Ghost Mothers, Ghost Children
Çağla Pınar Sevinç Yalçın
According to Winnicott in the case of primary maternal preoccupation the mother can provide the baby what she needs when she needs it, as she needs it, as if she had “created” the object. If there is an early rupture in the embracing environment offered by the mother, the baby must deal with psychological tasks that it is difficult to cope with because he is not equipped enough during the maturation process. The defensive self (false self) is constituted almost entirely to ensure the protective isolation of the infant’s individual potential (true self). But this isolation of the true self inevitably leads to feelings of emptiness, uselessness, and deadness. Nearly 30 years after Winnicott conceptualized the earliest mother-infant relationship, Green defined the concept of “dead mother” in terms of the mother of a two-year-old child suddenly depressed. The spiritual absence of the mother creates a hole in the center of the representation of the mother in the child’s mind, creating an absence or deadness. Initially, the little child will try to revive the “dead mother” with seemingly vain efforts of love, but when these methods fail, the child will identify with the absence of the mother, creating an inner deadness or absence in his psyche and a void in his self-representation. In such a situation, the child experiences what Green calls empty mourning for the deceased mother. When there is not even a breast to mourn, the child tries to hold on to life by the means of the false self. In this presentation, sections of the phantom phenomena that occur in the clinical situation of an individual who must experience the absence of the inner mother repeatedly in the event of earthquake and migration in external reality will be presented. How and to what extent will it be possible for such an individual to settle down and take root in his own life and then in another’s life?
Çağla Pınar Sevinç Yalçın
Clinical Psychologist. Mrs. Sevinç Yalçın continues her psychoanalytic formation education at Psike Istanbul and continues her clinical studies in her own office in Istanbul.