Table of Contents
What is Dead Mother Complex?
André Green 1980 coined the term “dead mother complex”1Green, A. ‘The dead mother,’ in On Private Madness, London: Hogarth Press, 1986, pp. 142-173. Translated by Katherine Aubertin from ‘La mère morte’, Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort, Éditions de Minuit, 1983. refers to a particular psychological trait amongst adults due to the emotional absence of their mothers in their infancy.
For example, a mother with mood swings, or a working mother, who is indifferent to the child would cause this complex in their children. A complex means a set of distinct behavioral and psychological traits.
Andre Green’s work proved that one of the key root causes of an individual developing pathological narcissism is the dead-mother complex.
History of Dead Mother Complex
Long before Andre Green coined the term, Wilhelm Jensen, a German Novelist, published a novel called Gradiva where a sculpt gets obsessed with a Roman relief called Gradiva and then moves from place to place in Rome in search of the lady. Even though the accurate reason for the dead mother was not portrayed in the novel, in 1907, Sigmund Freud studied delusional disorders based on the 1902 Novel Gradiva. Freud’s study first revealed the mental disturbance an adult suffers due to the mother’s emotional unavailability in childhood.
How does the dead mother complex gets developed in children?
Between 0-2 years of a child’s growth, the child and mother are an integrated entity. The child has to slowly separate, explore, individualize and reintegrate (SEIR). This is most dangerous and life-threatening for the child.
The child could get killed. When the child is back, the mother may not be there; the child may not return. For the small brain, this is a crazy risk. So the child becomes grandiose to handle the unprecedented risk in SEIR.
If the mother is depressed, or has not wanted the child, or was grandiose and thinks the child is a hindrance to her career or is emotionally unstable, she would be unpredictable for the child.
In the SEIR phase, the child may see many versions of her, switching between caring and cold.
So the child idealizes the mother’s good qualities into a small frame. That frame is dead, not-interacting. And it loves that “Dead Mother.”
Key mental models of individuals suffering from dead-mother complex
- In childhood, because the mother was good at times and raging and brought at other times, the child took the mother’s snapshot of the good time and created an album of the mother when she was good.
- Because genetically, a child expects the mother to be always available due to its vulnerability, not finding the mother in the physical world makes the child experience death.
- Throughout childhood, experiencing death repeatedly induces fear in the child.
- The child loses the ability to trust anyone and remains doubtful about everything.
- The child becomes paranoid and sees constant nightmares, and its ability to hold onto its core decreases.
- So, whenever the child finds the mother to be unavailable, it establishes a connection with the snapshot of the mother in its brain.
- Over some time, the child completely abandons the mother in the physical world even when the mother is present and instead communicates with the mother inside the brain.
- Instead of real emotions, the child develops its world of imagination and feels emotions only in that world of imagination.
- The child becomes addicted to trauma because only through the trauma its reality collapses, and it reaches the imaginary world of emotions.
- The child considers himself to be a bad child and therefore develops antisocial traits.
- The child develops the traits of abandonment anxiety, and all future relationships of the child remain insecure and anxious types.
- In females, this leads to Borderline Personality disorder, and in adult males, this trait leads to the dark triad of three spectra of Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism.
- The children create a belief system that they love their mother immensely, and so become unaware of their underneath conditions.
- Often such individuals will attract each other in adulthood.
- Because the brain’s core is disconnected from the real mother, from whose emotions the child’s emotion is created, the child will remain connected to the external world, find solace through pleasure, and experience emotions only through pain.
The portrayal of the Dead Mother Complex in the Movie Psycho(1960) by Hitchcock
What is the effect of the dead mother complex in adulthood?
In adulthood, this “child” looks for a caring and loving partner, but DEAD Partner because the adult can only love the dead, only absence, silence, and pain, our love for them.
This adult will decimate, disintegrate, punish, control you and make you emotionally dead and part of itself so as to love you. Females will look for a male partner with a dead mother complex, who will become childish upon giving pain, and the adult male will look for female partners who can act like their mothers. Then they will enact their childhood trauma. This relationship becomes addictive and is called “trauma bonding.”
Trauma bonding will be phases of attachment, extreme feelings for each other, abuse, rejection, walking away, getting bored, and again coming together. Because of the repeated trauma, the condition that the adults will develop is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(CPTSD).
Rules to follow and become aware of to save yourself from the CPTSD caused by a dead mother complex
If you are reading this article, you are already aware that there is something wrong that you cannot identify. You probably already know that your relationship with your mother is indifferent. The good thing is you still have awareness. As you are aware, you are searching online for CPTSD or dead mother complex.
The simple thing is that you can not change your past or childhood, but the good news is that you are aware. So you can work on your awareness and make that stronger, which would help you cope with the trauma better.
Here are the rules you must remember:
- No, adults don’t change. Only persona change. Core character doesn’t change after the age of 12.
- If you are a girl, the partner may say things like “you are my mother,” “you are as loving as my mother,” “you are the woman whom I love most after my mother,” or “I want you to look after my mother.” He will not know his complex. But these are triangulation words and idealization. A guy who has idealized a mother only has a fragmented frame of a mother. He can’t and won’t tolerate your individuality.
- If you are a guy, the girl will appear too strong to be real, almost like a boy. Know that her mother had idealized her by telling her, “you are our son.” So her grown-up years have gone into idealizing a happy mother who sees her as a son and herself as a boy.
- You will find it hard to see her switch between a girl and a boy in a whisker.
- If you are with this complex, seek therapeutic help. Otherwise, you will attract another partner with the same syndrome and get into an abusive relationship.
Remember, people tell lies to feel good about themselves and mask their agony and misery. You don’t have to buy their mess. Make your life beautiful with healthy attachments and relationships.
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Effect of childhood trauma on Adult Behavior and Relationships
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References
- 1Green, A. ‘The dead mother,’ in On Private Madness, London: Hogarth Press, 1986, pp. 142-173. Translated by Katherine Aubertin from ‘La mère morte’, Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort, Éditions de Minuit, 1983.
