004a, p. 286). Lady Bird’s depiction of everyday experiences of mothering as moments of hatred and overwhelming love signify that good-enough mothering can prevail, is in contrast to the relationship that unfolds between Mildred and Veda in Mildred Pierce. Despite the marked differences between these two mothers, strong parallels also exist in the relationships that Mildred and Mrs McPherson develop with their teenage daughters. Both mothers experience rigid and at times volatile interactions with their daughters in which difficulties with differentiation and fears of financial destitution and attendant social malaise are a central part of their narrative. Notwithstanding the expectations which fuel Mrs McPherson’s rigid thinking, she demonstrates a willingness to engage in, rather than shun, everyday battles with her daughter. This incites a f luidity, as resentments between mother and daughter become an opportunity for growth and a stimulus for change. Mrs McPherson shapes a relationship which instils a message of hope and forgiveness and an experience of good-enough mothering as she recognises and takes steps to repair and to be thoughtful about her failures. This is in contrast with Mildred’s relationship with Veda which by the last moments of the film is at a standstill as depleted and fractured interactions dominate their dynamic, and there is little indication of good-enough mothering. The comparison of these two experiences which both contain maternal struggle and pain, returns to the importance of f low, learning from missteps, ref lection, and the value of not knowing to good-enough mothering, all of which inform the maternal language of love that I formulate.

The transformative possibilities of maternal collapse The presence and value of maternal feelings of hatred and their function as a transformative agent emerge in the notion of maternal collapse which refer to severe and distressing abrupt feelings which momentarily seize the mother and are followed by maternal recovery and transformation. The underlying tensions and complexities that impact the mother and which elicit her hating feelings return to my previous discussion of Winnicott and his description of the diversity of the maternal experience. He alludes to a rawness in which maternal characteristics such as “possessiveness”, “generosity”, “power”, “appetite” and “humility” (1991, p. 17) reside. Winnicott makes the memorable comment about one of the main contradictions and imbalances of mothering in which the mother must accept that her child has the right to prioritise “traumatic experience of not being held

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well enough” as he minimises his memories of being “held well enough” (1988, p. 63). This is indicative of the continual dynamic that characterises this relationship in which the child feels entitled to receive good-enough mothering without any signs of appreciation, while the mother is expected to accede to this disparity without retaliation. Winnicott’s sentiment humanises and reconciles the reality of the mother’s experience of ambivalence, which releases a space to explore her hateful feelings which I argue are a transformative part of her maternal love. The notion of what I refer to as maternal collapse supports the thesis that maternal feelings of hatred are a catalyst for the mother’s feelings of love. The collapse can be described as an abrupt surge of severe and distressing feelings attended by an experience of emotional crumbling and disturbance, which overcome the mother. It can be attended by bodily reactions, which may include being stunned and immobile, convulsive weeping or difficulty in breathing, as the mother experiences the conf luence of intense hating and loving feelings. This experience facilitates a psychic restoration for the mother as she physically gathers and renews herself and regains her composure. Her subsequent recovery whether immediate or over a more protracted time has a renewed ardour which marks the experience as transformative.

Collapse and recovery in The Hedgehog A f leeting but definitive experience of maternal collapse occurs in the film The Hedgehog, as Paloma’s mother figure, Renée, the concierge, experiences a momentary lapse in her connection with Paloma which emerges as goodenough mothering and maternal renewal and restoration. It occurs as an argument ensues between Paloma and Renée about Renée’s decision to decline a dinner invitation. Paloma is videoing Renée as she is walking around with her hands in her pockets in her apartment. As Paloma’s fervent questioning intensifies it is clear that Renée is becoming more disturbed and that feelings of hate and exasperation with the girl are being elicited. Suddenly, Renée begins to shake and sob, and she covers her face with her hands for a few minutes. This is reminiscent of Klein’s description of an intensification of feelings and grief, as one’s “love . . . wells up” (1984, p. 360). During these moments, Renée experiences a f leeting breakdown in which her barriers momentarily dissipate, and she freely discharges her feelings and begins to weep uncontrollably. Renée’s uninhibited purging of her emotions recalls Baraitser’s discussion of the entreaty for the mother to remain with her experience rather than to defend against it. At this moment, Paloma puts the video camera down and slowly walks towards Renée to comfort her. While Renée protests that she does not want Paloma to see her in this state, Paloma continues to approach her and begins hugging her. Renée’s insistence that she protect Paloma from her anguish recalls Winnicott’s reference to the mother’s capacity to deal with her own anxieties and feelings without burdening her infant. As Renée recoils and momentarily pushes Paloma away, the girl is determined not to be refused, so Renée allows Paloma

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to comfort her. Despite Renée’s visible pain, Paloma puts her arms around the woman and snuggles into her. Renée murmurs that she is being stupid, and then drops her arms. Paloma begs Renée not to speak like that, and then the girl nestles into Renée, with her head leaning into her, and repeats her appeal in a soothing, soft voice. Renée wipes her nose and is just about to put her arms around Paloma when she falters momentarily; then puts her right arm around Paloma’s neck before stroking and then hugging her. Paloma burrows her head into Renée’s chest, and Renée squeezes her tight. Following this disturbance, as Renée’s sobs diminish and she holds Paloma in her arms, Renée is able to compose herself and return to her position as the mother. A renewed energy and f low are released between the couple through this encounter, as moments of renewed mutual comfort and trust ensue. This return is accompanied by Renée’s sighs, which heralds a non-verbal acknowledgment that equilibrium has been restored to their relationship. They exchange a long hug as they hold each other, and soft music accompanies this mutual embrace as they rock together. Renée draws Paloma to her breast to signify that the space between them has been restored and transformed. Renée’s recovery and the emotional rawness and sensitivity of these moments exemplify good-enough mothering and an intensification of the bond between the couple. The transformation is strengthened by their mutual swaying and hugging, which recalls the images of Winnicott’s description of the mother’s rocking movement and the way that she holds her child to her breast to comfort and reassure her. Renée and Paloma have formed a bond which is alive and is able to survive and be renewed, despite experiences of deep pain. These moments of Renée’s anguish are a reminder of Winnicott’s discussion of the benefits of maternal failure and its importance to the mother-and-child relationship. These experiences are crucial to the development of a trusting relationship, as the child witnesses a genuine mother, who is free to be herself as she engages with her diverse inner struggles and feelings and subsequently restores herself. This interaction between Paloma and Renée echoes the multiple instances in mothering when a child and mother together find creative ways to fortify their relationship. Through a moment of disruption, which occurs in Renée’s recoil and in her demonstrable struggle with her feelings, Paloma is able to physically hold and comfort Renée as they connect rather than sever their ties. This ref lects the transformative potential of experiences of tension and ambivalent feelings in the maternal relationship and the circularity of the mother-and-child relational bond, as feelings move between them and incite instances of emotional giving and receiving. In this experience, Paloma has the opportunity to express her love and concern for Renée, who, in return, accepts the girl’s ministrations. Despite Renée’s emotional outburst, her prompt recovery and her ability to become an adult again allow her to reconnect with Paloma. This incident is a reminder that while good-enough mothering favours characteristics such as reliability, presence and patience, this does not exclude f lawed elements, and equally, as demonstrated by Mme Josse, faulty mothering has loving aspects.

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Prolonged maternal collapse in A Happy Event Barbara’s decision in A Happy Event to leave her infant daughter who is about eleven months old and go to stay with her mother, as examined earlier, details a more lingering experience of maternal collapse and recovery, compared with Renée’s more f leeting encounter. Preceding her arrival at her mother’s front door Barbara experiences a crucial reckoning as it becomes evident that she is unable to sustain her continued immersion in her mothering at this time. She has an argument with her partner and tells him that she feels alone and “locked up in the place all day” and considers herself to be under house arrest. She is crying and tells him that she needs some time to herself, to which he responds that if she goes she must leave Lea with him. The scene finishes with an image of Barbara curled up in the corner of the kitchen in an almost foetal position, sobbing to herself, which evokes Baraitser’s description of a mother being “beside herself ” (2009, p. 75). This powerful image befits an experience of maternal collapse in its embodiment of disintegration and deep despair. This experience is marked by an eruption and f low of feelings which is evocative of Baraitser’s thinking of the child’s tantrum as a transformative force which affects both mother and child as it “shakes us to our core and brings us back changed” (2009, p. 83). This is reminiscent of the mother’s experience of collapse, in which she endures internal disarray accompanied by intense feelings and a subsequent gathering of herself which marks a transformation. Barbara’s collapse suspends her previous rigidity and forces a renewal as she recuperates at her mother’s home. This discussion examines encounters in which the good-enough mother survives experiences of maternal collapse, followed by recovery and transformation. It serves as a reminder of the power of maternal feelings of hatred and love for the mother. Both of these experiences are marked by an initial intensification of maternal feelings, as the mother loses herself to her acute sensations before she reaches a climax and an eruption of raw and genuine emotions which I describe as maternal collapse. Her outburst is a melee of emotions including exhaustion, tiredness, fear and exasperation which conf late into momentary feelings of hatred and are a catalyst for her renewed sensations of maternal love. These experiences of maternal collapse in which feelings of hatred are transformed into maternal love are an embodiment of the language that I am shaping.

Maternal hatred The exploration of the role of maternal hatred demonstrates that while it is an uncomfortable emotion, it is possible to harness its transformative capacities rather than to reject its existence. Both maternal love and hatred ignite connections in the mother, which are distinct from indifference, which is a disconnecting force. An understanding of hatred as a sustaining maternal force informs the dialogue of the good-enough maternal experience. Mothering is an experience of continual expansion and contraction in a symbolic and physical sense. This

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is exemplified in pregnancy, the natural birthing experience, and in subsequent life encounters. The f low of feelings between the good-enough mother and her child allows the mother’s loving feelings to be upheld while inciting the mother to be cognisant of both her own and her child’s needs and the difference between them. This demands a safe space that accommodates their f luid needs and promotes an aliveness and creativity between them, which Winnicott nominates as the potential space. While Winnicott focuses on the child’s interaction with her mother and the mother’s ability to know what her child needs and to act on it, this discourse also provides a way for the mother to think about her own needs and her communications and how they impact her and her child. Her ability to accept and engage with her hateful feelings and to learn from them has the potential to create new ways to experience her mothering, as her hateful feelings become a source of transformation. A facilitating environment transpires in a relaxed space, as the mother is available if needed but does not infringe on the child’s need for his own space to play and to experience life. The good-enough mother can bear her child’s need for separateness and its attendant struggles, while being available to him, as she reconciles that she is there is to be left. This invokes her ability to endure the vicissitudes of her loving and hating feelings as she experiences maternal love.

Conclusion This chapter examines the nature of good-enough mothering, which unfolds in a f luid facilitating environment created by the mother as she adapts to her child, faces and mends her failures and struggles with multiple difficulties, including issues of dependency as she negotiates closeness and distance from her child. A site of play, trust and f low known as the potential space unfolds between the couple. The good-enough mother’s ability to access f luidity and movement, together with her experiences of failure, forgiveness, reparation, acceptance and hope, allow her to tolerate her hating feelings whereas rigidity, which obstructs the f low of hating feelings, also impedes the realisation of love. These goodenough maternal capacities, which are embodied in Winnicott’s notions including patience, attunement, enjoyment and play, are a fundamental pillar of the language of maternal love I am developing. They serve as a guide to the mother as she endures her everyday mothering and its necessary failures and hatreds. The idea of hatred as a valuable and developmentally sound aspect of mothering is advanced together with the notion that these hating feelings are a catalyst and a transformative component of the mother’s love. Winnicott’s examination of the existence and potential productivity of maternal hatred are closely linked to the language I am formulating. The notion of maternal hatred, its roots and its emergence, will be explored in Klein’s work in the next chapter.

5 MELANIE KLEIN There’s no love without hate: movement between the rigid paranoid-schizoid and the integrated depressive position

This chapter demonstrates the way that Melanie Klein’s work on the infant’s inner world provides an understanding of maternal ambivalence and the transformative role of maternal hatred. First-hand experiences together with extracts from selected films are drawn on to exemplify how Klein’s theoretical concepts are lived out in everyday mothering. Klein’s insistence on the importance of the mother’s psychic functioning in the context of her external world is foundational to an understanding of mothering. The maternal ability to access diverse feelings, including those of love and hatred, to struggle and repair them, and to realise their synthesis, invites change and growth for the mother as she searches for new ways to manage her mothering. This chapter contributes to an understanding of the language of mothering which is being developed in this book in which the mother’s feelings of hatred are a catalyst of her experience of her maternal love. Klein devised two psychic positions to articulate her understanding of human emotional development based on her thinking of the infant’s experience. One is a rigid persecutory one, which she terms the paranoid-schizoid position, and the other is a more f luid and integrated one, known as the depressive position. She maintains that there is a perpetual backward-and-forward movement between these two positions throughout the lives of both adults and children, and an exposure to stressful life events returns the person to functioning at the paranoid-schizoid level. Klein argues that in the paranoid-schizoid position the infant experiences a persistent struggle between feelings of hatred and love, as defences are secured to separate feelings of love from those of hatred. This is succeeded by a shift as experiences of struggle, loss and reparation result in the integration of the loving and hating feelings, that is, a realisation of ambivalence, which is the hallmark of Klein’s depressive position. While an absolute synthesis of the loving and hating feelings is never achieved, there is a persistent internal struggle as feelings of love prevail over those of hate and the supremacy of what

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Klein refers to as the inner good object is ultimately sustained. Klein (1997, p.  274) explains ambivalence as a meeting of love and hate, which upholds the inclusivity of both, as the mother scrambles to hold her hating and loving feelings together while resisting the urge to split them. This is in contrast to love or hate, in which the co-existence of these feelings is precluded. The synthesis of love and hate relies on f luidity, as the mother’s feelings of hatred become a catalyst for her loving feelings. This dynamic is formative to the maternal language of love which I am developing. I return to the film Lady Bird and an encounter at the kerb-side of the airport between Lady Bird and her mother as the girl is leaving home to attend college, to introduce and examine Melanie Klein’s thinking. These excerpts from the film demonstrate a mother’s initial fastening to, then a shift from the persecutory anxieties of Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position towards the integrated depressive position. Historically Lady Bird and Mrs McPherson’s relationship is marked with typical adolescent and maternal skirmishes, including disputes about messy bedrooms, colleges and schoolwork as well as many moments of mutual love and connection. However, Lady Bird’s decision to secretly apply to an eastern college without her mother’s knowledge, while soliciting her father’s help in her deception, leads to an interval in which Mrs McPherson stops talking to her daughter despite the girl’s pleas for forgiveness. During this period Mrs McPherson’s mothering is dominated by the defence of splitting as she is paralysed in her view of her daughter as the wicked and hateful adversary while she considers herself as the wounded party. Mrs McPherson is unable to consider Lady Bird’s point of view and is totally adhered to Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position, in which her divided opinion sanctions her belief in her self-righteousness and her daughter’s impropriety. This belief secures her defences and allows her to tolerate her emotional situation and to soothe herself while distracting her from engaging in her real losses connected with her daughter leaving home. This persecutory position is threatened when Mrs McPherson drives Lady Bird to the departure lane at the airport, then mutters a forced goodbye to her daughter while refusing to park the car and come inside. As she drives away Mrs McPherson faces the reality that her daughter is leaving home and that she has missed the opportunity to farewell her in a loving way. It becomes clear that her maternal defences can no longer sustain her and she is suddenly overcome with weeping followed by a furious drive back to the airport. Her sobs indicate a shattering of her defences as overwhelming feelings of sorrow, loss and regret inspired by her hating feelings both invite and are submerged in a massive resurgence of maternal love and f low. This episode aligns with maternal movement from the paranoid-schizoid position towards the depressive position as the mother’s good object prevails.

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Klein’s inner world: movement between rigid part-objects towards integration Klein’s narrative of the infant’s inner world informs an understanding of the functioning of maternal psychic experience, which necessitates an examination of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. The paranoid-schizoid position is marked by rigidity and a separation between feelings of love and hatred as the infant initially struggles with feelings of persecutory anxiety which are buttressed by defences. The persistent struggle between feelings of love and hate begins in infancy and is maintained throughout life (Klein, 1984). Experiences of loss which result in reparation and the onset of the depressive position follow, as the infant is able to integrate his loving and hating feelings and move towards securing an internal good object through recurrent experiences of love over hatred. According to Roys (1999), Klein’s use of the term position does not imply a phase or stage, rather it refers to the perpetual backward-and-forward movement that occurs between these unconscious structures for both adults and children throughout their lives. The mother’s living experience is anchored in the f low and struggle that occur between her inner world and the external cultural milieu in which her loving and hating feelings interact. Her internal life is affected by a continual circular exchange with her external environment, notably her interaction with her child, as she negotiates her primal love together with many other imaginings and feelings, which are elicited by previous experiences and then absorbed into her mothering. Roys explicates the importance that Klein places on the infant’s external world in his psychic development by suggesting that a circular process is generated between the two worlds: it would be misleading to conclude that the external world has no importance in Kleinian thought. Rather, it is suggested that there is an interaction between the two, with the state of the internal world affecting the perception of the external world, but with the real external world shaping the state of the internal world. Thus, phantasies, which are projected, can either be confirmed and reinforced by the external world, or the external world can lead to their modification. Cycles of projection and introjection can move in a negative or in a positive direction. (Roys, 1999, p. 14) Klein’s explication of the infant’s inner world contributes to an understanding of the functioning of the mother’s psychic experiences. She postulates that a myriad of feelings, continually feature for the infant, including happy, unhappy, loving, hating, helpful, guiding or harsh sensations, which impact his emotional state and ultimate feelings of integration (1984). Her narrative of the infant’s inner world rests on the concept of objects, which are conglomerations of memories and experiences that are unconsciously and continually evoked in life throughout

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successive interactions. These recollections merge in the infant’s mind through Klein’s notion of phantasy, which Minsky describes as “the primitive, pre-verbal and extra-verbal language of these internalized objects” (1998, p. 34). Lisa Baraitser observes that, in psychoanalysis, the object comes to denote “specifically the original representation of person or thing, usually the parental figures and their body parts” (2009, p. 131), and that it “remains a person rather than a material object” (2009, p.  132). Minsky adds that the primitive thinking, which Klein refers to as phantasy, is what “the baby constructs out of its experiences, both inside and outside itself and by which it communicates with itself ” (Minsky, 1998, p. 34). Klein’s thinking about internal objects and the way that they impact the infant informs an understanding of the maternal experience and the way that she manages the transition between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.

The paranoid-schizoid position The paranoid-schizoid position relies on rigid defences, notably splitting, projection, introjection and identification which are unconscious, and function in a circular manner. These defences are complementary, with projection relying on the fantasy of excretion, while introjection depends on ingestion (Caper, 2000), to mitigate the infant’s intense persecutory feelings of anxiety and emptiness and accompanying “acute feelings of fragmentation” (Minsky, 1998, p. 37). Klein describes this as a process involving introjection and re-introjection of the good object which functions to protect against bad feelings (1997, p. 274) and to strengthen the feeling of “possessing a good internal object” (1997, p. 69). Hanna Segal, alludes to this circularity in which “the child protects itself against the anxiety produced by threatening internal figures by constantly splitting them off and projecting them outside, and trying to introject idealized parental figures” (1989, p.  48). Splitting is characterised by the presence of part-objects which while allowing the infant to keep his loving and hating feelings isolated from each other also prompts him to view the world in a divided manner as he separates “the ‘good’ phantasy object from the ‘bad’ one in its external and internal worlds” (Minsky, 1998, p. 37). Similarly, the mother’s adoption of these unconscious defence mechanisms secures her to the paranoid-schizoid position. Klein’s notion of the good and bad breast is central to her thinking. The image of the breast symbolises divided part-objects in which “hatred and persecutory anxiety become attached to the frustrating (bad) breast, and love and reassurance to the gratifying (good) breast” (Klein, 1997, p. 34). The good breast is a metaphor for mutual feelings of love and satisfaction which are circulated between the mother and her infant, as his pleasurable feeding generates a cycle in which feelings of fulfilment are conveyed to his mother, who becomes calm and comforted by feelings of goodness: A contented baby who sucks with enjoyment, allays his mother’s anxiety; and her happiness expresses itself in her way of handling and feeding him,

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thus diminishing his persecutory anxiety and affecting his ability to internalize the good breast. (Klein, 1997, p. 312) Klein’s experience of the bad breast refers to the mother’s inability to gratify her infant as his feelings of dissatisfaction, which are elicited from the experience of an actual feed or another disappointment, communicate an absence and emptiness for him, and sensations of distress towards his mother. When the good breast is not available, the infant senses that he has been denied food and goodness, which he associates with presence of the bad breast, and consequently he feels “hungry, insecure and empty” (Minsky, 1998, p.  36). Segal describes the absence of the good breast as a darkness that “is experienced as the presence of something tangible and frightening, rather than simply the loss of light” (2004, p. 41), which is consistent with an experience of the breast as denying. The mother continually confronts the psychic ravages of persecutory anxiety as they assault and undermine her maternal feelings of goodness. As part of her everyday mothering, the mother struggles to integrate Klein’s image of the good breast, in which she can sustain her sensations of love and giving, together with her hating feelings, indicating the realisation of maternal ambivalence. This persistent struggle between the mother’s loving and hating feelings, as the love prevails over the hate and is enriched by it, is a core dynamic of the language of maternal love that I am shaping.

Encounters of new mothering in A Happy Event: movement from paranoid-schizoid to depressive position Klein’s narrative of the infant’s transition from persecutory anxiety in the paranoid-schizoid position towards an integrated maternal experience in the depressive position is illustrated in first-time-mother Barbara’s encounters in A Happy Event. The film depicts Barbara’s reliance on rigid paranoid-schizoid psychic defences that she unconsciously accesses to manage the overwhelming and often persecutory sensations provoked by her new motherhood. Barbara’s dependence on defences and their rigidity is manifest in her decision to turn to a mother’s group when she encounters troublesome emotions in her initial mothering in order to restore some psychic equilibrium. This group, the Milk Club, can be considered as a representation of the maternal ideal. It upholds a divided view of mothering that separates what it regards as good from bad mothers, which obstructs the likelihood of Barbara entertaining any hating feelings about Lea. When it becomes clear that Barbara can no longer endure her mothering, experiences of loss and repair emerge together with a realisation that she holds both loving and hating, that is, ambivalent feelings for Lea, which heralds the emergence of the less defended and more forgiving and synthesised depressive position. Barbara’s daily maternal life typifies that of a new mother whose total attention to the physical and emotional care of her baby prevents her from attending to her own basic needs. An ordinary day, soon after her daughter Lea’s birth, commences

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for Barbara in the kitchen of her Parisian apartment. Nico, Barbara’s partner, holds Lea for a minute and then passes her back to Barbara as he wipes his shirt of baby vomit and then makes a hasty departure for work. The camera focuses on Barbara’s full cup of coffee, which is sitting on the kitchen table in a large blue cup. This is followed by the bell of the microwave, signalling that her coffee is ready and Barbara removes the cup from the microwave, smells the coffee, and prepares to take a sip. This opportunity is interrupted by Lea’s inconsolable crying. Barbara replaces her coffee cup in the microwave in the hope of drinking it later. As Barbara’s day continues, the unrelenting nature of her maternal tasks is portrayed as she steps out of her shower with the shampoo still in her hair to attend to Lea’s screams, which continue incessantly as Barbara changes her infant’s diaper. Deafening background music accelerates and intensifies in synchrony with Lea’s blaring screams and mirrors Barbara’s chaotic maternal experience with its messiness, indigestibility and obstruction to thought. Baraitser describes these persecutory anxieties as interruptions which impede maternal thinking and are almost numbing such that a mother’s [r]ef lective space is obliterated. This relentless and infinite present destroys all that is subtle, indeterminate, unknowing in one’s thinking. It’s not that mothers stop being able to think. It’s that we think in another order—the order of immediacy. (Baraitser, 2009, p. 48) The next scene reveals a series of missed and unanswered text messages on Barbara’s mobile phone which represent the alienation that can shroud a mother’s daily life when she is removed from the activities of the outside world. These episodes of exclusion are exacerbated later in the evening as Barbara glances outside her window and notices ordinary life continuing outside in an apartment across the street as people are drinking and enjoying themselves while she is trapped at home with Lea. Barbara is clearly fatigued by her mothering and the scene ends with her in a milk stained nightdress asking her partner Nico whether he can give her a hand. When Barbara is eventually able to locate and accept the complex feelings prompted by her mothering, she will be free to discover new ways to deal with Lea’s outbursts and her own feelings about them. Barbara’s persecutory anxiety is perpetuated as she tries to settle and pacify Lea. After failed attempts to distract her with toys, Barbara tries to hold her and then decides to let her scream. It is likely that Barbara’s inability to placate her daughter affects her belief in herself as a mother and that she feels persecuted by Lea and harbours hateful feelings towards her that she cannot express. This is reminiscent of an experience of the bad breast, as the mother feels that she is being denied the goodness and nourishment of a fulfilling maternal experience— Klein’s good breast—in which she can sustain a feeling that her experience with her child is mutually warm and nurturing. A nourishing experience provokes the mother’s capacity to incorporate her loving and hating feelings, which is a source of transformation that Barbara lacks at this time.

