Archaic mother (primal mother or ''Ur-mutter'') is the mother of earliest infancy, whose continuing influence is traced in

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

, and whose (repressed) presence is considered to underlie the horror film.

In psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

recognised in his writings the power of the archaic mother as "first nourisher and first seducer", and the image of the archaic mother as seductress became widespread in psychoanalysis in his wake. Jung too was absorbed in his writings by the concept of the archaic mother, and his followers have warned of the danger of that

imago In biology, the imago (Latin for "image") is the last stage an insect attains during its metamorphosis, its process of growth and development; it is also called the imaginal stage, the stage in which the insect attains maturity. It follows the f ...

being re-activated in the

transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...

by the female therapist. For Jacques Lacan, the primitive, untrammelled power of the archaic mother could only be contained by the emergence and consolidation of the paternal metaphor. Feminist analysts like Luce Irigaray have subsequently attempted to reclaim the archaic mother as an empowering force for female identity. Sceptics, however, have accepted Julia Kristeva's warning about the Utopian, indeed

narcissistic Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...

perils of attempting to circumvent society, and the cultural sphere, by regressing to a phantasisised merger with the archaic, undifferentiated mother. Kristeva also considered the Jungian approach as a "dead end with its archetypal configurations of libidinal substance taken out of the realm of sexuality and placed in bondage to the archaic mother". Artist and psychoanalyst-theorist Bracha L. Ettinger disagrees with Kriseteva's views that the archaic mother, starting with the pregnant mother, represents psychotic undifferentiation. In Ettinger's view the rejection of the archaic mother is culturally instituted by a patriarchal and phallic society. She addresses the archaic mother as the major subjectivising agency for the infant in a relations that she defines as matrixial, where psychic differentiation coincides with co-emergence. According to Ettinger the archaic m/Other of the matrixial (matricial) feminine-maternal sphere in the archaic encounter-event is the feminine source of humanized ethics and aesthetics.

In the arts

* Film theory has emphasised the role of the archaic mother as monstrous figure in the horror film, more terrifying and less uncontained than the

phallic mother In psychoanalysis, phallic woman is a concept to describe a woman with the symbolic attributes of the phallus. More generally, it describes any woman possessing traditionally masculine characteristics. Phallic mother Freud considered that at th ...

in her undifferentiated grotesqueness. *A similar figure appears as the 'black queen' in romances such as ''

The Fairie Queene ''The Faerie Queene'' is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books IIII were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IVVI. ''The Faerie Queene'' is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 st ...

'', and as the witch of folklore. *

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...

, under the influence of Jung, wrote what she called a "diatribe against the Dark Mother. The Mummy. Mother of Shadows...".

References

External links

Archaic Mother
{{Horror film Archetypes Concepts in aesthetics Concepts in epistemology Concepts in the philosophy of mind Feminist philosophy Film theory Horror films Motherhood Philosophical theories Philosophy of psychology Philosophy of sexuality Psychoanalytic theory

In psychoanalysis

In the arts

See also

References

External links