Mother-Girlfriend: Breaking The Boundaries Of Mother-Daughter Relationship

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-31 14:10

"Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword; For I came to set a man apart from his father, and a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies are his household" (Matthew 10:34, 35, 36)

"They were truly one. But the two of them were cramped in one body. It didn't matter if they loved each other or hated each other." Axel Blackmar. Arizona Dream. E. Kusturica

Where is the border between adequate mother-daughter relationships, and how to distinguish between natural emotional attachment in the mother-daughter dyad and its extreme, perverse forms? Who is responsible for this boundary, and how will its erosion affect the daughter's female history? What optimal boundary is needed in the mother-child relationship, which will further allow the daughter, who once became a woman, to be and feel herself, and, to a greater or lesser extent, realized?

Sometimes you can hear from women of different ages that their own mother is their best friend. With the innocence inherent in these women, deeply destructive relationships are not only not perceived as such, but are often a reason for pride and are elevated to the level of the ideal of mother-daughter relationships. More often than not, the daughter perceives the mother's friendly actions and makes efforts to maintain integrity in such a "gracious friendly" type of relationship with the mother, which is, in fact, a perverse form of communication between mother and daughter.

The 21st century is characterized as increased emotiogenic, making, accordingly, increased requirements for the emotional-volitional regulation of the personality, and the problem of a person living in the postmodern era is the problem of "free immaturity" [Lipovetsky J. The Era of Emptiness. Essays on contemporary individualism, etc.]. An immature person gets freedom, and at the same time, does not know how to dispose of himself. Today, in an intimate life with its increasing freedom, richness and spontaneity, a woman is faced with the growing complexity of the mother's sphere.

The transformation of intimacy, as E. Giddens points out, applies to both sex and gender, but it is not limited only to them: (…) “the problem here lies in a basic shift in the ethics of private life as a whole. this to construct a new ethic of everyday life "[Giddens E. Transformation of intimacy. Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies, p. 69].

I will analyze the category of intimacy as one of the prerequisites for considering the stated problems. Intimacy is defined through the categories of reciprocity, vulnerability and openness [Ts. P. Korolenko, NV Dmitrieva. Intimacy, P.15].

Intimacy requires the ability, on the one hand, to be together, on the other, to maintain separateness and individuality in intimate relationships. Intimacy is impossible without the ability to separate your I from the I of another person. Relationships based on intimacy are characterized by the presence of attachments, interdependence, duration, repeated interactions, and a sense of belonging to each other [ibid., P. 16].

Further, the authors point out that relationships of intimacy require reciprocity, mutual understanding, "transparency" on a conscious and unconscious level. There is an unconscious dialogue between people in intimate relationships, an exchange of "secret signs" [ibid., P. 27]. Within the framework of the stated theme, it is necessary to fix attention on "transparency" and "exchange of secret signs".

It is emphasized that maintaining and maintaining intimate relationships for a long time requires mature emotions, developed emotional and interpersonal awareness. Intimacy cannot be achieved without the ability not only to be together, but also to be able to separate from each other, its absence is a form of symbiosis, not intimacy, although the feelings of closeness in these states are similar.

E. Erickson, considering the continuum "isolation - intimacy", defines intimacy as the ability to "merge together your identity with the identity of another person without fear that you lose something in yourself" [Hjell L., Ziegler D. Theories of Personality, P.231] …

When considering intimacy for P. Mellody [Mellody P. The Intimacy factor, С.231], the question of internal and external boundaries that allow a person to realize intimacy, while maintaining their own integrity and the integrity of a partner, comes to the fore. Three types of borders are distinguished: 1) a whole, intact system of borders; 2) wall; 3) there are no boundaries.

Relationships of intimacy are possible only in the case of a whole and intact system of boundaries. In the case when a wall appears instead of a border, a person is unable to express his feelings, thoughts, intimacy, or to accept them from a partner. In the absence of boundaries, a person cannot control either his own manifestations in relation to a partner, which can lead to violence against the latter's personality, or the manifestations of a partner, which can lead to a violation of his own integrity.

