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On motherhood
a
Marita Torsti
a
Maria Jotunintie 10 J., 00400, Helsinki,
Finland
Version of record first published: 21 Jan
2013.

To cite this article: Marita Torsti (1998): On motherhood, The Scandinavian

Psychoanalytic Review, 21:1, 53-76

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 Scand. Psychoanal. Rev. ( /998) 21, 53-76 Copyright 1998
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On motherhood*
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Marita Torsti

This article deals with motherhood as a function of the innerspace, as a

representation of the integrated feminine inner-genitality, and with disturb-
ances in motherhood as a suffocation of that genitality. The development of
feminine ego ideals, from the girl's illusory loving triadic relationships
shared with the mother and father, and the primary significance of these
ideals in regulating the maternal functions is explored. The young girl tends
to react to traumas in the maternal relationship by stifling her own early
genitality. This is followed by a blocking off and a sealing up of the in-
nerspace by pregenital drive impulses. Such disturbances to motherhood as
oral, anal and urethral decathexes and the phallic idealization of motherhood
can be explained in terms of the developmental disturbances described above.

At the moment the sperm cell penetrates the ovum, a new life is born
within the woman. The development of the fetus takes place within her
body. Her genital organs, the uterus and the ovaries, make possible the
occurrence of fertilization and gestation, and her sexuality calls her to
unite with the man. Feminine love, both sexual and maternal, forms the
ground from within which the new life impregnated by the man can grow
and develop, both physically and psychologically.
Maternity is, to a considerable extent, the psychological product of the
woman's genital body image. Its animation, the extent to which it
'breathes' spatially and temporally, its nourishingness, are the outcome of
an extended process of development into a woman.
This functioning femininity, as a physical and mental whole, I here call
an 'innerspace'. It is within this sphere, characteristic of the woman, that

*Based on a paper delivered at the Toivola Psychotherapeutic Clinic, Turku, Finland,

January 1993.

53
 the child spends its earliest years, those of its most crucial development.
The mother must remain in touch with the child's needs, both physical
and psychological, in order to create adequate conditions for the child's
development. The mother, however, also possesses psychic 'dead spots', of
which she is unaware, but which suffocate the child's development. At
their worst, these dead spots are detrimental to the child's physical growth
and mental development; the child is either abused and bound or is re-
jected.
The psychoanalytic concept of the 'innerspace' was introduced by Erik-
son (1959). Comparing the play of girls and boys, Erikson observed a
significant difference. Ten-year old children, using the same toys and
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allowed to play freely with them, constructed very different games. The
girls constructed 'innerspaces'; they played house. These games were calm
and quiet in feeling. The innerspace was open to the outside; the door or
gate was not locked.
As Erik Erikson puts it:

Am I saying, then, that "anatomy is destiny"? Yes, it is destiny, insofar

as it determines not only the range and configuration of physiological
functioning and its limitation but also, to an extent, personality con-
figurations. The basic modalities of woman's commitment and involve-
ment naturally also reflect the ground plan of her body. We may men-
tion in passing woman's capacity on many levels of existence to actively
include, to accept, "to have and to hold" - but also to hold on and
hold in. She may be protective with high selectivity and overprotective
without discrimination (p. 245).

Inner-genitality and the early ego functions linked with it, which I call
innerspace functions, endure throughout the woman's life, from its earliest
moments; they have a lifetime continuity. The concept of inner-genitality
is not identical with sexuality; it is a set of mental phenomena, derived
from sexual feelings, and experienced internally from a very early age
onward. In addition to the images which arise in connection with the
development of the capacity for fantasy, inner-genitality includes a mo-
tility consistent with drive amplitude; it involves emotions which are
shared in the emotional bond arising in the mother's care, and which bind
feelings originally experienced in the inner-genitals. These feminine traits
include feminine ways of moving, touching and speaking. Innergenitality
colors the woman's way of shaping and perceiving her life.
I use the term 'inner-genitality' to denote precisely this process of the

54
 shaping and perception of femininity, its abstraction and symbolization.
Initially this function is an amodal transformation into kinesthetically
symbolized functions. The origins of inner-genitality are found in the
earliest stages of the psychophysical self, the beginnings of the processes
of symbolization and integration, at the interface between physiological
and mental development. The occurrence - or non-occurrence - of the
processing integration and symbolization has to do with the same
phenomena which give rise to psychosomatic disturbances. I will return
repeatedly to this interface, linking the psychophysical and the mental.
The interaction between inner-genitality and the innerspace functions
in the woman's psychological functioning is a lifetime continuum, main-
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taining the neutralization of impulses of both infantile sexuality and ag-

gression, and thus serving as the overall organizing principle of the wo-
man's feminine mental functioning. The early loss of inner-genitality as a
factor motivating this integrational process seriously impairs the develop-
ment of the feminine self and the process of ego development. Its conse-
quences are seen for instance in psychosomatic illnesses affecting the wo-
man's maternity, such as sterility and miscarriages; in depression and hys-
terical reality-impairment; above all, in disturbances to the feminine self-
esteem, such as masochism or the phallic idealization of motherhood.