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Doubts about her capacity to mother inspire Barbara to use defences such as an idealisation of Lea and the Milk Club credos to feel better about herself as a mother. These defences allow her to stave off her latent feelings of hatred towards Lea and her mothering, which may be preferable to experiencing and integrating her hating and loving feelings. It is not until Barbara is able to indulge these hateful feelings and the pain, loss and disappointment that they provoke that she will move towards transformative experiences of reparation. At this time, she is unable to soothe her feelings of hatred and insecurity; rather, she is embedded in feelings of emotional hunger which impede her movement towards the depressive position. Barbara’s experiences in the film offer a realistic representation of the struggles that mothers endure. Despite these onerous and distressing aspects of Barbara’s everyday life she also experiences moments of intense joy and meaning which attest to the strength of her love and the triumph of her maternal good object. Incidents of maternal struggle and pain are intermingled in the film with special moments of togetherness between Barbara and Lea. At one moment, as Barbara is feeding Lea at the kitchen table, she remarks, with a smile on her face, that she lives for Lea, that nothing could outdo her. She tells Lea that she loves her as she kisses her on the face and nibbles on her finger. In another instant, as they bathe together, Barbara describes supreme moments of loving connection and gracefulness. Notwithstanding Barbara’s inner and outer conf licts and hardships, her experience suggests that there is something within a mother which allows her to access a unique maternal tenderness and longing which soothes and regenerates her and become a transformative part of her maternal love. These sensations of renewal and restoration, together with the messiness, interruptions and dependence on defences that everyday mothering demands are well articulated in living experiences of film and first-hand encounters and are an essential part of the language of love I am developing.

The trap of the maternal ideal As Barbara navigates her first year of motherhood she initially relies on her allegiance to the maternal ideal and in particular the dogma of a mother’s group called the Milk Club to survive her mothering. While this loyalty temporarily relieves Barbara’s maternal struggles, it also fortifies her rigidity and limits her understanding of her mothering to black-and-white notions. Over time Barbara’s initial stringency mellows, and she questions her devotion to the ideal as she moves towards a more satisfying mothering experience which allows her to tolerate the diverse and often conf licting maternal feelings that constitute her everyday existence. I make a link between the maternal ideal as a carrier of socially acceptable and unacceptable mothering practices, and Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position which is grounded in the persecutory anxieties and rigidity. The ideal endorses the taboo nature of maternal feelings of ambivalence which are exacerbated as the mother navigates a hiatus between her hopes and expectations, which are partly

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fuelled by her perception of whether she meets the standards of the ideal, and the reality of her maternal experience. An allegiance to this ideal secures psychic defences which allow her to rally against the pain that feelings of anxiety and guilt provoke for her by offering her the promise of guidance and strength in her mothering. Equally they function as a means of denying the reality that she is struggling with her mothering and its hateful aspects. An admission that she may sometimes hold hateful feelings about her child is profoundly painful for the mother and fuels her fears that she is a bad mother. A conversation about the shaping of the maternal language of love calls for an acknowledgement of the impact of the ideal on the mother’s experience of her hating and loving feelings towards her child. While the ideal operates as a defence against the mother’s feelings of inadequacy it also reinforces them, as the mother is aware that she is not realising the expectations of society or herself. Over time the rigours of the accumulation of persecutory anxiety resulting in part from maternal collusion with the ideal prompt incidences of maternal loss and reparation which propels the mother to develop a capacity of acceptance and tolerance of her own and, consequently her child’s imperfections and human frailties. This allows the mother to engage on a heartfelt level with herself and her child and with the difficulties and struggles of mothering, as opposed to preserving a strict fidelity to the maternal ideal and the stif ling hold that it casts on her. Movement to the depressive position releases the mother to engage more freely with her child and to bear both loving and hating feelings. This echoes the central thesis of the book, as the mother’s hating feelings become both a catalyst for, and an enriching part of, her maternal love.

Breastfeeding: a representation of the maternal ideal Barbara’s initial dependence on rigid principles is demonstrated in a dialogue with her mother about breast feeding which reveals the inf luence that wider social pressure can impose on the mother’s daily life. A vibrant conversation between Barbara, her mother Claire and her sister transpires to a narrative about the merits of breastfeeding. While the communication appears to be light and friendly, it hints at deeper issues related to a wider discourse about the rights and wrongs of mothering as represented in the maternal ideal. Conf licting thoughts, feelings and expectations are expressed about motherhood as Barbara voices an affinity with the idea of breastfeeding, and her mother expresses strong opposing opinions about it. Barbara’s mother insists that breastfeeding damages the breasts, and she refers to it as torture and insists that women breastfeed due to social pressure. Barbara’s mother objects to the idea that a perfect mother exists, and suggests that Barbara settle on being a mediocre one like herself. This short exchange offers a concise example of the passionate feelings that can be incited by divided opinions about mothering and its ideals. While this discussion begins with the merits of breastfeeding, underlying concerns related to rigid maternal ideals and maternal perfection surface quickly. The

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notion of mediocrity favoured by Claire rejects the ideal of perfect mothering and advances an engagement with feelings sourced in maternal experience rather than in an externally prescribed directive. This is consistent with supporting a mother’s capacity to learn from her mistakes and to pursue her mothering with curiosity and moderation rather than with an intensity propelled by an ideal. Claire’s temperate approach exhibits an insight that is paradoxically more natural than Barbara’s ostensibly organic approach which is symbolised by her insistence on breastfeeding. Their conversation continues with Claire querying her daughter’s decision to breast feed, Barbara offering a churlish response about being a mammal, and further quips by the older woman about Celine Dion’s supposed inculcation into the art of feeding, giving the Milk Club another victory. The girls’ laughter at their mother’s comments betrays the seriousness of the subject which highlights the power of the maternal ideal and the strict and often impossible standards of mothering that it demands. However, Barbara’s willingness to participate in the debate with her mother also demonstrates an inquisitiveness and interest which are suggestive of a possible questioning of those ideals that simplify the values placed on mothering. Perhaps Barbara is wondering whether her mother is correct about the inf luence of social pressure on mothers in their decision to breastfeed. Subsequently Barbara attends a meeting with The Milk Club which exemplifies a living experience of the functioning of the maternal ideal and the hold and pressure that these externally held beliefs can exert on the mother. The meeting commences with a group of eight women, many holding their babies, sitting on lounges facing each other in a living room, possibly in a private home. The focus is directed to Barbara as she introduces herself and Lea, her daughter who is about six months, to the group. This is followed by a series of questions and a commentary from both the group leader and other group members. The group leader asks whether she is breastfeeding Lea, to which Barbara replies in the affirmative. Then Barbara adds that because she is short on milk, perhaps she could complement her breastfeeding with a bottle. This suggestion incites a chorus of noes and head shaking and remonstrations as bottle-feeding a baby is denounced as the enemy. Barbara’s response is to nod uncertainly. The Milk Club’s atmosphere of judgment and rigidity is continued as the group leader explains that the Milk Club also recommends baby slings and co-sleeping. The notion of co-sleeping is discussed, and Barbara adds, with a nervous laugh, that her sex life is practically non-existent. This comment is disregarded, and the leader gives a firm response emphasising the merits of co-sleeping for the baby. These words, as the final authoritative statement, complete the scene. Rather than a serious consideration of Barbara’s feelings and concerns, the Milk Club conveys a strict fidelity to certain socially acceptable rules of mothering. This echoes the pressure and sanctimony of the more general maternal ideal. These moments reveal the power and force of a certain group of women who believe that it is their messianic mission and right to enforce these particular maternal ideals. At this point, Barbara may feel uncertain about her mothering so she may believe that the Milk Club can save her and protect her from her self-doubts and likely failures. Barbara’s inability

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to consider the whole picture, including her own hatreds and upsets, together with the pressures, loneliness, and unease that mothering imposes, is suggested in this scene. As the film progresses, it is clear from her questioning that Barbara is anxious about whether she is mothering properly, so she ultimately decides to pursue the ostensible safety of the Milk Club as the representative of the maternal ideal. While her adherence to the Milk Club offers a possible safe haven against feelings of anxiety and fear that are provoked in Klein’s persecutory position, this prominent reliance on defences can only offer a short-term solution. This is consistent with Segal’s assertion (2004, p. 33) that while adults return to defence mechanisms at stressful times in their lives, this is a temporary remedy. At this stage, Barbara’s attachment to defences, predominantly idealisation and splitting, further fastens her to the ideal. This unquestioned promotion of breastfeeding, regardless of the well-being of the mother, is consistent with the maternal ideal. It endorses a representation of the mother as an unselfish, ever-present and all-giving being, as opposed to what may be regarded as a self-centred alternative. A rigid allegiance to this visionary idea is upheld by the wider society and, in many cases, by mothers themselves. The ideal is an unwritten but socially sanctioned guide which measures and standardises mothering and acts as a moral compass as it glorifies or denigrates, includes or excludes. This divided view of mothering is exemplified by Barbara’s prejudice for breastfeeding, as the only right way to feed an infant. For Barbara it is likely to be a means of inculcating her belief in herself as an acceptable mother, both socially and personally. A collusion with the maternal ideal exerts a rigour on the mother and prevents a f luid connection between the meaning of her feelings and her reactions, including potential feelings of anger, sadness and guilt that are perpetuated by her mothering. Barbara’s words reveal her reliance on the defence of splitting between good and bad mothering and a fastening to notions sympathetic to Klein’s persecutory position which impedes her ability to express both loving and hating feelings. Barbara’s doubts about her capacity to mother inspire her to use defences such as the idealisation of Lea and the Milk Club principles to feel better about herself as a mother. These defences allow her to stave off her latent feelings of hatred about her mothering rather than entertaining the possibility of experiencing and integrating her hating and loving feelings. It is not until she is able to indulge these hateful feelings and the pain, loss and disappointment that they provoke that she will move towards transformative experiences of reparation. At this time, she is unable to soothe her feelings of hatred and insecurity; rather, she is embedded in feelings of emotional hunger which impede potential for change. Barbara’s experiences in the film offer a realistic representation of the struggles that new mothers endure. The young woman’s subsequent decision to join the Milk Club offers her a way to endure the demands of her mothering as the group provides support and understanding from a cohort of mothers, together with rules that offer direction and provide a safeguard. Barbara’s experience of the maternal ideal through

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the Milk Club portrays her inception into a world of cultural principles which circulate around the mother and which she internalises and projects outward. A mother’s individual experience with her own mother affects her expectations of herself and interacts constantly with wider cultural views about the maternal. Perhaps the lure of the fantasy and the supposed satisfactions of socially prescribed perfect motherhood offered by the Milk Club, together with the difficulties that she is facing in her new experiences of motherhood, offer Barbara an opportunity to cocoon herself from potential maternal struggles in the real world. The powerful inf luence of the maternal ideal over the mother emerges as Barbara glorifies breastfeeding at her next meeting with the Milk Club. The scene begins with a focus on Barbara’s face, which is beaming with confidence and smiles as she proudly announces that breastfeeding is now a fulfilling, pleasurable and intense experience which has impacted her sensually and emotionally. She insists that breastfeeding Lea can now be considered as an orgasmic experience for her. This disclosure meets with an atmosphere of approval as the group leader smiles in agreement and claps, which is followed by background sounds of endorsement and applause. It is likely that her successful attempts at breastfeeding have helped Barbara to become more self-assured and have intensified her allegiance with, and a full submission to, the rules of the Milk Club rather than providing a space for her to ref lect on and integrate her current feelings and experiences. Barbara’s recognition from the Milk Club offers her a hollow rather than a sustainable experience, which binds her more deeply to her suffering, and demonstrates how the mother can succumb to the pressure of an ideal. This particular encounter with the Milk Club, which can be considered as a parody of the power of the maternal ideal, also reveals an opportunity for Barbara to access experiences of acceptance, security and belonging from the group. While this incident may be described as constituting Barbara’s triumph and her passion—as she can finally celebrate and be celebrated by the Milk Club as the perfect mother—it equally impedes her experiences of transformation. These moments will ultimately be revealed as an augury, when Barbara subsequently discovers that theory and obedience to an ideal obstruct her ability to engage in real-life encounters. Ensuing maternal experiences in A Happy Event allow her to discover her own way to mother which enables an acknowledgment and a reconciliation of her loving and hating feelings. Barbara’s description of her ecstatic feelings that arise from her experience of breastfeeding her daughter demonstrates how she relies on the defences of idealisation and introjection to support her mothering. Caper’s definition of introjection as a dynamic in which “aspects of the outer world that have been ‘swallowed’ and are therefore felt to exist within one” (Caper, 2000, p. 98), is an apt explanation of the way that Barbara assimilates the convictions of the Milk Club into her reality. By absorbing what she considers to be the righteousness of the Milk Club she is able to unconsciously retain her “own feelings of goodness and security” (Minsky, 1998, p. 38) while expelling any potential damaging and dangerous feelings about her mothering, to “an external object” (Caper, 2000,

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p.  97), that is to those who do not subscribe to these beliefs. This bifurcation allows Barbara to idealise her mothering and to sustain a psychic fusion with her daughter which only permit expressions of pure unadulterated maternal joy. While this approach functions in the short term by allaying Barbara’s persecutory anxieties, in time, a dependence on these defences usually incites complications. Julia Segal, an author and counsellor who focuses her writing on Klein, alludes to these complications by highlighting both the benefits and difficulties that can emerge from this reliance. She considers that while identification can be a useful tool for the mother when “the projected parts of her align with her child’s need” (Segal, 2004, p. 38) she warns of ensuing problems when this connection falters: The baby conveys feelings to the mother: feelings of contentment, of interest in the world, or of some kind of pain or discomfort. The mother responds to the baby’s feelings as well as bringing her own emotional state to the interaction; she may feel wonderful when her baby is obviously happy and contented, and feel a strong need to do something when the baby is not. (Segal, 2004, p. 38, emphasis in original) Subsequent encounters demonstrate that Barbara is unable to sustain her mothering through a reliance on these defences and that she must instead confront the reality of her mothering. Barbara’s experience with breast feeding and the Milk Club demonstrates the interaction between the mother’s external and inner life as the impact of the social environment on the young mother’s life become apparent. Klein’s thinking of the tenacious experiences of rigidity, the splitting of hating and loving feelings and the defences and anxieties that pervade the infant’s experience of the persecutory paranoid-schizoid position informs an understanding of the mother’s experience. These notions manifest in A Happy Event through an adherence to the maternal ideal and are anathema to fulfilling and reparative experiences of mothering and, as such, the language of maternal love which I am formulating. The language encourages a thoughtful engagement with the maternal ideal, rather than a blind adherence to it, as a way to understand the mother’s experiences and her movements towards the depressive position of synthesis and a lesser reliance on defences.

Integration of loving and hating feelings: hallmarks of the depressive position The mother’s synthesis of her loving and hating feelings can be understood through Klein’s thinking about the infant’s psychic movement from part-objects in the persecutory paranoid-schizoid position towards whole objects in the depressive position. The infant cannot endure these persecutory sensations indefinitely as they prompt a fantasised fear for him that he is responsible for losing and destroying the one that he loves, that is, his mother. These conf lictual feelings become a source of both anguish and renewal for the infant, as “these feelings of

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guilt and distress now enter as a new element into the emotion of love” (Klein, 1984, p. 311). To seek relief from his anxieties the infant unconsciously seeks to repair the harm that he has inf licted on his mother which prompts movement towards the depressive position (Klein, 1984). This transition invites “the welding together of the different parts of the self ” (Klein, 1997, p. 274), as feelings of both love and hatred are integrated and “contrasting aspects of the objects and the conf licting feelings, impulses and phantasies towards it, come closer together in the infant’s mind” (Klein, 1997, p. 35). While a new and less intense form of anxiety accompanies this synthesis, a fear is inspired for the infant that his good object will be endangered. As the infant’s loving feelings prevail over his destructive impulses a dynamic occurs inspiring reparation in which “the drive to restore and make good” (Klein, 1984, p. 334) is accompanied by the loss, consequent restoration and integration of the good internal object. A psychic transformation occurs for the infant as he transitions from “crude binary, black-and-white phantasies of love and hate in relation to part-objects” (Minsky, 1998, p. 41) in the paranoid-schizoid position, towards a more evolved and realistic understanding, characteristic of the depressive position. The infant’s anxieties lessen in quantity as “depressive anxiety gains the ascendency over persecutory anxiety” (Klein, 1997, p. 35) and the defences that typify the depressive position which are “less violent than those of the paranoid-schizoid position” (Minsky, 1998, p. 41), are secured in an attempt to avert painful feelings of loss from reaching consciousness. The infant cultivates the ability to integrate his feelings, as he is able to perceive that his mother is a complete person and to identify with her more fully and to develop a “more stable relation with her” (Klein, 1997, p. 35). Klein maintains that reparation is a process which the infant embarks upon to “heal these imaginary injuries” (1984, p. 341) that he has inf licted on his mother. Reparation, which “creatively constructs and repairs” (Minsky, 1998, p. 41), is “an essential part of the ability to love” (Klein, 1984, p. 342), as it allows the infant to accept love from, and to give love to others. Reparation is linked closely to loss and mourning which provoke pain and suffering. Mourning is a transformative process which permits difficulties to be overcome as feelings of love are secured together with a belief in the continuation of life inside and outside. This evokes the notion of hope, which is consistent with the infant’s developing belief that “his ‘good’ objects . . . can be saved and preserved” (Klein, 1984, p.  34). As the infant’s loving feelings struggle with and prevail over the hating ones, an inner mental representation of the good object is created and sustained while cycles of projection of good feelings are incited. However, Klein warns that integration occurs step by step and is likely “to be disturbed under internal and external pressure; and this remains true throughout life” (1997, p. 302).

Barbara’s integration and renewal Barbara subsequently demonstrates an ability to integrate her feelings of love and hate as she embraces a more authentic version of mothering. A movement towards the depressive position occurs as Barbara experiences a decreased

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reliance on defences, which is indicated by a less idealised vision of her daughter together with a lapsed affiliation with the Milk Club. Barbara becomes more willing to risk f lexibility and experiences of synthesis, which are characteristic of Klein’s depressive position, as she begins to develop the capacity to hold all her parts, including her loving and hating feelings towards Lea, rather than expelling or splitting them. This allows her to connect more fully with her feelings about being a mother and the losses and gains that this means for her, which elicit experiences of maternal reparation and renewal. The young mother experiences a crucial moment of reckoning as she recognises that she needs time away to process the changes mothering has imposed on her. Her maternal feelings of disintegration and deep despair are attended by an eruption and f low of emotion, which suspend her previous rigidity and force a reversal for her. It becomes apparent to her that her loyalty to the Milk Club, with its expectations and pressures, has become a corrosive force for her. Rather than a productive and ref lective dynamic which relies on an engagement with real feelings, the mores of the Milk Club promote an idealised maternal experience. Ultimately Barbara begins to access f lexibility and a capacity to hold her diverse parts, including her loving and hating emotions towards Lea, rather than expelling or splitting them. This allows her to connect more fully with her feelings about being a mother and what the losses and gains mean for her, which invites experiences of reparation and renewal. This indicates that she may be ready to name and struggle in a new way with her difficulties which would secure a new way for her to mother and to restore equilibrium, as she begins to reconcile her personal needs with those demanded by caring for her infant. This transformation is signalled by Barbara’s choice to leave her daughter in her partner’s care, her lapsed affiliation with the Milk Club, and the development of a less idealised vision of her daughter. Barbara’s struggles with experiences of despair and loss together with f low, hope and reparation are typical of mothering and are an endemic component of the language of love that I am shaping, as the mother’s loving and hating feelings are able to realise some integration.

Barbara’s epiphany The interaction of Barbara’s past mothering encounters, together with her time in her mother’s home, are reconciled in the following scenes as she experiences an epiphany about her life. Barbara moves from a previous experience of indigestion where she is overwhelmed and unable to tolerate her mothering towards an acceptance and a forgiveness of herself and others. A period of reparation and f low begins at her mother’s house as she realises that the defences that she has previously relied on in her mothering are faltering. Her wavering obedience to the Milk Club is demonstrated by a conversation that she has with a friend in a fashionable bar one night during her stay at her mother’s home. Barbara is pondering her personal and cultural expectations about mothering. She poses rhetorical

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questions about a mother’s right to complain or to be unhappy, given that mothering is meant to be a beautiful experience, to which her friend responds, that these words are only theory. By posing questions rather than statements Barbara is betraying her uncertainty and some inner conf lict about her expectations and her reality, while equally demonstrating a willingness to engage more freely about the truth of her maternal experience, which offers a potential for maternal transformation. However this exchange also challenges Barbara’s capacity to embrace the necessary change and the significant chaos and losses that it would entail by discarding her reliance on theory and ideals and replacing it with more authentic life pursuits. Finally, Barbara confronts the startling revelation that the rigid principles that have guided her mothering up to this time, which are grounded in obedience to strict ideals, are failing her. This is symbolised by her decision to abandon her theoretical doctoral thesis and to replace it by writing a novel about her actual maternal experiences and marks her newfound capacity to recognise the hateful and loving parts of herself. This productive experience is a form of maternal pain in which she names her losses, which signals a reparation, and contrasts with her previous experiences of persecutory anxiety which relies on rigidity and impedes transformation. By writing a novel, Barbara communicates a wish to rely on her own maternal experience and her readiness to embrace and integrate both the joy and the challenges, which are the reconciliation of her loving and the hating feelings that wise mothering invites. This indicates that, despite her pain, Barbara has learnt from her struggles that she can endure and resolve difficulties. In the last scene at her mother’s home a softness and an inner reconciliation are suggested as Barbara holds Lea’s blanket in her hand. This f luidity is continued as Barbara voices the dramatic change that mothering imposed on her as she admits that her life was turned upside down. The last moments of the film are a testament to the integration of her loving and hating feelings, that is, her ambivalence. As she is waiting to meet her partner and Lea in a familiar cafe at nightfall with snow falling outside, she acknowledges to herself that her daughter drove her into the corner and forced her beyond her limits. This is followed by a pause as Barbara grasps at her chest and begins to breathe quite heavily. She waits and looks outside through the window. The camera then moves to the bathroom; Barbara is washing her face at a basin. Through her tears she is able to enunciate and reconcile the reality that mothering demands a connection with deep and often conf licting experiences, such as sacrifice, tenderness and abandonment, while eliciting dislocation and transformation. These words return to the core notion of this book and exemplify the familiar maternal experience of being pushed to the limits by one’s child and then experiencing hating feelings which are mediated and turned into feelings of maternal love. Barbara exemplifies a mother’s capacity to endure the pain of hateful feelings, which by embracing f low and her personal truth, enriches her experience and enables her transformation and forms an integral part of the developing language of love.

