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Even if it occupies such an important place in the unconscious histories of mothers, breast feeding is often considered only from the point of view of the development of the baby, without taking into consideration the amplitude of the psychical resonances in the newly become mother. At this point there is a strange silence which corresponds to the permanent temptation of opposing the erotic breast and the maternal breast, which is valid for everyone and requires the comprehension of its unconscious logics. The experience of breast feeding is a privileged field of study of the conflict or the articulation between the feminine and the maternal: in each woman breast feeding questions the alliance or conflict between different psychical positions. Because breast feeding is a specific carnal act, submitted to a complex collective imaginary, that embodies or refuses but at the same time that delimits the contours. It is a particular type of relation, which is more carnal and regressive than bottle feeding. It provides particular sensual modalities and provokes rich and complex fantasies, especially around liquids where all products of the body can be confused. The maternal erotic awakens the burning pre-oedipal and oedipal desires and defenses and questions the part of the infantile played in the sexuality of each one.
This article proposes the questioning of “the impossible division” between the maternal and the feminine, the nourishing and the sexual, in order to take distance from a phallic logic of the breast and to indicate certain defensive modalities of the classical opposition between erotic breast and maternal breast.