Peter Pan, Wendy, and the Lost Boys: A Dead Mother Complex

Melanie Klein and André Green offer competing descriptions of primitive mental development. The former emphasizes the need to control internal objects through splitting and projective identification, while the latter emphasizes a narcissistic retreat from objects through progressive deadening of the self. To bridge these theoretical differences a spectrum of fantasies is proposed ranging from reanimation (bringing deadness back to life) to reparation (healing damage caused by paranoid attack). Clinically, alternations between these two defensive patterns occur, acting together to avoid painful anxieties. The interplay of these defenses is illustrated by a dream drawn from clinical practice, from the life of James Barrie, and from his fictional creation Peter Pan.

Tarkovsky’s Childhood: Between Trauma and Myth

This chapter focuses on the traumatic events in the director’s childhood that continued to haunt him throughout his life. Tarkovsky scholars often point out the autobiographical nature of his cinema and, more specifically, how the divorce of his parents influenced his cinematic representation of marital relationships. According to Helena Goscilo, for example, Tarkovsky’s personal trauma of paternal abandonment provides a clue to the narrative structure of his films. For Tsymbal, however, it is the director’s strained relationship with his mother, viewed in the context of André Green’s theory of the dead mother complex, that defines much of his artistic impulse. This chapter also discusses what hardships Tarkovsky experienced during the wartime and how his father’s influence inadvertently helped him choose his future profession.

Influence of lack of night sleep on the cognitive set by indicators of EEG rhythms coupling

The aim of the study is investigation of nighttime sleep effect on the performance of a cognitive setting in terms of the coupling of EEG rhythms. The coupling of 5 rhythm: beta-1, beta-2, gamma, alpha and theta rhythms of EEG during the formation and testing of cognitive set was studied for 120 students (17 with short-term night sleep and 15 with a full night sleep). Multi-channel EEG was recorded. EEG evaluation was carried out by continuous wavelet transform based on the “mother” complex Morlet wavelet in the range of 1–35 Hz. Maps of the distribution of the values of the modulus of the wavelet transformation coefficient, which reflect amplitude changes of the potentials were analyzed. The Pearson correlation coefficient was a measure evaluating the coupling of EEG rhythms. The subjects with a short night’s sleep showed almost all of the relations of EEG rhythms (8 couples) during the formation stage of presentation. Students with a full night’s sleep showed statistically significant coupling of the following pairs of rhythms: alpha–beta-1, alpha–gamma and beta-2–gamma. Students with short-term night sleep demonstrated the 3 significant couples: alpha–beta-1, beta-1–gamma and beta-2–gamma during the testing stage. Well-slept students showed an increase in the number of connections (6 couples) in relation to the stage of formation of the set due to the addition of connections with the theta rhythm. The obtained data could indicate that the thalamo-cortical and cortico-hippocampal structural-functional associations work differently in the groups of subjects.

Psychoanalytical Interpretation of the Intersex Relations in S. Protsyuk's Novel «Infection»

The article is devoted to the analysis of the artistic world of the S. Protsyuk’s novel “Infection” The selected a priori schemes-matrices in the research help to find the complexes around which the author's imagination begins to work and to create the artistic world of the future work. The partially explained process of formation of the writer's novels helped to outline certain unconscious components and supplanted desires of the artist. The analysis of the character's dreams, his fantasies and visions reveals to the recipient the undisguised archetype of the writer's Anima. The considering hero’s unconscious states around this matrix explain us several complexes. The identified features make it possible to assert their presence in creator’s person. Our creative search involves the explanation of the intersex relations of the characters with the help of the archetype of Anima, which forces the person to unconscious actions. It includes: attraction to persons of the opposite sex, neurotic perception of reality, donjuanism, the emergence of fantasies and dreams, which opens a broader picture of the psyche of the individual. This archetype often finds its expression in the work and is clearly manifested in the love lines of the novel, so it would be wrong to ignore it. The comparison of the features of the protagonist's wife and his mother shows us the similarity and correspondence of the heroines. Analysis of the dreams and fantasies of the hero indicates that the hero lived at the expense of women. This statement is confirmed by the interpretation of the following dreams and fantasies in the article. The consideration of the childhood reveals to us the main reason for the betrayal of the hero, because there we find two complexes: the Oedipus complex and the Mother complex. The detected complexes become the cause of neurotic perception of reality and unstable psyche.

MOURNING IN THE DEAD MOTHER COMPLEX

ABSTRACT: We review the concept of mourning, first as conceived by Freud and Klein, and how it relates with the contemporary “clinic of the void” as described by André Green. The clinic of the void is part of a series of modern manifestation of psychic malaise called “new symptoms”. To illustrate, we present the case of Roxana, a Mexican woman whose psyche reflected the dynamic of the dead mother complex. Through an analysis of her interpersonal relationships and past experiences, and comparing with psychoanalytic literature, we conclude that the dead mother complex might become a common condition in our society.

The Great Mother: A Psychoanalytical Analysis of the Magna Mater In Two Novels

Sigmund Freud formulated the theory of “Oedipus Complex”, Erich Newmann came forth with “The Great Mother or the Magna Mater” based on Carl Jung’s Theory of the Archetype and the Mother Complex, which charts the mental processes of women’s psychological development. Two novels are analysed based on the given psychoanalytical theories the first a British novel “Sons and Lovers” by D.H. Lawrence and the other Australian “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough. Both novels have two brothers who become the focus of their mother’s attention and the overbearing mother’s control clashes with their identities, which results in death or fallout from society. The characters’ personal conflicts reveal encrypted truth.

A Short Introduction to Freud’s Mahābhārata Through the Pāṇḍavas’ Mother Kuntī

Chapter 2 introduces the French psychoanalyst André Green’s concept of “the dead mother,” alive but emotionally dead to her child, around which it introduces the epic’s main story through the interactions of the peace-loving King Yudhiṣṭhira and his bellicose mother Kuntī. Chapter 2 thus introduces the Mahābhārata text and tradition more thoroughly. It takes the tensions between Kuntī and the eldest Pāṇḍava Yudhiṣṭhira as guru to his four brothers to exemplify Green’s dead mother complex, in which a living mother has stopped loving a child, resulting in a “depressed position,” but in which the child may be creative in working through the impasses that the distance from his mother introduces. The chapter traces these tensions in the Mahābhārata, and also finds them suggestive for the Draupadī cult possession scenes during dramas that enact Draupadī’s disrobing.