ELEMENTS OF THE INNERSPACE

The origins of the woman's innerspace lie in her earliest love relationships
with the mother and the father. Its elements - animation, space, timing
and the giving of nourishment - already have their somatic correspon-
dences in the period of gestation, the activity of the uterus. A correspon-
dence can be seen between fertilization and animation, between the ex-
panding uterus and the element of space; nourishment is linked with pla-
cental nourishment before birth and lactation after; and timing with the
full-term delivery (Torsti, 1988).
The functions of the innerspace are wordless. Even when the mother
speaks to the infant, the main stress from the child's point of view is not
on the words but on the tone, color, rhythm and volume of the voice.
Many of the disturbances in innerspace functions take the form of psycho-
somatic illness: psychogenic sterility, some spontaneous abortions, re-
peated premature deliveries, low birth-weight of the full-term infant and
many disturbances to lactation.
Of the elements of the innerspace, the first, animation, corresponds to

55
 the event of fertilization. It lives in the fruitful interaction between mother
and infant, at moments when their gazes meet, smiles are exchanged, at
moments when a toy takes on its meaning in the shared play of mother
and child, when the infant's prattle and the sounds of the mother's talk
meet and merge. This animation creates life and growth, both in the act
of fertilization itself and later in the psychic encounter between mother
and child during the vital first months of life.
Space, as the term suggests, is the spatial element of the innerspace.
The mother sets boundaries, she estimates distances. The uterus expands
during gestation with the growth of the fetus, and contracts powerfully in
expelling it. At the breast, the infant needs space to breathe while it sucks,
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otherwise swallowing becomes impossible; similarly, the child needs suit-

able free space to move about yet remain near to the mother, throughout
the period of earliest development. The mother has to be present at an
appropriate distance; this distance varies with the age and mood of the
child. Eye contact, for instance, can arise only at the right distance from
the mother's face; this enables interaction by expression and babytalk.
Erna Furman (1982) entitles her article "Mothers have to be there to
be left". As she puts it:

We know that the child's mastery of this development (the child going
to nursery school) can occur only when the mother can allow herself
to miss her child, to feel not needed, and to remain lovingly available
for the moments when the child chooses to return to her ... For years
mothers make sure they are there at lunchtime and when the children
get home after school. And still later, they stay up at night until their
teenagers come home (p. 15).

One of women's cardinal sins, as we know, is possessiveness. Modern

mothers are well aware of this danger, and of the need to try to avoid it;
in doing so, however, they may mistake the appropriate distance. The child
may be left to its own resources at too early a stage, and without heeding
the child's own needs. The child itself has very few opportunities to be the
one who does the leaving, except during a brief time when the mother
stays home from work after the child's birth. In Finland many mothers
suffer from guilt feelings when they go back to work when the child is not
quite one year old, and try to compensate the child for this abandonment.
It has been noted that a mother suffering from guilty feelings has trouble
setting limits for the child.
The regulation of space, of distance and of boundaries is to a great

56
 degree unconscious in the woman, and is constantly present in the every-
day care of the child. The space must be adequate, it must not be unre-
stricted. Most of the recognized disturbances in maternal function have
to do with misestimations of distance. The adhesive and overprotective
mother stifles the child by invading its space.
In addition to the spatial aspect, space also has a temporal aspect as a
function of the innerspace. In terms of the child's survival, gestation to
full term plays a crucial role. A premature infant is always vulnerable in
the earliest stages of life. The mother cannot consciously control the
timing of the birth, but some premature deliveries, as well as post-term
ones, seem to be psychosomatic in nature, and can therefore be accessible
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through psychoanalytic methods.

In responding to the child, the mother's sense of time is part of the
interaction, in which she has the opportunity to identify with the child's
needs. She learns to know her child from its expressions, its motor re-
sponses and its sounds. When the mother attunes her vocal response to
the child's sounds appropriately, according to Stern (1985), the child con-
tinues to play undisturbed. An inappropriate timing interrupts the child's
activity and turns its attention immediately to the mother. A mother with
a good sense of timing supports the child's development, which is directed
away from the mother. The wrong timing is binding: too early, it tells the
child "You mustn't leave me and be so interested in your play"; too late,
it says "I'm not interested in you".
The mother's life with the infant is a constant matter of timing: the
intervals of breastfeeding, the length of time she holds it in her arms, the
rhythm and rate of speaking, how long she lets the child play with its
siblings or the father before intervening. In everything she does, the
mother is signalling to the child her sense of what she considers appropri-
ate. This timing should correspond to the child's stage of development and
to its mood at a given time. This interaction is affected by the mother's
unconscious. The mother's timing may be self-contradictory, the rhythms
confused. She may lose her intuitive sense of what is the right timing for
the child: now and then, this happens to every mother. At such times, she
has to take a look at what she is doing, taking the child's already familiar
responses as a guideline. Such mutual interaction strengthens the relation-
ship and gives the infant itself, to an increasing extent, a chance to influ-
ence the mother.
Sometimes, the mother is so lacking in understanding that the infant is
forced from the very beginning to adapt itself to her rhythm, which may

57
 deviate totally from that of the child. Furthermore, a mother who herself
is incapable of waiting is unable to trust the child's ability to tolerate and
to learn waiting. One of the mothers I observed gave birth to four of her
five children three weeks prematurely. All of the infants weighed under
three kilograms (6.6 pounds) at birth. The two first children had to be
monitored up the age of four years because of poor growth and weight
development. The mother's contacts were constantly broken and interrup-
ted, her eye contact was flickering and intermittent, her speech rapid and
unclear; in speaking to the child she did not turn to it. In trying to breast-
feed the child, she constantly stopped it from sucking by moving it from
one breast to the other; one child after another lost its willingness to
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breast-feed, and was shortly weaned, at two to four months. The child I
observed was the third one. I was present when the mother gave the bottle
to the child, the day after weaning; the child at this time was exactly four
months old. In the middle of the infant's sucking, the mother dropped the
bottle on its chest and went off to do something else. This child developed
cardiac arrhythmia in its fourth year, without visible organic cause; it
seems possible that this was a psychosomatic reaction to repeated inter-
ruption and breaking off by the mother, which the boy had been subjected
to from the first moments of life.
The fourth component of the innerspace is the capacity to give nourish-
ment. After birth, the relationship between the child and the mother be-
gins at the mother's breast, in the feeding situation, in which the infant
satisfies both its hunger and its need for tactile contact with the mother.
The nourishment must be sufficient, the flow of milk must be right for
sucking. It must not be too meager, but it also must not spurt so abun-
dantly that the child is in danger of suffocating.
The mother's self-confidence appears with particular clarity in the
breastfeeding situation. Many mothers are afraid that they will not have
enough to give; in some cases the flow of milk is in fact insufficient or
may even cease entirely before the infant is ready to be weaned. Maternal
skills also include the preparation of attractive, appetizing and nourishing
food. Women are in general very well aware of the importance of food
and cooking to their maternal role, and take pride in their skills.
The mental nourishment given by the mother to the child appears in
her ability to share in the child's play and to ensure that it has sufficient
toys and other stimulation. Maternal skills include nursery rhymes, songs
and a 'peacemaking' or 'negotiating' ability. A situation often occurs in
which the mother has to be able to offer the child an explanation it can