Thus, the views of different researchers on the problem of intimacy agree that the ability to enter into intimate relationships requires maturity, awareness and the presence of clearly delineated, intact boundaries. At the same time, the feelings of closeness in symbiosis and intimacy are similar; theoretically, the distinction between these states is carried out, again, using the category of boundaries.

Intimacy has the property of "transparency", presupposes the interaction of "secret signs" and, as it develops, mutual cognition.

Let me analyze a number of highlighted concepts: "borders", "transparency", "secret sign", "cognition".

Transparency (from Lat. Trans - "transparent", "through and through" and rageo - "to be obvious") - transparency, permeability. Transparency (synonyms - crispness, purity, crystallinity, permeability) is a property of an object when internal connections and information are available to subjects external to the object. The essence of transparency is that it allows you to see the INVISIBLE, makes it OBVIEW, permeable to the observer. Transparency brings you to clean water, hiding nothing.

Achievement of psychological intimacy requires a conscious act of "transparency" for the other, while the demarcation of the boundaries of the self is preserved. In intimacy, the secret becomes apparent, the "declassification" of the inner world takes place and, as a result, its cognition. Cognition is an act of transition from the unknown to the known, from the incomprehensible to the comprehensible, from the inaccessible to the accessible.

The essence of knowledge is not always safe, it is inextricably linked to the likelihood of violating the prohibition established to designate any boundaries. I will refer to the Bible: Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: "and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked …" (Genesis 3: 7), for which they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Cognition is also dangerous because it is associated with sexuality; in ancient texts the verb "to know" is used in relation to sexual intercourse: "Adam knew Eve, his wife; and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said: I got a man from the Lord" (Genesis 4: 1).

W. Bion understands the tragedy of Sophocles "King Oedipus" as a drama of knowledge - Oedipus seeks to find out the secret of his own origin, and, in the end, blinds himself, because the knowledge that was revealed to him is unbearable for him [Bion W. Learning from Experience, Bion W. A theory of thinking].

Therefore, in intimacy, the act of crossing the border is carried out, which is impassable outside the relationship with the object of intimate connection.

N. Brown distinguished between physical, psychophysiological and psychological types of boundaries, highlighting the flexible and rigid "boundaries of the I", as well as the gradation of boundaries from weakened to healthy [Brown N. W. The Destructive narcissistic pattern]. According to the author, personal space is also determined by psychological boundaries. N. Brown notes that physical, psychophysiological, and psychological boundaries can be quite rigid; selective rigid (psychophysiological) boundaries serve the same purposes: to protect against potential threats and / or harm that may be inflicted on an individual; they are boundaries that depend on time, place and / or conditions; flexible boundaries are movable boundaries of the I, potentially reflecting the psychological status of a person among people and the unconditionality of self-acceptance.

In the Gestalt approach, the border is the central concept that separates and connects the environment and the organism, it is not only a line that separates or connects the I and not-I, but also is the most important field of their interaction. The boundaries, the place of contact, constitute the Ego only there and then, when the I meets the "alien", the Ego comes into force, begins its existence, defines the boundaries between the personal and the impersonal "field". Contact is a process of interaction, exchange of a person with the environment. The border of contact is the border that separates the self from the non-self, which regulates the exchange. In healthy contact with the environment, the border is functional - open to exchange and strong for autonomy. The cycle of contact is the process of satisfying needs, creating and destroying figures [Perls F., Goodman P. Theory of gestalt therapy].

Object relations theory holds that the child initially does not distinguish between his own body and that of his mother. The formation of psychological boundaries occurs in the context of the separation of the child from the mother. In the understanding of D. Winnicott, the formation of the boundaries of the Self occurs in early childhood and is determined by the quality of motherhood - with good motherhood, integral psychological boundaries are formed between the Self and the outside world [D. V. Vinnikot. Little children and their mothers].