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First-hand maternal experiences of repair I draw on several first-hand experiences to continue to explore the mother’s loving and hating feelings and to argue that the latter, which are inspired by maternal struggle and pain, are a valuable and conciliatory part of her maternal love. Mothering demands that the mother is attentive to both her own, and her child’s needs, a dynamic more complex than that belonging solely to the mother and sourced in a vast range of maternal emotions, affected by, and influencing, multiple daily interactions with her child in the context of a particular culture with its mores. The mother’s personal history and her phantasies contribute to her experience of her internal objects, which is subject to memories from and feelings about her earlier relationships, notably those with her own mother. Her mothering is also affected by her current emotional and physical situation. All these emotions can become blended, confused and reignited in her current interaction with her infant as anxieties, fears, and loving feelings are intensified in their close and interdependent relationship. While the mother experiences her inner world as containing loving and hateful elements, her feelings of maternal ambivalence often perplex her and leave her at a loss as to how to comprehend and accept them. These extra complications require the mother to be mindful of her own and her child’s needs—and her feelings about the demands placed on her. This promotes a perpetual struggle for the mother as her feelings of hatred endure and are transformed into her maternal love. Klein’s ideas bring to mind a story about a mother’s experience with her daughter. While the mother and daughter had a close relationship when the daughter was young, problematic interactions emerged in the daughter’s teenage years and unfolded, ultimately as an enriching experience. During the daughter’s early years, a f luidity prevailed between them, and the mother experienced pleasure in their interaction as she used identification as a source of learning about her daughter and as a way to promote effective communication and an understanding between them. However, in her daughter’s teenage years, the mother’s intransigent need for her daughter’s academic achievement, which was sourced in an identification with her, undermines her ability to engage with her daughter in a fuller sense. As the daughter reached her teenage years, the mother became increasingly frustrated and concerned at her daughter’s disinterest in her schoolwork. Their previous closeness was compromised as the mother’s hopes for her daughter’s good grades began to interfere with the rhythm between them. The mother’s fervent hope for her daughter’s academic excellence obstructed a full understanding of her daughter and provoked a rigidity which permeated their relationship. Their interaction was marred by defences, which surfaced in the mother’s reactions to her daughter. Segal describes a circular process between mother and infant in which the “baby responds to the mother’s state, and may feel his or her own emotional state reinforced, modified or broken by the mother” (2004, p.  38). In their ongoing communications, a fragmented interaction emerged between the mother and daughter which was buttressed by defences. This dynamic is

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consistent with Klein’s rigid paranoid-schizoid of part-objects, and it obstructed the mother’s engagement with her daughter and an understanding of, and curiosity about, her daughter’s experiences and needs. In this relationship, the mother’s reliance on part-objects affected her ability to respect and encourage her child’s difference and limited her to seeing her daughter as merely an extension of herself. The mother had difficulty managing her own disappointments, which were manifest in her daughter’s mediocre academic achievement. Her inability to understand her daughter emerged in the mother’s routinely harsh and thoughtless reactions and criticisms of the girl. The mother’s responses to her daughter were based on reactions fuelled by the mother’s own expectations and exacerbated by her difficulties in remaining adult in her interaction with her daughter, which was fundamental to their developing relationship. Segal’s work elucidates the importance of the mother’s understanding of the way that her own internal dynamic affects her child. She states that the mother’s capacity to identify with her child can further her understanding of her child provided that her “denial or dislike of the ‘baby’ parts of herself is not too powerful” (2004, p.  38). Segal continues this discussion by warning of problems that may ensue if the mother uses defensive projections to disown parts of herself by expelling them into her child or if her identification with her child provokes unresolved issues for her which may overwhelm or disturb her. The mother was struggling with some psychic issues at this time, which urged her to rely on rigid defences rather than developing and perpetuating a f luid relationship with her daughter that would promote her awareness and understanding of their relationship. While this example focuses on the mother’s problems with her daughter’s academic performance, the mother was also navigating issues related to her daughter’s separation from her. Segal’s work on the unconscious communications between an infant and her mother is helpful in understanding the difficulties that the mother experienced as she negotiated the emerging differences between herself and her daughter. Segal comments on the importance of the mother being aware of and upholding her child’s difference and separateness: True caring and sharing in adult life depend on the satisfactory negotiation of the pain and anxieties of the depressive position: tolerance of jealousy and separateness rather than a furiously destructive reaction to them which attacks love or the loved person. In order to be able to care and share, others have to be seen as human beings with their own characteristics, rather than simply parts of the self. Parts of the self as well as parts of earlier loved objects continue throughout life to be invested in others; as these parts become less idealised . . . and less monstrous, the need to deny them so totally in the self lessens. (Segal, 2004, p. 43) After a period of personal pain and struggle, the mother was able to begin to repair and transform the relationship with her daughter. She was able to understand

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that her reliance on rigid defences had provoked a harshness in her which had affected her relationship with her daughter by obstructing the movement of feelings between them. The mother began to realise that her own needs for academic merit were being confused with her daughter’s experiences and that her rigid expectations were impeding the f low of love between them. This unfolded in feelings of confusion for the mother as she was unsure how to develop a new relationship with her daughter. As a result, the mother avoided conf lict with her daughter, which provoked further difficulties. According to Klein: balance does not mean the avoidance of conf lict; it implies the strength to live through painful emotions and to cope with them. If painful emotions are excessively split off, this restricts the personality and leads to inhibitions of various kinds. (Klein, 1997, p. 270) The mother recognised that she had been functioning on a f lawed premise that evaded the reality of her feelings of hatred and resentment towards her child and towards herself for having those feelings. This recalls Parker’s statement about the mother’s difficulty in reconciling her hateful feelings for the one she loves absolutely (2005, p. 22). I argue that this reliance on division infiltrates the mother’s version of herself and her child as she perceives others as “cut-up people” (Segal, 2004, p. 44), rather than whole, which undermines the motherand-child relationship by prohibiting a more authentic and dynamic perception of reality. Ultimately, the mother recognises her daughter’s willingness to stay at school and complete her final examinations as a potent signal of achievement, which represents a fuller and more reliable view of the teenager’s reality. Parker (2005) posits that the depressive position heralds the mother’s capacity to reconcile her hopes and expectations with reality and to forge a distinction in her mind between herself and her child. The mother’s anxieties, fears and loving feelings are intensified in the close and interdependent relationship that she has with her child as a tolerable separation between them enables a movement away from a rigid position towards a more evolved experience of, and balance between, closeness and distance in the f luid depressive position. This movement towards the depressive position signals the individual’s ability to “bear pain, regret, guilt, and shame rather than to get rid of it” (Symington & Symington, 1996, p. 79), which is aligned with the mother’s acceptance of diverse feelings. As the mother is able to begin to integrate her loving and hating feelings, a reparation and transformation emerges in their relationship, and a f luidity marks many of their interactions, rather than the former severity which was unsustainable. By struggling with her maternal hating feelings and recognising that her moralising was undermining their relationship, the mother was able to repair and renew her connection with her daughter. This resulted in a cyclical relationship as feelings of satisfaction generated from good internal objects were maintained.

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The mother’s ability to tolerate and acknowledge both her hating and loving feelings can cultivate transformation and vitality in her mothering. Parker insists that conf licts that are generated by maternal ambivalence, in which guilt and anxiety have a prominent place, are potentially creative as the ability to repair ushers in creativity. A connection secures the mother’s inner good object as she struggles to preserve an engagement with her child that defies deadness and disconnection as she assembles an inner vitality that precludes indifference and inspires a future of hope and regeneration. The maternal experience of indifference is aligned with the paranoid-schizoid position and secures the mother in her persecutory anxieties as she splits her feelings between loving and hating. This impedes hope and the possibility of maternal growth and transformation. The mother’s movement towards the depressive position, despite painful experiences of loss and mourning, impedes indifference and invites connection and change through transformative maternal experiences. The importance of maintaining the struggle through capacities of connection and self-ref lection rather than submitting to indifference informs the language of maternal love and its transformative potential.

Maternal synthesis of love and hate in the depressive position: loss and restitution The mother’s engagement with her diverse feelings, including those of love and hatred, incite maternal conf lict and loss. These encounters can however be ultimately reparative and can mitigate maternal feelings of hatred by inspiring the mother’s good internal object as they summon new ways for her to tolerate and transform her experiences. This is distinct from experiences of persecutory anxiety, such as those exemplified in the discussion of the maternal ideal, which divide the mother’s loving and hating feelings and obstruct the potential for loss and repair. The mother’s possession of a good internal object relies on her ability to both internalise and to give out goodness as she struggles with persecutory anxieties. The supremacy of the good object is connected with the mother’s satisfaction in her mothering and her ability to adapt to her child’s growth and to accept change as she summons new ways to tolerate and transform her experiences. These anxieties, which are deeply affected by the way that she was mothered herself, surface in the mother in expressions such as doubt and guilt and impact the state of her own internal objects and, consequently, how she mothers. While primitive anxieties from “injured and destroyed objects—about a shattered inner world” ( Klein, 1997, p.  77) are often stimulated again by childbirth and mothering, the mother’s capacity to re-introject her good internal object reduces her persecutory anxiety (Klein, 1997, p. 69) and generates a shift towards the depressive position. An understanding of the losses provoked in mothering is elicited through Klein’s thinking on the depressive position, as experiences of mourning and subsequent reparation allow the mother’s internal goodness to prevail over her destructive sensations. The safety of her inner good object relies on the mother’s ability to mitigate the inner chaos that is prompted in the conf lict that arises

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between her feelings of love and hate. This struggle will involve, as Klein suggests, intense experiences of feelings and grief with instances of despair and love sitting together as “the lost loved object can be preserved within”—and, despite this suffering, life prevails and these feelings can be productive (1984, p. 360). Klein’s description of mourning echoes the process that occurs for the mother as she faces the chaos and turmoil provoked by her troublesome feelings towards her child and the subsequent retrieval of the good object. The mourning entails an experience in which the internal objects—constituting “love, goodness, and security”—are felt to be lost (Klein, 1984, p.  345) and the inner turmoil that takes place in a mourner’s unconscious when he feels that an actual loss is compounded by a perceived loss of his internal good objects: The poignancy of the actual loss of a loved person is, in my view, greatly increased by the mourner’s unconscious phantasies of having lost his internal ‘good’ objects as well. He then feels that his internal ‘bad’ objects predominate and his inner world is in danger of disruption. (Klein, 1984, p. 353, emphasis in original) While the actual experience of death is not explored in this book, the processes involved in bereavement and the subsequent mourning mirror the feelings of loss that are encountered in mothering. The importance of recognising and sustaining the presence of an internal good object is central to the thinking of Klein and is also expressed in Segal’s work (2004). For Klein, the affirming consequence of encounters with grief can be reconciled through a faith that the inner good object can be retrieved and the conviction that despite the loss of the loved object its good qualities and the loving feelings connected with it can endure. Segal claims that the experience of “loving and losing caring and cared-for people is crucial to the development of a resilient and strong internal good object” (2004, p.  46). She continues that the value and existence of an internal good object is aligned with both caring and feeling cared for, and the belief in the presence of a loving self and an ability to “love without destroying” while withstanding the pain of grief (Segal, 2004, p.  47). This fuels the resilience of the object and a confidence that feelings of love can be upheld which ensures its inner continuity and the presence of the good object. The individual with an inner representation the good object is more able to manage this struggle with loss and bereavement because a dynamic is provoked in the depressive position in which underlying fears and anxieties are stimulated together with the desire for reparation. Klein reasons that pining for the loved object is a life-preserving and inspiring creative force (1984, p. 360), which returns to the notions of hope and reparation: If greater security in the inner world is gradually regained, and feelings and inner objects are therefore allowed to come more to life again, re-creative processes can set in, and hope return. (Klein, 1984, pp. 359–360)

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Segal’s words “Children need adults who care for them if they are to maintain a belief that ‘inside me I can feel she still loves me’” (2004, p. 47) express the embodiment of the internal good object in which the presence of feelings of love ground and nourish the child. I draw on this to understand the mother’s experience of her own internal good object, as her experiences of love thrive and are transmitted to her child. This thinking links with the language of maternal love I am developing as struggles with feelings of hatred towards her child stimulate the mother’s loving feelings, and the enriching and sustaining power of her internal good object, which signifies both experiences of loss and restitution.

Hopefulness, fluidity, forgiveness and repair: markers of internal good object Securing hopefulness in the face of losses, difficulty and conf lict is a preserving force which is central to the experience of mothering, while “a good relation to ourselves is a condition for love, tolerance and wisdom towards others” ( Klein, 1984, p. 342). Hopefulness for the future is linked with the good internal object and its capacity to infiltrate and uphold a relationship between mother and child as they experience loss, struggle, and ultimate reparation and forgiveness. The f luidity that the notions of hope and forgiveness demand is instrumental in the management of the mother’s feelings and her ability to remain positive and buoyant in the interactions with her child. The mother, by accessing her own internal good object, is able to regulate her feelings of love and hatred so that “hatred has receded and love is freed” (Klein, 1984, p.  360). Klein’s insistence that there must be “recurrent experiences of love surmounting hatred” (1997, p. 36) and a synthesis of diverse experience for integration to occur adds to an understanding of mothering as a process in which the mother sustains her inner good object despite her everyday maternal difficulties. Klein’s reference to the child’s “belief and trust in his capacity to love, in his reparative powers and in the integration and security of his good inner world” (1984, p. 353) returns to the mother’s realisation of her internal good object as notions of love, repair, security and integration, signifies the onset of the depressive position. Integration provokes a process in which the mother’s awareness of herself: as a more whole, loving, and hating being can also begin. Conf licts between different parts of the self are no longer solved by splitting and pushing those parts into others, including the good object itself, but by holding them within the self. (Segal, 2004, p. 41) More f luid and integrated mothering result from experiences of self-forgiveness and reparation which allow the mother to develop a more realistic and compassionate attitude towards herself and her child. Hess attests to the development

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of a forgiving internal object, which liberates the mother to forgive others as well as herself (1999, p. 131). As a less severe image of herself unfolds the mother also becomes more adept at managing her internal and external struggles which prompts the circulation of further loving feelings. Experiences of loss and reparation, which “attempts to repair not deny” (Craib, 2001, p. 77), together with forgiveness and compassion promote the restoration of the mother’s internal good object as loving feelings prevail over her hating emotions.

The story of a hospital stay This discussion of forgiveness, repair and the emotional shift between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions is illustrated in an experience between a mother and her 12-year-old son as the mother accesses new ways of preserving a relationship with him. The boy’s complaints about severe stomach aches led to his admission to hospital. After a few days, the doctor was unable to find anything wrong with him, and he was discharged. He later admitted that he had feigned the stomach aches because he had a school assignment due. Initially, her child’s admission provoked a vacillation for the mother between her hating and loving feelings, as she experienced both anger at his deception and relief that he was not sick. The shift in her psychic movement towards the depressive position was marked by her initial feelings of frustration, which are indicative of her persecutory feelings in the paranoid-schizoid position, while her feelings of relief are an indication of the depressive position. Segal considers that a shift towards the depressive position indicates a change in the nature of guilt as an ability to experience concern emerges: As the depressive position evolves and the persecutory elements in the superego diminish, so guilt becomes less persecutory and gradually becomes a realistic concern for the fate of one’s objects, external and internal, and it loses its punitive aspect. (Segal, 1989, p. 132) There is a distinction in the manifestation of guilt, which is helpful in understanding the mother’s experience. While guilt is present in the paranoid-schizoid position, it is subordinate to experiences of persecutory anxiety and remains largely hidden. In the persecutory position, feelings of guilt are paralysed as the mother resorts to defences. Minsky postulates that in the depressive position “the pain of guilt has replaced the absence of guilt involved in hate or blame” (1998, p.  42). The mother may deny her anger and feelings and project her feelings of blame and anger outward to her child or inward to herself. Minsky describes this latter experience as emotional pain which “is induced by guilt caused by anger turned against the self rather than, as before, against someone in the external world” (1998, p.  42, emphasis in original). The mother is unable to process and explore her hateful feelings towards her child in the persecutory paranoid-schizoid position.

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The conf lict between her loving and hating feelings provokes the mother to search for new ways to inspire and sustain her engagement with her son. This is demonstrated by the mother’s attempts to understand her son’s admission, which provoked feelings of both outrage in her and blame towards her son for “what he has put me through”. As time passed, this divided reaction transformed into an attempt by the mother to explore her feelings in a more complete way and to realise that, while attention to school rules were uppermost for the mother, her son’s experience was different and no less valid than her own. Segal refers to the presence of depressive anxieties and feelings as presenting the mother with the possibility to work through her depressive pain towards “further growth and development” (1989, p. 136). The mother’s ability to uphold her loving over her hateful feelings ensured that her love for her son was reaffirmed, together with the re-establishment of her good internal object. The mother’s ability to engage and struggle with her diverse feelings is aligned with an unconscious striving to internalise feelings of goodness and the realisation of her inner good object. According to Segal, creativity develops through the depressive position in which “experiences of guilt and loss in relation to the internal objects give rise to reparative urges to recreate internally and externally the lost internal objects” (1989, p. 134). The opportunity for transformation prevails when the mother can submit to and survive the emotional pain, including feelings of guilt and anxiety that the experience of mothering entails. The mother’s struggle to manage and understand her child and herself is accompanied by her need to make reparation. This prompted her ref lection about the meaning of the charade, it’s shocking and funny sides, and her attendant feelings of love and hatred. She also recognised that her son’s misdemeanour was not as serious as she had originally considered it to be, and she realised that she probably needed to relax and soften in her approach to him. I assert that in the depressive position, as the mother’s feelings of love and hate are merged, she is able to reconcile the valuable as well as persecutory qualities that both she and her child bear. Smith (1999) claims that movement towards the depressive position, together with reparation, propels the mother to repair the damage that she has inf licted on her internal objects, while relating to these objects as a whole. This is demonstrated as the mother incorporates the odious and amusing aspects of her son’s misdemeanour by limiting it to part of his experience rather than regarding it as an understanding of his whole behaviour. This signals the mother’s transition from reliance on part-objects to a fuller understanding, as she moves towards the depressive position. However, the mother is unable to secure the depressive position forever, as the maternal experience involves perennial challenges and pain, which provokes intermittent and continual movement back to the paranoid-schizoid position. Minsky states that the depressive position results in transformation through “emotional suffering . . . involved in owning all its feelings, including painful ones of vulnerability and anxiety, into one based on reality and the possibility of creative reparation and change” (1998, p. 42).

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The mother’s continual engagement in, rather than a denial of, her painful feelings, liberates her towards reparation and provides productive and new ways for her to connect with her child. This can result in a more authentic and dynamic mother-and-child relationship as she accepts, rather than denies, the diverse and unacceptable parts of herself and her child. Despite the pain and struggle that this experience brought, it also inspired a more relaxed atmosphere between the mother and her son, as she was able to forgive both his 12-year-old prank and her own intense feelings and reactions towards it. A transformed relationship developed between the woman and her son, which was marked by less maternal moralising, an increased trust and f luidity between them, and a hopefulness that their love would allow them to endure the future conf licts and anxieties which are part of the mother-and-child relationship. Through a movement towards the depressive position, the mother is able to access a wider range of feelings, including concern, guilt, and hope, as a result of reparative and transformative engagement with loss. While her experiences of pain and loss are a prominent and reparative feature of the depressive position, this position also fosters feelings of hope and forgiveness. Klein suggests that the ability to hope, which is reliant on the preservation of the good inner object, keeps away despair, which arises “out of feelings of guilt” (1984, p.  342). While the mother may attempt to avoid future encounters with feelings of guilt and anxiety, this is futile, as they are essential aspects of mothering. The presence of hope, tenacity, and a willingness to change and to examine her relationship with her child in a reparative and non-judgemental way transformed their relationship. If the mother can tolerate and acknowledge both her hating and loving feelings, this can cultivate transformation and vitality in her mothering. Parker insists that conf licts that are generated by maternal ambivalence, in which guilt and anxiety have a prominent place, are potentially creative as the ability to repair ushers in creativity. A connection secures the mother’s inner good object as she struggles to preserve an engagement with her child that defies deadness and disconnection as she assembles an inner vitality that precludes indifference and inspires a future of hope and regeneration. The maternal experience of indifference is aligned with the paranoid-schizoid position and secures the mother in her persecutory anxieties as she splits her feelings between loving and hating. This impedes hope and the possibility of maternal growth and transformation. Her movement towards the depressive position, despite painful experiences of loss and mourning, impedes indifference and invites connection and change through transformative maternal experiences. Klein’s nomination of the internal good object and its link with the regenerative notions of maternal repair, hopefulness, compassion and forgiveness in the context of maternal loss and struggle contribute to the formulation of the language of love. Her articulation of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions and the persistent movement between them together with the anxieties, defences and relief they bring, illuminate the mother’s everyday concerns and conf licts that both pervade and can transform her maternal experience.

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Maternal suffering The experience of maternal struggle is a recurring theme which is addressed in this book through the work of the theoretical thinkers and cinematic and first-hand examples. It is a complicated notion which warrants deep ref lection regarding the most appropriate way to enunciate the difficulties that occur in the mother’s daily life. The notion of struggle is advanced by an examination of the idea and meaning of suffering which offers a nuanced approach to an understanding of the maternal experience. Suffering is defined as “to endure patiently or bravely . . . to undergo, experience, or be subjected to (pain, distress, injury, loss, or anything unpleasant) . . . to tolerate or allow” (Macquarie Dictionary, 2001). These words and their semantics are a robust reminder of the experience of mothering. As already mentioned in this book the terms suffering, patience and passion share an etymological root, pati (Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, 1951), which embodies the maternal experience, and the definition of endure, “to bear without resistance or with patience” (Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2020, June 18, 2020), return to the mother’s ability to physically and emotionally bear her children. In addition to this link with language, Klein’s work informs a deep understanding of the dynamics of suffering in its explication of the depressive position as a productive and f luid experience in which feelings of grief and despair are released and then mediated as feelings of love prevail, whereas the paranoid-schizoid position is one of paralysis and obstruction. These positions can be adapted to the experience of suffering in which the f low and healing of the depressive position merits its nomination as transformative suffering and the static and defended encounters of the paranoid schizoid position are fitting to experiences of passive suffering. Maternal suffering, which is linked with f luidity and acceptance rather than with an adherence to hindrances and defences, is transformative and corresponds with the realisation of deep emotional change and maternal wisdom which will be further explored in Bion’s and Symington’s thinking in the next chapter. By devising these positions and examining the damaging role of defences, Klein’s work continues to foster further examination of the importance of maternal f luidity as opposed to the perils of indifference, and experiences of hope, loss, compassion and reparation and the transformative possibilities of maternal suffering. These notions contribute to the cultivation of the maternal language of love and wisdom.

Maternal suffering in the film We Need to Talk About Kevin The film We Need to Talk About Kevin demonstrates the experiences of a mother, Eva, who despite enduring feelings of extreme maternal hatred, is able to secure and transform her hating feelings into nourishing feelings of love for her son. While Eva’s shocking circumstances eclipse the ordinary struggles that mark everyday mothering, she is able to eventually reshape a new physic connection

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with her son that defies indifference and promotes a synthesis between her loving and hating feelings as in Klein’s depressive position. Eva initially encounters what can be described as a rigid experience of passive suffering, which is exacerbated by her encounters with external and internal judgement, before intense experiences of maternal hatred loss, grief and reparation are reworked into transformative suffering. Her encounters fuel a curiosity about a puzzling maternal energy that moves a mother, in the face of extraordinary circumstances to endure colossal pain and feelings of maternal hatred as she manages to sustain loving feelings for her child. The film reveals how Eva is propelled through experiences of terror, frustration and despair and is forced to abandon her defences, as her feelings of love for her child prevail over her feelings of hatred despite his escalating abhorrent behaviour. Kevin is an extremely bright but very troubled teenager, who embarks on a series of violent acts, pronounced by carrying out a deadly massacre at his high school and the murder of his father and sister at their home, as his sixteenth birthday approaches. This marks a colossal psychic change for Eva as she relinquishes her rigid mothering, mourns and abandons her old life and adjusts to her new existence. The story of Eva’s past and present life is presented as a series of vivid intermittent f lashbacks which are randomly interspersed throughout the film and bind it together while returning to the reality that a mother’s life is composed of real experiences and her imaginings and memories.

