Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood

Reviews and Endorsements

'The balance of Freud's original phallocentric theories, with the emphasis on the importance of father and the fear of castration, needed to be redressed and due weight given to the importance of the earlier mother-infant interaction. The apparent greater incidence of perversions in men was classically related to the concept of castration anxiety. Welldon broadens this perspective and suggests that the reproductive functions and organs are used by both sexes to express perversion. If in man it is more localized and focused through his penis, in woman it will be expressed through her reproductive organs and her whole body. She includes her syndromes of self-injury, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, self-mutilation and prostitution, all of which occur more in women. Above all, "motherhood provides an excellent vehicle for some women to exercise perverse and perverting attitudes toward their offspring, and to retaliate against their own mothers."…The book is well written and is easy and engaging to read; altogether it sheds a most welcome light on the route to the heart of the dark continent.'
- Johnathan Pedder, Institute of Psychoanalysis, London

'Courageous and provocative…This book is remarkable not only for its revelation of a little acknowledged truth, but also for the very humane quality of understanding perverse and pathological motherhood that Welldon displays.'
- Joyce McDougall, author of Theatres of the Mind

'Dr Welldon's remarkable book uncovers the hidden area of female sexual perversion, relatively unrecognized in the past…The book is an extremely important one, and should be read by all who work therapeutically with women.'
- Joseph Sandler, Freud Memorial Professor, University of London

Customer Reviews

Our customers have given this title an average rating of 5 out of 5 from 1 review(s), add your own review for this title.

Paul Verhaeghe on 08/07/2015 12:38:16

(5 out of 5)

Putting forward the combination between motherhood and perversion made Estela famous - to my knowledge, she is the first clinician who has demonstrated time and again that perversion can only be understood if we look at the mother, meaning that we have to reconsider female perversion as well. The importance of this clinical insight cannot be overrated,and it testifies to three things. First of all, to her intellectual courage. Secondly, to her sense of humanity. And last but not least, to her clinical finesse.

To publish a book about motherhood as the seat of perversion in a feminist time and place is just another way of trying to commit suicide by proxy. With hindsight, it is almost a miracle that the book was actually published and read. It goes against two visceral certainties: that mothers are always saints and that women are never perverse. Estela confronts us with another reality, not caring about being politically correct, as long as it is clinically correct. And correct she was and is - beyond the romantic mainly boyish ideals of a saint motherhood and the feverish phallic masculine ideals of a sexy femininity, there are real women with real problems that are totally different from both the romantic and the erotic universe of the male, but it takes courage to put that forward against both traditional patriarchal and then contemporary feminist views.