58
 understand, and to speak with generosity. In this respect, as with actual
food, the mother can also be overly intrusive; the child's appetite becomes
overly important as a source of self-esteem for the mother herself. In such
cases, the mother has difficulty in understanding the child's feelings with
regard to food and eating, and the child quickly becomes aware of this.
In an appropriately nourishing situation, the mother has enough to give
the child without being overpossessive or jealous. The most common
stumbling blocks for mothers are in fact those which arise in connection
with eating and mealtimes, and with going to sleep. In both situations, the
mother's unconscious conflicts make it difficult for the child to enjoy in
tranquillity what it receives from the mother and to create its own capacity
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for tranquillity.
All the elements of motherhood described above, when they act in har-
mony to support the child's development, play the role in the mother-
child relationship which is described by Winnicott (1960) under the term
'holding' and by Bion (1959) under the concept of 'containing'. Winnicott
describes the development of the child's false self as a result of "not good
enough mothering":

'The mother who is not good enough is not able to implement the
infant's omnipotence, and so she repeatedly fails to meet the infant's
gesture; instead, she substitutes her own gesture which is to be given
sense by the compliance of the infant. This compliance on the part of
the infant is the earliest stage of the False Self; and belongs to the
mother's inability to sense her infant's needs.' (1960, p. 146).

This could also be expressed in another way: the integrated innerspace

functions of the mother support the integration of the infant. Incomplete
feminine integration in the mother, in contrast, makes the infant vulner-
able to the experience of emptiness, which can disrupt the continuity of
its development.

FEMININE DEVELOPMENT AND THE ORIGIN OF THE INNERSPACE

In an earlier publication (Torsti, 1993), I have suggested that motherhood

is best understood from the point of view of the woman's libidinal develop-
ment. There has only been slight interest in the psychoanalytic study of
motherhood. This seems quite obviously due to the fact that the classic
psychoanalytic concept of the woman has denied to the feminine libido
its rightful place; femininity is constructed overly in terms of castration

59
 and penis envy (Torsti, 1993). Freud (1931) believed that the vagina be-
comes sensitive only in puberty and thus does not contribute to the girl's
mental development prior to that time. Freud interpreted the urge towards
maternity as a consequence of the absence of a penis, an attempt at com-
pensation. Similarly the views of femininity held by Helene Deutsch (1925,
1945) are artificial, based entirely on the phallic concept of womanhood.
For Deutsch, the woman is masochistic, passive and narcissistic; nor is the
feminine development of the girl possible before puberty. For both Freud
and Deutsch, the concept of the woman was to a great extent derived from
a masculine view of the world, without an original femininity, precisely
that femininity which in my view, is the source of motherhood and ma-
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ternity.
Deutsch places great emphasis on identification, seeing motherhood as
basically a reparative process. The traumas of early childhood, weaning,
and the difficulties of the relationship with the girl's own mother are
healed when the woman identifies with the fetus and child or with another
woman. Deutsch's woman needs extensive external support and objects of
identification; it is not an internalized genital identity (Thomson 1987).
In the following, I need to return to views concerning the development
of femininity which I have discussed in a previous publication (Torsti
1993). In order to understand the nature of motherhood, the following
developmental 'narrative' is crucial. Judith Kestenberg (1982) has drawn
our attention to the very early origin of maternity in the process of the
girl's development. She saw it as linked with the female drive development.
Kestenberg saw the same in girls as mothers generally see in their daugh-
ters. From the beginning of the second year, the daughter's relationship
with her doll is already quite characteristic, very different from that of the
boy with his doll. During the first four years of life, the girl's relationship
with the doll undergoes a certain process of development.
The girl plays with her doll in a way which in a boy would surprise
even the lay observer. She cuddles it tenderly, feeds it at the breast, tucks
it up under the blankets and talks to it with babytalk. Her touch in hold-
ing the doll is tender and affectionate. In other words, she behaves towards
it as a mother. In playing with the doll, the girl identifies with the mother
and her maternal activities. This play changes as the girl grows and de-
velops. Between two and a half and four years, we see the girl become
impatient with both her mother and the doll. She becomes cranky and
nagging, at times almost chaotic. Her doll she alternately cuddles and
beats.

60
 Kestenberg analyzes the girl's relationship with the doll as follows: the
girl's genital drive is already present from birth; it pulses in her, in the
inner-genitalia, the vagina and the uterus. The overall sense of gratifi-
cation and well-being produced by breast-feeding radiates to the genitalia;
in a satisfying mother-child relationship, the infant girl experiences her
pulse and her heat not only as oral but also as genital.
It seems to me that this early genitality is not released sexually until
a few years later, when the girl has discovered it through masturbation.
Therefore, in my view, from the very beginning, it immediately serves as a
source of psychological power, a 'warmth of the heart', the basic structure
of the growth of the innerspace and in particular its ego ideals. With
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further development, it becomes a source for the capacity to defer gratifi-

