“The wounds arise from early losses, rejections and insufficient holding environment arising in part from experiences with the absent and blank mother. They leave behind the nagging feeling of being flawed and inadequate. Perfectionistic habits develop to compensate but do not lead to growth.” (p. 27)
 
Unease, anxiety, or perhaps even a sense of unexplained dread, low self-worth and a lack of confidence, a feeling of being an imposter or living a façade may all be symptoms of inadequate mothering. However, let’s not blame the personal mother as we know now that intergenerational trauma is passed on from parents to children; generation to generation; and that it is extremely difficult to mother properly when inadequate mothering was received.
 
We have also learned that, for optimal mothering, the mother needs to be adequately contained by the father and/or a community. Inexperienced mothers often find themselves alone in the challenging process of mothering amidst difficult circumstances. Many mothers are traumatized themselves and may dissociate from their internal world and feelings of sorrow, abandonment and betrayal in order to survive psychologically. They become absent to themselves and consequently to their children. These complex emotionally deadening internal spaces, where there is deficient relationship to self – and lack of connection to others - are transferred from mother to child. This emptiness becomes a fault line in the personality.
 
A psychologically absent mother “cannot recognize or support the child’s psychic aliveness and this denies permission for the child to exist or be separate.” (p. 14) Whether outright or subtle, maternal rejection, emotional neglect or a lack of secure attachment arrests the healthy development of the child.  A mother who is unable to relate to her child’s authentic self-expression, treating the child as a narcissistic extension of herself, can’t fulfill the child’s basic needs for love, affirmation and validation. This impacts the child’s the ability to feel and express love in a healthy manner and a self-denigration may develop. The lack of the mother as an internal anchor reverberates through the personality.  
 
References:
Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. THE ABSENCE OF MOTHER
https://speakingofjung.com/podcast/2019/1/18/episode-40-susan-schwartz
Image credit: Andrew Peterson 
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Our beginnings are rooted in the mother. We are born from her body, imprinted with her DNA (combined with the father’s) and biologically programmed to seek and recognize her. According to Jung, this innate need for mothering is a universal archetypal pattern.
 
‘Good enough mothering’ is important for the psychological and physical well-being of a growing human being. A nurturing, caring and psychologically present mother person (not necessarily the biological mother) during infancy and early childhood is a keystone of optimal adult human health.
 
But what if the mother figure is either emotionally, physically, or psychologically absent?
 
The mother’s impact on her children can be enlivening or deadening as reflected in the positive and negative mother complexes. “The negative mother complex can include self-alienation… It adversely affects confidence, promotes idealization of others and erodes life energy; feeds an internalized cycle of self-hatred, oppression, and vengeance.”  (p. 7)
 
“At the core of the mother complex is the mother archetype, which means that behind emotional associations with the personal mother, there is both an archetypal image of nourishment and security on the one hand and an archetypal negative of devouring possessiveness, darkness and deprivation on the other.”(p. 3) The mother archetype can manifest as the ‘loving’ mother, demonstrating nurture, wisdom, fertility, birth and growth (Jung, 1990, par. 158), but may also manifest as the ‘terrible’ mother (Jung, 1990, par. 157), devouring, engulfing or suffocating her children emotionally  
 
Allan Score’s Interpersonal Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and attachment theory/research emphasizes how our sense of self as well as brain development are formed via our early relationships.  Early interpersonal trauma such as loss, rejection, absence and insufficient holding may lead to feelings of being flawed, inadequate and ‘not good enough’.
 
Awareness of how mother images live within is us integral to becoming more conscious. Join us this month as we explore the relationship with the mother, whether personal or collective, and the impact on one’s sense of self.

​A post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica
 
Image credit: Gustav Klimt
 
References:
Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. THE ABSENCE OF MOTHER
https://speakingofjung.com/podcast/2019/1/18/episode-40-susan-schwartz

 
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How do you remember your father? Was he a kind, loving presence in your life, fully engaged with your upbringing? Or was he partially or completely absent and you were brought up by your mother, grandmother, extended family or other caretakers? Was there the mystery of a biological father and a much harsher reality of a stepfather? Or was your stepfather the light in your life?

The impact of a real father or father figure, or the lack thereof, on our psyche is enormous. It may empower or disable us.  Our fathers (or father figures) are our first introduction into the world of the masculine, shaping our perceptions of the wider world as we venture from the relative safety of the maternal circle. Our relationships with our fathers shape our views of the feminine, and how we respond to the feminine world, whether we value or dismiss it. This may play out in our relationships with woman, whether in intimate relationships, friendships, social situations or work environments. The relationship we witnessed between our father and mother becomes a blueprint for future relationships.

