Eroticism in the Maternal Matrix: Infusion through Development and the Clinical Situation

Julia Kristeva (2014) offers us an evocative pairing: “Reliance, or maternal eroticism.” The relationship between the two intrigues. An intimate equivalence is suggested. Also, we wonder, who is it that relies on maternal eroticism? Kristeva indicates that a mother relies on her eroticism in mothering her child, but also that the child relies on the mother's eroticism in developing a vibrant sense of self. The encounter with the mother as erotic being brings into being the child's erotic self, both in the specifically sexual and in the most general sense: vitality in living, a curious and creative engagement with life — eros, rather than functional adaptation. We, as a species, rely on our inheritance of maternal eroticism as crucial to our humanity — a generational transmission of tantalizing tenderness and fierce passions in an embodied relationship with mother, with self, and with the world — what we as clinicians hope to help each patient access and elaborate, as well as, necessarily, to contact in ourselves. In Kristeva's evocation of maternal eroticism, we find hints of a much-expanded understanding of what might be encompassed within erotic transference and countertransference.

Reliance does not mean omnipresence. A mother relies on her eroticism to invest in her baby and in its development and to turn her in directions of desire other than her child, setting a limit, a line between the two, allowing for a state of emergence from the stasis of a closed unit and, thus, supporting the child's unique unfolding as well as her own. This dynamic pairing would ideally form the foundation for an experience of a couple relation that breathes — connecting in, releasing out, oscillating, but sustaining over time. As Kristeva states, the mother holds; she is not a passive bystander; she stands by her child; she is committed. Without abandoning, she also needs to release any “hold” that would grip, constrict. Contact with her erotic self supports each of these activities t