The Phenomenology of the Dead Mother Syndrome

[…]The dead mother syndrome remains one of the most difficult therapeutic problems that an analyst can encounter. Green reports that in a successful analysis the patient may recover memories of a period of aliveness that preceded the mother’s depression. 

My own cases suggest a somewhat different scenario: the mother’s deadness is not experienced as a discrete episode with a beginning and an end, so that I have not been able to recover memories of a period where the mother was emotionally available. 

From the perspective of the patient’s reconstruction of their mother, the mother may be perceived as someone with a permanent characterological deficit, rather that remembering their mother as having suffered from a time-limited depression. Furthermore, in some cases my patients do not necessarily recognize the mother’s depression as such.

In some instances it would appear as if their mother was unable to recognize that her child had an inner life that was separate and distinct from her own. […] The consequences of experiencing this failure […] can be devastating. For recognizing the uniqueness of children’s inner life is equivalent to recognizing that they are psychically alive. It is as if their mothers failed to acknowledge their humanity […] The child has not been granted the  permission to be a person [which] may result in the conviction that all desires are forbidden, for if one does have a right to exist one has no right to have desires, to want anything for oneself. (p.77-78)

[...] Stern (1994) observed the infant’s microdepression resulting from its failed attempts to bring the mother back to life. “After the infant’s attempt to invite and solicit the mother to come to life, to be there emotionally, to play have failed, the infant, it appears, tries to be with her by way of identification and imitation”(p.13). This observation is consistent with Green’s report that his patients suffered from a primary identification with the dead mother. It is as if the patient is saying: “If I cannot be loved by my mother, I will become her”

Many patients avoid the dead mother syndrome by a counter-identification, becoming the opposite of the mother, or believing that only a part of themselves is dead, thus retaining a sense of individuality and preserving a sef/object distinction. In contrast in cases of primary identification the patient’s individuality is completely lost as she becomes submerged with the mother that she has constructed.[…] This total identification with a dead mother who is incapable of loving contributes to a corresponding incapacity to love others and love oneself. (p.78)

There is another aspect of the phenomenology of the dead mother syndrome [that] relates to the processing of affects. It is commonly recognized that a disturbance in the early mother/infant or mother/child relationship contributes to a relative incapacity to regulate affects[…]This disturbance in affect regulation my arise from a non-specific asynchrony in the mother/child relationship, consistent with Bion’s theory that the mother is the container and initial processor of the child’s anxiety. 

One observes the fear of experiencing intense feelings with the belief that, insasmuch as affects are inherently uncontrollable, the self would be flooded and overwhelmed. If the mother is emotionally unresponsive, one may infer that she has distantanced herself form her body and bodily experiences. If this should prove to be the case, this dissociation between the self and the body will be communicated to the child, and the mother will therefore, prove to be relativel unable to facilitate the child’s processing of his/her own affective experiences.

[...]What may be more specific to the dead mother syndrome is an inability to experience pleasure. This is different from what is ordinarily understood as a masochistic compulsion to seek pain. Pleasure itself, the pleasure of simply being alive, is missing. More than that, in some instances that pleasure can be derived from any source, no matter how innocent, is forbidden. If pleasure is inadvertently experienced it must be punished. […] (p.79)

Those patients who suffer form the dead mother syndrome evidence great difficulties in “being with the other”. Green (1983) alluded to this when he commented that “the patient it strongly attached to the analysis more than the analyst” (p.161). The patient does not know how to be with the analyst. In some cases it is felt to be dangerous to even aknowledge a relationship to the analyst […] hence they become dead and lifeless in the analytic setting. They maintain a corpse-like posture, do not move on the couch and speak in a dead-seeming voice drained of all affective valence. This deadness may prove to be contagious and infect that analyst who may find himself also speaking in a dull lifeless monotone. The dead mother is a ghost which pervades the entire analytic process.(p.79-80)

Modell, A.H. (1999) The dead mother syndrome and the reconstruction of trauma. In G. Kohon (Ed.) The dead mother: the work of Andre Green (pp. 76-86), London: Routledge