cation to the future, the capacity for waiting. Above all, it is intertwined
with a good, constructive emotional relationship with the mother, basic
structures which promote binding, such as neutralization and symboliza-
tion. It thus serves as one of the most central elements of the process of
integration. I have found that it can be observed in the play of girl
children, to the extent that it also reflects the earliest disturbances in the
mother-daughter relationship. According to Kestenberg's observation,
from the beginning of the second year, the girl already gives a shape to
this experience; she externalizes it. It is the doll and her way of treating
and handling it, the first sign of feminine symbolization. The ego-ideal of
maternity grows out of this illusory 'doll motherhood', as the girl's sense
of reality increases and she realizes that she cannot be a real mother. The
maternal ego-ideal is integrated by the fourth year.
After the stage of integration of inner-genitality, the girl's sexual press-
ure begins to increase, as she discovers the arousal produced by her own
genitalia in masturbation. The reality of gender differences only now be-
comes evident to the girl, as she relinquishes the inner-genital illusion
shared with the mother. Exploring her genitalia, she becomes aware of the
importance of her opening and is frightened by it. The first incestual fant-
asies now arise. This is also the time of the conflict between mother and
daughter over anal stimuli. Under such multiple cross-pressures, the girl
internalizes her early maternity. These conflicts also contribute to sub-
sequent problems in adult motherhood.
The doll phase of the early maternal relationship, according to Kesten-
berg, gradually fades away. The girl leaves it behind her when she takes
active control of her sexuality, transferring her desires and wishes to the
father. A well-concluded doll-girl-mother triangular relationship becomes

61
 integrated and leaves the girl her genitality, which she is then free to trans-
fer to the father relationship and its fantasies. If the mother has failed to
be adequate for the daughter, the latter abandons her mother-love too
early and turns to the father, seeking a phallic weapon against the mother.
This is what happens when the pain of disappointment in the mother
relationship is very great. The disappointed and hurt little girl is unable
to transfer her love to the father and lacks the courage to allow her geni-
tality to live. She forms an early phallic defence position (Chasseguet-
Smirgel 1964; T-B. & V. Hagglund and Ikonen 1976; the concept is orig-
inally derived from Jones (1935)). The girl stifles her inner animation, her
genital warmth; this prevents the development of a capacity for love. This
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structure dramatically affects the subsequent sexuality of the adult wo-

man, her relationships with men and above all her own motherhood.
The girl who has developed in a circle of maternal love, on the other
hand, is now prepared for a new love relationship, preparing her for
motherhood. The father's penis is the object of cautious and timid atten-
tion. Gradually the girl begins to cherish the father within her, in her own
genital warmth, the same feminine innerspace where the love shared with
the mother also had its pulse.
In the girl's mind, in her developing innerspace, the father's penis repre-
sents on the one hand her own illusory penis baby, on the other her fantasy
of a love shared with the father. This internal penis illusion is in its essence
feminine, and it is not relinquished in adulthood.
With the internalization of the phase of penis envy, we see how the
girl's play changes with this stage in development. The earlier, caring and
nurturing doll play changes to an interest in a larger number of smaller
dolls, hard rather than soft; instead of a single doll baby, the girl plays
family and sibling games with little dolls or with small horses and a 'flying
pony'. She is dealing with a new, three-dimensional innerspace, again her
inner-genitality. This new illusory inner-genital love relationship binds and
neutralizes both envy and jealousy, as well as the too overt infantile sexu-
ality.
Identification with the father's penis helps the girl to integrate abilities
and skills, for the appropriation of which she needs a well-functioning
penis envy. This envy must not be too painful or bitter; in such case it will
be an obstacle to healthy competitiveness in penis-identificatory skills.
Envy is restrained by the inner-genital structures acquired before now. The
girl's own sexual organ, the clitoris, promotes these identifications, since
its fantasy content and that of the sexual arousal it allows, also has a

62
 penis-related function (Torsti 1993). The integration of this fantasy world
gives rise to ego functions which the girl will need in her future mother-
hood: activity, determination and selectiveness. Being a good enough
mother demands such traits as good judgment, determination, activity
and the ability to make choices. Typical female neuroses generally involve
passivity and a difficulty in setting limits and refusing. In the background,
it is always possible to discern the phallic idealization and an overly bitter
penis envy, which has not allowed for sufficient identification with the
father.
The resolution of the girl's oedipality strips her triadic relationships of
their illusoriness, and the internalization of the ego ideals begins to take
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shape as her own superego development. Mother identifications take on a

new content, the girl identifies with the mother as the representative of
her own gender, as well, as in competing for the father's love, the object
of masculine interest and love.

INNER SPACE, EGO IDEALS AND THE SUPEREGO

Freud (1914) defines the ego ideal as a consequence of the lost narcissism
of childhood. In my view, the woman's ego ideals are derived from the
triadic relationships of childhood, from the phase of the "maternal doll
baby" and the "penis doll baby", from the relationships belonging to the
innerspace, in the illusory love shared with the mother and father.
The development of the girl's superego had already been described by
Edith Jacobson in 1937: "The task of this early, feminine ego ideal is to
oppose oral-sadistic and phallic-aggressive impulses against mother and
father, as well as against the devaluation of her own and mother's genit-
alia" (1937/76, p. 533).
According to Helene Deutsch (1925), the feminine ego ideal is only
formed during pregnancy. The child within her body represents to the
woman the father, whom she finally, through the pregnancy, has come to
possess. In withdrawing her libido from the external world and directing
it inward, towards the fetus, she is devoting herself to the inner image of
the father. The newborn infant comes to embody the woman's ego ideal;
in her child, the woman loves her father. Thus, feminine narcissism is
transformed into object libido. In the woman's inner difficulties, the child's
function is to represent the superego: demanding, threatening or pun-
ishing.
I interpret femininity as the attempt to preserve the inner animation,

