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Our mothers were our first unrequited loves, our first relational gain and loss. In a rich and vivid way, Galit Atlas describes how our first physical and emotional connection, our bond to our mothers, can be traced in our mature desires and longing for others. As infants we longed for the mother's touch and for her body. When we were in her arms, we felt whole. When she was away, we longed to be reunited with her. Yet this constant longing creates anxious tension—what if she doesn't feel the same way toward us? Atlas uses Meltzer's formulation on how the tension between the mother's tangible, loving arms and her enigmatic, tacit aspects—her unknown thoughts and often puzzling actions—provokes anxiety. She further elaborates how the baby is therefore left with an aching fear of being dropped, neglected, or left alone, yet at the same time achingly and dreadfully longs for the maternal touch.
This aching fear and desire derived from the encounter with the “Enigmatic Mother,” a term Atlas uses following Laplanche and Stein, and her enigmatic messages. These enigmatic messages refer to both the implicit messages and enigmatic signifiers from the mother's unconscious, which are imprinted in the baby's body and mind. These imprints, Atlas contends, are connected with mature sexuality patterns, and especially their existential aspects.
In many ways, the mother and her infant were never truly symbiotic—the mother's enigmatic aspects highlighted her separateness, her otherness. Yet they were still connected, enigmatically and pragmatically, through the pragmatic aspects of the mother—her touch, gaze and mirroring. And so, sexual longing presupposes a sense of loss, and a hope of re-finding what has been lost. This loss is inevitable, yet painful nonetheless.
The book explores the diachronic axis from birth to death, combines a personal and cultural view, and contains autobiographical aspects which accord with the Relational perspective on the analyst's subjectivity. In this re