M. Mahler connects the formation of the boundaries of the self with the acquisition of identity, which occurs in the process of separation and individuation of a child from the initially unified mother-child dyad [Tyson F., Tyson R. Psychoanalytic theories of development].

G. Ammon's self-structural model of personality uses the idea

The psychological border should be considered as a functional organ, which means that the psychological border has not a substantial quality, but an energetic one. The characteristics of the psychological boundary arise as a temporary combination of forces for the implementation of a specific interaction of a person with the world. Thinking the border dialectically, one can conclude about its indeterminacy, procedurality, constant formation, instability and situational conditioning.

The border is created in front of something that cannot be thought of, in front of the inexpressible and lies where thinking loses its bearings. I will allow myself to conditionally divide the space of mother-daughter relations into the sphere of the possible, and what is abroad is the sphere of the impossible. This suggests the conclusion that overcoming this border is an act of transgression (transgression from the Greek trans - through, through; gress - movement; a term that fixes the phenomenon of crossing an impassable border, first of all, the border between the possible and the impossible), literally meaning "going beyond limits ".

What stands guard over going beyond the possible?

According to M. Heidegger [Heidegger M. Parmenides], shame can be the guardian of being, the metaphor "guardian" indicates the protection of borders. Shame, as a borderline phenomenon, indicates a direct connection with borders; this complex concept in various discourses in one way or another marks the sphere of intimacy.

Intimacy in the context of shame can be understood as being forced into the grip of something that cannot be accepted. Shame involves bringing a non-public naked body onto the stage. So, clothes are a borderline sign that separates the intimate sphere from that which is presented to others, the internal from the external, and shame is a signal of violation of this border. To get dressed means to hide your ins and outs. To undress means to be vulnerable, literally "exposed", "discovered", exposed.

In the fragment of Genesis cited earlier, the exact etiology of shame is recorded - this is knowledge about Good and Evil, obtained by violating the prohibition, which leads to shame from discovering one's own nakedness.

M. Jacobi argues that already primitive people covered up their nakedness and concludes that this aspect of behavior is inherent in humanity as a species. For a person "it is unnatural to behave naturally in relation to his physical nature" [Jacobi M. Shame and the origins of self-esteem, p. 26].

G. Wheeler, agreeing with G. Kaufman, quotes the latter: "Shame itself is the entrance to the Self … No other affect is so close to the experienced self. Nothing is so central to the sense of identity" [Lee RG, Wheeler G. Shame and the Gestalt model, P.45].

Let me remind you that phenomenologically shame is experienced as a feeling of being "visible", an impulse to "fall through the earth", to become invisible. That is, shame can be viewed as a destroyer of intimacy, that is, in its negative essence; as well as a natural moment in the opening of rapprochement - in this sense, shame loses the image of a monster and acquires a positive meaning, in particular, the meaning of regulating distance in relationships, depending on the readiness for rapprochement. I will also refer to B. Kilborne: “Shame is on the border between I and others. …

The well-known prose writer and essayist M. Kundera, considering the anxiety of appearance, in his essay "Broken Wills" points out one of the reasons for shame: "Shame: an epidermal reaction aimed at protecting privacy; to the demand to hang curtains on windows (…), one of the alphabet situations of transition to adulthood, one of the first conflicts with parents is the claim to a separate box for their letters, their notebooks, the claim to a box locked with a key; we enter adulthood, rebelling with shame "[Kundera M. Broken Wills: Essay, P.264].

