Daughters and Mothers—Oedipal Aspects of the Witch-Mother

CURRENT LITERATURE CONCERNING THE VICISSITUDES OF FEMALE DEVELopment emphasizes the centrality of the girl's long dependence on the mother. Usually what is commented on is the tenacity of the daughter's attachment and the difficulty she seems to have in relinquishing it. Because of the apparent hostility and sadism which seem to characterize this tenacity, the prominence of envy rather than jealousy, the girl's insistence on dyadic as opposed to triadic issues, and the girl's attachment to her mother are often understood as primarily preoedipal. From this point of view, the girl's difficulties lie in the arena of separation-individuation, and the fantasies are seen as having to do with the archaic omnipotent mother. For example, Bernstein and Warner (1984) state, "The shadow of the preoedipal mother falls constantly upon the girl's representational world during the oedipal period" (p. 54).

I think that the fantasy of the fascinating and terrifying "witch-mother" that is so frequently associated with the daughter's tenacious, hostile attachment to her mother is better understood as an oedipal fantasy configuration. This paper presents clinical material from the analyses of several adult women, an adolescent girl, and a prepubertal girl, illustrating a configuration of fantasies about the mother that include: a secret excited longing for the mother and her body which the daughter experiences as putting her at risk to be taken over by the mother for the mother's pleasure; the projection onto the mother of the envious, hostile, jealous, and possessive aspects of the daughter's love; the experience of the mother as malignantly destructive of the daughter's efforts to obtain genital pleasure from other sources; and