This paper examines the nature of the maternal trope in psychoanalysis, especially the common connection between psychoanalytic portrayals of the mother in normal child development and the analyst in clinical work. Inspired by Bion and, to a lesser degree, Winnicott, the mother is seen as essential to the child’s development of thinking and symbolizing capacities. She functions as a manager and processor of emotional experience—both her own and the infant’s—through her holding and containing activities. The analyst, by direct analogy, is depicted as occupying this fundamental maternal role. However, this view often reduces maternal subjectivity to a pallid set of functions, thereby overlooking the mother’s (and by extension, the analyst’s) lack, desire, passion, and her engagement with enigma and uncertainty. Through Kristeva’s work on maternal reliance/eroticism, along with Chetrit-Vatine’s concept of matricial space, an ethics of care and responsibility is articulated that adds dimension, nuance, and depth to the typical portrayal of maternal and analytic subjectivity found in the literature. The paper concludes with the clinical implications of the analyst’s responsibility toward the other: the other of background, content, absence, and the desire that underpins the analyst’s countertransference experience.
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