Maternal intrusion: Its roots and consequences

Abstract

Behind an intrusive mother’s view of her actual child lies a disproportionate, hidden desire to revive an ideal relationship with a perfect mother. The resulting image of an idealized child then becomes a strategic aspect of the mother’s own identity, representing an idealized figure from her own past. As the mother’s idealization is disturbed by the reality of the child, the mother experiences the situation between herself and the baby as “pathological,” that is, disruptive to her. She then attempts to repair the idealization by resisting any change in the status of her relationship to her child, even as the child grows older. Her rigidity in this regard necessarily excludes a paternal presence that could challenge or change the mother–infant idealized dyad. The mother’s orientation is also contradictory to, and acts as a resistance to, psychoanalytic therapeutic interventions, which aim at any “change.”

Key words:

• mother–infant idealized dyad
• alienation
• “no-change” dictum

Notes

1 Throughout this paper, for simplicity and consistency, I refer to the “mother,” taking into consideration Winnicott's admonition that fathers can also be mothers, “good enough” or not … Further, at times it may be the father who is involved in the pathological tie to the child rather than the mother.

2 In this contribution, I have developed some ideas suggested by Piera Aulagnier about the potential for psychosis (Mijolla-Mellor, 1998).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor

Author

Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor, MD, is emeritus professor of psychopathology and psychoanalysis at the Sorbonne-Paris 7 University, a psychoanalyst in private practice, and a training analyst with the Fourth Group in Paris. She is chief editor of the journal Topique (www.revue-topique.org) and president of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Interactions (Association International Interactions de la Psychanalyse, www.a2ip-psychanalyse.org).