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Maternal representations: A clinical and subjective phenomenological view
Author(s) -
Stern Daniel N.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
infant mental health journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1097-0355
pISSN - 0163-9641
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0355(199123)12:3<174::aid-imhj2280120305>3.0.co;2-0
Subject(s) - narrative , psychology , psychodynamics , dyad , representation (politics) , value (mathematics) , social psychology , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , epistemology , idealization , interpersonal relationship , interpersonal communication , cognitive psychology , psychoanalysis , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , politics , political science , law
The relationship — as represented — is proving to be of growing value in our thinking about clinical problems such as “intergenerational transfer.” It is also an extremely positive influence in our thinking about how the interpersonal world is remembered, abstracted, and lived. Yet, the nature of a “represented relationship” remains unclear. This paper is an attempt to clarify some of the problems and areas for needed study regarding this concept. The mother's representation of her infant and of the people in her own life who have played “maternal roles” will be taken as the model. First, we will explore the richness and complexity of these representations and conclude that, for clinical purposes, different models are used to simplify this richness and render it therapeutically useful. Three models will be discussed. The first is the disfortion model which measures the distance between the mother's subjective experience of her interaction or relationship with another and some objective, observable “reality.” The model of overdeter‐mining themes is a second model, largely the inspiration of psychoanalysis but inclusive of Bowlby's theory of attachment. Here psychobiological and/or psychodynamic themes organize the clinical material. Finally, a coherence model is discussed. Here the motive is goodness of the narrative construction rather than the historical “truth.” A second issue discussed is the capacity to represent dyads vs. triads and actual vs. second‐hand narrated relationships. These issues are crucial for notions not only about the nature of such representations but also their limitations in understanding family interactions and relationships, i.e., where many members are concerned. A third issue concerns the nature of the subjective experience for a mother when a representation of her infant or herself in relation to the infant is “activated.” There exists here an unknown typology of experience. Finally, we will discuss what all of the above have to contribute to our further understanding of the nature of represented relationships.