Before the massacre: rigid persecutory paranoid-schizoid position Eva’s mothering can be understood by dividing it into two parts: her maternal experiences preceding and following the massacre. Before the massacre Eva was driven by rigid and partial views of herself and her son which aligns with Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position. Their connection is marked by mutual difficulties as Kevin’s increasingly strange and unsettling behaviour is accompanied by Eva’s inf lexible mothering and unreasonable expectations of herself and her son. A growing dynamic of shame, guilt and helplessness progressively ties her more intensely to her persecutory anxieties. While Eva is aware that there is something amiss in her relationship with her son she f luctuates between feelings of frustration, blaming herself for failing as a mother, and wondering if Kevin is emotionally disturbed or whether he is simply precocious and scheming. On a few occasions Eva experiences a momentary shift in her mothering as there is a softening between them, however these incidents are sparse and she struggles to both discover and maintain an inner image of herself as a good mother. Caring for Kevin and his contemptuous and unruly behaviour represents a challenge to Eva’s neat orderly self and her expectations that he would be loving, ordered and submissive which promotes her maternal feelings of hatred. Turrini and Mendell’s description (1995, p. 101) in Chapter 2 of the dirtiness, hostilities and hatreds that caring involves at a physical and emotional level, and the way that it can defy a mother’s internal

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image of herself while provoking feelings of ambivalence, articulates the vice that Eva constantly finds herself in. Eva’s relationship with Kevin prior to the massacre, with a few momentary exceptions, is replete with incidences of persecutory anxiety, as her awareness of her feelings of disillusionment and accompanying feelings of maternal hatred is palpable. The film depicts Eva as being removed and confused about her position in the context of the other visibly animated and excited mothers-to-be in her pre-natal classes before Kevin’s birth. Eva possesses a blank stare as she sits up in the hospital after the birth as her husband, Frank, cradles the baby in his arms. In the apartment in the city she is unable to soothe her screaming baby or hold him close to her. In one instant she is so distraught that she resorts to putting Kevin’s pram next to a drill in a city street to drown out his screams. After moving to a large home in the suburbs Eva’s rigidity is expressed in the fastidious way that she keeps her family home and a difficulty with dirt and messiness and childhood mayhem. Kevin’s diapers are arranged perfectly in a row in his bedroom and the house is organised and uncluttered. Eva’s play with him is depicted as monotonous and intellectual and lacking mutual laughter, enjoyment and curiosity. In one game Eva challenges Kevin who is about 4 years old to count up to a certain number, which he does intermittently, while at other times refusing to comply with her wishes and extending a glowering and knowing stare at her. Eva is unable to entertain the idea that her youngster may be playing his own game with her; rather, his perceived defiance infuriates and paralyses her as she is further embedded in her inf lexibility. While these examples may not be unusual in themselves, they precede a dynamic in which a rhythm and fit between Eva and Kevin is not realised in most instances during his toddlerhood, boyhood and his teenage years. Eva’s intractability tampers with her ability to engage truthfully with her hateful feelings as her reliance on rigidity and order contradicts her psychic chaos. Over time Eva is increasingly unable to maintain her composure and she loses her temper with Kevin which generates a cycle of guilt and self-reproach which Kevin uses to his advantage. In one instance Eva becomes very distressed and frustrated with Kevin, who is about 5 years old and still in diapers. Kevin seems to be able to control his sphincter muscle, and, on this occasion, he deliberately soils his diaper immediately after Eva changes him. Eva puts him roughly on the table to change his diaper for the second time, he stares at her smugly and she is so furious that she pushes him down on the ground and breaks his arm accidentally. Unfortunately, she is too ashamed to tell her husband Frank the truth so she colludes with Kevin’s story that he fell off the change table. By revealing the truth of her feelings of anger and frustration and the difficulties of her mothering Eva would expose herself as a bad mother which is anathema to her personal and social vision of herself. Instead Eva complies with the ideal of the mother who is unable to seek help for fear she will be labelled as a failure so she allows this opportunity for help to pass. This incident and the lie cement Kevin’s power over his mother which is evident in the next scene. Kevin and Eva are driving home

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from school when the usual silence of the car ride is broken as she tells him that she wants to stop off at the store. He demands that they go straight home and she accedes to his command, which portrays the power imbalance between them and her inability to impose limits on him. The shame and guilt, together with the frustrations and momentary feelings of hatred that puncture Eva’s daily life, reveal difficulties that are endemic to daily hands-on mothering. Despite these difficulties this early relationship of inf lexibility is abandoned a few times in Kevin’s early years. On one occasion, when Kevin is about 9 years old, Eva finds him lying on the f loor motionless outside his bedroom. She is alarmed and she attends to him in a caring way. He apologises to Eva for vomiting and she cleans him up in an attentive way and tells him not to worry. He allows her to care for him and to read to him in bed. She hugs him with compassion, tenderness and love and a connection between them is evident at this time. Kevin resents his father’s interference in their space which is unusual. However, this engagement is short-lived and by the next day when Kevin is better he begins to reject her again. While this incident offers a momentary connection and a respite to Eva’s faltering internal object, it is insufficient to generate and maintain feelings of internal goodness for her. As Kevin enters adolescence the situation intensifies as he continues to taunt and scheme against his mother which fuels her feelings of hatred and helplessness. Eva continues to make futile attempts to control Kevin, rather than trying to engage with him on his level and to understand his feelings. The alliance between Kevin and his father deepens as Frank is relaxed with him and they share activities such as frenzied competition between handheld television games and archery. Eva struggles to relate to the latter. Eva and Kevin’s car rides together continue to be silent but she attempts to reach out to him. There is a particular scene when Kevin is about to turn fifteen and Eva invites him to come out with her to celebrate his birthday. Their rivalrous dynamic continues as they go to play mini-golf. Kevin accuses her of being judgemental about people who overeat and are fat, which is most likely a thinly disguised barb about how Eva judges him. Eva wins the golf match and is self-satisfied about her victory which provokes rivalry and resentment in Kevin. Their dinner plans are thwarted because Kevin devours a chicken before they go out and then refuses to eat at the restaurant. As she eats, Eva asks Kevin inane questions about school, and Kevin accuses her of not asking him about things like music bands and girls which are of interest to him. He continues to berate her by saying that she drinks too much and he ridicules this outing as being her idea of registering some quality time with him. Kevin is suggesting that Eva is scripted rather than natural in her mothering, and she is aware that his words contain some truth, which provokes further maternal feelings of resentment and helplessness, which she tries to hide unsuccessfully. This notion is returned to during a later discussion between them when Kevin is in prison. As he strokes the scar on his arm that resulted from her breaking his arm when he was young, he tells her that was the most honest thing that she ever did. While her fury and actions were unbearable to her, they were

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authentic and real to him, and could not be hidden. This incident illustrates that while this defence of reaction formation, which Eva used to try to conceal her unacceptable feelings of rage towards Kevin, made it easier for her to bear, for Kevin, like most children, it registered as an unsettling and false communication from his mother. Eva’s challenging circumstances are exacerbated by internal struggles that generate her collusion with the maternal ideal together with pressures emerging from external judgement. She is not reaching either social standards or her own expectations of the way that a mother should be and feel, which magnifies her doubts and failures about her mothering and compromises feelings of an internalised good object. In addition, Eva is unable to abandon her strict expectations of the correct way in which she believes Kevin should behave, which fastens her to inf lexible feelings of persecutory anxiety and prompts her feelings of frustration and resentment. A cycle of unrealistic and unmet expectations is generated between them which is devoid of f low and mutual acceptance as Eva adheres closely to the persecutory demands of her own internal rigid beliefs which are fuelled by her understanding of the maternal ideal, while Kevin disparages and outmanoeuvres her. This is reinforced by communications from her husband Frank who continually undermines Eva and alerts her to the shortcomings of her mothering, which is demonstrably rigid and uneasy, as opposed to his own effortlessness both in caring for, and relating to, Kevin. Eva’s difficulty in handling Kevin erodes her sense of herself and Frank exacerbates this by being condescending with her at times, chastising her and ignoring her concerns about their son. Frank refuses to countenance the possibility that Kevin is responsible for, or aware of the consequences of his actions, which compromises Eva’s position. Eva’s hateful feelings towards Kevin escalate when he is about fifteen and he begins to target his the assaults at his much younger sister, Celia. Eva is suspicious about Kevin’s role in the disappearance of Celia’s pet rabbit which ends up mangled in the kitchen waste disposal and when the girl loses one eye to an accident with bleach while Kevin was looking after her. While Eva is fearful about Kevin’s future actions she is still uncertain about whether her feelings about Kevin are right and whether he is evil or whether the accident is a string of coincidences, but she knows that she must protect Celia. In an exchange when Frank commands Eva to thank Kevin for calling an ambulance after Celia’s eye is burnt, the father continues to be blinded to his son and to minimise his wife’s feelings. Eva almost spits out her gratitude and then adds, with a tone of disgust, that Kevin was meant to be looking after his sister.

After the massacre: depressive position A process of deep mourning and loss occurs for Eva as she faces community scorn, an acceptance of her situation and a reworked self-image, following the massacre. The destruction of her former life prompts maternal transformation and an integration of her feelings of hatred and love for Kevin. Eva’s psychic

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state after the massacre is elucidated by Klein’s thinking as experiences of sorrow and loss transform towards forgiveness and reparation as she begins to soften and ref lect and to moralise less. She is forced to adjust to a totally new life, while she manages to survive each moment and its accompanying episodes of suffering and despair. The film shows her being mobbed on the court steps presumably after Kevin is sentenced and then trying to recommence her life in the shadow of his crime. She decides to remain in the community where she previously lived so she can be close to him and she is treated as a pariah. Her life consists of going to visit Kevin in prison, doing unskilled work in an office which is far removed from her previous career as a travel journalist, and seeking shelter and solace in her home. Eva’s new home mirrors her internal disarray as scenes of empty wine bottles, dirty plates and discarded pill bottles strewn over the f loor are interspersed with her attempts to clean and to put order into her dishevelled physical and emotional space. Flashbacks of meaningful and difficult memories of her past family life and the night of the massacre assault and possess her. They accompany her daily living and fuel her feelings of grief and pain by both haunting her and reminding her of what she has lost. The film regularly returns to images of Eva trying to scrub away red paint that was sprayed onto her house and car as she tries to physically and symbolically cleanse herself of the dirt and horror of the massacre and to restore something within herself. Her existence is distinct from her previous life and its reliance on defences which secured her and shielded her from her reality. Any semblance of inf lexibility and falseness is abandoned as she tries to absorb the shock of her new life. We Need to Talk About Kevin demonstrates the force of the maternal ideal as most of the local community hold Eva responsible for her son’s transgressions and Eva herself colludes with this narrative. Community fury and hatred against Eva in the film can be understood using Klein’s notions of defences and their link to the maternal ideal, as she becomes the repository of community hatred, scorn and fury against Kevin. Her decision to stay in the local area is a constant reminder of the pain of the massacre which provokes further communal hatred against her. Eva is identified as the murderer’s mother, who by association must also be a bad mother, because she raised an evil son which contradicts the maternal ideal of a good mother, who through her love and her self lessness nurtures decent children. In the film, hatred is projected into Eva by many community members including those who spray her house and car with red paint. In another instance Eva is physically and verbally attacked in the street by a woman and when a man comes to her assistance Eva refuses help. When Eva notices a mother of one of Kevin’s victims in the supermarket she hides from her. At the checkout, Eva’s whole carton of eggs is broken, and Eva, despite the cashier’s remonstrance, takes them as they are, and rushes out of the store. In another scene when some evangelists call at her door and ask Eva about her afterlife she responds that she is destined to go to hell which indicates that she sees herself as a condemned person. These instances demonstrate Eva’s shame and a view which she shares with the wider community that they are the victims and that

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she, as the mother, shares Kevin’s responsibility as the perpetrator of the crime. They are unable to consider that there may be other sides to her that do not align with this perception. There is one exception to this in the film when a young man in a wheelchair, wounded from the school massacre, surprises Eva on the street and asks her how she is. Eva is shocked and taken aback at this concern for her. Ironically Eva’s dedication and total focus on her son after the massacre transforms her into what society expects of her as a totally self less mother. Kevin’s arrest and imprisonment mark a time for Eva to process her losses and for some honesty between mother and son to emerge. In an early visit to Kevin in prison there is extreme tension between them as Eva stares at him while he slowly removes about six white objects, which look like teeth from his mouth. There is no verbal communication between them; Eva is void of reaction except the wringing and unwringing of her clasped hands as they lay in her lap. At another visit there is a similar dynamic as they both sit silently, with faces turned away from each other at opposite sides of a table. However, their arms are both resting on the same table, with Eva leaning on it with her hand and elbows, while Kevin rests his elbow is on it. This scene moves to another silent one in which Kevin stares at Eva but she averts her gaze from him. Eva endures these visits in an attempt to understand her son. This period of loss and grief for Eva merges towards a reconciliation for her as experiences of pain and suffering allow her to assemble her losses and to realise a f luid space of forgiveness and reparation. This is demonstrated in one of the last scenes in the film as Eva makes Kevin’s bed with care and folds the t-shirts that he wore just before the crime neatly and lovingly, amidst heart rendering and despairing sobs. This indicates her love and care for him and a possible hopefulness for the future, even if it exists purely in her mind. During one of the last scenes Eva pleads with Kevin to tell her why he carried out the massacre. He responds that while he used to know the answer, now he is not so sure. This exchange marks Eva’s softening towards Kevin as she notices some remorse for his actions in his words and pain in his uncertainty. This allows her to begin to process the past and to integrate her loving and hating feelings towards him and to repair. Her judgment lessens as she accepts the situation and the film illustrates the way that truthful mothering, in all its messiness and chaos and despite its impossibilities and challenges, can endure. Eva’s loving feelings ultimately prevail over her hating feelings, which marks an emergence of her good internal object.

A mother’s struggle against indifference Eva’s ability to maintain her visits to Kevin and to try to connect and understand him, marks her decision to emotionally claim him as her child as she defies the temptations to disconnect from him and the possibility of indifference. We Need to Talk About Kevin clarifies an understanding of the difference between hatred, which maintains connection and energy and is a source of maternal repair and transformation, as opposed to indifference, which marks a perforation

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which cannot be restored. As such, indifference rather than hatred is the opposite of love. This film supports Mann’s contention that indifference marks a fissure that is static and beyond repair and hope whereas hating feelings are mobile with the potential for transformation. I argue that Eva’s feelings of hatred for Kevin’s action paradoxically elicit her feelings of love as she is unable to countenance the alternative, that is, indifference, which would mean severing from her child and losing hope. Eva’s experience exemplifies how a mother’s feelings of love in the most horrifying circumstances can survive and can be transformed by her hateful maternal feelings. This experience of mothering is vital to the shaping of the language of maternal love that I am advancing. It is an extreme and compelling example of the lengths that a mother will go to protect and love her child despite countless attacks on her. Eva’s hating feelings towards Kevin, which are mobilised in her evident disgust and enmity towards him, are transformed into loving feelings, a vital aspect of the language of maternal love I am developing as she fights to stay engaged with him. This discussion signals Eva’s maternal capacity to endure deep levels of suffering together with her inability to emotionally sever from her son despite the ignominious acts of betrayal and terror that he inf licted on her. Questions remain about the force of this maternal love which, when tested, both survive and are expanded through experiences of suffering and hatred that are transformative. Eva’s experiences of transformative maternal suffering return to my thinking about Sophie’s circumstance in Sophie’s Choice. I reframe her experience as one of passive suffering as she is trapped in social conditions that deprive her of the means to move towards transformative suffering. Sophie is stranded in her persecutory anxieties and denied her movement towards the depressive position as the potential for hope and repair is denied. Her daughter’s death sentence prompted a parallel psychic death in Sophie which impeded the possibility of her retrieving any fragments of good maternal object.

Mothering: confluence of love, pain and pleasure This discourse about love and hate invites ref lection about the force that drives the mother to endure such intense, vacillating, and often gut-wrenching maternal experiences as well as the monotony and the demands of everyday caring. While I am unsure where this arises from, I suggest that f luidity inspires the mother’s capacity to be enlivened and curious about her child, to yearn to know the intimate details of his life and to repair, to maintain hope and to forgive, as f lashes of maternal hatred both stun her and remind her of her deep love. This experience revitalises the mother and facilitates her to keep repairing herself and to move forward with her mothering and is an inalienable aspect of the language of love that I am forging. These raw experiences of maternal love recall the thoughts of Adrienne Rich in a journal entry and the astute link she draws between mothering and suffering and the enigmatic nature of the relationship which binds the mother to her child:

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To suffer with and for and against the child—maternally, egotistically, neurotically, sometimes with a sense of helplessness, sometimes with the illusion of learning wisdom—but always, everywhere in body and soul, with that child—because that child is a piece of oneself. (Rich, 1995, p. 22, emphasis in original) The language of love that I develop reasons that the mother’s suffering prompts the mother to access a deep emotion which is transformative. Winnicott’s thinking on the pleasure and enjoyment that is critical to mothering contributes to the discussion about this maternal energy. He links the mother’s physical and emotional handling of her child with her ministrations of love and tenderness and insists that without pleasure that her maternal experience is useless and mechanical. Enjoyment is linked with humour and laughter and I argue that the maternal capacity to enjoy fuels the mother’s energy and helps her to tolerate and transform her hateful feelings and sustain her good-enough mothering. The maternal encounters in this book are a reminder of transformative energy of maternal hatred which relies on f luidity, notably the mother’s engagement with the diverse and often paradoxical feelings elicited in the maternal experience rather than being limited by an inf lexibility which emerges from external and internal limitations. Intense maternal expressions of joy and pain emerge sporadically, the latter in deep f lashes of maternal heartache, as the mother is pierced by anguish and equally reminded of her intense loving feelings for her child. Curious and sudden experiences of deep maternal love attached to suffering are revealed in this book in first-hand experiences, including Baraitser’s experiences of maternal feelings that are provoked as she watches her child sleep and endures her child’s stammer. I suggest that there is an unknown energy in the mother’s everyday repetitive experiences with her child that helps to sustain her. This invokes Baraitser’s thinking about the mother’s daily caring for her child and her proposition that it returns something to her which incites feelings akin to a glow of intense satisfaction. Through this nurturing, something new and transformative is created. This discussion also evokes the idea of the familiar, recurring feelings and experiences that are sustained over the generations. Moments of maternal struggle and pain, such as those endured by new mother Barbara in the film A Happy Event, are intermingled with special moments of togetherness between mother and daughter and attest to the curious energy that propels and embodies mothering and demonstrates maternal tenderness and longing.

Conclusion In this chapter, I argue that Klein’s thinking of infant development is a useful model to understand the mother’s negotiation of her loving and hating feelings and the effect that they have on her feelings about herself and her mothering. While this book maintains Klein’s fundamental notion that both children and

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adults preserve the movement between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive position throughout life, her thinking has extra complications when it is applied to the mother’s experience in relation to her child. These additional complexities arise principally from a combination of the mother’s unique history, her intricate relationship with her child and external social forces. Social factors assume a specific quality when they are considered in the context of cultural expectations about mothers, which are embodied in the maternal ideal. An adherence with the ideal both guides the mother and exerts pressure on her to deny her hateful feelings that, paradoxically, sustain her in the paranoid-schizoid position and compromise both her vitality and her emotional investment in her mothering. Despite this difficulty, maternal loving feelings are secured together with an internal good object. While this chapter explores the struggle that the mother faces as she recognises her hating feelings, equally, these experiences inspire her to discover new ways to engage with those feelings. This investigation of the mother within her social and psychic context informs an examination of her lived experience of maternal ambivalence. Klein’s thinking delivers a framework for an understanding of the way that loving and hating feelings dwell together. For the mother this is articulated as an experience of maternal ambivalence in which momentary f lashes of maternal hatred restore and nourish her feelings of love for her child. This experience of ambivalence is fundamental to the language of love that I am developing in its insistence that a mother must not only bear her hating feelings, but also understand them as vital and transformative to the realisation of her maternal love. Klein’s thinking on the persecutory and depressive position and the role of defences augments this language by promoting the centrality of f luidity and the merit of notions such as loss, repair and hope to the maternal experience. The use of cinematic and first-hand experiences enriches the thinking of Winnicott and Klein and provides a bridge to Bion’s work which champions the importance of learning from real life experience. In the next chapter Bion explores the experience of loving and hating feelings and creates a discourse about the ways that the mother uses her capacities of ref lection and feeling to respond, rather than to react, to her child. He insists on the value of real lived experience as opposed to artificially learnt experience, as the mother moves towards maternal wisdom. The mother’s capacity to foster an internal and external facilitating environment for herself and her child which enables her to tolerate and use her hating feelings as a conduit for her love as she learns from her own genuine experiences is fundamental to the language of love that I am formulating.

6 WILFRED R. BION Learning from experience as a source of maternal change, understanding and wisdom

This chapter focuses on the work of Wilfred R. Bion, British psychoanalyst and proponent of psychoanalytic theory in the last half of the twentieth century, and continues an examination of the role of hatred as a catalyst for transformation in the mother’s experience of her feelings of maternal love. Bion argues that real learning comes from life experience which inspires profound and lasting emotional transformation. Duncan Cartwright, psychoanalytic clinician and author who extracts and develops central notions of Bion’s work, concurs with this thinking about the importance of real-life encounters by stating that “the essence of his [Bion’s] contribution lies in his struggle to articulate the transformatory qualities of lived experience” (Cartwright, 2010, p. 3, emphasis in original). He continues that Bion “is interested in the minutiae of experience, how we come to know our experience and learn from it, use it, and be transformed by it” (Cartwright, 2010, p. 3). This is opposed to a superficial knowledge which draws on intellect rather than experiential learning, and as such does not promote change and development. Bion’s emphasis on learning from experience unfolds as a cumulative and f luid dynamic which invites the mother’s capacity to ref lect as she regulates her diverse feelings. Neville Symington, who has written profusely about Bion, examines the acquisition of maternal wisdom and its link with deep affective learning and change. The notion of wisdom is a fundamental pillar of the maternal language of love that I advance. Bion explores the process by which the mother is able to bear her infant’s anxieties, to understand and assimilate them, and to send them back in a form which is meaningful. This unfolds as a circular dynamic which necessitates an understanding of the functioning of the mother’s mind as she endures the hateful feelings that are stimulated by her child’s anxieties. Bion devises the notion of the mother’s containing function, in which her ability to reverie and to ref lect allows her to soothe her infant and herself. First-hand interactions between

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mother and child, and Lisa Baraitser’s (2009) thinking on encounters of maternal interruption, are used to exemplify the value and impact of living experience. Neville Symington, a psychotherapist who has written extensively about Bion, augments the latter’s emphasis on learning from experience by nominating it as a site of affective rather than superficial understanding, in which instances of profound change and maternal wisdom emerge through struggles with forces that undermine this practice. This returns to the perils of inf lexibility in which fixed standards of right and wrong, together with moralising and artificiality can threaten the realisation of maternal wisdom, which is consistent with movement towards acquired emotional knowledge and a capacity to learn about oneself through actual experience. Barbara’s experience as a new mother in the film A Happy Event demonstrates Bion’s thinking as the experience of mothering elicits profound emotional growth and an achievement of maternal wisdom. In the following moments towards the end of the film Barbara is faced with the futility of her past theoretical learning and the sudden recognition that only real life experience can prepare her for both the challenges and the rewards that mothering offers. These moments follow a chain of events in which Barbara severs from past practices which threaten her mothering, notably the strength of the maternal ideal, and she is finally able to embrace some f luidity. The scene begins with Barbara sitting at her computer in her mother’s house as she is completing her doctoral thesis. As the camera scans her philosophy books in the background, Barbara begins to think aloud and ruefully states that her study of philosophers such as Kant and Heidegger has been unproductive because they have tied her to concepts, that is, an intellectual understanding. After this revelation Barbara scrolls through her computer files, locates her thesis, and places it in the trash. In those few actions, Barbara demonstrates an astute assessment of the essence of Bion’s thinking about the difference between theoretical and experiential learning and the drawbacks of the former. She insists that intellectual learning, symbolised by her philosophy books, hinders her ability to open her eyes, that is, to reach a real understanding. By discarding her doctoral thesis, Barbara makes a firm severance with her previous life work and its reliance on rigidity and scholarly learning, which, like her fidelity to aspects of the maternal ideal, have stif led her freedom to be productive. Following this, a torrent of words and feelings gush out as Barbara types furiously. Her typing is matched by an increasing escalation of background music. In these moments Barbara is finally able to access her voice and find words to name and understand her real-life experience which recalls Bion’s thinking on the importance of ref lection and feelings as a means for self-expression. This epiphany leads to an experience of f low and more transformative moments for Barbara. A narrative of her mothering experience erupts, beginning with

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Lea’s birth and her feelings of helplessness and dislocation, as Barbara compares herself to a turtle who is upside down. This is an apt description of the threatening and a frustrating experience of persecutory anxiety that Barbara endures before she returns to her mother’s home. Barbara’s belief that women are “not mothers; we become them” echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s idea in The Second Sex that “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (1997, p. 295), as the concept of becoming invites the notion of maternal transformation. Barbara also alludes to difficult emotions that mothering provokes for her, including the perception of herself as having the leading role in a horror film and feeling that she was living a life that no longer belonged to her. As Barbara digests what mothering means to her, including experiences aligned with horror and others which inspire her “becoming”, a newfound capacity to recognise the hateful and loving parts of herself emerges which contrasts with her previous experiences that relied on rigidity and impeded transformation. She likens mothering to being in a chasm which she also considers as foundational to creating a mother. Her notion of a chasm is aligned to the concept of a waiting space in which a mother can name, repair and mourn her past losses, as she uses her capacities of endurance and patience to endure deep affective suffering and pain which introduces her to becoming a mother. At this point, Barbara writes the words “a happy event” and leans back on the chair with a visible sense of relief as if her experiences now make sense. This is followed by a pause, and then she writes the word “novel”. Barbara’s decision to write a novel rather than to finish her doctoral thesis marks a recognition that her previous intellectual pursuits cannot provide her with what she needs to traverse the joys and travails of mothering. Rather, the process of writing a genuine and heartfelt account of her own everyday maternal experiences can provide her with the opportunity to learn from her mothering in a way that can sustain and nourish her. Her novel releases her to express the hating feelings that are part of everyday mothering which ultimately unfold as a catalyst for the realisation of her maternal love. These instances from A Happy Event return to the fundamental importance that I place on learning from real life experience and the enriching function of hating feelings as markers of maternal wisdom in the language of love that I am advancing.