63
 the capacity to love. It is on such ego ideals that the woman's relationships
towards the man and towards the children are constructed (Torsti 1993).
Failing in these aims, the woman feels unfeminine. This gives rise to feel-
ings of shame and guilt in the woman's life, which she is forced intermit-
tently to cover up; this is the source of the defence mechanisms we encoun-
ter in motherhood.
I agree with the view of Helene Deutsch, and with the findings of Grete
Bibring, according to whom the woman's relationship with the infant is
characterized by a striving to fulfill the maternal ego ideal.
Disturbances in the girl's superego development are always linked with
phallic idealizations. The girl, in her disappointment with the mother, has
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suffocated her innerspace animation, the element of genitality in the mat-

ernal relationship. The triadic doll-baby phase to be shared with mother
has suffered a premature wreck and collapse, and the girl turns to the
father in search of the idealized phallic weapon against the mother. In this
situation, the mother is experienced as phallic; as frightening and vengeful.
Identification with the mother thus becomes impossible. However, adored
and idealized father does not offer an object of identification either, nor
is he, as would be the case in a normal situation, a source of genital
warmth, due to the girl's severe disappointment and envy accompanying
the loss of the first genitality. The development of the innerspace, and the
shaping of its ego ideals, is strangled and suffocated. Instead, the woman
develops a super-ego based on phallic ideals. The phallic superego is rule-
oriented, and is unable to take reality into account in a feminine manner
(Torsti, 1993). In motherhood, this means a leaning on idealization. The
maternal functions are idealized, and the woman strives for perfection as
a mother. In such a relationship, the child itself is ignored. The mother is
incapable of learning to know her child as a separate human being, with
needs of its own.
Relinquishing the father's sexuality to the mother in the oedipal resol-
ution significantly affects the girl's sense of distance between herself and
the other, and her capacity for considering the other's needs. It broadens
and strengthens her ability to tolerate disappointment, to wait, and to
respect the rights of others - abilities which are essential in motherhood.
The appropriate distance to the child helps the mother to recognize the
child's reality, while respect for the child's intimate privacy prevents her
from intruding hurtfully into its world. The ability of the woman and the
man to tolerate outsideness is derived from the oedipal disappointment
and its successful handling.

64
 Withdrawing from the father and the mother opens up for the girl the
way to identification with the mother and to acquisition of the mother's
femininity for herself. The mother's feminine values also fall within the
sphere of the girl's identification; these are the values whose object and
under whose nurture she has been herself until now.
The feminine body image which is integrated in adolescence contributes
significantly to the shaping of the maternal ego ideal. The feminine self-
respect and identifications which have been achieved before then offer a
foundation for coping with the onset of the menarche, with its blood and
pain. Internal feelings which up to now have been primarily a source of
pleasure now become also a source of pain, discomfort and awkwardness.
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The new attitude towards one's own inner-genitals helps to bring the girl
to mature, adult femininity. In the ego ideals, the ego aims at preserving
good feelings - feelings which at one time have yielded pleasurable sen-
sations - for the future object of love.
The ideal of patience arises out of the relationship towards pain, but it
does not assume masochism. It also prepares the future mother for the
task of childbirth. The ideal of faithfulness grows in part out of the young
woman's commitment to the rhythmic activity of her body; not merely
menstruation as such, but the mood changes brought about by the hor-
monal cycle. The ideal of empathy arises out of the girl's ability to listen
to her inner self, a listening in which the woman is involved throughout
her life. Taking one's own inner self into account gives reality and meaning
to the inner life of others. These traits - patience, faithfulness and empa-
thy - enable the woman to care for her child and color her relationship
with the loved man. They are founded, as I have indicated, on the feminine
libido and satisfaction, and they develop through relinquishment and pain
to a sense of reality, without deteriorating into masochism (Torsti 1993).
Above, I have discussed one disturbance to the superego, the construc-
tion of a phallic superego structure. We also encounter blocking off and
the later sealing up, of the innerspace; this blocking off may be oral, anal
or urethral in nature. A girl who is bitterly disappointed by the mother in
an early stage gives up her genitality and fills the innerspace with pregeni-
tal drive impulses (Torsti 1993). In losing the triadic relationship, she
clings to the mother, and the image of the mother's innerspace is filled
with contents which sully and spoil it. This is also motivated by the girl's
envy of the mother's innerspace; a bad mother is not allowed to have an
innerspace characterized by anything good or loving.
When faced with such a difficult relationship with the mother, the girl

65
 often takes refuge in phallic worship, fleeing the mother for the protection
of the overlarge father. These positions always involve an omnipotent
mother image, with whom identification is impossible. Thus, in adulthood,
one's own motherhood is frightening, marked by destructive fantasies and
the resulting feelings of guilt or shame. The same shamelessness with
which in the girl's fantasies, and sometimes in reality, the mother and the
child have once dealt with the values attached to the innerspace, its purity
and lovability, enables the woman in adulthood to decathect the in-
nerspace elements of her own motherhood. All of this is derived from
earliest childhood and is deeply rooted in the woman's unconscious. It
acts non-verbally and in many cases with a psychosomatic destructiveness.
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It is the task of psychoanalysis to discover this blocking off of the genital

innerspace, and by means of understanding and interpretation, to rescue
and bring back to life its suffocated inner-genitality.

