Crossing the Borders: An Interview with Julia Kristeva

In this June 2004 interview, Julia Kristeva takes us through her long and extraordinary career as a writer, an intellectual, and an academic. She speaks of her early years as a radical poststructuralist, postmodern feminist, and discusses how her scope has broadened with the addition of psychoanalytical theory and practice. She answers questions about her work on the abject, melancholy, motherhood, and love, and reveals how personal experiences, like the death of her father, have shaped parts of her literary output.     

The Impact of Insecure Attachment on Mothering: A New Mother’s Story

This article describes the treatment of a first-time mother and her daughter. The mother’s impoverished primary relationships and the fragility of her early attachments contribute to her challenges with motherhood. Through parent-infant treatment she is gradually developing the capacity to reflect upon her experience and beginning to make discoveries about her attitudes toward herself and others. My work with Leslie has deepened my appreciation for Daniel Stern’s notion of “the motherhood constellation” and for the power of insecure attachment to destabilize the parent and consequently the parent-child relationship. During the treatment, I used the Newborn Behavioral Observations system as an adjunct to therapy to help demonstrate to this distressed new mother her infant’s competencies. Later, I also used the Adult Attachment Interview to enhance her curiosity about her own childhood, and in particular her relationship to her mother and the impact of that relationship on her own mothering.     

An Aesthetic Review of New Mothers as the Ultimate Weaver: Achieving a Harmonious Integration of Prevalent Discourses and Lived Experience

Experiences in new motherhood are influenced by popular sociological discourses and ideologies. The narratives promoted in these discourses may or may not fit with the subjective experience of the mother. Lacking experience in motherhood, the new mother may misguidedly accept these mainstream discourses and ideologies as standard. The process of adapting and blending sociological narratives to fit with lived experience is similar to the art of weaving. This article, an original argument grounded in relevant literature, explores how new mothers can develop a balanced weave of popular social discourse and her subjective experience by: accepting motherhood as a creative process, being aware of the powerful influence of social constructs on her perceptions, and recognizing the influence of her body/biology on her lived experience. The aesthetic narrative of the spider, the ultimate weaver, accompanies the research presented. Complementary art therapy interventions such as weaving, art boxes, and dolls are discussed.     

THE ROLE OF AN IMMIGRANT MOTHER IN HER ADOLESCENT’S IDENTITY FORMATION: “WHO AM I?”

Immigration is a complex bio-psycho-social process and the immigrant mother has a truly complex task in lending her ego strength to her adolescent offspring. The normal adolescence’s decathexis of the love object and the consequent search for a new object may not happen smoothly for those adolescents whose mothers are immigrants. The immigration experience may cause the immigrant mother, who lost her motherland, deeper disturbance in self-identity as well as disequilibrium in her psychic structure, which in turn impacts adversely her adolescent’s development. The adolescent’s inadequate early experience with an immigrant mother may result in a deeper disturbance in his separation-individuation process as well as his identification process. An immigrant mother who has not mourned adequately, with a different sociocultural background has to go through a far more complex development of motherhood. The case of an adolescent boy, Jason, demonstrates the impact of immigrant motherhood on his ego development.     

Helene Deutsch: a life in theory

Evaluations of Helene Deutsch's work on female psychology almost invariably focus on her idealization of motherhood and on her attribution of narcissism, passivity, and masochism to the "feminine" woman. The author suggests that identification plays a more important role in Deutsch's portrayal of feminine development than has hitherto been acknowledged. Deutsch treats identification as a reparative process that enables women to overcome major traumata by allowing them to re-experience the initial bliss of the mother-child relationship. The biographical origins of Deutsch's theory of feminine development are explored, and an assessment offered of how her reliance on personal experience both enhanced and inhibited its explanatory power.     

Past her Prime? Simone de Beauvoir on Motherhood and Old Age

Despite her reputation as the ‘Mother’ of second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir is not usually heralded as a mother-friendly feminist. In The Second Sex, the passages dedicated to the female body—and especially the pregnant female body—have been dismissed as unfortunate expressions of internalized patriarchy or personal idiosyncrasy. By comparing Beauvoir’s later analysis of old age to aspects of the experience of pregnancy and early motherhood, this essay suggests that Beauvoir’s later work Old Age offers a rich untapped resource for understanding her thinking on maternity.     