Reverie, reflection and the containing mother Bion’s curiosity about the functioning of the mother’s mind unfolds through his concept of maternal reverie and his interest in the mother’s capacity for ref lection and containment, as she learns through experience to tolerate and process her child’s anxiety. The mother is initially affected by her capacity to reverie, a notion formulated by Bion, which has similarities with Winnicott’s notion of unintegration. Maternal reverie can be described as an unconscious feature of the maternal experience, which provokes relaxed and dreamlike qualities in the mother, as she attends to her child in a fully absorbed way. Esther Pelled’s articulation of reverie as a state of “f loating attention” (2007, p.  1519) draws

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attention to the importance of active thinking in which the mother remains unconsciously in touch with her child’s inner state. Julia Segal articulates the relationship between the mother and her child as one characterised by a circularity and a mutual capacity to hold each other “in mind” (2004, p. 42). A circular f low is sustained between the mother and her child as a constantly changing internal dynamic unfolds, which relies on the two minds affecting each other which promotes emotional growth through interaction. Joan Symington and Neville Symington argue that Bion’s thinking emerges from an analytic investigation of the “inner processes of the mind” (1996, p. 2), which is necessarily negotiated through the mind of another (Cartwright, 2010, p. 2). This psychic connection is such that the mother becomes a container (♀) for her infant, who is nominated as the contained (♂). In their paper “A research methodology for the study of symbolic activity in infants”, Marisa Pelella Mélega and Maria Cecília Sonzogno make a fundamental link between containment and reverie by asserting that “Bion calls the maternal capacity to function as a container ‘reverie’” (2012, p. 223). The significance that Bion places on the mother’s ability to tolerate, regulate and transform her infant’s anxieties is pivotal to an understanding of his work. This process occurs in a f luid space of psychic waiting as the mother devotes mental space “to a particular infant and its unique cues” (Mendes de Almeida, 2012, p.  90). Bion’s containing emphasises the mother’s capacity through her reverie to ref lect and manage her baby’s emotional state without being overwhelmed (Fonagy & Target, 2003). The containing mother struggles with her own and her infant’s anxieties, absorbs them, and returns them to him in a form which he can tolerate and from which he can draw goodness as her capacity to be a responsive and available mother is fortified. Maternal transformation rests on the containing mother’s ability to take her time to process the torrent of loving and hating feelings that emerge for her in her interaction with her child, with the added difficulty of suffering through experiences of uncertainty. The mother develops as she learns about herself, drawing on the relationship with her child “to make sense of experience; that could make meaning available and . . . actively contribute to the growth of the mind” (Waddell, 2002, p. 37, emphasis in original). The mother’s ability to tolerate and understand her own and her infant’s pain and the struggle that they provoke is a dominant part of her living maternal experience. This is contrary to managing her everyday frustrations by relying on defences such as evacuation or inertia, which paralyse her creativity and development. The relationship between the mother and her child is characterised by a circularity and a mutual capacity to hold each other “in mind” (Segal, 2004, p. 42). The mother’s use of reverie, containment and thinking to soothe her own anxieties and attendant hateful feelings, is a marker of her developing maternal wisdom and, as such, contributes to the maternal language of love that I am developing. I present an experience of mothering drawn from Margot Waddell’s extensive work on mother and infant interaction to advance an understanding of Bion’s notions. This incident illustrates the way that feeling components of reverie and

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containment, together with maternal thinking, enable the mother to remain present with her infant. These capacities allow her to transform her infant’s projections into tolerable sensations, which, in turn, nourish her mothering and provoke learning. The maternal projections can be perceived as communications, which summon maternal engagement and ref lection, rather than material for expulsion. This interaction stimulates thoughts about how these dynamics facilitate a pathway towards maternal wisdom, which returns to the maternal language of love which is being formulated. I borrow from a description used by Waddell in her book Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Development of the Personality: He seemed quite relaxed, but then suddenly coughed, continued to suck for a moment and then began to cry. . . . He was giving thin, high cries followed by a few sobs. . . . This behaviour would stop and he would relax for a time and then repeat it. . . . Mother lifted him to her shoulder and his shrieks increased. . . . She sat him up for a while saying that this is how he felt most comfortable. All the while she was talking to him soothingly. She told the observer that one could feel how stiff his legs and tummy were. She decided to put him back to the breast. . . . He gradually slowed down and stopped feeding. Then he lay back in his mother’s arms and gazed at her face. She smiled and talked to him. He cooed in reply and waved his hands. (Shuttleworth’s unpublished manuscript, as cited in Waddell, 2002) Waddell has written extensively about parent-and-infant interaction and the experiential teaching method of infant observation. This training experience for psychotherapists, which was devised at the Tavistock Institute in London, involves a student’s weekly visits over a year in which she observes a mother and her infant. The student writes a report based on their mutual responses to their interactions, which she then processes with her mentor. In the first interaction the observer relates her observations of a mother’s exchange with her three-monthold infant and the mother’s responses to his distress during an observation. In this episode, the mother maintains her composure as she attends to her infant’s displays of discomfort with love and care. His irritation is revealed in spasmodic cries, shrieks, stiffened legs and intermittent attempts to take food as he endures repetitive and agitated attempts to become comfortable. A circular dynamic is perpetuated through the mother’s containing capacity in which she is charged with ensuring that there is a suitable adjustment and f low between herself and her infant. This enables him to accept and respond to her ministrations, while the mother’s ability to be responsive to her infant is both founded on and feeds a corresponding capacity to reverie and to engage in her own maternal experience. The transmission of emotion between the mother and infant prompts her maternal capacity to transform her infant’s raw chaotic feelings into a tolerable phenomenon, which results in an emotional experience that is “comprehensible and meaningful” (Symington & Symington, 1996, p. 61). Through

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maternal reverie and thinking, the mother can recognise and contain both her own and her infant’s turbulence while accessing and sustaining a place for thinking and for soothing herself before she reacts. These moments demonstrate Bion’s notion of maternal reverie as a mother’s expression of love for her child unfolds through her containing presence and her capacity for ref lection. It allows the mother to realise an understanding of her infant, which enables her to manage her own and her infant’s expressions of raw anxiety. The mother shows a capacity to internalise her infant’s experiences of anxiety and pain without being overpowered by them, as she is able to make them “manageable, and in a sense, to hand back to him a quality of experience which makes him feel divested of terror and capable of reintegration” (Waddell, 2002, p.  33). Waddell describes the mother’s capacity to simultaneously receive her child’s communications and engage with them, as she holds onto his experience in her mind while bearing uncertainty together with patient waiting as her infant struggles. Waddell continues that the mother, by accessing her internal resources, can engage in, rather than expel, her infant’s distress which demonstrates a containing presence as her unconscious receptive capacity meets her ability to endure her infant’s pain without participating in his projected emotion. The term reverie has an etymological association with the French verb le rêver, to dream (Macquarie Dictionary, 2001). Reverie is described by Mélega as the mother’s “capacity to dream and produce mental representations based on responsiveness to her baby’s emotional states” (2012, p. 118). Through her reverie, a mother uses her infant’s expressions, including his cries and his body language, as she “weaves ‘stories’, unconsciously and consciously, about what is going on for her baby and for herself in relation to him and between them” ( Joyce, 2005, p. 17). The mother demonstrates a willingness to understand her infant’s psychic and physical distress which she knows that he is unable to yet manage himself. She makes various attempts to make him feel more comfortable: first she tries to change his position by sitting him up, and then she notices that his legs and tummy are rigid so she decides to feed him. The mother is intent on comprehending his communications as she lifts him to her shoulder and keeps talking to him calmly as he shrieks. There is a dreamlike and unhurried quality to the mother’s care, an almost hypnotic synergy between them, as she talks soothingly to him as he lies in her arms and gazes back at her as she smiles and talks to him. The mother’s relaxed manner recalls Winnicott’s maternal notions of unintegration and maternal preoccupation. The mother concentrates on understanding her infant’s distress as she tries to comfort him by placing him in different body positions and seeing if he wants to be fed. This is conducted in a calm manner as the mother shows a curiosity towards her infant’s discomfort through her lively and interested equilibrium. Rather than trying to dismiss or explain his projections, she engages with them as communications and tries to make sense of them. The mother’s ability to reverie, together with her containing capacity, provides an emotional environment for the mother to think about her infant’s projections of anxiety and to transform them into something meaningful for herself and her

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infant. Maternal thinking takes place in the context of a continual cycle of projections and introjections that transpire between mother and infant in which loving and unbearable feelings are circulated. A cycle proceeds as the mother sends her newly digested emotional experience back to her infant, who is now able to internalise it as a result of the mother’s reverie and her containing function. This evokes Parker’s insistence that, despite the passive associations of reverie, it summons “an active, albeit unconscious, capacity on the part of the mother to be in touch with her own turbulence” (1997, p.  26). In this instance, the mother’s response, while seemingly composed, was likely affected by her concern about her infant’s state and her wish to make it better for him. Her soothing and relaxed qualities contain his anxieties, and he communicates his satisfaction as he rests in her arms then gazes, coos and waves at her. The mother regulates the f low of emotion between them, as she contains herself and accepts his anxieties by relieving his pain. Waddell refers to the connection in these moments between the infant and his mother as her talking, ref lection and holding allows him to recover as he basks in “the calm of trustful intimacy” (2002, p. 33). This interaction exemplifies the importance of recognising that the projections that occur between the mother and her child are a source of communication between the couple. This notion is fundamental to Bion’s work and his emphasis on these exchanges as a guide to an understanding of the mother’s thoughts about herself, her infant and her mothering experience. Bion uses the terms beta elements, alpha elements, and alpha function as abstractions to illuminate the inner operation of the mind and the dual functions of thinking and emotion. Beta elements represent raw, unprocessed material that Bion refers to as “undigested facts” (1984, p. 7), which are inaccessible to any thought processes and can be used to depict the experience of an infant, child or adult who is experiencing intolerable anxiety as demonstrated in the infant’s obvious discomfort in this exchange. Bion asserts than an exposure to an experience of alpha function, that is, the containing object (usually the infant’s mother), prompts a transformation to occur. In this occurrence, the infant’s experience of his indigestible and distressing beta elements is converted into alpha elements through his mother’s containing ministrations, including her calm composure and her soothing gestures. The mother in this encounter remains with her infant physically and emotionally during his bouts of anxiety, and her physical attention to him, including the ways that she adjusts his body to ensure that he is comfortable, conveys her caring presence. She is sensitive to his pain and anxiety, including his recurrent sobs and his rigid body, as she receives her infant’s “inchoate communications and in her own mind makes them meaningful” ( Joyce, 2005, p. 17). Her reverie is that “state of mind which is open to the reception of any ‘objects’ from the loved object” (Bion, 1984, p. 36) which enables the mother to respond lovingly and consistently rather than reacting to his projections. The circularity of the process is enhanced as she receives her infant’s experiences and feelings while dispatching her “maternal psychical qualities” (Bion, 1984, p.  36), which reveals an unfolding connection between her psychic and thinking functioning.

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Waddell posits that if the mother can regulate and manage her child and his distress, the baby will then experience both the relief from his physical irritation and the comfort of being understood (2002, p. 35). There is a circular link with mother’s management of her relationship with her child and her capacity to contain herself. A cycle of Winnicott’s goodenough mothering is provoked, as “improving the inner container” (Pelled, 2007, p. 1507) nourishes the mother’s inner good object. For Bion, the emotional dependence and interchange that exists between the container and contained, that is, mother and infant, relies on their ability to affect each other in a profoundly emotional way: The basic premise behind the container-contained configuration is deceptively simple: one object (container) external to another (the contained) inf luences the contained in some way, whilst the contained, in turn, alters the qualities of the container. (Cartwright, 2010, p. 9) The maternal capacity to contain also demands the mother’s willingness to struggle with uncertainty as a crucial part of the maternal experience. The twin notions of reverie and containment equip the mother to endure the obscurity that is often sourced in her infant’s experience of his anxiety. Waddell warns against the mother’s interference and her attempts to presume that she knows what is wrong with her child rather than exhibiting a curiosity and a lively interaction as exemplified by the mother in this exchange. She posits that the mother who prematurely explains her child’s discomfort by imposing her own solution “diverts the true meaning of the experience” for her infant (Waddell, 2002, p. 33). Waddell recommends a more f luid engagement between mother and infant as she engages with his anxiety rather than explaining it and “is able to tolerate not knowing its source” (2002, p. 33). This recalls the discussion in Chapter 4 of Winnicott’s mother’s experience of unintegration in which she is able “to be” in a f luid space, free of judgement and expectation. Thomas H. Ogden (2004a) claims that Bion’s introduction to Learning from Experience guides the reader towards tolerating the obscurities in his work by cajoling her to read it straight through in order to attain clarity. Ogden’s discourse upholds the reader’s capacity to endure not knowing, getting lost, being confused and pressing ahead anyway” (2004a, p.  286), which is familiar to the maternal experience. Mothering is replete with incidences of trial and error, and her experiences of not knowing urge the containing mother to rely on her thinking and her reverie to navigate its contradictions and uncertainties as her capacity to learn from her experience helps her to tolerate uncertainty. A parallel can be drawn between Bion’s containing mother, Klein’s internal good object and Winnicott’s good-enough mother in their shared capacity to promote attuned maternal experiences despite the struggles that emerge in their interaction as the mother renews and maintains the connection between herself and her infant. This interaction between a mother and infant exemplifies the maternal

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capacity to soothe and to help integrate an infant’s experience, which is reminiscent of Klein’s depressive position and fundamental to an experience of emotional growth for both mother and infant. It displays the mother’s ability to “function as a container” (Mélega & Sonzogno, 2012, p. 223) for her infant as she is able to “hold any content without the need to resist it or to evacuate through an action” (Pelled, 2007, p. 1520). While this communication between mother and infant involves occurrences of anxiety, the mother is able to diffuse and manage the experience by relying on her reverie, her containing qualities and her understanding, which  supports a smooth process between them. This instance demonstrates the notions of maternal reverie and containment as the mother’s soothing presence allows her to think about, rather than react to, her infant’s pain in a calm way which secures a safe environment for the couple. The mother uses her infant’s communications as a means to understand and learn, rather than as an attack on her, as she exhibits a strength and knowing about her child. This f luid interaction exhibits the value of the mother’s struggle with uncertainty as a guide to learning about her child. These maternal facilities inform the language of love I am developing.

New Year’s Eve debacle and turnaround I present two exchanges which arise in consecutive encounters between a mother, Cy, and her 15-year-old daughter to emphasise the fundamental importance of maternal ref lection and emotional availability. The mother initially demonstrates reaction and lack of both thinking and compassion towards her daughter. The next morning the daughter confronts her mother with her complaints and her pain, and the mother is able to think about her daughter’s words, to tolerate and absorb them, while containing herself and her daughter rather than reacting. Cy’s capacity to use her daughter’s discontent as a source of understanding rather than considering it as a personal attack heralds a deep experience of maternal learning and transformation. These interactions evoke the thinking of Duncan Cartwright who maintains that a “a real human mental connection” exists between two minds, which he describes as magnetic forces that both “crave and resist each other” (2010, p. 3). He continues that this connection elicits both an “emotional storm” and an opportunity for “particular personal meaning” through ref lection and endurance (Cartwright, 2010, p. 3). His allusion to the complicated and at times oppositional relationship that characterises human dyads is indicative of the mother’s internal life in which her feelings of maternal ambivalence gather and equally hold transformative potential. Cartwright’s language articulates the depth of emotional connection together with the struggle that fuels the relationship between the mother and her child. A recount of Cy’s experience during a New Year’s Eve celebration in 2013: Cy drove her daughter to a friend’s place at about six in the evening— before nightfall—while warning her about the dangers of New Year’s

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Eve and of drinking and of being near the beach at night. Her daughter was dressed in high heels with lots of make-up on, and she looked beautiful. As she dropped off her daughter, Cy felt a disquiet and worry for her daughter’s safety as well as a sense of pride at her growth and her radiance. Cy reminded her daughter to contact her at any time during the evening and that she would collect her if necessary. The mother was going to a small gathering with her own friends, and she was hoping to stay out late and to have a rare undisturbed night. At about midnight, Cy received a distressed call from her daughter to pick her up at the local shopping district, as she was alone. Cy experienced a deep concern about her daughter as she drove to collect her. When she finally located her amongst the revellers, her daughter assured her that she was fine but that her friends had left her by herself at about a half-hour before midnight. She was upset about that and had been quite scared because she had been alone for a while. It had been a hard night for her. She also indicated that she wanted her mother to stay with her instead of returning to her New Year celebrations. Cy was annoyed and weary of her daughter’s constant demands on her time. While accepting that she had to stay with her daughter, she complained about it. She was totally immersed in her own disappointment, and she told her daughter three or four times that although she would stay with her and not return to her party, it was not her preference to do so. Bion’s investigation of the experience of frustration, in which reaction prevails over thought, informs an appreciation of Cy’s actions that evening. Her reaction can be understood as an inability to tolerate her irritation which resulted in an experience of action rather than ref lection. She was overwhelmed by her own needs on that evening and the accumulation of previous frustrations with her daughter had impeded her capacity to consider her daughter’s situation. Her ability to contain herself, to be generous and to engage in reverie and loving feelings for her daughter, which would have involved keeping her daughter in her mind and reading her cues, was obstructed. While Cy was sympathetic that her daughter had been alone during the night, she assumed that because the girl was home safely that she was free to return to her own celebrations. However, Cy had not taken into account the girl’s emotional distress because she was overwhelmed with her own disappointment and annoyed at her daughter. Cy did not sleep in the bed with her daughter to comfort her but left her alone for the night. I reason that she was trapped in a vicious cycle of thoughts about herself and anger with her daughter, which impeded her ability to engage with all her feelings and obstructed her capacity to think objectively and clearly. This recalls Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position of splitting as the mother defends against painful feelings by rejecting them rather than engaging with them, which would have allowed the mother to remain open to her struggle. Symington and Symington pose a question about this:

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Encountering a painful state of mind, does the individual immediately engage in one or more of the numerous defence mechanisms readily available for the purpose of getting rid of the awareness of the frustration, or is there an attempt to remain open to it, to tolerate it and to think about it? (Symington & Symington, 1996, p. 67) Cy realised with hindsight, that her comprehension had been blocked by moralising and that she was immersed in disappointment which was prompted by her expectations for the evening. This marked the experience as one of inf lexibility in which her dissatisfactions and intolerance were supreme and motivated by fixed standards of right or wrong. Cy was unable to be an understanding mother who could reverie and transform the situation through ref lection. Instead, a deluge of feelings impeded her potential for psychic growth and the opportunity to engage with both her own and her daughter’s torment. Symington and Symington state: Rejection of painful feeling, refusal to think, blocks the development of thought. As a habit it results in a stultification of growth because it prevents the sort of thinking that could lead to growth. Thinking about the self remains stuck in a vicious circle. (1996, p. 103) There was also a lack of fit and f low between Cy and her daughter, which was dominated by the mother’s lack of understanding as she chose, in Bion’s words, “a projective-identification-rejecting-object [which is] wilfully misunderstanding” (1962, p. 309). Rather than containing her daughter through loving feelings, Cy allowed what Bion refers to as a “disturbed relationship with the breast or its substitutes” (1962, p. 10) to prevail. Her inability to be emotionally present with her daughter was attended by an incapacity to contain herself, which would have involved taking time to think and to read her daughter’s cues. Her daughter was trying to communicate that she was in pain and that she was searching for a warm comforting mother to hold her and to be with her. The girl proceeded to tell her mother that her friends had left her, that she was scared and that it had been a hard night for her. This experience also recalls a notion addressed in Chapter 5 on Klein, which relates to the mother’s difficulty in attaining psychic separation from her child. It is a reminder of the maternal inability to transcend experiences of persecutory anxiety which favours paralysis and an inability to move towards inner synthesis and to tolerate difference. Parker warns that the mother must distinguish emotionally between herself and her baby, otherwise the pain from each experience will “merge and magnify” (Parker, 2005, p. 118). Cy demonstrates an incapacity to remain adult in this interaction with her daughter. Rather than thinking about her daughter’s pain and her own distress as separate entities; they fused for her and she reacted. The mother’s inability to separate her anxiety

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from her daughter’s, combined with her own moralising, escalated her anguish and limited her opportunity to wrestle with her thoughts and to learn from her experience. A successive encounter urged Cy to think about her reaction and to garner her maternal thoughts and feelings and to register her mistakes as she experienced a profoundly deep and transformative learning experience. She engaged in a ref lective and experiential learning episode as she was confronted with her daughter’s reality and opinions. This demonstrates that a difficult experience between a mother and her child, when thinking can be summoned together with a capacity to learn from experience, can result in maternal growth and repair. The next morning Cy’s daughter confronted her with an accusation: “You were only thinking about yourself last night and your plans being spoilt—you didn’t think about me at all”. She told her mother that she was really upset about her actions. This provoked a processing of thoughts and feelings for Cy over the next few minutes. After some personal reckoning and insight, she hugged her daughter and told her that she was sorry for the pain that she had caused her and that she had learnt a lesson from her. The girl’s comments had revealed some truth which prompted Cy to rethink her actions of the previous night. Cy was confronted with confusing and shameful thoughts and feelings and was very disappointed in herself. However, she realised that her failures on the previous evening also availed her an opportunity to connect with her experience and to use her reverie to think and to understand her daughter’s point of view. This incited a deep learning experience for her. Cy encountered a glaring realisation that her daughter had been alone and in pain twice during the evening—once with her friends and again through her own mother’s inability to be caring and attuned to her. She understood that her daughter was speaking her own truth and that she was communicating and reaching out to her mother. This reminded Cy of the importance of keeping her daughter in her mind while remaining adult in future interactions with her. She was also aware of the adverse and limiting inf luence of her maternal expectations. Cy revealed that the main memory of this interaction with her daughter were moments of acute pleasure and sadness. She recognised her daughter as a deeply sensitive and strong individual who wanted to articulate her feelings and thoughts to her mother rather than ignoring them. She registered pride for having a daughter who could enunciate her feelings in such a loving and frank way. At the same time, Cy was also aware of experiencing deep pain as she understood that she had failed both herself and her daughter through a missed opportunity for connection. This evokes Parker’s sentiment, “Recognition of maternal ambivalence, facilitated by reverie, is the basis for self-knowledge” (2005, p. 118). Cy’s conf lict between her deep loving and hating feelings offered her the opportunity to struggle while inviting self-knowledge. Her maternal capacity to use thinking and feeling to endure and learn from the pain, together with her

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daughter’s words, conveyed something to her about her own internal dynamic, her relationship with her daughter and her reactions to her mothering. At this point, she understood that although she would never reclaim that lost opportunity, she was hopeful that there would be more opportunities for her to be a better mother in the future. Equally she was aware of the potential that failure can provide in deepening connections. This provoked a deep sense of love and gratitude for Cy as she perceived that she needed to move forward while being mindful of using thinking rather than reaction in her future interactions with her daughter. The mother’s capacity to recognise and admit to her failures while being mindful of her daughter’s needs over her own, marks an experience of maternal learning and an enriched connection within the couple and return to qualities which embody the maternal language of love. The encounters between Cy and her daughter demonstrate how a mother both uses and denies the usefulness of a ref lective waiting space. Symington advances this idea in his discussion of a psychoanalytic session when an emotional attack by a patient on their work evoked an internal struggle and recognition for him. He describes the struggle: I did not hold it easily, there was a tug of war inside me: one side was saying “point out her denigration” while the other side was saying “hold it”. The “hold it” side won and then calmness began to come over me and then in that state of calm another thought came forth. (Symington, 1990, p. 101) While Cy’s initial reaction to her daughter demonstrates a lack of ref lection, it is likely that the overnight lapse in time availed her the opportunity to unconsciously reconcile her feelings of anger with the love that she has for her daughter. She realised that her actions were dictated by her needs and hopes for the night, which were unrelated to reality. She was stuck to her expectations that she would be able to have a night for herself and she was unable to entertain the possibility that a different experience might ensue. The discussion with her daughter urged Cy to comprehend that their dual anxieties had merged in her mind and that she had only been able to discern her own distress. The post-mortem the next morning provoked self-examination as Cy began to understand the previous night’s experience as one of reaction involving an obstruction of thought. The lapse in time provided an internal thinking space in which “the unpleasant experience is held in the mind in such a way as might render it meaningful” (Symington & Symington, 1996, p. 70). A waiting space emerged, which offered Cy an opportunity to contain herself, to think more rationally, and to endure her daughter’s frustrations; the containment of the painful experience made it “more bearable” (Symington & Symington, 1996, p. 70). Cy disclosed that the encounter prompted an opportunity to engage in thoughts and to derive meaning from her experience and to ref lect on the benefit of using

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patience in her mothering. The process involved with tolerating frustration is described by Bion as being: synchronous with the development of an ability to think and so to bridge the gulf of frustration between the moment when a want is felt and the moment when action is appropriate to satisfying the want culminates in its satisfaction. (Bion, 1962, p. 307) Bion claims that thinking is a requirement for the “mental apparatus to support increased tension during a delay in the process of discharge” (1984, p. 83). This requires that the mother relies on thinking to develop her capacity to learn as a deep affective experience rather than as a superficial one. This example also demonstrates the relationship that exists between learning from experience and a responsive waiting space. This is referred to as a maternal waiting space which functions as the mother’s container and relieves her anxiety while inviting her to respond rather than to react. This experiential learning experience evokes Bion’s words about reliance “on the capacity for the container . . . to remain integrated and yet lose rigidity” (1984, p. 93) as the mother integrates new ideas through tolerating and thinking about them while sustaining her equilibrium. It upholds the importance of listening and ref lecting rather than disintegrating when engaging with one’s child. Learning through experience occurs through the mother’s ability to contain herself and her child as the mother adapts and struggles, internally and externally, with the demands imposed by her mothering. Waddell determines that “experience is transformed into growth when it is possible to learn from that experience” (2002, p. 41) as a source of self-knowledge, which emerges from a desire to understand and a need to know rather than an intellectual pursuit of knowledge. The mother’s experience of containing relies on her capacity to uphold the dynamic rhythm between herself and her child while withstanding and subsequently repairing the tensions that emanate between them, including her loving and hating feelings. This is predicated on the mother’s facility to ref lect on herself and her relationship with her child and to struggle with the complexities this entails, including pain and obstacles as well as a delight in their connection. Her relationship with her child is an ever-changing dynamic in which the mother is confronted with constant learning and a need to accept and ultimately embrace difference and sameness between herself and her child. These interactions contribute to the development of the language of maternal love as a mother’s painful but revelatory experiences incite momentary feelings of hatred towards her daughter which become a catalyst for emerging wisdom. Moments of heated conversations compel a mother to examine and ref lect on her behaviour as a result of being open to her daughter’s words. The mother’s emotional shift from a position of rigid reaction marked by intolerance and moralising, towards compassionate and sensitive responses, marks her ability to learn deeply from her experience which elicits maternal transformation.