PREGNANCY

Pregnancy has been seen as a developmental crisis ever since Grete Bibring
(1961) published her sizable body of material. In her view, pregnancy is a
normal crisis in development. It begins with an intense sexual relationship,
which leads to conception. The significant representation of the love object
becomes part of the woman herself, up to the time when the child's move-
ments interrupt this narcissistic initial process. The new task for the wo-
man's psychic maturation towards childbirth is to create of the child a
separate object within herself.
Bibring notes that pregnancy means the onset of a new stage in the life
of the young woman; henceforth for the rest of her life, she will be a
mother. At this time, the woman goes through a regression in her early
mother-relationship. Pregenital impulses are in the foreground during the
first 13 weeks of the pregnancy. Still, in some compulsive mothers studied
by Bibring, the early pregnancy did not result in regression; instead it led
to even more powerful defenses.
Bibring also found that the developmental crisis generally had not yet
led to differentiation of the fetus in the mother's mind at the time of birth.
In many cases, the mother's mature ability to perceive the newborn infant
as separate from herself came only with the birth of the second child.
My own material includes a number of pregnancies occurring during
different stages of analysis. My analyses seem to indicate that in the crisis
of pregnancy, neither the expected development nor the regression it re-

66
 quires necessarily occur in nearly all cases. A woman who is accustomed
to phallic defenses seems to make use of them for precisely the purpose
for which she originally constructed them: to oppose the envied mother
image, the good in the mother. Throughout the pregnancy, the woman is
threatened by her awareness of her own destructiveness. She copes with
this by idealizing her state and often also the child during infancy; after
this, she has to quickly abandon the child, in order not to be confronted
with the frightening picture of the mother in herself. Phallic structures,
and the pregenital closure of the innerspace, block the way to a new inte-
gration during both pregnancy and the child's infancy, and prevent the
occurrence of the development-supporting crisis.
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Kestenberg (1976) sees pregnancy as development towards increasingly

integrated genitality. At various stages of the pregnancy, the woman deals
with pregenital impulses (oral, anal and urethral), freeing herself from the
early binding to the mother and moving towards the love relationship
available at this stage in her life and its sexuality. I suggest that a func-
tioning motherhood is to a great extent precisely that which is described
by Kestenberg in pregnancy: the attempt to maintain the openness of the
genital animation. The woman is directed towards this by her functioning
ego ideals. She attempts to prevent blocking off and destructive flattening
of the triadic innerspace in her relationship with the child and her husband
and with life in general. She takes care of her mood and nurtures the
atmosphere of the home. In giving up this aim, the woman is threatened
by depression.

PSYCHOGENIC MISSCARRIAGE AND STERILITY

It is in psychogenic sterility and misscarriage that the destructivity of the

innerspace is realized in its most concrete form. In the following, I illus-
trate this point with a few examples from analysis. I was led to assume that
their previous miscarriages had been psychogenic from the transference
phenomena. In some cases of sterility, the infertility gave way to pregnancy
during analysis. The analysis revealed an aborting attitude towards every-
thing that gave rise to sensation and emotion in the innermost self- above
all towards emotions that were positive and constructive and which arose
in the relationship with the analyst as a result of her understanding atti-
tude. The analysand was forced to empty herself of such feelings as quick-
ly as possible, at the same time as she longed with particular yearning for
such positive, beneficent experiences. Each analysand protected herself

67
 from positive expectations by devaluing the analysis and the analyst. Their
attitude was characteristically more-or-less openly aggressive in tone. The
problem in the analysis was, how integration could succeed at all, with
the analysand permanently avoiding enclosing or holding anything within
her. There was an unconscious homosexual content. Internalization could
not occur, since even a momentary sidestep in the direction of receptivity
led to feelings of shame and a suspicious attitude towards the analyst.
Instead of identification and integration imitation of the analyst was used
considerably, as was somatization.
The lives of these women were characterized by various interruptions
and breakings off in different areas of life: love, work, occupational
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choices and attitudes towards children. They suffered from indecisiveness

and lack of commitment. Childhood sexual play and masturbation had
typically been urethral and contained exhibitionist traits. They still had a
noticeable need for attention, which was also expressed in their work, only
partly sublimated. In the early stages of the analysis, they immediately
began to wish for pregnancy; these wishes, however, did not involve sexual
desires in relation to a man, nor - in the case of one woman who had
never had a close relationship with a man - even a desire for love. The
wish for pregnancy arose as the content of the maternal transference in
relation to the analyst. This wish, however, was not allowed to warm the
analysand's mind, but was kept under strict control. The expelling element
appeared in all of them, also in somatic form; all three of my analysands
had a compulsive need to urinate, which also appeared as a reaction to
my interpretations. The images connected with urination involved the
attempt to shame the maternal authority - both as the phallic-omnipotent
mother and the mother who is capable of giving and of giving birth.
One of the women reacted to my interpretations not only by a need to
urinate but also with painful contractions of the uterus. This analysand
had two adopted children; during the ten years of her marriage, she had
not used any form of contraception, but had a powerful belief that she
would never become pregnant. When the first adoption had been officially
confirmed, she had found herself pregnant and had had an abortion, be-
cause she hated her husband so much that she could not conceive of carry-
ing within her body a fetus conceived with male semen. The same thing
happened at the time of the second adoption, but this time she had a
spontaneous abortion; she believed that she had brought it about by her
own will.
I see this type of psychogenic miscarriage as a psychosomatic phenom-

68
 enon. In these cases, an unconscious wish for abortion of the pregnancy
is not sufficient; in addition, the intrapsychic processes have to succeed in
penetrating the somatic self-protection. Such miscarriages are a sign of
integration anxiety, related to early maternal trauma causing disturbances
in the process of inner-genital integration. The relationships of these
women with their mothers were filled with feelings of bitter anger and
disappointment. Even in adulthood, the mother aroused a need to revenge
childhood traumas, and these women also did so, striving to produce dis-
appointment and shame for their now elderly mothers.
The only urge towards infanticide, told to me in therapy, was felt by a
woman whose pregnancy had been produced by artificial hormone treat-
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ment after conception had failed in spite of two years of attempts. The
pregnancy had been a time of very great anxiety. Her relationship with
the child suffered damage and destruction from which it never recovered.
Only the second child received maternal affection and tenderness, now -
in this difficult situation -quite exaggerated. Both children began to show
symptoms at a very early stage. The woman's sterility had probably been
psychogenic in character.
According to Dinorah Pines (1982), the wish to become pregnant is
quite different from the wish to have a child. In the analysis, Pines' patient
proved to have a very strong lack of differentiation from the mother. For
this, she blamed the mother, who wanted in everything to possess the girl
and in particular her body. In the analysis, Pines and the analysand fo-
cused on an exploration of all the ways in which the latter had in fact
used her own body precisely as part of the mother, using it to shame and
accuse her. In her induced abortions, the patient felt that she was even
worse - and thereby more powerful - than the bad mother. She also, how-
ever, consciously strove to see the bad in her mother, and, with the pro-
gress of the analysis, in the analyst, with whom she tried to bring about
a sadomasochistic relationship, similar to her current love affair. Pines
describes her countertransference feelings as being strongly connected
with the analysand's nonverbal lack of emotion, and the thinness and lack
of resonance of her speaking voice. The analysand sought a common
understanding and even a fruitful exploration, but she 'aborted' every-
thing. Each good period was followed by a destructive one. Every shared
and productive period in the analysis was followed by a sadomasochistic
episode with the lover.
This seemed very familiar to me too; it is precisely thus that abortion
takes place in the analysis.