Counselling women with post natal depression: Implications from recent qualitative research

This paper explores the role of the counselling psychologist with women who experience post natal depression. Traditionally post natal depression has been identified as a clinical condition, and the woman referred for psychiatric assessment; or it is seen as the result of stressful childbirth and associated events, and the woman is offered treatment by her GP or referred to a post natal support group. A recent study suggests that some degree of depression following childbirth is ‘normal’, and that far from being a clinical condition, its origins appear to be located in the context of problematic relationships (in both domestic and obstetric settings) as well as in women's expectations and inadequate preparation for childbirth and early motherhood. These expectations seem to be embedded in female psychology and wider cultural values. Women appear to be prepared for the fact that they will bear and mother children, but not the experience of motherhood itself, and consequent changes in identity and relationships are rarely made explicit. This study suggests that childbirth and the early months of motherhood (even for second and third children) are likely to precipitate some degree of depression in most women, and that this depression appears to be reactive rather than determined by individual pathology. Further, the experience of becoming a mother (each time) equates with a model of loss and bereavement, suggesting a very specific role for the counselling psychologist.     

“My Spiritual Journey to Know and Find Myself”: An Interview with Manisha Roy

In this interview, Manisha Roy shares how she became interested in Jungian psychology and how the concept of the shadow became a living help in her life. She relates how she has dealt with the heritage from her native country of India and shares her experience with marriage and divorce. She expresses her opinions about the future of depth psychotherapy.     

Lucy's dividing family: My discovery of the person in the subject

Abstract

This essay is excerpted from a larger project the author conducted with adolescent and preadolescent children of divorce. It tells the personal story of the author's first interview experience with her first participant in this project, here called Lucy. At the time of the interview, she was 11 years old and her parents had been divorced for 3 years. In the effort to engage the reader as an outside interpreter of her story, this essay invites the reader in, to the “raw data” of Lucy's experiences, as described in her words. Presented here in dialogue are the two voices of participant and researcher, as well as researcher reflections and recollections of this memorable experience.     

Can't a mother sing the blues? Postpartum depression and the construction of motherhood in late 20th-century America

Popular depictions of 20th-century American motherhood have typically emphasized the joy and fulfillment that a new mother can expect to experience on her child's arrival. But starting in the 1950s, discussions of the "baby blues" began to appear in the popular press. How did articles about the baby blues, and then postpartum depression, challenge these rosy depictions? In this article, we examine portrayals of postpartum distress in popular magazines and advice books during the second half of the 20th century to examine how the unsettling pairing of distress and motherhood was culturally negotiated in these decades. We show that these portrayals revealed a persistent reluctance to situate motherhood itself as the cause of serious emotional distress and a consistent focus on changing mothers to adapt to their role rather than changing the parameters of the role itself. Regardless of whether these messages actually helped or hindered new mothers themselves, we suggest that they reflected the rarely challenged assumption that motherhood and distress should not mix.     

Young Females' Images of Motherhood

This paper reports on two studies into the images of motherhood held by young females. In Study 1, we attempted to uncover general conceptual dimensions by which young Dutch females perceive motherhood. For this, a group of 64, predominantly White, participants of various ages and educational backgrounds were interviewed about real-life mothers and female images derived from television. Qualitative analysis revealed 4 main conceptual categories: a mother's traditional orientation toward motherhood, her child-centeredness, her self-assertive attitude, and a mother's open and social attitude. The items making up the 4 conceptual categories found in Study 1, underwent factor analysis in Study 2. Two main dimensions were found. One dimension represented a traditional orientation toward motherhood, whereas the other added a more contemporary perspective to motherhood, and represented a self-assertive and relational orientation toward motherhood. In Study 2, we investigated how young females viewed themselves as potential mothers with regard to these two dimensions. We analyzed whether differences in the views of young females about their future motherhood were dependent on level of education, age, and image of their own mother. The 165, predominantly White, young females taking part were asked to rate themselves and their mother on a range of items, representing the two dimensions of motherhood. Although daughter ratings were positively related to the ratings they assigned to their mothers, daughter perceived themselves to function differently with respect to the two dimensions of motherhood, compared to their own mother: They perceived themselves as less traditional, and more self-assertive and relational oriented than their mothers.     

Counselling with a profoundly deaf client and the impact of a therapist's dream: A case study

This case study explores the experience of one client participating in a project evaluating the use of dreams in short‐term counselling within the National Health Service. The client received 24 sessions of counselling and completed a post‐counselling semi‐structured questionnaire. This was followed by a semi‐structured interview, which confirmed the internal coherence within the participant's narrative and allowed a more detailed exploration of her experiences, supported by process notes. Supervision challenged the therapist's preconceptions and held her in her uncertainty until the work was aided by a dream that the therapist had of the client.     