Eight years earlier, the theme of shame was raised by M. Kundera in the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. In the house of the heroine of the novel Teresa "there was no shame": "Mother walked around the apartment in only underwear, sometimes without a bra, and in the summertime she was completely naked" [Kundera M. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Roman, p. 53]; mother insists her daughter staying with her in the world of shamelessness, “(…) where the whole world is nothing but one huge concentration camp of bodies similar to one another, and the souls in them are indistinguishable [ibid., p. 55], (…) "marching in the ranks naked - for Teresa, the main image of horror. When she lived at home, her mother forbade her to lock herself in the bathroom. By this she wanted, how to tell her: your body is the same as the rest of the body; you have no right to be ashamed; you have no reason to hide what exists in billions of identical copies "[ibid., p. 67].

Shame makes you stop moving on, slow down, stop. What is the function of this stop? Shame - shows a person his limits, the knowledge of which determines his place and is an internal regulator in determining what is allowed / possible and what is not allowed / impossible.

Shame ensures the safety and inviolability of borders, reflects an invasion of internal territory (one's own and another's). Shame enhances interpersonal differences, a sense of one's own identity and uniqueness. Thus, shame stands at the "entrance" to the zone of intimacy.

Once again, I will turn to the category of secrets. The secret is that which is in the inner plane; represents something deep, incomprehensible, impenetrable, intimate, semantically significant, excluded from the communication process, something that is associated with a taboo. According to Z. Freud, the purpose of a taboo is to protect the psyche from contact with too strong feelings, to protect it from shame and feelings of guilt. Freud considers the incest taboo as one of the most widespread and serious prohibitions.

In Pompeii, in the Castle of the Mysteries, there is a series of frescoes that are believed to depict female initiation in the Dionysian mystery. In one of the final paintings of the series, there is the following scene: an initiating woman, half-naked, kneels next to a dressed woman, resting her head on her knees. Behind her is an angelic female figure with wings, in her raised right hand she holds a whip. In the scene preceding the scourging, a woman is depicted kneeling, trying to lift the coverlet from the basket, where the phallus, and therefore the god, is located. This action is viewed as reprehensible and blasphemous. A. Mayui suggested that the winged figure with a whip embodies the goddess Aidos, whose name means "bashfulness." The initiating woman is castigated by shame in order to give her humility and return to her true understanding of her natural boundaries, her humanity and mortality.

Anthropologist M. Douglas, exploring archaic ideas about desecration and taboos, shows that in primitive cultures, the fundamental belief was that the transition of the forbidden line of a taboo area generates impurity and danger. In M. Douglas's concept, dirt is something disgusting, in essence a mess. M. Douglas believes that the rules of separation, differentiation presuppose the idea of integrity and completeness, while perversion is a mixing and violation of order and purity [Douglas M. Purity and Danger: Analysis of the notions of defilement and taboo].

The concept of M. Douglas was developed in the ideas about the disgust of Y. Kristeva [Kristeva Y. The Forces of Horror: an essay on disgust], which considers the disgusting as rejected by society due to the fact that it carries" title="Image" />

Shame makes you stop moving on, slow down, stop. What is the function of this stop? Shame - shows a person his limits, the knowledge of which determines his place and is an internal regulator in determining what is allowed / possible and what is not allowed / impossible.

Shame ensures the safety and inviolability of borders, reflects an invasion of internal territory (one's own and another's). Shame enhances interpersonal differences, a sense of one's own identity and uniqueness. Thus, shame stands at the "entrance" to the zone of intimacy.

Once again, I will turn to the category of secrets. The secret is that which is in the inner plane; represents something deep, incomprehensible, impenetrable, intimate, semantically significant, excluded from the communication process, something that is associated with a taboo. According to Z. Freud, the purpose of a taboo is to protect the psyche from contact with too strong feelings, to protect it from shame and feelings of guilt. Freud considers the incest taboo as one of the most widespread and serious prohibitions.

