“A Mother of One’s Own”: An Analytic View of Object-Relationships in Adult Patients Raised in the Kibbutz

Abstract

Child rearing practices in Israel’s kibbutzim (from the 1920s to the 1980s) offer a unique opportunity to explore possible consequences of a particular type of early mother–infant relations. During this time in the kibbutzim, it was common that babies were not raised by their mothers as sole, or even major, caretakers. This practice was different from current Western cultural norms of child rearing. Winnicott's view of the role of the mother (1958 [1965]) is examined in light of the author's extensive experience as a psychoanalyst treating adults who were raised in the communal child-rearing system of the kibbutz. The author aims to reexamine the object relations of her patients raised in the kibbutz as manifested in the psychoanalytic process. Patient–analyst relations, transference and countertransference, the analytic “frame,” and the analyst's emotional presence are discussed and examined through two clinical cases illustrating various consequences of the communal child rearing.

Keywords:

• kibbutz
• child-rearing
• object-relation
• attachment
• consequences
• transference–countertransference

Notes

1 My deepest gratitude to M.R. and T.H.O.

1 I am very cautious regarding how to make use of this portion of Winnicott's thinking as well as the aspects of my own thesis regarding the significance of the `biological mother' when considering mother-infant relationships that lie outside the focus of this article, for example, in cases of adoption. It is important to emphasize that this article's aim is to address the unique upbringing that occurred in the kibbutz. Adoptive mothers, although not 'biological' mothers, are certainly ? by means of ?primary maternal preoccupation' (Winnicott, 1958) ? capable of being good-enough-mothers.

2 Bowlby adds the following footnote: “Although in this paper I shall usually refer to mothers and not mother-figures, it is to be understood that in every case I am concerned with the person who mothers the child and to whom he becomes attached rather than the natural mother” (p. 350).

3 This failure to differentiate the biological mother from other forms of maternal provision may also derive from the sociological–political changes in which egalitarian attitudes have become more popular. Although it might be thought that these egalitarian attitudes would influence the actual allocation of tasks within the private sphere in general, and child care in particular, this is not the case. In almost all of the research on issues of maternal caretaking it is the biological mothers (compared to the fathers) who are the primary caretakers of infants and children in these studies (Baxter, 2002; Bianchi, 2000; Craig, 2006; Rabin & Shapira-Berman, 1997, and many others).

4 Toddlers learned early on that if they cried, the night-keeper would hear them through the intercom and eventually come to check on them. The night-keepers also took periodic strolls throughout the communal children homes to check up on the children as they slept.

5 This article cannot elaborate on this issue, i.e., examining the various factors that contributed to the change. However, it is most likely that the shift was influenced by general changes in Israeli society as well as initiated by personal experiences of the second generation, i.e., those raised as children in the kibbutz, who, as they matured into parenthood, demanded modification.

6 ”Metapelet is the Hebrew word for both “caretaker” and “therapist.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ofrit Shapira-Berman

Ofrit Shapira-Berman, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and senior teacher at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a member of the Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She maintains a private practice in Tel Aviv.