69
 DISTURBANCES OF MOTHERHOOD

In all her maternal functions, the woman is at the mercy of her uncon-
scious and nonverbal self. The occurrence of conception, possible miscar-
riages, the time of the birth, and lactation are not under conscious control.
The tone, color and rhythm of her voice are deeply embedded elements of
her body image. Her gaze, her body language, her ways of holding and
soothing the child all spring from deep within the somatic self. In these
maternal occupations, mental contents with inappropriate or prohibited
meanings are generally unconscious. When, however, the child shows
symptoms or is discontented, the situation is threatening. A crying, feeble
or sickly infant can penetrate the mother's defences and momentarily re-
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veal to her another self, one of which she is ashamed. Repeated difficulties
with the child easily oppress the uncertain mother, who then seeks de-
fences against the child's symptoms. The child is forced to submit to the
mother's way of treating it, and its own voice is not heard.
A four-month old girl baby of an adoptive, psychosomatically childless
mother had in the children's home adopted a somewhat phlegmatic and
calm attentiveness, at the same time being quite contented. The mother
strove strongly to carry out the advice she had received, both at the child
welfare clinic and from books, according to which the child needed a great
deal of stimulation. She became so intrusive in her contacts with the child
that the latter became totally unable to relax and fall asleep. For a couple
of months, the child screamed piercingly and its development came to a
standstill, until the mother was able in feeding situations to slow down to
the pace demanded by her daughter.
All disturbances in motherhood originate in the flattening of the living
inner feeling. For the woman, the child literally represents her inner ani-
mation and its hopeful feelings. The child represents a dimension of the
future: a new triadic reality, formed by the man, the woman and child
together. This is no longer an illusion. The healthy mother is filled with
joy by her task. The desire for children is great in a woman; sometimes,
however, it can become a compulsive demand, especially when early disap-
pointments in the maternal relationship have reduced the shared illusion
to a very remote and tiny flicker, isolated from other development.
The central danger to the woman in motherhood is her tendency to-
wards idealization. The woman idealizes her own motherhood, robbing
the infant of the leading role. She makes herself too important to the
child, and thus blinded, cannot distinguish the child's true needs. The child

70
 does not have its own space; in everything it does, it is forced to confirm
the mother's greatness and goodness. The mother becomes the great giver,
without whom the child cannot survive except on the mother's terms. The
mother becomes intrusive, offering her own body for every trouble; she is
too close to the child, often merely fulfilling her own need for closeness.
This idealizing mother is unable to tolerate imperfection; the child too
has to be perfect. A crying, angry, frightened or sick child threatens this
image of perfection. The child that has to be too good is always in trouble
with the mother. A sick child, especially a child suffering from psychic
disorders, may fail to receive care and help. The too good mother is always
prone to anxiety, and to using her child to pacify that anxiety. In her
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own grandiose strivings she unintentionally nullifies the child. The latter's
development may become disturbed at a very early stage. Psychosomatic
symptoms, colic, eating problems and nightwaking, strain the relationship
between mother and child. In her uncertainty, the mother often has no
alternatives; she becomes even more intrusive, and the vicious circle merely
gets worse.

DECATHEXES

The woman's inner destructiveness, i.e., the closing off of her inner-geni-
tality and the consequent defectiveness of her feminine ego ideals, some-
times takes a form in the functions of the innerspace which can be fatally
obstructive to the normal development of the child.
The mother whose blocking off of her inner-genitality takes oral form
does not allow the child its separateness. Oral motherhood is devouring,
overly gratifying, or miserly and rejecting. The mother cannot tolerate the
child's aggression, because it signifies separateness and judgment of the
mother as imperfect. When the child struggles to achieve a separate space,
the mother is offended; she either withdraws too far or offers herself in
an even more exaggerated and intrusively close way. She tends to swallow
up the child in herself. She is unable to listen to the child's own needs
regarding distance and closeness, because she offers her own in their place.
The joy of motherhood shrinks to anxiety, and the child's animation and
individuality receive too little response. As long as the child is capable of
self-defence, it seeks for better objects nearby, for instance in the father or
siblings. It struggles to distance itself from the mother. This in turn in-
creases the mother's anxiety and uncertainty. In her shame, she becomes