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Bion’s thinking about learning from real life experience is further demonstrated in the work of Lisa Baraitser (2009) as she develops the idea of maternal interruption as a crucial part of daily mothering. This idea lends itself to the paradox that frames the language of love that I am forging in which maternal hating feelings hold the potential for renewal and provoke a movement towards love.

Reworking interruption I draw on Baraitser’s work of interruption as a part of the maternal language that I am developing in which mothering is revealed as both a messy interrupted experience which incites momentary sensations of hatred and a catalyst for renewed expressions of the mother’s love. Baraitser insists that these lived encounters of interruption that mark everyday mothering, equally hold something special and transformative which eclipses an understanding of them as impediments or irritants, as experiences of repair, minutiae and repetition inspire diverse feelings in the mother. Her thinking is sourced in the premise that a mother is deeply affected by interactions with her child as ordinary maternal struggles and joys elicit paradox, surprise and confusion and prompt the mother to be receptive to her experience. Baraitser reframes encounters of interruption as opportunities for learning, creativity and renewal. She recounts challenging and typical everyday maternal experiences such as managing a child’s tantrum and the burden of constantly ferrying children around, together with experiences that evoke the mother’s heartfelt loving feelings such as enduring a child’s stammer and sudden surges of love. I draw on Baraitser’s work of interruption in the formulation of the maternal language, in which mothering is understood as both a messy interrupted experience which can fuel momentary sensations of hatred while it is equally a catalyst for renewed expressions of the mother’s love. Baraitser’s reliance on everyday encounters in which she describes her negotiation of the cityscape of London and her exposure to her child’s cry (2009, p. 72), can be understood as a metaphor for the tension that emerges between a mother’s inner experience and the execution of the everyday tasks of mothering. Encounters with her child provide the mother an opportunity for learning, creativity and renewal as her momentary feelings of hatred are transformed into maternal love. However, for Baraitser, the interruptions arising from mothering are more than a disruption to bodily functioning and “activities and speech” (2009, p. 73). She claims that what is most disquieting is the way that the mother’s thinking and her ability to “follow through, ref lect or dwell in” or “gather” her thoughts (2009, p.  73), are affected. This recalls Bion’s reference to beta elements as “undigested facts” (1984, p.  7), which Symington and Symington describe as “foreign bodies in the mind” (1996, p.  62) that cannot be thought about or processed. Baraitser adds that the maternal containment is attacked by these interruptions, and she suggests that what may be required is a particular kind of thinking which is appropriate for these mothers in these situations of

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interruption. She reframes it from an experience that she describes as “depleting, exhausting, disabling and controlling” to one which she argues can potentially become “enlivening and productive” (2009, p. 75) because it compels the mother to think and feel in a new way. Baraitser argues for a mother’s fuller immersion in her mothering as she reconsiders moments that she may ordinarily dismiss, as being special and transformative. She posits that the mother’s engagement with her child in its “relentlessly unpredictable and extreme presence forced her into an appreciation of experiences she had skimmed over before” (2009, p. 154), which inspires her to return to her task of mothering. Baraitser encourages increased attention to sensations that her mothering prompts including “sound, smell, emotions, sentient awareness” (2009, p. 4) together with a fuller expression and awareness of her diverse feelings such as “intensity, exhilaration and excitation as well as anxiety and despair” (2009, p. 75). Newly considered but everyday moments with her child are articulated by Baraitser as “generative, surprising and unexpected” (2009, p. 23). These instances are endowed with the potential to elicit renewal, because while ordinary and generally disregarded occurrences, they equally seem to “trip us up, or throw us ‘off the subject’” (2009, p.  3). The mother is urged by Baraitser to gather and embrace her experiences of interruption and to remain connected with them rather than to retreat back to words, thoughts and memories that occurred before the interruption. This emphasis on f luidity and feelings of pleasure and connectedness allows the mother to emerge rejuvenated from the interruption. Baraitser entreats the mother to stay in the moment, and to take time to appreciate her experience despite the internal havoc that the interruption imposes and the accompanying loving and hating feelings it evokes.

Everyday laden maternal encounters Baraitser’s reliance on everyday encounters, as she describes her negotiation of the cityscape of London, elicits momentary feelings of hatred that equally renew and enrich her maternal loving feelings, and as such return to the developing language of love. Baraitser recounts personal lived experience of early mothering as she manoeuvres the streetscape of London loaded with a stroller, a toddler and the other necessary infant paraphernalia. Her maternal encounter of interruption unfolds as a kinetic experience in which Baraitser, who is encumbered by her maternal stuff, can negotiate her way around a city as a new being, distinct from pre-maternity, with the characteristics of a dual identity as a woman and a mother. Despite physical obstacles that block her pathway such as kerbs, stairs and doors, Baraitser is able to overcome many impediments and arrive at her destination feeling a sense of accomplishment as she discovers innovative ways to survive the multiple demands of daily motherhood. Baraitser reasons that the very nature of being impeded, which is portrayed by her slow, heavy movements, grants the mother both a place to think and a revived and more intense appreciation and awareness of herself and her surroundings. These ordinary maternal activities, as

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both burdensome and potentially generative, are a metaphor for the maternal experience. Baraitser’s journeys through concrete urban structures, such as buildings and roads, are a reminder of the importance of the mother’s social environment and the way it structures her identity and grounds her in her maternal experience. This logic also provokes ref lection about how the mother emotionally negotiates her way through other obstructed experiences in her mothering, notably issues that unfold in the mother-and-child relationship by virtue of their joint experiences, and the internal struggles that the mother personally endures. The impediments can remind the mother of obstructions inside herself as she discovers novel ways to manage these difficulties through her ability to be f luid and adaptable. Baraitser’s image of the encumbered mother recalls the multiple roles and duties that mothering requires and may inspire thoughts about their usefulness and which ones nourish her and which ones she may need to discard. The sensitivities of the mother and her connection with her child are addressed in Baraitser’s discussion of her heightened sentience and the continual troughs and peaks which saturate her living experience. The mother’s engagement with aspects of her social environment also reveals something about the way that she mothers her child. Does she face the obstructions with f luidity and purpose? Is she resilient? How does she manage her internal and external viscosity? Does she get stuck in her experiences, or does she engage with them in a creative manner? Are the tools that the mother uses in her mothering helpful, or does she adopt them without thinking? Baraitser’s discourse of the mother’s encumbered experience provokes ref lection about how maternal feelings of love and hate are incited in everyday maternal experiences of interruption and how these hating feeling can be transformed which contributes to the language of maternal love.

Child’s tantrum: a testing interruption This theme in which interruptions to everyday maternal reality are a pervasive and restorative aspect of mothering is continued as Baraitser explores the mother’s responses to her child’s crying and tantrums. These encounters invite loving and hating feelings and test the mother’s ability to forge a waiting space in which her capacity to think rather than react to these instances informs how she manages this typical part of her maternal experience. The mother’s exposure to her child’s cry elicits a lingering assault on her maternal senses and provokes a myriad of feelings, including momentary sensations of hatred as she struggles to manage the encounter. The cry can be received by the mother as an emotional piercing that obstructs her thinking and stimulates thoughts and feelings which may clash with each other. Baraitser describes the cry as: initially plaintive, ramps up into the rhythmic blare of an air raid siren, blotting out all thinking, and stimulating a more compulsive need to shut it out or shut it up. (Baraitser, 2009, p. 72)

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This interruption recollects the maternal urge to both understand and block out her child’s despair. The mother’s ability to successfully endure her child’s attack on her relies on her patience and her ability to shape and maintain a ref lective waiting space as she bears her child’s difficulties and remains emotionally and physically present for him. Her thinking allows her to engage with her feelings of concern and frustration, to engage in her loving and hating feelings for her child, and to sustain and renew herself. Baraitser’s depiction prompts a consideration about how the mother feels as she is punctured by her child’s cry, the meaning that she attributes to it, and the accompanying intense emotional states that are provoked in her. Maternal responses may be inf luenced by a recognition of her child’s pain, her own need for repose or space, the competing voices in her head, including those of her child and those incited by her own early life experiences, and her inability to process this inner turmoil. Baraitser specifies that the way a mother responds to and experiences her child’s cry may relate to historical “issues of control and omnipotence, dependency and impingement, on how successfully she developed a capacity to be alone, or developed a relationship with her own good and bad voice” (2009, pp. 72–73). While these are complicated issues to discern, Baraitser simplifies the mother’s experience, stating, “We hear an infant cry: our heart rate goes up, and we get sweaty. That much at least is official” (2009, p. 73). Her child’s cry stimulates a frenzy for her in its capacity to interrupt “all durational activities” (2009, p. 73) as she attempts to soothe her competing inner feelings. As the mother receives her child’s piercing cry, her feelings may include frustration at a perceived attack on her, which often prompt momentary f lashes of hatred together with sensations of love inspired by empathy and a satisfaction as she registers both an aliveness and an assertiveness in her child’s impulses. Baraitser’s narrative of the mother’s response to her child’s tantrum focuses on her ability to endure the tantrum and to remain adult in the maternal waiting space. She indicates a wide range of maternal feelings that can be provoked by the child’s outburst including: a sense of shame, humiliation, rage, despair, hatred, anxiety, compassion, helplessness, disbelief, a dispassionate separateness, aggression, sadism, concern, boredom and distress. (Baraitser, 2009, p. 82) Baraitser argues that while the mother is presumably shaken by the episode, equally both she and her child are able to withstand and prevail from this experience. The mother re-emerges changed and secure in the fact that she has survived both the tantrum and the reality that it was a display particularly meant for her. The mother is affected by her child’s plight and by bearing it she is able to reconnect with herself and her child. Her capacity to tolerate this interruption also conditions her to deal successfully with the next imminent onslaught from her child which recalls Bion’s thinking on experiential learning as the mother realises that difficult circumstances can be endured and resolved.

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Baraitser’s work on the child’s tantrum contributes to the language of love that I am shaping in its vivid retelling of an everyday maternal experience in which the mother’s feelings of hatred stimulate her love for her child. This rests on the mother’s capacity to think about and struggle with her diverse feelings and to ultimately integrate them. A continual dynamic of repair and renewal unfolds as the mother is able to learn and change from her experiences which signals the realisation of her maternal wisdom, an integral dynamic of the developing language of love.

The stammer Baraitser’s discussion of her experience of her child’s stammer as an interruption demonstrates the way that everyday interactions between mother and child prompt an understanding of the value of learning from real life experience, which inspires the realisation of maternal wisdom and love. The stammer is a unique and contradictory rupture because it both stalls and moves, as the child’s speech is obstructed by its own repetition. Paradox emerges in the nature of the stammer because it provides an arena for maternal ref lective space as the stammerer attempts to find and emit his words. According to Baraitser, this returns a protracted interruption to the mother as she can ironically “grasp hold of the tail of her own experience of interruption” (2009, p. 88) as she endures her child’s repeated attempts at speech. While these waiting moments are grounded in the present, they seem to extend as if in slow motion “in the suspended non-time of interruption” (Baraitser, 2009, p. 88). Baraitser’s narrative provokes thoughts about the mother’s experience of her child’s stammer and the diverse emotions they can provoke in her, including the desire that her child’s words will emerge smoothly and an attendant fear that his words will remain blocked. This invites f lashes of maternal hatred together with feelings of compassionate love, as the mother’s hopes and expectations f luctuate with her child’s struggles to emit his words. The mother’s suffering is palpable as she anticipates and identifies with her child’s pain and almost mouths the words herself to urge them out. Feelings of ambivalence are incited in the mother as she endures and identifies with her child’s experience. Baraitser describes a personal experience of interruption in her reaction to her child’s stammer. Her son, Joel, experiences a period of stammering after he receives an accidental knock to his head when he is a toddler. She describes her own concern about the stammer and her attempts to amend it, including her decision to take him to speech therapy. As the therapy unfolds it becomes clear that a relationship exists between her son’s stammer and her inability to bear the pain of this interruption to his speech. The speech therapist uses a video to show an interaction of play between Baraitser, her partner and their son, as a cue to understanding more about Joel’s stammer. Baraitser recounts what she sees in the replay of their session: There we are, always a step ahead, there, interrupting him . . . a gesture, a small movement of the hand towards the puzzle piece that he hasn’t

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yet noticed, our fingers dextrously slotting the [pieces] together while he fumbles next to us, giving up, waiting instead to play with the tower we have made. (Baraitser, 2009, p. 87) Rather than summoning a ref lective and patient response as an opportunity to pause and to calm herself and to embrace unknowing, Baraitser recognises that she is interfering with her child’s play. She becomes aware that her intrusion is being most likely being generalised to other areas of Joel’s development, including his speech, and that she is contributing to sustaining rather than relieving his stammer. Despite what Baraitser describes as a “drama of interruption” (2009, p. 87), therapy over the next few months leads to Joel’s stammer being resolved. This realisation marks a movement towards maternal wisdom as it exhibits Baraitser’s ability to learn from experience, as she uses her failure as a catalyst to think and an opportunity to repair, which signals her transformation.

Surprising encounters with maternal love Baraitser presents another experience of personal interruption as she encounters sudden and intense feelings of overwhelming maternal love, tenderness and f luidity for her child. She recounts a surprising meeting with what she refers to as her child’s alterity, that is, his otherness, as she watches him slumber and is suddenly brought to tears. This experience of weeping marks both a psychic separation from her child and surprise at her own intense emotional response. Baraitser argues that her child’s “coming and going, from the world, to another place and back again” (2009, p. 109) provokes a f lash of maternal love together with feelings of internal disarray as she recognises that her child has gone away to a place where she cannot join him (2009, p. 157). She understands these experiences as distinct from other forms of maternal love which she describes as “either a f lood of warm affectionate feeling or simply a function of speech” (2009, p. 91). She ascribes the ardour of these overwhelming feelings, which provoke internal disarray for her, as a realisation of the reality that he has gone away to a place she is excluded from (2009, p. 157). I argue that this wave of curious maternal feelings is a sign of a deep reserve of love which has the potential to both unnerve the mother and to renew her loving sensations towards her child. The description of this particular kind of maternal response inspires an understanding of the transformative role of maternal interruption as it rests in, and powers the everyday maternal experience and contributes to, an articulation of the language of maternal love. Baraitser attests to the maternal struggles that constantly confront the mother as she is faced with needing to accept and take ownership of a full gamut of feelings towards her child. She speaks of sensations of “shame, confusion, self-reproach and anger” that grip the mother when she “feels anything other” than being fulfilled in her mothering (Baraitser, 2009, p. 67). According to Baraitser mothering

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summons a woman’s capacity to “confront her own worst nightmares—her rage, aggression, hopelessness and despair”, while being “bruised” in the process (2009, p.  68). Baraitser offers a way to navigate these interruptions to the maternal experience by employing a concept of them as opportunities for renewal, rather than as impediments, as she uses her imagination to utilise these incidents in a creative way and to ref lect on their meaning. Baraitser’s thinking returns to Bion’s work and the value it places on lived encounters which inspire the mother to learn from her experience as she engages in patience, thinking and feeling in the waiting space. The interruption elicits maternal renewal, as the mother experiences suffering and struggle, together with a revived love for her child and a new experience of herself and a feeling of specialness sourced in their mutual connection. These encounters challenge the mother and provide her with experiences that are surprising and new, and they serve as a reminder that everyday life with her child also elicits feelings of maternal ambivalence. An articulation of maternal feelings provoked by the interruption contributes to an understanding of momentary feelings of hatred as a transformative part of maternal love.

Movement towards maternal wisdom The thinking of Bion and Symington informs an understanding of the movement towards maternal wisdom which is manifest in the mother’s capacity to learn from her experience, to pursue real knowledge and to realise profound emotional change. Bion advances the idea of the mother as a container who patiently retains her composure as she processes her child’s anxieties in the waiting space, then returns them in an assimilated and comprehensible way which facilitates interand intrapsychic f luidity. His notion of authentic knowledge, K, is linked with a desire to understand, rather than a need to know, as the mother struggles with her conf lictual feelings, confronts uncertainty and resists the temptation to exert power in her interactions with her child. This chapter draws on Symington’s reasoning that deep affective knowledge and understanding indicates wisdom. Maternal wisdom emerges in the mother’s ability to understand and engage in her feelings of hatred as an enriching and crucial aspect of her love and is a cornerstone to the language of maternal love that is being developed in this book. The attainment of understanding, knowledge, and learning through experience is traced by Bion through the containing relationship of the mother and infant in which “the earliest and most primitive manifestation of K occurs” ( Bion, 1984, p.  90). Bion uses the terms container and contained to describe an emotional connection in which any possibility of growth and vitality is reliant on a meaningful and constructive exchange rather than one which is superficial. This involves a connection with the nature of the other, an ability “to tolerate both the sense of infinity (that there is always more to know) and of doubt (that is, of being able not to know)” (Waddell, 2002, p.  116). Ogden (2004a) considers the notion of not knowing as a source of transformation and learning

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as it engenders curiosity and promotes the mother’s development as she endures uncertainty. Waddell furthers the emphasis that Bion places on the value of real knowledge in the distinction that she makes between “becoming a walker” and “learning about walking” (2002, p. 41) as a way to determine real understanding. The experience of becoming a walker describes a superficial rote learning experience, whereas learning to walk corresponds to an experience of getting to know something in a profound way, which emanates from the desire to understand the self and other. The mother’s capacity to learn to relate in an authentic way with her inner and the outer world in the context of her interaction with her child can result in a transformative maternal experience. The acquisition of knowledge can be further elucidated in the context of its struggle with its antithesis, −K, which Bion describes as a mode of being that destroys rather than promotes knowledge. If antipathy to knowledge results, transformation is impeded and the experience is stripped of its true meaning, as the human is left “in a denuded condition where only worthless residue of elements are retained” (Bion, 1984, p.  98). Bion cautions against the use of vapid facilities, including the use of power and finding fault with the other, as a way to assert moral superiority. This takes on special significance for the mother because of her daily close and protracted relationship with her child. A warning can be extracted from Bion’s work, which exhorts the mother to avoid exerting a sense of moral superiority over her child. This can also apply to the mother’s internal dynamic and the struggle between a side of her that upholds self-criticism, judgement and moral superiority and a side that promotes truth and understanding. Symington explores notions of emotional freedom, power and transformation in his 1990 article “The Possibility of Human Freedom and Its Transmission”. In this paper, Symington advocates the value of an authentic connection in which “The real me was contacting the real her” (1990, p. 102), the passing of time and the upholding of mutual freedom and respect. This contrasts with reaction which advances the use of power, as both become victims and hostage to the other, and each “puts the other’s personhood out of action” (1990, p. 102). According to Symington, the power imbalance perpetuated in mothering can be mediated by the mother’s ability to access her own centre which inspires an inner sense of freedom. He endorses a reframing of relationships in which bullying and power are removed and, as such, intercourse within the couple is promoted assuaging the need for a “victim or victor” mindset. Symington claims that emotional knowledge and wisdom can be realised through the meeting of what he refers to as the personal “thinking and feeling centre” (Symington, 1990, p. 102), of another person, which I understand to be the site of connection. When the personal centre of one individual connects with that centre of another, the “primeval” anxiety (1990, p. 103) is allayed, which invites transformation. “When one person begins not to be victimized by these forces, the possibility of transformation begins. . . . Emotional knowledge is able to free people from the bonds of anxiety” (1990, p. 103).

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Symington advances Bion’s thinking in his articulation of the notion of wisdom in its transformative capacity which enhances the maternal language of love. The maternal functions of containment and reverie prepare a space for maternal wisdom to f lourish while the mother struggles with experiences of not knowing as she engages with her own and her child’s anxiety. Her capacity to shape a maternal waiting space grants her the ability to think, rather than to react, in her mothering. This allows her to access a part of herself that can tolerate, struggle with, and think about her frustration. The integration of maternal loving and hating feelings is aligned with wisdom as the mother learns from her experience. This is a f luid process which, paradoxically, relies on the maternal capacity to be, to wait, and to attend. Symington’s work on maternal affective experience invites an understanding of maternal wisdom. He defines wisdom “as a rich store of emotional knowledge” (1990, p. 100) which is allied with affective knowledge. Symington explores the notion of wisdom and distinguishes between the attainment of intellectual, that is, cerebral knowledge, as opposed to affective, that is, emotional knowledge. He argues: Intellectual knowledge is knowledge about someone or something. It is knowledge about a phenomenon. Affective knowledge is knowing someone or something directly. It is knowing the phenomenon directly. Intellectual knowledge is knowing about it. (Symington, 1990, p. 100, emphasis in original) The mother’s experience of integration of her loving and hating feelings is aligned with wisdom as the mother learns from her experience. Symington presents a narrative in which he claims that affective knowledge is akin to wisdom when it involves the acquisition of both experiential and emotional knowledge at a deep inner level. His argument is adaptable to the maternal experience as one which relies on the mother’s deep connection with and understanding of her child, which enables a rhythm to be established and an opportunity for her to know her child in a genuine way: Affective knowledge changes the knower in the substratum of his being; intellectual knowledge leaves the substratum unchanged. A person can be very intelligent and knowledgeable but be left unchanged by it; it is compatible with being emotionally undeveloped. Another person may make a poor showing in intellectual knowledge but be rich in emotional knowledge. (Symington, 1990, p. 100) Symington’s discussion of rich emotional knowledge is applicable to Renée’s experience as the concierge in The Hedgehog. Her admission that she has never studied formally and that she is always glued to her television recalls the correlation

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that Symington makes between a person who, whilst poor in intellectual knowledge, has a rich emotional understanding. It is clear from the way Renée relates with Paloma that a lack of formal education has not hindered her insight or her ability to connect with the girl and that she possesses profound affective knowledge and an ability to be transformed by, and to learn from her life experience. Symington’s definition of wisdom is used to describe the kind of knowledge and insight in which personal meaning is extracted through learning by experience as opposed to a superficial or rote learning: Wisdom we might define as a rich store of emotional knowledge. Wisdom is often present when the store of intellectual knowledge may be low. Being changed by emotional knowledge is painful and therefore resisted. (Symington, 1990, p. 100) Symington’s reference to the mother’s experience of change, which involved pain and struggle as a way to attain wisdom while also recognising it as a transformative force, is crucial to the notion of wisdom. Two films, Incendies and Mommie Dearest, are drawn on to further an understanding of the notion of maternal wisdom as an acquired emotional knowledge, which is aligned with the mother’s ability to learn from her lived experience, and a movement towards the realisation of Bion’s K, which is aligned with a desire to understand. These films depict living experiences of struggle as two women encounter diverse and discrete interactions with their children. One mother, Nawal, despite enormous emotional and physical deprivation, makes a movement towards emotional knowledge and wisdom, whereas the experiences of the other mother, Joan Crawford, who lives an ostensibly charmed and successful life, contribute to an understanding of −K, the antithesis of K, which indicates a lack of emotional knowledge. The shaping of the maternal language of love is advanced through the notion of maternal wisdom which is marked by the mother’s ability to learn from her experience and to use momentary feelings of hatred as a catalyst for her love, In Incendies, maternal wisdom prevails as Nawal uses her experiences of deep personal suffering to advance an emotional understanding of her mothering. A maternal experience is portrayed which is reliant on f luidity and experiential learning as Nawal confronts extreme experiences of love and hatred which, while formidable and potentially debilitating, also facilitate opportunities for deep affective growth and profound change. The film inspires an understanding of the concept of maternal wisdom as a mother’s capacity to learn from her real life experience invites both a realisation of deep affective knowledge and a movement towards an acceptance of her feelings of ambivalence. This is contrasted with the mother in Mommie Dearest a film about the actress Joan Crawford, whose relationship with her adopted daughter Christina is driven by maternal rigidity, violent outbursts and a sense of moral superiority and entitlement. Joan continually relates through competition and exerting power while

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exhibiting a minimal capacity for emotional insight or learning from previous experience.

