Editor's Introduction: Mothers

After its earlier fascination with the parents of Oedipal phase, psychoanalysis began to recognize the importance of the pre-Oedipal mother. This shift began to occur in the early 1940s and was firmly in place by the 1970s. Prominent among those responsible for such conceptual movement were John Bowlby, W. R. D. Fairbairn, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and somewhat later, Margaret Mahler. The subsequent decades have witnessed the emergence of far more sophisticated neonatal and child observation studies; their impact on psychoanalytic developmental theory is beyond doubt. The works of Stanley Greenspan, Daniel Stern, Robert Emde, Henri Parens, and Peter Fonagy are especially important in this realm. Noticeable in this newer literature is the fact that the interactive patterns of both the child and the mother are taken into account; this is in contrast to the earlier theorists who mostly focused (with the exception of Winnicott) on the child's contribution to the dyad.

Distilling the observations on the mother's role in facilitating the child's development, I have elsewhere proposed that the tasks of a mother belong to the following 12 categories: (i) holding; (ii) containing; (iii) protecting and nourishing; (iv) awakening the libidinal potential of her child's body; (v) introducing the child to his inner world; (vi) evoking the core self and helping consolidate gender identity; (vii) imparting ego skills; (viii) seeing goodness in the child; (ix) surviving; (x) letting go of the child; (xi) remaining available as a psychological “home base”; and (xii) helping the child bear the Oedipal situation and teaching the child to respect the father.

Now, this applies to well-adapted and high-functioning mothers. Not all mothers are “good enough” (Winnicott, 1956/1958) in this way. Some are self-absorbed and neglectful. Others, hostile and malicious. While the notions of “schizophrenogenic” mothers and “frigidaire” mothers who inculcate infantile autism have become antiquat