71
 even more intrusive, offering the bottle, sweets and gifts to bind the child
to herself. If, on the other hand, as often happens, the oral closure is
accompanied by phallic positions, she may become offended, vindictive
and rejecting towards the child. Many a child in a situation like this is
forced at an early stage to care for the mother, in order for the latter to
remain of any use to the child; the child's own developmental strivings and
interests are put aside.
It is evidently oral motherhood that is involved in the 'addictive mother-
hood' described by Joyce McDougall (1985). McDougall uses this term to
describe the maternal relationships of her psychosomatic and perverted
patients. The mother is ubiquitous, offering herself and her body. The
stifled areas of the child's mind become deadened and atrophied, since
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they do not have the mother's permission to grow and develop. What
replaces them is the psychosomatic symptom, which sometimes already
develops in childhood, though more often only in adulthood. Correspond-
ingly, a perversion develops to represent the mother's devouringness. The
mother's need, which leads her to abuse the child, takes on in the latter's
mind a sexual content.
According to Alice Balint (1949), from the child's point of view, the
good mother has no needs of her own, which might make her forget the
child's interest or place herself first. She is there to serve the child. The
child's love for the mother is totally egoistic; archaic love has no sense
of reality. The mother's needs are to be consistent with the child's de-
mands, and we retain this demandingness in relation to the mother, ac-
cording to Balint, into adulthood. Maternal love for the child is the
mirror image of the child's love for the mother. The mother never per-
ceives her child as an adult; the child belongs not to the outside world
but to her. Balint's conception of the mother-child relationship as one
of mutual possessiveness and egoism resembles the oral blocking off of
the innerspace, its selfishness and mutual intertwining, rather than the
genital maternal relationship, in which the mother has succeeded in re-
solving her oedipal conflict and the child is able to grow from the very
beginning in a triadic relationship.
When the blocking off of the innerspace occurs through anality, the
mother tends to experience the childishness of the child as shameful. It is
difficult for her to see the child as lovable and productive of satisfaction,
whether the child displays dependence or strives towards independence.
Particularly in the presence of other adults, the mother has difficulty
avoiding feelings of shame for her child; this leads to an overly controlling

72
 relationship. At the other extreme is the maintenance of perpetual con-
fusion and chaos both in the child's daily timetable and in the home en-
vironment. The mother identifies with the infantile anality and lives it out
together with the child, herself too seeking the satisfaction of destruction;
this kind of setting, however, makes it impossible to raise a child. The
mother participates together with the child in the destruction of the clean
and envied good innerspace. Anality destroys animation, because it
concretizises and kills the genital inner space, turning it into feaces to be
eliminated and discarded. Sometimes, the innerspace which has taken on
this faecal meaning is then idealized, just as the perverted man idealizes
anal sexuality. A lifetime 'anal alliance' is constructed between the mother
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and the child, for the nullification of pure and precious values.
One psychotic mother, who experienced her own genitals as stinking,
decomposing and sick, was unable to empathize with any live emotion of
her son otherwise than with disgust, trying to control it or in one way or
another to eliminate it. The child, after all, had originated in her shameful
inner body. The mother eliminated everything that was alive and dis-
turbing by turning her gaze away. Her attitude towards herself was the
same. Everything that caused emotions was horrifying and disgusting; it
took on a faecal meaning. Paralyzed and deadened, she said that she
simply did not know how to be with the boy. Whenever the child com-
plained or cried, she picked him up and carried him. This happened on
the street, even when the boy was a big five-year-old. At ten, the boy was
seriously suicidal and needed immediate treatment.
Finally, urethral blocking off often takes the form of sneering cynicism
and explosive rages. Such blocking off always seems to involve phallic
elements: penis envy which fails to result in the useful integration of penis
identificatory properties, and castration fantasies at both the phallic and
the inner-genital level. The mother who strives to totally control her own
outbursts may favor them in the child, thus unconsciously supporting
sphincter release, both somatic and psychic, in the latter. The bedwetting
child or the one who has uncontrolled temper tantrums may represent the
mother's own impulses towards release; the mother will be unable to influ-
ence the child's symptoms.

MATERNAL DEPRESSION

Maternal depression has been considered to be particularly injurious to

the child; supposedly it is bad for the child to see the mother weep.

73
 Children nevertheless do occasionally see the mother grieving and crying,
and observe in her signs of depression. Often the mother, even when de-
pressed, strives to conceal this from the child, or feels herself to be more
cheerful in the child's company than otherwise.
The depressed mother does not necessarily decathect the child except
intermittently; furthermore (according to Erna and Robert Furman,
(1984)), this phenomenon, the intermittently decathecting mother, may
also occur without any concurrent depression. A state of severe de-
pression, above all a depression whose main content is emotional impover-
ishment and a powerful withdrawal into self-centeredness, is a barrier
which even the child cannot penetrate, and which constitutes a danger to
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it. If the mother does not have guilt feelings which warn her in spite of
her depression to modify her attitude towards the child, the situation from
the latter's point of view is at a stalemate, and needs to be explored
through the kind of decathexes described above.
The severely depressed mother loses both her own animation with re-
gard to the child and her capacity to see the animation of the child and
to be herself revived by it. The unconscious conflicts involved in mat-
ernal depression always contain phallic idealizations in her structures,
above all a phallic superego. For this reason, the relationship with the
child has to do with the phallic idealization I have described above, with
idealizations and with the devaluation of the innerspace elements at-
tached to them.
A mother with tendency to depression often demands both from her-
self and from the child particular liveliness and vivacity, the purpose of
which is to mask the depression. This excessive vivacity impoverishes the
emotional scale of the relationship. The child's grief, crying and distress,
sometimes its fear, provoke maternal anxiety; they become forbidden
emotions. The penis-envy fantasies typical of the depressed mother take
a particular form in relation to the boy child. The boy easily comes to
represent to the mother her own penis. The mother lacks confidence in
her success with the boy, and constantly fears the discovery of her cas-
tration. This anxiety is easily transferred to the child, whose helplessness
and dependence reinforce the mother's concern. The mother no longer
dares to see her son as successful and good, but is disappointed and
begins to nullify the boy. The mother has difficulty even expecting to
see cause for pride in her son, and fails to see such cause when it occurs.
The boy tends to signify to her own penis, and the lack of faith attached
to it.

74
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Marita Torsti
Maria Jotunintie 10 J.
00400 Helsinki
Finland
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Copyright Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review. 1998

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