Getting of wisdom in Incendies Incendies is a compelling story of maternal struggle as a mother’s hating feelings become a catalyst for her maternal love and inspire her emotional growth as she develops a capacity through ref lection and emotions to learn from her experience. The film is a retrospective of Nawal’s life (1949–2009) from about the time she is 15 until her death in 2009. It is set in the late twentieth century in a fictional Middle East country which is ravaged by civil war. Nawal’s teenage pregnancy to her boyfriend from a rival religious group results in her having to give up her infant son with a promise that she will find him one day. This is followed by her relentless and fruitless search for him over some years through a warring countryside. She joins a rebel group and is commanded to commit a murder which results in her incarceration where she is continually raped and becomes pregnant. Some months after giving birth to a boy and girl, Simon and Jeanne, she is released from prison and her twins, who have been secretly cared for by a nurse, are returned to her and she resettles with them in Canada. The central disclosure of the film is Nawal’s sighting of her lost son about 25 years later at a local swimming pool in Canada. She is shocked as she recognises him both as her lost eldest son, by an identifying symbol that was tattooed on his foot at his birth, and as the man who raped and impregnated her in prison. This means that her twins’ lost brother is also their biological father. This discovery results in a period of maternal grief and suffering which is also marked by internal sunder as Nawal receives and absorbs this harrowing news. She is compelled to emotionally revisit her mothering and to process the reality that her yearned for son, a representation of her pure and idealised maternal love, is also her cruel and hated rapist. This reconciliation forces her to confront her long held beliefs about her eldest son that are now shattered, and the reality that the mothering of her twins has been deeply affected by the secrecy and anger that has permeated her past and their lives. This realisation is a catalyst for profound change for Nawal and is articulated in a series of letters that she prepares to be delivered to her twins on her death. These letters while initially confusing for the twins hold the key to the puzzle about Nawal’s life. The letters reveal that the disclosure about her eldest son has profoundly affected and changed her and that she has ref lected deeply on the way to deliver her new thoughts and feelings to her children. She devises a plan whereby her twins can decide to discover the truth of their heritage, which is conditional on them retracing their mother’s past and learning about her life themselves by travelling to her homeland. Her insistence that they make their own discovery, rather than her relating her own understanding of the enigma and secrets of her life, attests to the value that Nawal places on experiential learning. Despite the hardship and disruption that Nawal knows that her twins would confront in

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their travels, she realises that this would equally provide them with a singular opportunity for learning and emotional growth, and release a compassion and understanding of her past and of themselves.

Nawal’s first letter to her twins Nawal’s letter of wishes requests that the twins find and deliver two envelopes: one for Jeanne to take to their father, and the other that Simon will give to their previously unheard of brother. On completion of this duty the twins will then be given a final letter which will break a silence and free them to bury their mother in the designated way, facing the sun in a grave with her name on it. The twins are confounded by their mother’s requests and conf lict is generated between them despite their closeness to one another. Jeanne is filled with benevolence and love for her mother and decides to embark on the journey to locate her father. Simon on the other hand is incensed with the demands of his mother, whom he considers as a crazed woman, and while initially refusing to go with his sister he joins her later. Their quest reveals that their mother’s early life is marked by circumstances of extreme adversity and despair which is complicated by a series of dark secrets which emerge as the twins try make sense of the puzzle prompted by her wishes. Their bewilderment is mirrored in the film which continually oscillates between various geographical locations, time periods and multiple lives which are weaved through the story. The twins find and deliver the two envelopes to the same man whom they realise through their travels is both their elder brother and their father. Nawal addresses two letters to her eldest son, the first to the father who is also her rapist, the second to her beloved son whom she gave up at birth many years before. These letters to her son are a testament to Nawal’s attainment of deep affective understanding. They demonstrate that she is able to integrate extreme feelings of love and hate, and that her hating feelings constitute a transformative part of her maternal love. Her ability to synthesise these feelings and to learn from them, are a sign of her wisdom. The first letter addressed to “the father”, her hated rapist, reveals feelings of contempt and hatred towards him. She anticipates that he will remain silent rather than admit to his former transgressions, which suggests that she believes he is beyond redemption and unable to learn from his past and to transform. By signing the letter Whore 72, Nawal is expressing her anger and hatred about his ignominious and humiliating treatment of her during her time in prison, where she was merely a whore identified by her number whom he tortured and raped at will. The tone of the next letter which is addressed to “the son, not to the torturer” is in stark contrast to the previous one. Nawal repositions herself as a mother who has spent her lifetime yearning and searching for the son whom she describes as “beautiful” and her words are consoling and profess everlasting love and tenderness towards him. This letter from “your mother Nawal Marwan, prisoner no. 72” signals that she has transformed herself from being a mere whore, while still

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identifying herself as a prisoner, as she becomes a mother with a name. In addressing “her son not the torturer”, Nawal demonstrates that she has the capacity to hold contradictory images in her mind which she connects at some level. Nawal also demonstrates that she has attempted to understand the tension and meaning of these disparate concepts for herself, as she directs her understanding “not just towards the baby but also to her own feelings” (Parker, 1997, p. 26). Parker states that the mother must face “the part of her that wants to shut the baby up at any cost, as well as the part that passionately wants to make things better” (Parker, 1997, p. 26) for him. The forgiving tone of this letter suggests that despite her suffering Nawal has been able to use her hating feelings, as expressed in the first letter, as a catalyst for her loving feelings which indicates a movement towards their integration, which is a mark of maternal wisdom.

Nawal’s final letter to her beloved twins The letter that the twins open from their mother after they complete her instructions is replete with expressions of love together with some maternal regret. Nawal admits to her past emotional absence, elicited mainly by the relentless search for her lost son and her experiences in prison, which resulted in an upbringing dominated by their mother’s pain and angst. The final letter to her twins expresses her posthumous but unattainable wish to give them time and to soothe them through her embrace and song. This loving letter to her twins is apologetic and conveys her gratitude to her twins, while entreating their forgiveness for the mothering they received. It ends with a hopeful tone and a sustaining declaration of maternal love for her twins as she can finally release and understand her long held hatreds which are a catalyst for her maternal loving feelings. The discovery of the startling truth about her eldest son stimulates an opportunity for her to rethink her understanding of her past experiences as she recognises the futility of perpetuating the cycle of secrecy and anger that she has shaped to manage her life. While the sighting of her lost son elicits both shock and despair for Nawal it also presents an opportunity for learning and transformation as her feelings of hatred are intensified and profound sensations of love are released. Nawal’s relationship with her children recalls de Marneffe’s work on the difference between having, which is based on hopes and dreams and caring, as real life struggles peppered with momentary feelings of love and hate are experienced. Her feelings about her eldest son are dominated by her own illusions and idealisations as she yearns for him, which is consistent with de Marneffe’s notion of having, and distinct from the reality of everyday caring. She spends most of her life emotionally fused to this fantasy, however when reality is revealed and she is confronted with the truth that her long lost son has a good and an evil side, she is able to integrate her feelings of love and hate and use them to draw on her wisdom and tolerate her disparate feelings. Her experience with her twins is different as the circumstances surrounding their conception were traumatic and violent. As previously mentioned by Takševa (2017), in her study

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on mothers who decide to proceed with mothering their child born of rape, the traumatic events around the conception licences these mothers to have hateful feelings about their child, which are as a rule, taboo. Takševa adds that these feelings of hatred and aggression are reworked over time and provide the mother with opportunities of empowerment. However, it seems, not surprisingly, that for Nawal the combined trauma of losing her son, being imprisoned, raped and impregnated, then suffering a separation from her twins for the first few months of their lives, followed by moving to a foreign country, totally overwhelmed her. It is most likely that her decision to hold the secrets from her past thwarted opportunities for f luidity and agency until she sighted her lost son, which both unravelled her life and prompted her to find her inner resources to write the letters and finally speak her truth. The maternal experiences of Nawal articulate the message conveyed in this book in which the value of maternal ambivalence, the site in de Marneffe’s words of the “real human work” (2004, p. 124), is linked with learning from real life experience as a precursor to maternal wisdom. The experiences that Nawal and the twins endure return to the distinction that Waddell makes between learning to walk, which promotes understanding and deep affective change through experiential learning as opposed to the superficial experience of being a walker ( Waddell, 2002, p. 41). The notion of maternal wisdom also elicits a hopefulness for the future and is linked with a capacity for tolerating the unknown, as explored by Ogden (2004a, p. 286), which involves a capacity to push forward, despite getting lost and being confused and uncertain, which is exemplified in the experiences of both Nawal and her twins. Her actions exemplify those of a mother who can contain her child through ref lection and forgiveness and rather than being stymied by her feelings of hatred for her eldest son, Nawal is able to draw on her capacity for f luidity to tolerate his attacks on her. I draw on Nawal’s experiences to demonstrate the effect of experiential learning and deep affective knowledge and their centrality to the language of maternal love that I am developing. Nawal’s appeal to her twins to return to her homeland in order to gain an understanding of her early life ref lects her belief in the value of learning from experience and its link with profound affective knowledge. Her communications with her oldest son illustrate her ability to extend forgiveness and compassion towards him despite his transgressions, which shows how feelings of hatred can be a catalyst to the repair and restoration of maternal love. These encounters demonstrate that incidences of f low, experiential learning and deep affective knowledge can effect maternal wisdom which is core to the language of love.

Mommie Dearest: maternal wisdom thwarted Nawal’s mothering provides a stark contrast to that of the film star Joan Crawford in the 1980s film Mommie Dearest whose mothering recalls Bion’s −K, the antithesis of real knowledge, K. Whereas K is marked by a capacity to provoke deep

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affective change which f lourishes through learning from experience and thinking, experiences of −K destroy, rather than promote, the realisation of real knowledge and understanding. Joan’s inability to move towards K, is demonstrated by her behaviour towards her daughter which is dominated by a need for control, outbursts of rage and bullying, which are examined in Symington’s 1990 article “The possibility of human freedom and its transmission”. This is accompanied by a rigidity and a need for total compliance from her daughter, which subverts the development of maternal understanding and capacity for change. Joan’s inability to ref lect on her actions and to process her feelings is characterised by a quest for moral superiority and self-aggrandisement with a dearth of care shown for Christina’s emotional or physical welfare. This is exacerbated by the mother’s need to indulge in moments of disingenuous maternal affection towards Christina which are favourably timed for public display and to elicit a fantasy of maternal perfection. Joan’s mothering, while consistent with a lack of maternal wisdom also functions as a guide to the language of love I am developing. It demonstrates the destruction that can escalate when a lack of emotional knowledge and an inability to learn from experience embodies the mother and child interaction. A lack of maternal insight dominates Joan’s mothering of her daughter Christina who becomes a repository for her mother’s insecurities and disappointments as Joan continually reacts to her daughter through thoughtless and spiteful attacks. The mother’s insistence on external appearances of tidiness and perfection, such as the impeccability of her house and her clothes, belie the real internal disorder and messiness of her being which infect her household and are expressed in surges of anger, particularly towards Christina. In one instance when Christina is about 6 years old, she is play acting at her mother’s mirror pretending to be a famous film star talking to her fans. Joan walks into her bedroom and is infuriated as she construes this as Christina making fun of her. The mother roughly brushes the girl’s hair before fiercely cutting it off in uneven clumps as Christina pleads with her to stop and protests that she is scared to go to school with her hair in such a mess. These appeals incite further maternal ferocity and demonstrate a lack of maternal compassion. In another episode when Christina is a little older, she is woken in the middle of the night to clear remnants of the rose bushes that Joan has ferociously mutilated because she was denied a film role. Joan embarks on another torrent of emotional and physical abuse when she sees a wire hanger in Christina’s closet one night when the girl is about 8 years old. This elicits Joan’s unbridled rage so she wakes Christina, throws the girl’s clothes on the f loor, beats her mercilessly and then makes her clean her bedroom and then the bathroom tiles with a nailbrush as she becomes increasingly incensed by the girl’s cries. These continuing incidents portray a mother who is totally reactive and unable to ref lect on her behaviour and learn from it; rather she continually repeats this behaviour. Joan’s entrenchment in −K is marked by her incapacity to ref lect on, and to process either her own or her daughter’s anxiety, as control, competition and bullying are the currency in their relationship. The mother considers any filial act of resistance from Christina as a hateful attack which necessarily undermines

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her quest for maternal power and moral superiority. Ironically this also indicates that Joan is fused with her daughter and regards her as an extension of herself rather than someone with separate needs. A series of encounters between Joan and Christina when Christina is about 8 years old illustrate their dynamic. Joan insists on competing against Christina in a swimming race in their pool and after Joan wins the girl complains that she is tired and that it was unfair because her mother is so much bigger. Joan responds that life is not fair and she will always beat her. When Christina replies that she will not play with her anymore, the mother admonishes her for her tone of voice, the girl answers back and Joan hits Christina and locks her in a room. This episode demonstrates that rather than relying on ref lection to understand the interaction with her daughter Joan returns to being a child herself and fury and tension escalate between them. It is clear that Christina’s displays of sorrow and vulnerability do not elicit maternal empathy and equally that Joan has not developed the thinking and understanding to tolerate and explore, rather than react to her daughter’s impudence. This battle for control is evident in a subsequent encounter when Christina refuses to finish her lunch one day. Joan tells her she cannot leave the table until she eats everything on her plate and Christina stubbornly defies her mother and remains at the table until dinner. She is then sent to her room, without dinner, and the next day she is given the old meal again. The mother eventually relents and commands Christina to throw the remains of the meal in the rubbish, but it is evident that she will not forget and she will avenge her daughter’s wrong at an opportune time. Joan’s mothering recalls Green’s thinking on unprocessed rage, in which an inability to ref lect and to shape a differentiation results in a space which is full of reaction and devoid of a calming adult presence, which is consistent with −K. This is opposed to an experience of Bion’s K, in which measured responses together with experiential learning allows sense to be made of surging anxiety and profound change. These violent scenes are interspersed with exhibitions of idealised maternal love which are dependent on Christina’s good behaviour and compliance which become a mirror for her mother’s self-image. At an extravagant circus birthday party when Christina is about age 6, the young girl must pose for loving photos with her mother as they wear identical dresses, before she’s allowed to play with her friends. A televised Christmas message around the same time publicises Joan’s perfect family in which the successful actress also manages to give the impression that she is a wonderful mother, full of charity for underprivileged children, including her own adopted daughter. This image evidently belies the true domestic situation which she describes as a mixture of discipline and love. These episodes echo an experience of −K which is aligned with superficiality which stif les depth, f low and creativity rather than a movement towards genuine emotional understanding. These encounters return to Symington’s (1990) work and prompt a fuller understanding of Joan’s mothering as her feelings of frustration and helplessness are conf lated resulting in a dynamic of power, bullying and reaction. The

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realisation of authentic knowledge relies on a circularity which prompts free f low between mother and child where, in Symington’s words, the couple can access each other’s centres, and a genuine connection can prevail. The f luidity between Joan and Christina is impeded as the mother is unable to emotionally meet with her daughter and quell the anxiety between them, and as such they both become victims to each other’s reaction. The essence of the language of maternal love which I am developing and its reliance on experiential learning and emotional understanding which is aligned with a realisation of maternal wisdom is compromised in Joan’s mothering. This film is both an embodiment of, and a warning about, what can occur when maternal wisdom is thwarted.

How to Make an American Quilt: ritual, the unconscious, wisdom The film How to Make an American Quilt forges a connection between real-life and psychic experiences, as the experience of quilting, while a mechanical task, is also revealed as holding deep symbolic meaning. Bion’s notion of the thinking and feeling mother, who makes sense of her child’s feelings through the combination of her ref lective and sensitive capacities, is evoked in film by the women in the quilting bee, who draw on their powers of concentration and their intuitive natures. In weaving their life experiences into patchwork squares, they unconsciously indulge in ritual, as stories and memories contribute to generational wisdoms which are traditionally passed from mother to child. A link between the ritual of quilting and mothering is secured as the quilt is assembled, undone and restored alongside experiences of maternal failure, repair and renewal as both summon toiling, forgiveness, patience, suffering and commitment. These maternal capacities uphold f luidity and are central to the mother’s capacity to endure and transform her hateful feelings, which mark the realisation of her wisdom and contribute to the maternal language of love. One of the opening scenes of the film of Finn as a young child demonstrates how the psychic and actual experiences of quilting conf late. Finn recounts memories of herself at about 4 years of age sitting under the dining table in her grandmother’s home looking up at the quilting frame as the members of the bee sewed above her. She compares the moving images of the women’s hands to shadows which she imagined to be missives which giants had made in the sky. Their skilful and repetitive hand movements, together with Finn’s imaginings, provoke a hypnotic atmosphere. These continual and rhythmic gestures are a reminder of both the passing of understandings between mother and child, and of the wisdom that these women have acquired over the years through their craft, which symbolises the skill and sagacity that mothering necessitates. As a woman engages in her mothering, she draws from, and contributes to, this collective wisdom and strength, which is sourced from an unconscious connection with her ancestors and helps her to bear the complexities that being a mother demands. By engaging in ritual an emotional expression which “speaks to the

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mind and heart but doesn’t necessarily make sense in the literal context” (Moore, 1994, p. 225), the mother is unconsciously compelled to follow a direction while oblivious to the reason for doing so. In the film, incidents of maternal wisdom transpire as the women meet, sew together, argue and reconcile, which prompts opportunities for learning from experience through instances of maternal failure and repair. This recalls experiences of altercation and restoration between two mothers and daughters, recounted in Chapter 4 on Winnicott, as each mother undergoes experiences of deep affective change. After a dispute with her daughter Finn, Sally admits to her maternal failures and mistakes which allows a reparative waiting space to emerge which signals a movement towards knowledge. Similarly, Anna’s argument with her daughter Marianna, prompts the mother to ref lect and abrogate the use of power over her daughter, which transforms and deepens their relationship. While these exchanges unfold between mothers and their daughters, other interactions in the film serve as a reminder of the importance of the presence of other maternal figures, including friends and relatives, to the child’s life. This is demonstrated in personal conversations that emerge between Finn and women in the quilting bee. Their discussions about past life experiences including stories about love, losses and traumas in a patriarchal society, and those of their ancestors, communicate information about the collective cultural narrative in the twentieth century. Difficult maternal encounters allow the mother to learn from her experiences and to absorb the significance of everyday accomplishments and failures. This learning is coloured by Ogden’s (2004a) notion of not knowing as the mother pursues her experiences despite unpredictability. In the film, instances of forgiveness and f luidity mediate and transform maternal feelings of hatred as the quilting bee offers a creative, reparative and transformative environment. The film invokes a story of a labour of love, storytelling and meeting, as feminine lore is processed and imprinted, physically and emotionally, into the quilt. The crafting of the quilt becomes a medium in which to chronicle and transmit stories about the women’s past lives, loves and sufferings and to ascribe meaning to them. Anna shares a story with Finn about a quilt which was made by her great-great-grandmother many years ago. The story of her life was crafted into the quilt, and as it was passed on each storyteller added her own words to the tale. The quilt generated a story of its own. It was initially sold during the depression and then reclaimed, so it could accompany Anna on her travels to become a new mother. Quilting becomes part of the family tradition and as Marianna grows up, Anna tells her tales from the quilt, and realises that she had also become part of those stories. The importance of the quilt as an agent of tradition and a carrier of continuity and comfort is clear in Anna’s comments. How to Make an American Quilt is a narrative of maternal love and ambivalence in which psychic transformation unfolds. In the film the notion of ritual is observed and maintained as the women’s insights add to the personal stories and memories that are continually imparted over the generations as a quilt is crafted. Stories of maternal transformation and wisdom unfold within a repetitive shifting

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of time between past and present as personal stories and memories are shared and serve as reminders that quilting, and the women’s work that it entails, is a timeless and linked generational experience. The use of film demonstrates that ritual offers another dimension which, together with the notion of wisdom, enriches an understanding of the maternal language of love.

Conclusion This chapter draws on interactions between mother and child, from both film and first-hand experience, to reach an understanding of the notion of lived experience and how it reconciles with maternal ref lection, learning, and wisdom, to promote transformative exchange. The attainment of maternal wisdom can mediate and transform hating feelings in the mother. It is tied to thinking and learning from experience in the waiting space in which profound knowledge is realised through maternal change, as opposed to a superficial or intellectual interaction that impedes transformation and learning. Symington’s ideas are drawn on to extend the articulation of a language of maternal love through the contribution to the maternal notion of wisdom. The dynamic that prompts the mother to respond, to ref lect, to be patient and to connect with wonder and curiosity, while resisting the compulsion to exert power over her child, facilitates a waiting space that transforms hating maternal feelings and is aligned to the realisation of maternal wisdom. The notion of deep affective knowledge, which is sourced in experiential learning and the mother’s capacity to be changed by her experience, marks the achievement of maternal wisdom. Whereas the film Mommie Dearest exemplifies a mother’s incapacity to reach a modicum of wisdom, the films Incendies and How to Make an American Quilt (1995) are carriers of the language of maternal love and a movement towards maternal wisdom through love, repair and suffering. I synthesise these ideas with Winnicott’s work on goodenough mothering, Klein’s integration of feelings of love and hate together with accounts of lived experiences from film and personal experience, to guide me as I continue to develop the language of maternal love. The next chapter, which is the conclusion, communicates my belief in the efficacy of the word wisdom as a foundational construct in its capacity to articulate this language.

7 CONCLUSIONS The experience of maternal love and hate

I begin this chapter by returning to the preamble and my analysis of the Greek myth of mother and daughter, Demeter and Persephone, to enhance an understanding of these maternal feelings of ambivalence. Demeter’s experience, as a powerful symbol of the sustaining and forgiving power of maternal love, has guided me in my writing and hints at the fabric of the book. As Demeter suffers and struggles with the dark hateful feelings prompted by Persephone’s experiences in the underworld, equally, they provoke intense feelings of maternal love. I argue that perplexing and uncomfortable feelings that result from these maternal painful encounters, together with the mother’s capacity to endure and to learn from them, are a central part of mothering. Demeter’s anguish prompts a shift towards reparation and transformation as she realises that she must accept the reality that Persephone will return to the underworld for four months every year. This myth has many possible levels of meaning. It may represent the mother’s impossible search to recapture her idealised love for her daughter or it could symbolise the psychic realisation that certain differences between mother and child can never be spanned. Complicated nuances emerge from Demeter’s realisation that her daughter is indeed f lawed, and that she will need to reconcile her maternal hatreds about this and the feelings it prompts about her own darkness. Demeter exhibits a capacity to endure and to learn from her suffering as she reaches an acceptance of her daughter and herself, a marker of maternal wisdom. The challenge remains to continue the search to understand and articulate the vast range of maternal feelings and tensions which encapsulate the mother’s inner and external daily experience. In accordance with the myth this book has shone a light on the underbelly of mothering and exposed its dark parts and has forced a rethinking, rather than a recoil from it. Rozsika Parker’s book Torn in Two (2005) drew my attention to the under-examined idea of maternal ambivalence, the mother’s loving and

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hating feelings towards her child, and the creative potential of maternal hatred. While I share Parker’s belief that ambivalence is a silenced but integral part of mothering, I have emphasised the momentary nature of these hating feelings and their capacity to fuel maternal love. The language of maternal love which I have formulated has drawn on the work of psychoanalytic, feminist and contemporary social thinkers, including Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Daphne de Marneffe, Erna Furman, Lisa Baraitser, Andrea O’Reilly, Adrienne Rich and Neville Symington, made real through the lived experiences from film and first-hand accounts, and bears witness to everyday maternal life and its struggle, feelings and transformation. This book both disrupts and advances understandings of mothering by shaping a language of maternal love in which a mother’s wisdom is borne by bearing deep psychic challenges as she learns from her experiences in an atmosphere rife with social expectations. Parker’s words met with my conviction that mothers are less than truthful to themselves and others about their everyday feelings. Her words inspired me to ref lect on the taboo, fabrications, prejudices and silences that surround mothering and questions related to everyday maternal experiences. This conf lated with an urge to convince mothers to give an authentic voice to their full maternal feelings rather than censoring them. The daily grind of hands-on mothering incites a range of emotions, some amazing, others shocking and still others boring, but all worthy of ref lection. Surrounding this dynamic is a mother’s fear that she will be judged by others, and a niggling suspicion that she may be a bad mother. Moments of maternal despair and feelings of exasperation are not uncommon. The mother f luctuates between being drained by her child’s demands and needs, and sudden surges of love which compensate for her fear that she may harbour hateful feelings. As I have demonstrated in this book, all mothers experience feelings of maternal hatred and for the most part these emotions are intermittent and short lived. It’s a very confronting and fearful sensation for the majority of mothers and runs contrary to their most primal instincts and social expectations. This is compounded by difficulty in exploring and recognising maternal hate because it is entangled in so many other mixed emotions and ideas about what a mother should be. Whether simmering or overt, this emotion is usually denied then smoothed over so it can be spoken of in more socially acceptable terms. It is impossible to imagine that as social niceties are stripped away and mothering at the coalface is exposed, that hateful feelings do not exist and that they are not hiding behind or manifest in some other form such as maternal guilt, shame, anger, sadness, exhaustion and sentimentalised love (Almond, 2010; Baraitser, 2009; Furman, 1982; Symington & Symington, 1996; Winnicott, 1949). My own understanding of the notion of maternal hatred is informed by a discussion that I had many years ago with a colleague. I admitted to confusion, shame and shock about feelings of hatred that I had towards people I was close to and that should, in my mind, only contain love. He wryly posed the question “What do feelings of hatred do, do they kill anyone?” This led to an epiphany

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for me as I realised that I had invested an inordinate amount of mythical and unfounded power in the word hatred, I had conf lated it with cruelty and paralysed myself in this understanding. This exchange had caused an emotional shift which enabled me to recognise and safely explore the significance of both my feelings of hatred and my previous rigidity. I realised that I had forfeited a vital part of my emotional growth by denying, and refusing to ref lect on, my genuine and full sentiments. This encounter is a reminder of the power of words to both crush taboo and strengthen its stultifying force, and the value of lived experience in capturing and transforming these moments of meaning. I now assume the role of the devil’s advocate and ask what is achieved for the mother in revealing and examining distasteful aspects of her mothering? Is it not preferable to keep them hidden? Mothers already suffer from being blamed and shamed so will these admissions make it worse? The problem is that in hiding the truth, untruths fester, and any efforts to sanitise these dirty parts of mothering are untenable, in fact they are counterproductive. Mothering is a human experience which needs to be honestly examined and lived. This means that the mother must be prepared to recognise and take responsibility for her feelings about her mothering. By engaging with hateful feelings and trying to understand and talk about them, the mother can realise an opportunity for transformation and a richer, more fulfilling relationship between herself and her child. Of course, a paradox sits at the heart of this matter which poses the question: How can a loving mother harbour hateful feelings for her child and what does she do with these feelings? It is a difficult demand for such an emotionally charged subject. As the traditional carers for their children, mothers have endured many difficulties and joys, both psychic and physical in their mothering. I argue that the mother needs to take a step forward and make sure that her voice emerges. A conversation is needed in which doubts and misgivings about mothering meet together with the other side, a right to these maternal feelings. Mothering needs to be upheld as a dynamic process, a site of learning, repair and hope which relies on forgiveness of the self and other (Bion, 1984; Craib, 2001; Hess, 1999; Klein, 1997; Putzel, 1993; Symington & Symington, 1996). A physical and psychic shifting is evidenced in the questioning of the patriarchal system (O’Reilly, 2010; Rich, 1995) and a movement in the literature from a child-centred towards a mother-focused perspective (Bueskens, 2014b; Parker, 2005; O’Reilly, 2010). These are indications of a rethinking as a choice emerges for mothers to access their voices or to remain mired in the maternal ideal. This is a rocky path which relies on the mother’s willingness to express her feelings, difficulties, hatreds and ambivalence, without judging herself too harshly. Mothers themselves are responsible for both impeding and freeing themselves. An experience of mothering which favours the release of a wide range of emotions, including those that are taboo, contradictory and unseemly, presents the mother with an opportunity to acknowledge and work through her difficulties and to enrich her daily life. An investigation of how these dark and unsavoury feelings can be revisited and

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reconsidered to become a facilitator of wisdom is central to the maternal language of love.

