The Maternal Experience: Encounters with Ambivalence and Love

ISBN-13: 9780367223748 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 184 str.

Margo Lowy

Opis

The Maternal Experience explores the powerful and dynamic nature of maternal ambivalence, and disrupts the conventional narrative of the mother’s lived experience by arguing that encounters with feelings of hatred are both universal and have the capacity to stimulate and enrich her maternal love.

 

Spis treści

Preamble: The myth. 1. Opening: lived experience, storytelling and maternal ambivalence 2. What is maternal ambivalence? Conflict, contradiction, confusion and the maternal ideal 3. History of thought on maternal ambivalence: locating the mother’s voice amid patriarchy, taboos and feelings of ambivalence 4. Donald Winnicott’s good-enough mother: transformation through maternal love, failure, repair and moments of hatred 5. Melanie Klein: there’s no love without hate—movement between the rigid paranoid-schizoid and the integrated depressive position 6. Wilfred R. Bion: learning from experience as a source of maternal change, understanding and wisdom 7. Conclusions: the experience of maternal love and hate. Bibliography. Index.

O autorze

Margo Lowy is a psychotherapist with an interest in mothering and women’s reproductive health. She completed her doctorate and her research master's at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, investigating the fields of maternal ambivalence and infertility.