a list

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Fri May 31 14:11:45 PDT 2002


At 04:35 PM 05/31/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Apropos of nothing (well maybe the patriotism thread, tangentially),
>except that I just came across a copy of this paper in my files, this
>classic list of reasons why the mother hates her baby from D.W.
>Winnicott's "Hate In The Counter-Transference" (International Journal
>of Psycho-Analysis 30 [1949], part 2, pp. 69-74).

I really like Winnicott, but, based on personal experience, I can't go along with those abc's. For one thing, although our language gives us separate words for "mother" and "baby," there are in reality no mothers without babies and no babies without mothers.

Though the solitary ego may resent any interference with its liberties and its expansion (and therefore "hate" the baby), the experience of being a mother is more about an effacing of ego boundaries and a realization that one is (before anything else) intimately, fruitfully, eternally in relationship with others--without which relationship the holy ego is no more than a useless husk.

Needless to say, this situation is extremely complicated by the fact that motherhood is seldom chosen freely and consciously.

Joanna



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