Concept
Dead mother complex
André Green's name, from a 1980 lecture published in 1983, for the lasting effect on a child of a mother who stays alive and present but becomes psychically absent, withdrawn into a depression, often after a loss of her own. Losing her living presence, the child withdraws its investment from her and identifies unconsciously with the 'dead' mother, which leaves a cold, empty core that shows later as an inability to love, to take pleasure and to invest new objects, beneath a life that may look ordinary.
- Introduced by
- André Green
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- André Green Green set out the dead mother complex in his essay « La mère morte », collected in Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort (1983): the child's inner world is organised around a mother who, though alive, has withdrawn her investment, usually through depression or mourning.