Women's involvement in multiple roles and psychological distress

Women's involvement in multiple roles was examined in relation to three stress indices: role overload, role conflict, and anxiety. Using hierarchical multiple regression analyses, effects of number of roles occupied; occupancy of the particular roles of paid worker, wife, and mother; and the quality of a woman's experience in her roles were analyzed. Data were from a disproportionate stratified random sample (N = 238) of Caucasian women between 35 and 55 years of age. For the total sample and for employed women, occupancy of the role of mother was related to two stress indices; occupancy of the role of paid worker was related to none. The quality of experience in the work and parental roles was a significant predictor of role overload; quality of parental role experience was a significant predictor of role conflict and of anxiety.     

"Motherhood starts in prison": the experience of motherhood among women in prison

This study aims to explore the way in which women prisoners in Israel experience motherhood in prison and construct their motherhood after being released. In-depth interviews were conducted with 9 women, and the data were analyzed according to the phenomenological approach. The qualitative methodology generated 5 main themes: (a) motherhood in prison as a motive for survival; (b) the sense of failure experienced by mothers in prison; (c) coping versus avoidance in the mother-child relationship during imprisonment; (d) motherhood in prison as a motive for change; and (e) the transition from questioning the right to be a mother to redeeming motherhood. The 5 themes were organized into a model that depicts the process of becoming a mother in prison and the move toward mending the experience of motherhood. The findings indicate that side by side with the traumatic experiences of prison are other aspects that allow for growth and rehabilitation. The discussion focuses on 2 main issues that evolved from the findings: the reasons for the change in motherhood that occurs during imprisonment and the aspects of prison that enable this change.     

Pioneers of Multicultural Counseling: An Interview With Janet E. Helms

This article presents an interview with Dr. Janet E. Helms, scholar, researcher, and mentor in the fields of multicultural counseling and psychology. In this interview, Dr. Helms reflects on her educational and professional development and gives her thoughts about multiculturalism as it relates to her own work.     

On motherhood

This article deals with motherhood as a function of the innerspace, as a representation of the integrated feminine inner-genitality, and with disturbances in motherhood as a suffocation of that genitality. The development of feminine ego ideals, from the girl's illusory loving triadic relationships shared with the mother and father, and the primary significance of these ideals in regulating the maternal functions is explored. The young girl tends to react to traumas in the maternal relationship by stifling her own early genitality. This is followed by a blocking off and a sealing up of the innerspace by pregenital drive impulses. Such disturbances to motherhood as oral, anal and urethral decathexes and the phallic idealization of motherhood can be explained in terms of the developmental disturbances described above.     

Reflections of a black woman practitioner-researcher

Poetry as a tool for research reflectivity is used in this article to explore the individual and personal experience of a black woman researcher-practitioner, working and studying in two white male-dominated organisations—the British Prison Service and a university institution. The discussion will trace how she reconciled her multiple identities and how these identities shaped her perception of her gender-racial group, prison culture, and university culture. An interpretive creative poem that reflects the author’s attempt at capturing the essence of her experience as a prison service employee is presented. The author then examines an excerpt from her journal alongside an in-depth qualitative interview extract and discusses her interpretive comments. The article discusses the issues related to the author’s outsider-within position, a result of her gender and racial minority status, and highlights how poetry allowed her to articulate the anxiety and tension caused by her multiple identities.     

‘I still have difficulties feeling like a mother’: The transition to motherhood of preterm infants mothers

Objective: The premature birth of their infant can constitute a sudden interruption of the transition to motherhood that requires a reorganisation of the process. The present study aimed to analyse the experience of the transition to motherhood of preterm infants’ mothers, framing it within Stern’s transition to motherhood theory.

Method: A semi-structured interview was administered to 30 mothers during the recovery of the infant in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The interview explored the experience of mothers related to pregnancy, the infant’s birth and recovery.

Results: Thematic Analyses evidenced four interrelated themes: disconnection from the child, perception of maternal inadequacy, loss of parental role and temporal suspension. The themes showed that the mothers’ experience of preterm birth not only concerns the traumatic delivery, but is also embedded in the entire process of becoming a mother within an institutional context.

Conclusions: Results were connected to Stern’s theory. Findings revealed difficulties for preterm mothers that could affect the development of the maternal constellation and thus their transition to motherhood. These difficulties may influence the construction of maternal identity, mother’s representation of their child and the bond with their child.     

Student-produced representations as a means for interrupting the flow of an interview / Representaciones producidas por una alumna para interrumpir el flujo de una entrevista

Abstract

This work provides evidence that children as young as six years old successfully leverage written representations to their own purposes. During a modified clinical interview, Maggie created an idiosyncratic written representation to negotiate understanding of the interview task. In this move, Maggie shifted her role in the interview from sharing her own thinking to understanding the interviewer’s thinking. Her representations were not strictly for communication but also for control. This fleeting but illuminating episode points to young children’s intuitive perspective on written representations as a cultural tool.