If only I had . . . These understandings have elicited thoughts about my own maternal experiences and strengthened my assumption that most mothers look back on their mothering and wish they could have done many things differently. This thinking is indicated as feelings such as guilt, distress, shame, fear, anger, disappointment and exhaustion persist in the maternal literature (Blos, 2003; de Marneffe, 2004; King, 2017; Klein, 1984; LaChance Adams, 2014; Lax, 2003; Parker, 1997, 2005, 2012; Minsky, 1998; Rich, 1995; Rose, 2018; Symington & Symington, 1996; Turrini, 2003; Turrini & Mendell, 1995). There is evidence that most mothers experience deep regret when recalling the times that “they lost it” (Edward, 2003, p. 252) with their children. This is exemplified in Joyce Edward’s (2003) recount of the graphic recollections of a mother who is still haunted 45 years after shaking her baby. These feelings are aggravated by the mother’s inability to resist the lure of perfectionism, which elicits unreasonable maternal expectations and distress (Almond, 2010; de Marneffe, 2004; Parker, 2005; Turrini & Mendell, 1995; Raphael-Leff, 2010; Tuval-Mashiach & Shaiovitz-Gourman, 2014). Despite these adversities I maintain the vast majority of mothers do the best they can given their current and historical experiences and that “every woman wishes to be a good mother” (Lax, 2003, p. 174). With this in mind, I have compiled some “if only I had” thoughts, inspired by my own experiences as a hands-on mother and the maternal language of love. If only I had understood and repositioned mothering from an imaginary space full of perennial joy and tenderness to a more lifelike, messy, interrupted experience, which, although marked by irritation, frustration and disorder, nonetheless elicits maternal love and satisfaction, I would have had a more realistic baseline from which to mother. This description of mothering as messy and interrupted is oddly coherent; though it implies disorder it equally has a steadiness that grasps the truth of the experience. A more accurate and truthful naming of it would have helped me to have more realistic expectations about what mothering really entailed and meant, and to be more accepting and forgiving of both myself and my children. Had I realised that “that loss—or the fear or fantasy of loss—is at the very heart of the mothering experience” (Rye, 2009, p. 19) I would have been more equipped to manage my mothering. If I had accessed the creative and controversial thinking of writers such as Jacqueline Rose who encouraged mothers to “speak the unspeakable” (2018, p. 47), Susan Maushart (2007) who pleaded for the removal of maternal masks and Katie Wright (2014) who confronted the unseemly and silenced parts of mothering with honesty and humour through theatre, I would have normalised and felt less alone in my struggles. If only I had recognised and understood the significance of maternal f luidity and the corresponding danger of inf lexibility, and celebrated the fact that I had

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never experienced indifference towards my children, my mothering would have been enriched. It may have helped me to be more patient and ref lective, more present and less regimented in my daily life. If I had applied Maushart’s wise entreaty that as mothers we must accept that we are “all of us making it up as we go along, and wishing we knew better” (Maushart, 2007, p. 480) I would have felt soothed and could have reconciled the reality of mothering as a humbling and uncertain experience (Ogden, 2004a) which imparts daily lessons. If only I had slowed down, been less serious and laughed more. Had I played longer at bath time, been willing for my children to be late to school a few times and insisted on fewer after school activities, I would have better understood play as “the best part of the relationship” (Winnicott, 1991, p. 79) with my children. By playing and remaining in the present I would have put more value on the wonder and curiosity. Had I allowed myself more me time, what Rich describes as a mother’s dream to “simply find a way to take care of herself ” (1995, p. 280), I would have had more space to delight in the “the truly unmitigated moments of joy and bliss that children bring” (Takševa, 2017, p. 164). If only I had realised that my maternal mistakes were a source of repair and learning (Bion, 1984; Mariotti, 2012b; Klein, 1984; Winnicott, 1986) and an opportunity for redress and hope, rather than a source of self-regret and shame. I could have adopted the tenet “where getting it wrong, may be as important as what getting it right might sometimes mean” (Mayo & Moutsou, 2017b, p. 6) to guide to my mothering. I would have found solace in Lisa Baraitser’s (2009) stinging and honest admission of fostering her child’s stammer as a lesson in the restorative and transformative possibilities of everyday maternal failures. If only I had understood mothering as an experience of paradox, it may have prepared me to hold the tension between both sides of the continual contradictions of my life as a mother. Had I reconciled mothering as a process of expansion and contraction, a continual series of gains and losses (Furman, 2001; King, 2017; Rye, 2009; Segal, 1989; Turrini & Mendell, 1995) I would have been able to be more thoughtful and forgiving of my responses and accept myself more. The truth within the contradiction articulated by Jacqueline Rose that for a mother “there is nobody in the world I love as much as my child, nobody in the world who makes me as angry” (2018, p. 126) would have comforted me. If only I had been able to resist the pressures of the maternal ideal and been more ref lective about how it provokes superficiality, while hindering creativity and change, my mothering would have been more unrestricted and authentic (Symington, 1990). I would have been more aware of the dangers of expectations and the word should, which are aligned to dreams and illusions about mothering rather than the daily realities (de Marneffe, 2004; King, 2017). This distinction would have prepared me to be more measured and thoughtful and less reactive in my mothering. If only I had a maternal language of love to ref lect on and to identify with it may have helped me really understand my own ambivalences and mine the depths of my own experiences.

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Implications This brings me to the implications of my understandings for maternal theory and research. By adding to the research on this under-represented, valuable and misunderstood aspect of mothering, I allocate a distinct space for ambivalence in the context of the wider maternal literature and extend the parameters by which the mother’s lived experience can be investigated. I restate the underlying assumption that this study upholds an awareness that mothering cannot be generalised within or across cultures, and that a mother’s experience with each of her children is unique (Almond, 2010; DiQuinzio, 2007; Mayo & Moutsou, 2017b; Parker, 2005; Takševa, 2017). I would welcome further research on the vital importance of a supportive other, such as a partner, friend or family member, for the mother as she negotiates her mothering (Bernardez, 2003; Parker, 2005; Symington, 1990; Winnicott, 1991). Work that is mindful of current matters such as the changing nature of the maternal ideal, the impact of new family structures such as same sex couples, whether two mothers or two fathers (Takševa, 2017), and the effect of technology and the pressure of work on the lives of mothers are pressing issues that need additional examination. As I finish this book at the time of Covid-19, I consider its ramifications on the lives of mothers who must stay at home, often in confined spaces, with their dependent children and how it will impact their mothering and expose feelings of maternal ambivalence. I applaud any new work on maternal ambivalence as an opportunity to provoke ref lection, curiosity and debate, to facilitate a realisation of its significance to mothering and its function in the public maternal narrative.

Conclusion The disruption of conventional beliefs has prompted a renewed understanding of the experience of mothering and further ref lection about the attendant expectations and beliefs nestled in the maternal ideal. I have probed the myths around mothering which have been transmitted through this ideal and argue that secrets and taboo impede a fuller understanding of the maternal experience and that they exert an undue inf luence on a mother’s everyday experience, while hindering her ability to claim her voice. The emergence of the mother’s voice is manifest in the expression and acceptance of the genuine feelings and struggles that mark her mothering. This is closely tied to her ability and inclination to question the value and purpose of the cultural ideals and accompanying judgements that affect her as a mother. By reconciling these often contradictory sensations and by owning and examining rather than hiding them, and by forfeiting her dependence on the maternal ideal, I argue that the mother can realise a position in which she can claim her own agency.

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Filmography Babies. (2010). Directed by Thomas Balmès [Film]. USA: Focus Features. A Happy Event. (2011). Directed by Rémi Bezançon [Film]. France: Gaumont. The Hedgehog. (2008). Directed by Mona Achache [Film]. France: Pathé Films. How to Make an American Quilt. (1995). Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse [Film]. United States: Universal Pictures. Incendies. (2011). Directed by Denis Villeneuve [Film]. Canada: E1 Entertainment. Lady Bird. (2017). Directed by Greta Gerwig [Film]. United States: Universal Pictures. Mildred Pierce. (1945). Directed by Michael Curtiz [Film]. United States: Warner Bros. Mommie Dearest. (1981). Directed by Frank Perry [Film]. United States: Paramount Pictures. Sophie’s Choice. (1982). Directed by Alan J. Pakula [Film]. United States: Universal Pictures. We Need to Talk About Kevin. (2011) Directed by Lynne Ramsay [Film]. United States: Oscilloscope Laboratories.

INDEX

Almond, Barbara 4, 13, 17, 20, 23–24, 28, 31 alpha elements 133 alpha function 133 ambivalence, concept of 20, 27; see also maternal ambivalence Association for Research on Mothering 37 Babies (film) 11, 14, 35; approach to mothering 47–50; value of 50–51 bad breast 96, 97 Baraitser, Lisa 15–16, 91, 98, 125, 128, 161; child’s tantrum 91, 141, 143–145; everyday maternal encounters 142–143; experience of child’s stammer 145–146; surprising encounters with maternal love 146–147; work of interruption 141–147 bedtime routine 64–65 Benn, Melissa 41 beta elements 133, 141 Bion, W. R. 7, 15, 126, 127, 161; acquisition of knowledge 147–148; learning from experience 137–141; mother-child communication 133; mother’s lack of understanding with daughter 137–140; mother’s reverie, ref lection and containment 129–135; New Year’s Eve debacle and turnaround 135–141; notion of maternal reverie 15, 129–130, 132, 135; undigested facts 133, 141 Bosnian women, narrative of 13, 34, 39 breastfeeding, representation of maternal ideal 100–104

Buddhism 58 Bueskens, Petra 13, 37 Care of the Soul (Moore) 6 caring, notion of 45–47 Cartwright, Duncan 127, 134, 135 Child, The Family, and the Outside World, The (Winnicott) 72 child’s tantrum, maternal experience of 91, 141, 143–145 choice 8–9, 62, 106, 124, 162 conf licted mother, maternal group 30 Crawford, Joan 150, 154–157 cruelty 5, 42, 162 de Beauvoir, Simone 129 de Marneffe, Daphne 13, 21, 22, 24, 153, 154, 161 Demeter, legend of 1–2, 160 Demeter Press 37 dependency: drama of 71–72; movement from absolute to relative 76–81; new mother’s struggle with 72–73 depressive position: integration of loving and hating feelings 104–111; Klein 14, 31, 93–94, 97–100, 104–105, 109, 111–118, 121–123, 126, 135; loss and restitution 111–113; story of hospital stay 114–116; We Need to Talk About Kevin (film) 121–123 DiQuinzio, Patrice 36 Douglas, Susan 41, 42, 44 Edward, Joyce 12, 78, 163 Embodied Encounters (Piotrowska) 9

180 Index

Facebook 7, 44 facilitator, maternal group 30, 163 Featherstone, Brid 37 feeding experience: breastfeeding 100–104; mothering and 55–58 Feminism, psychoanalysis, and maternal subjectivity (Stone) 78 Ferrante, Elena 42, 43–44 film(s): cinema and 8; maternal love 3; use of 10–16; see also Babies (film); Happy Event, A (film); Hedgehog, The (film); How to Make an American Quilt (film); Incendies (film); Lady Bird (film); Mildred Pierce (film); Mommie Dearest (film); Sophie’s Choice (film); We Need to Talk about Kevin (film) First, Elsa 53, 75, 76, 78 Frost, Nollaig 13, 34, 38, 39 Furman, Erna 53, 67, 161; mothering experience 81–83 good breast, metaphor of 96 good-enough mothering 14; bedtime routine 64–65; collapse and recovery in The Hedgehog (film) 89–90; drama of dependency 71–72; feeding experience and 55–58; in Lady Bird (film) 83–88; maternal failure and repair in How to Make an American Quilt (film) 60–63; maternal rage 75–76; move from absolute to relative dependency 76–81; new mother’s struggle with dependency 72–73; potential space of unintegration and play 63–71; productive use of maternal hatred 80–81; prolonged maternal collapse in A Happy Event (film) 91; redeeming aspects of deficient mothering 68–71; separation process 81–83; struggles and renewal of new mother 58–60; transformative possibilities of maternal collapse 88–91; transformative possibility of maternal hatred 73–81; Winnicott’s notion of 53–60 Grapes of Wrath, The (Steinbeck) 84 Green, Laurence 53, 74–75, 78, 80 Happy Event, A (film) 11, 15, 54, 91, 125; Barbara’s epiphany 106–107, 128–129; Barbara’s integration and renewal 105–106; encounters of new mothering in 97–99; first-hand maternal experiences of repair 108–111; Milk Club 97, 99, 101–104, 106; new

mother’s struggle with dependency 72–73; struggles and renewal of new mother 58–60, 128 “Hate in the countertransference” (Winnicott) 74 hatred: feelings of self- 19; maternal 5–6, 91–92, 161–162; maternal rage 75–76; term 5; transformative possibility of maternal feelings of 73–81 Hayes, Jane 41 Hedgehog, The (film) 11, 14, 64, 89–90; play and unintegration in potential space 65–68; redeeming aspects of deficient mothering 68–71 Hollway, Wendy 37 honour, definition of 6 How to Make an American Quilt (film) 11, 14, 55, 159; Anna and Marianna arguing about yellow f lowers 61–63; maternal failure and repair in 60–63; maternal love and ambivalence narrative 158–159; Sally and Finn’s restorative encounter 60–61; wisdom in 157–159 Incendies (film) 11, 16, 159; getting wisdom in 151–154; notion of maternal wisdom 150 Inside Lives (Waddell) 131 Instagram 7, 44 Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, The ( journal) 37 King, Lucy 41 Klein, Melanie 7, 14, 31, 93–94, 161; avoiding conf lict 110; depressive position 14, 31, 93–94, 97–100, 104–105, 109, 111–118, 121–123, 126, 135; hopefulness, f luidity, forgiveness and repair 113–116; markers of internal good object 113–116, 134; maternal suffering 117; mother’s struggle against indifference 123–124; movement between rigid part-objects toward integration 95–99; movement from paranoid-schizoid to depressive position 97–99; notion of good and bad breast 96–97; paranoid-schizoid position 14, 31, 93–97, 99, 104–105, 109, 111, 114–118, 126, 136; story of hospital stay 114–116; trap of maternal ideal 99–104

Index

LaChance Adams, Sarah 13, 42, 45, 46 Lady Bird (film) 11, 14, 15, 94; goodenough maternal transformation in 83–88 Learning from Experience (Bion) 134 literature see maternal studies lived experience 9–10, 32, 127; learning from 137–141; of maternal ambivalence 15, 40, 126; mother’s 7, 57, 124, 150; notion of 159; storytelling as carrier of 4–5, 8, 11; value of 50, 53–54 love, naming maternal feelings of 23–24 Mann, David 6, 23 maternal ambivalence 1–2, 165; contemporary maternal voice 41–47; creative potential of 28–29; current literature on 38–41; disrupting beliefs about mothering 25–28; healthy 29–30; lived experience of 15, 40, 126; love and hate 26; maternal hatred 5–6; naming 3–5; naming feelings of love 23–24; notion of 4, 6, 12, 16, 26, 29, 36; recognizing 138–139; ref lections about mother 17–18; role of in mother’s experience 32–33; term 7, 34; use of film 10–16 maternal caring, concept of 21–22, 24 maternal collapse: collapse and recovery in The Hedgehog (film) 89–90; prolonged, in A Happy Event (film) 91; transformative possibilities of 88–91 maternal experience see mothering experience maternal hatred 5–6, 91–92; notion of 161–162; productive use of 80–81; transformative possibility of 73–81 maternal ideal: breastfeeding as representation of 100–104; changing nature of 165; function of social system 19–20; having and caring in 21; notion of 19; problematic and compelling force of 18–23; trap of 99–104 maternal love 3, 159; language of 151, 154, 156–157, 159, 161, 164; power of 160; surprising encounters with 146–147 maternal ref lection, New Year’s Eve experience 135–141 maternal reverie 15, 127, 133–138; concept of 129–132; containment and 134–135, 149; term 132 maternal studies 34–35, 163; Babies (film) 47–51; caring notion 45–47;

181

contemporary maternal voice 41–47; current literature on maternal ambivalence 38–41; in feminist literature since last 20th century 35–36; maternal agitators of 20th century 36–38; mother’s passage through blame, hate and secrecy 42–44; taboo and masks 44–45 maternal suffering 117; passive 117, 118, 124; transformative 117, 118, 124; in We Need to Talk About Kevin (film) 117–124 Maternal Theory (O’Reilly) 37 maternal voice: contemporary 41–47; notion of caring 45–47; passage through blame, hate and secrecy 42–44; taboo and masks 44–45 maternal wisdom: Bion on acquisition of knowledge 147–148; getting, in Incendies (film) 151–154; in How to Make an American Quilt (film) 157–159; Mommie Dearest (film) and 154–157; movement towards 147–154; Symington’s work on maternal experience 149–150 maternity 18, 24, 40, 142 Maushart, Susan 42, 44–45 Mayo, Rosalind 13, 39, 41 Mélega, Marisa Pelella 130, 132 Mendell, Dale 21 Michaels, Meredith 42, 44 Mildred Pierce (film) 12, 14, 16, 84, 88; move from absolute to relative dependency 76–81 Milk Club, A Happy Event (film) 97, 106 Mommie Dearest (film) 12, 159; actress Joan Crawford 150, 154–157; maternal wisdom and 154–157; notion of maternal wisdom 150 Monster Within, The (Almond) 20 Moore, Thomas 6 mother: concept of promoting confusion 25; hateful feelings in vicious cycle for 20; perception of 34; ref lections about 17–18; term 18 mother-and-child relationship: bedtime routine 64–65; feeding experience 55–58; potential space of unintegration and play 63–71 mother and infant: circular process 108, 133; emotion between 131, 134–135; feeding experience for 56; group 7–8; interaction 49–50, 130; relationship of 147

182 Index

motherhood studies 36, 37; unmasking 44–45; see also maternal studies mothering: Babies (film) 47–50; conf luence of love, pain and pleasure 124–125; differences in rural and urban 49–50; disrupting beliefs about 25–28; engagement of diverse feelings 111–113, 115; hateful feelings in 32; having and caring in 21; hopefulness, f luidity, forgiveness and repair 113–116; if only I had 163–164; intersectional approach to 47–50; maternal suffering 117; process of separation 81–83; ref lections about 6–9; reverie, ref lection and containment 129–135; in rural settings 48–49; tumult of 30–32; universalising 12; in urban settings 49; Winnicott’s notion of good-enough 53–60 Mothering & Psychoanalysis (Bueskens) 13 Mothering and Ambivalence (Featherstone and Hollway) 37 mothering experience 162–164; Baraitser’s work on interruption in 141–147; child’s stammer in 145–146; child’s tantrum in 143–145; everyday encounters 142–143; expansion and contraction symbolising 18; expectations of 22–23; feelings of 15; nature of love in 26–27; ref lection in 139–141; role of maternal ambivalence in 32–33; understanding 14 Mother in Psychoanalysis and Beyond, The (Mayo and Moutsou) 41 motherlove 36; term 23–24 Mothers (Rose) 35, 42 Moutsou, Christina 13, 39, 41 Mum’s the Word (play) 38, 40 myth, Demeter and Persephone 1–2, 160 New Momism, phenomenon of 44 Of Woman Born (Rich) 36 Ogden, Thomas H. 15, 134, 147, 154, 158 O’Reilly, Andrea 13, 33, 34, 161; foundational work of 36, 37 paranoid-schizoid position: Klein 14, 31, 93–97, 99, 104–105, 109, 111, 114–118, 126; relying on rigid defences 96–97; story of hospital stay 114–116; We Need to Talk About Kevin (film) 118–121 parenting 27 Parker, Rozsika 4, 12–13, 17, 23, 34, 153, 160–161; avoiding conf lict 111;

beliefs about mothering 25–28; creative potential of maternal ambivalence 28–29; maternal rage 75–76; maternal reverie 133; mother-and-child dyad 31; reconciling hateful feelings 110 passion 103; root of 24, 117; term 24 passive suffering 117, 118, 124 patriarchy 13; concept of 36–37; system of 33 Pelled, Esther 129 Persephone, legend of 1–2, 160 Pines, Dinora 22–23 Piotrowska, Agnieszka 9 position, term 95 potential relationship 36 Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria 13, 42, 45 Raphael-Leff, Joan 4, 13, 17; healthy maternal ambivalence 29–30; maternal groups 30 reciprocator, maternal group 30 regulator, maternal group 30 reproduction, psychic experiences of 22–23 Researching Lived Experience (van Manen) 10 reverie: maternal 15, 129–130, 132, 135; state of f loating attention 129; term 132 Rich, Adrienne 13, 33, 34, 124–125, 161; foundational work of 36–37 Rose, Jacqueline 13, 35, 36, 41, 164 second child, mothers having 13, 39, 41 Segal, Hanna 96, 97, 108–109, 112–113 Segal, Julia 104, 130 self-hatred 7, 19 Shaiovitz-Gourman, Shirit 13, 35, 38, 40 social media 7, 44 Solomon, Hester 26 Sonzogno, Maria Celília 130 Sophie’s Choice (film) 8, 9, 10, 124 Steinbeck, John 84 Stone, Alison 78 storytelling 158; creativity of 10; Demeter and Persephone 1–2, 160; lived experience 9–10; as medium 8, 9–11; mother’s experience 1–2 Symington, Joan 130, 136–137, 139, 141 Symington, Neville 16, 68, 70, 117, 127–128, 130, 136–137, 139, 141, 147–150, 155–157, 159, 161 symptom: definition of 6; honouring 70–71

Index

Takševa, Tatjana 13, 34, 38, 39, 153–154 Tavistock Institute 131 Torn in Two (Parker) 25, 160 transformative suffering 117, 118, 124 Turrini, Patsy 21 Tuval-Musiach, Rivka 13, 35, 38, 40 undigested facts 133, 141 unintegration: film The Hedgehog 65–68; potential space of play and 63–71; Winnicott’s notion of 57 “Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications, The” (Winnicott) 75 van Manen, Max 6, 9–10, 26, 27

183

Waddell, Margot 130–131, 132–134, 140, 148, 154 We Need to Talk about Kevin (film) 12, 15; depressive position 121–123; maternal suffering in 117–124; mother’s struggle against indifference 123–124; rigid persecutory paranoid-schizoid position 118–121 Winnicott, D. W. 7, 14, 53–54, 161; good-enough mothering 53–60, 134; maternal preoccupation 77, 132; notion of unintegration 57, 132; pleasure and enjoyment of mothering 125; potential space of unintegration and play 63–71 wisdom, notion of 127; see also maternal wisdom Wright, Katie 13, 35, 38, 40