Of Mothers and Other Collective Lovers: Inspired by Kyoko Taniguchi's “The Eroticism of the Maternal: So What If Everything Is About the Mother?”

Abstract

Inspired by Kyoko Taniguchi's article (this issue), I deploy the Japanese concept amae to engage the mother as a collective erotic object. Amae also helps me express gratitude to my psychoanalytic mothers for their tireless efforts on behalf of this journal.

Notes

¹I'm using italics for these pronouns to emphasize our interdependence.

²In this comment, I do not address many of Taniguchi's central themes regarding maternal erotic desire but allow myself to stray—with her always in mind.

³This is taken to its extreme in what Stein (2003) called “vertical mystical homoeros” where any form of maternal identification must be destroyed in order to join as One with the Father.

⁴Indeed, given our penchant for attachment and neuropsychoanalysis of late, might it be said that we are crediting observation sometimes at the expense of fantasy? (J. Wolff-Bernstein, personal communication, March 4, 2012).