Fantasy of mother’s infanticide in psychological consultation

Abstract

Infanticide committed by the mother raises the fundamental question about the origin of violence. The psychoanalysis considers it an expression of maternal hatred and primary ambivalence towards the child. This fantasy whose psychic function is to introduce the process of early detachment, can turn into murder in mothers with pathological characteristics, or who suffer from the return of traces of primary traumatic experiences. Unlike the literature of projectives, the Rorschach protocol of a mother in psychological consultation reveals the involvement of certain defensive processes, such as the projective identification and massive projection of the anguish of persecution under the sign of an all-powerful and terrifying maternal imago, far from suspecting a frankly psychotic de compensation. These defenses are put in place to counter or cure psychotic contents infiltrating a psychic function of a neurotic character. The fantasy of the infanticide of this consultant, reflects her difficulty in developing a maternal position in support of primary identifications to the mother actually perceived as victim, but unconsciously omnipotent and murderous and ceaselessly in the quest for revenge. Identifying this terrifying imago in the context of the mother-child relationship subconsciously reactivates the primary representations of the mother’s desire for her own murder, and it was her inner mother who transmitted to her the fantasy of the infanticide that this consultant relives under an obsessive or persecuting dimension before her child. Finally, from a therapeutic point of view, this fantasy restores violent or ambiguous contents of an early relational experience, back for a symbolic and liberating elaboration.