Events and Seminars
| Event | : | A Return to the Mother, an Exploration of the Transition from Freudian Fathers to Kleinian Mothers in Psychoanalysis |
|---|---|---|
| Venue | : | Online |
| Date | : | 19/06/2025 |
| Duration | : | 6 - 7:30pm BST |
| Extra Info | : | A paper delivered by Faye Mather as part of the Freudian Research Seminar Series. In works such as ‘Totem and Taboo’ and ‘Moses and Monotheism’, Freud traces the “primitive” origins of the Oedipus complex to an early event in human prehistory – the murder of the primal father by his sons. The words “primitive” and “primal” function, for Freud, as indicators of our collective past. As he constructs a timeline of human psychical development from prehistory to modernity, he emphasizes the rivalrous relationship between fathers and sons, carried forth from the primal horde into the unconscious minds of subsequent generations. The Oedipus complex experienced by us all, Freud says, attempts to reenact the events of prehistory in childhood phantasy. This signifies the enduring emphasis, in both the human psyche and Freudian psychoanalysis, on patriarchal systems of thought. As for the figure of the mother in Freudian theory, though she appears within the Oedipal triad, she fades away into relative obscurity against the background of an androcentric aetiology of human nature. That is, until the work of Melanie Klein, which hails a return to the mother in psychoanalysis – the subject of this seminar. Unlike Freud, Klein emphasizes the mother–infant dyad in her research, creating a curious reversal as the father becomes only tangentially significant. The words “primitive” and “primal” no longer hark back to prehistoric hordes of men, but now hold new significances; they denote the immediate, intimate relationship between mother and infant. Whilst Klein develops psychoanalysis in this way, she also retains fundamental Freudian elements in her thinking. One instance of Freudian conservation is her use of Athenian tragedy to illustrate her theories, just as Freud uses Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’. But, to convey her innovations, Klein turns away from the Oedipus story and turns towards the ‘Oresteia’ tragedies of Aeschylus. She constructs what we might call the “Orestes complex,” an alternative, infantile developmental experience. We shall explore the ways Klein transitions from a patriarchal psychoanalysis to a matriarchal one which centralises the mother – an ambivalent object of love and hatred, who possesses the original power to give life and take it away… |
| Organised By | : | Freud Museum London |
| Web Link | : | https://www.freud.org.uk/event/freudian-research-seminar-a-return-to-the-mother-an-exploration-of-the-transition-from-freudian-fathers-to-kleinian-mothers-in-psychoanalysis/ |