In Pompeii, in the Castle of the Mysteries, there is a series of frescoes that are believed to depict female initiation in the Dionysian mystery. In one of the final paintings of the series, there is the following scene: an initiating woman, half-naked, kneels next to a dressed woman, resting her head on her knees. Behind her is an angelic female figure with wings, in her raised right hand she holds a whip. In the scene preceding the scourging, a woman is depicted kneeling, trying to lift the coverlet from the basket, where the phallus, and therefore the god, is located. This action is viewed as reprehensible and blasphemous. A. Mayui suggested that the winged figure with a whip embodies the goddess Aidos, whose name means "bashfulness." The initiating woman is castigated by shame in order to give her humility and return to her true understanding of her natural boundaries, her humanity and mortality.

Anthropologist M. Douglas, exploring archaic ideas about desecration and taboos, shows that in primitive cultures, the fundamental belief was that the transition of the forbidden line of a taboo area generates impurity and danger. In M. Douglas's concept, dirt is something disgusting, in essence a mess. M. Douglas believes that the rules of separation, differentiation presuppose the idea of integrity and completeness, while perversion is a mixing and violation of order and purity [Douglas M. Purity and Danger: Analysis of the notions of defilement and taboo].

The concept of M. Douglas was developed in the ideas about the disgust of Y. Kristeva [Kristeva Y. The Forces of Horror: an essay on disgust], which considers the disgusting as rejected by society due to the fact that it carries

A. Werbart points to the main danger of blurring boundaries and abolishing taboos: "For the archaic layers of our Ego, the message that everything can be depicted tends to boil down to the fact that everything can be done in the same way" [Werbart A. Our need for taboo: Pictures of violence and mourning difficulties, P. 14].

"There is almost no taboo left, all our borders will soon disappear" [cit. by Skerderud F. Anxiety: A Journey into Oneself, S. 25].

Investigating the taboo of incest, Y. Kristeva turns to the logic of separation, fixed in the prohibition: "Do not boil a kid in his mother's milk" (Exodus, 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21).

The use of milk not for vital needs, but according to a culinary fantasy that establishes an abnormal connection between a mother and a child, is, according to Y. Kristeva, a metaphor for incest. As the prohibition of incest, one can also understand the prohibition of “slaughter neither a cow nor a sheep on the same day as its birth” (Leviticus 22:28).

One of the main tendencies of puberty is the reorientation of communication from parents, teachers and, in general, elders to peers, more or less equal in status. The need for communication with peers who cannot be replaced by parents arises in children and increases with age, being an important specific channel of information through which adolescents learn the necessary things that adults do not tell them for one reason or another. A teenager receives most of the information on issues of relations between the sexes from peers, so their absence can delay his psychosexual development or make him unhealthy.

Communication with their own kind is a specific type of emotional contact that makes it easier for a teenager to autonomize from adults and gives him a sense of well-being and stability. Teenage friendship is a means of self-disclosure, a person's individuality, which is created, first of all, by the presence of some kind of secret.

The main opposition on which the results of P. Giordano's analysis are based is the contrast between close friendship and relations with parents: unlike friendship and its egalitarian nature, relations with parents always have a certain hierarchy; friends are over

Raising a child is, first of all, being able to separate from him. Harmony depends on the mother's ability to establish a distance between homogeneous ones and bring dissimilar ones together. When the difference between mother and daughter consists only in wrinkles around the eyes, and all other symbolic signs, including clothes, are similar (J. Fowles, an outstanding writer and essayist in the article "Get together, you starlets!" Writes: "When then daughters wanted to dress like their mothers; now mothers want to dress like their daughters "[Fowles J. Get together, you starlets!]), their roles are mutually interchangeable and it is difficult to distinguish where the mother is and where daughter, then why the same mixing will not occur in their sexual functions? When mother and daughter begin to play the same role (girlfriend), it is difficult to predict how far this will go.

A mother-friend commits an act of excess, excess, abuse, overcoming the limit of the possible, transcending it and thereby interrupting the course of the normal development and formation of her daughter. When a mother becomes a friend, she, in fact, ceases to be a mother, the roles of mother and friend are functionally completely different.