Our own relationship with our father figures repeats in many other relationships, especially in the form of a father complex, whether negative or positive.  The complex is based on the specific conditioning or programming we received as children though the real interactions with a father figure. This may compel us to search for father figures all our life, sometimes ruthlessly competing for their attention.

Underlying our relationships with the father lies the father archetype. A pattern with numerous potentialities as reflected in the many fathers from history, mythology, fairytales and observed in the world around us. The devouring father who shallows his children such as Kronos from Greek mythology. The Greek goddess, Athena who was born from the head of her father after he shallowed her mother. The father that cuts off his daughter’s hands or banishes his lame son to the underworld.
The relationship with the father, whether personal or collective, impacts profoundly on one’s sense of self. 

Written for #@jungsouthernafrica

Image credit: Shante Young 

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There's Never Enough!  The Scarcity complex is the idea that there are limited resources and everyone is grabbing at the same piece of the pie. If someone acquires something of value, it's seen as taking away from everybody else because there's only so much to go around. The idea of sharing equally is not conceivable to a scarcity mindset since the belief that there will never be enough produces feelings of anxiety and fear. On the extreme end this involves actions of ‘self-preservation’ such as unlawfully taking from other persons (or institutions) – whether their belongings, money (by way of theft or fraud), or opportunities. The scarcity complex may be rooted in some form of deprivation, either as an individual experience or passed on through ancestral wounding and intergenerational trauma. Though it may be born from a genuine lack, it may remain long after impoverished conditions are left behind.
 
The Netflix series “100” (The Hundred) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama portraying the scarcity complex. A nuclear conflict has decimated civilization. A century later, forced by a lack of oxygen, a spaceship with the only surviving humans dispatches 100 youths back to the Earth to determine its habitability. Once on earth an ongoing fight for survival ensues as the Earth was not uninhabited.  Various factions of the human race compete for resources, taking from each other what they need, even lifeblood when it proved to be a needed resource for ongoing survival… Appalling actions are justified by “doing what is necessary to save their people”. This theme is repeated over and over - destroying others in the process of getting what is needed for themselves.
 
At some point the various factions come together out of necessity, having to hide in a bunker as radioactive levels rise again. Food becomes scarce and unthinkable choices have to be made. By the time it was safe to leave the bunker, the whole Earth had been decimated, except for a lush green valley that somehow escaped the radiation… the race was on again… with everyone going for the ‘Garden of Eden’ and no-one willing to share. In the process all was destroyed.

Image credit: https://www.vulture.com/

I post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica

#jung #carljung #jungpsychology #jungianpsychology #depthpsychology 
#analyticalpsychology #consciousness #unconscious #archetypes #shadow #symbolism 
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​Awareness of how mother and father images live inside us is vital in being conscious of how they influence our current relationships.  Being cognizant of your parental complexes allows you to take back what you unconsciously project onto an intimate partner, a boss or other important relationships.
 
The parental complex is cluster of emotionally charged images, ideas, thoughts, feelings and behavior patterns originally associated with the parents. The activation of a complex is always marked by the presence of an intense emotion… like when your buttons were pushed!  We all have mother and father complexes, but they differ from person to person. The internalized imago of the parents comprises the individual’s experience of the personal parents as well as the culture and historical era in which we live.  James Hillman (2) reminds us not to confuse the mother complex with our real flesh-and-blood mother. It rather refers to the way in which our psyche has integrated the personal mother within the structure of the archetypal mother.  
 
At the core of any parental complex there is an archetypal image of the primordial parents residing in every psyche. “For instance, behind emotional associations with the personal mother (that is, the mother complex), there is the archetype of the mother— an age-old collective image spanning humanity’s experience of mothering, from nourishment and security (“positive” mother) to devouring possessiveness (“negative” mother). Similarly, behind the father complex there is the father archetype—all the experienced diversity of fathering down through the ages, from authoritarian to permissive and all shades between.” (3)
 
A parental complex can have enlivening and deadening features. A negative father or mother complex, for instance, may have been formed due to a father and/or mother who was physically or emotionally absent, self-absorbed, detached, disengaged from and disinterested in the child. A negative parental complex can manifest in self-doubt and/or idealization of others but may also include profound self-alienation which may manifest in self-hatred and/or dissociation.  

References:

1. Carl Jung, “Mind and Earth,” CW 10, par. 74.
2. https://thefeministwire.com/2011/08/resurrecting-the-great-mother/
3.  Sharp, D. (2001). Digesting Jung: Food for the journey. Toronto: Inner City Books. Chicago

 
Image Credit:

1.  'My Parents', David Hockney, 1977 / Tate
2. Cartoon by NICO ARMENTI. IllustrazioneAccademiaBARI.
3. Katie M. Berggren https://shop.kmberggren.com/
   

 
A post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica

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