Tag: mother

  • Great Mother

    In Container, the third article in my series on leaving home, I wrote briefly about what can happen when a child’s need for balanced “containment” and nurturance are not met in the family of origin, and she grows up uncontained, unprotected, and without nurture. The opposite can happen, of course, and a child can grow […]

  • Container

    There are many parallels between the developmental phase of adolescence and the concomitant process of leaving home, and the inner process of individuation; of becoming one’s own person. The transmogrifying process of adolescence begins at around age 12 and continues through age 20. Scientists tell us that the adult brain isn’t fully functioning until a […]

  • It’s About You, Orphan Child

    It’s about you, adopted person. It’s about you, orphan child. It’s about you, wandering waif who has been caught forever between two worlds, you who are the precariously-stretched suspension bridge, uniting two families whether you like it or not.

  • Mother as Container | 2

    Yesterday I wrote the first installment of a series I’ll call “The Mother as Container” series, about what is meant by mothers as containers of their children’s negative feelings and even their shadowy selves, and about what the lack of an effective container does to a child. The topic arose when we attended a middle school […]

  • Mother as Container | 1

    The idea of the mother as a container is ancient, of course–think about the baby in the womb and it is easy enough to see why. Jung wrote about the symbolism of vessels thus: The motif of the vessel is itself an archetypal image which has a certain purpose, and I can prove from this […]

  • Beautiful Babes

    Beautiful Babes

    One’s mother has far less power over her children than the archetypes projected upon her by the culture or by her own children as if they were real.