A mother must master the status of a mother, a mother is not born, she can only become; for the optimal development of a daughter, it is enough to be a mother, not trying on other roles, roles that belong to others. A mother who has become a friend usurps (breaks the law), takes someone else's place, fulfills an unusual role and violates her daughter's right to have a natural relationship with another person.

The tasks of the mother are to feed, protect, educate, set rules and let go; the daughter's tasks are to obey, grow, disagree, move on, continue the birth.

What happens if everything is turned upside down in this system?

If the mother of a teenage daughter reveals her innermost, thereby she pulls her daughter out of the system" title="Image" />

A mother-friend commits an act of excess, excess, abuse, overcoming the limit of the possible, transcending it and thereby interrupting the course of the normal development and formation of her daughter. When a mother becomes a friend, she, in fact, ceases to be a mother, the roles of mother and friend are functionally completely different.

A mother must master the status of a mother, a mother is not born, she can only become; for the optimal development of a daughter, it is enough to be a mother, not trying on other roles, roles that belong to others. A mother who has become a friend usurps (breaks the law), takes someone else's place, fulfills an unusual role and violates her daughter's right to have a natural relationship with another person.

The tasks of the mother are to feed, protect, educate, set rules and let go; the daughter's tasks are to obey, grow, disagree, move on, continue the birth.

What happens if everything is turned upside down in this system?

If the mother of a teenage daughter reveals her innermost, thereby she pulls her daughter out of the system

The mother is forcing her daughter to enter adulthood, violating the laws of age-related mental hygiene. Let me give you an example. The mother of thirteen-year-old Zoe tells her daughter that she has already grown up and it is time for her to change her hairstyle to a more mature one; the mother takes her daughter to the hairdresser, where the girl has a short haircut and hair dyed. Arriving home, Zoya goes into hysterics not so much from the rejection of her "adult" appearance and forcibly pulling her out of a child's state into an adult, but from the perverse actions of her mother, which is expressed in the phrase thrown by Zoya: "You are not a mother, all mothers are like mothers. and you're not normal. " The mother's desire to make her daughter an adult prematurely causes a deep shock in her daughter, since her mother is not a mother; not a normal mother. It is important for a mother to accept the status of a mother and recognize her child as a child, trusting the natural course of her daughter's development, accepting her age and not violating the age-related ecology. The above example of forcibly forcing a daughter's growing up is a traumatic memory for both, which reveals their frequent recourse to this memory. For a mother, the accusation that she is not a mother is a painful discovery, much more painful than if she was accused of being a bad mother, but by defining a mother as a non-mother, a non-normal mother, the daughter directly points to perversion. maternal action.

The child has the right not to know that it does not directly concern him. So, for the successful development of a child, it is important that the sexual life of his parents is not available to him, while it is also important that the child can know that it exists. In the case when a child directly encounters the sexual life of his parents, this violates the boundaries of his mental ideas, an immature psyche is not able to assimilate such knowledge.

You need to grow up to the state of a partner, as they say, friendship is a relationship of equals, the nature of friendship is egalitarian. Let me give you another example. Yana's mother devoted her daughter to her amorous affairs, shared her secrets, experiences. In the course of therapy, Yana realized that she did not need such revelations from her mother, her mother actually made her an accomplice in a succession of adultery, the pain from the unlawful intrusion of her mother lived in her for many years and sometimes resulted in attacks of aggression, incomprehensible to Yana herself, arising after her mother was absent from her. return. Yana recalls that her mother told her: "You are lucky, many would like to have such a mother," but the truth was that Yana wanted (which she did not admit to herself for a long time) to have just not "such a mother," in fact, Yana wanted so that MOTHER is next to you.

Friendship between mother and daughter is one of the modalities of psychological incest (incest not realized in sexual acts, according to Aldo Nauri). For the normal development of a child of any gender, it is necessary to build a triangular structure of object relations, create mental ideas about a married couple of parents and about the child's own place. D. Winnicott argued that separation from the mother is necessary, which is intended to be favored by the transitional object, the third that will allow the daughter to exist outside the mother [3]. The appearance and presence of such an object is possible if the mother is able to organize an optimally free zone between herself and her daughter.

According to K. Elyacheff et al. [Elyacheff K, Einish N. Mothers and daughters. Extra third?], The distance between mother and daughter should be established with the utmost respect, especially in the sexual sphere, which is a sign of the condition that the mother-daughter bond remains life-giving. Let me give you an example that the above authors refer to. The daughter remarks to her friend: “I don’t want to know anything about what my mother is doing with her lover. I don’t want her to know what I myself am doing with my lovers, nor, let alone, that she sees me drunk” [there the same, p. 275].

This rule of mental hygiene in a mother-daughter relationship illustrates a conversation between two female friends aged approximately 15-16. One of her friends talks about the observed picture, how a mother was leading a drunk daughter by the arm: "She was very drunk, but it seemed to me that her condition was not such as not to understand that her mother was leading her, nevertheless, she walked calmly", to which the second friend replies with a remark: "Horror! I would crawl, but I would not go with my mother."

Let me give you the dream of 24-year-old Jeanne. "My mother and I are in a cafe, through the window we see an impending huge wave that moves in the direction of the building we are in. In fear, we run from the window, but the wave rushes into the cafe, throws us into the toilet stall, in which we are mother we find ourselves naked on the floor, we try to get up, but the water knocks us down, I see my mother completely naked and helpless. " It was a crisis stage in Zhanna's life, she fell in love for the first time after 7 years of complete lack of interest in a man (there was a desire to be with a man "in general"), turned for psychological help, graduated from college, and tried to find a job. The plot and symbols of sleep are quite understandable: the bursting wave symbolizes the destruction of Jeanne's defenses, female energy, and on the surface of this water we see the emerging mixing of substrates - a cafe-toilet (something incompatible), a cafe-place to satisfy the need for oral pleasure, a symbol of oral-maternal problems; a toilet stall is an intimate place, a place associated with shame and our borders, something that is associated with our human. The dream reveals that the relationship with the mother is a dependent relationship, infinitely dependent, "naked" (both naked), and therefore the same, there is an equal sign between the mother's body and the daughter's body, Jeanne's body is not exclusive. In fact, the dream "exposes" relationships with violated boundaries. The desire to "get up" in Jeanne's life is realized by the appearance of a man, seeking psychological help and looking for work, but the water knocks down, the water, as a symbol of female energy, one for two, does not allow to get up, Jeanne sees her mother naked and helpless, one might think, that helpless, and therefore naked, but here I will stop in the "preparation" of Jeanne's dream, since her answer to the question: "What feelings does a dream evoke?" Zhanna began to answer, saying that the ending of the dream was "unpleasant" for her, "unpleasant" to be naked, to see her mother naked and unsuccessfully trying to get up is "unpleasant", this toilet is "unpleasant". In the beginning, Jeanne says "softly", downplaying emotion, replacing it with a vague "unpleasant". When the anxiety has subsided, Jeanne says "disgusting."

Disgust always accompanies any crime, so we have a particularly acute disgust for the crimes of Nazism. Nazi lawlessness aimed at the destruction of the human in the person is presented in the memory of the Ostarbeiter associated with

In general, Hitler's Reich serves as an example of a totalitarian state that weakens personality development, making a child out of a resisting adult personality by force of an infantilizing person, seeking his regression to a child who has not yet learned to use a pot, or even to an animal that suppresses individuality, so that all merge into a single amorphous mass … When external control in one form or another begins to touch the intimate life of a person (as it was in the Hitlerite state), it becomes incomprehensible what remains in a person personal, special, unique.

"Total control over all spheres of a person's life, up to sexual, leaves a person only with the possibility of some kind of attitude to such emasculation" [Bettelheim B. Enlightened Heart Investigation of the psychological consequences of existence in extreme conditions of fear and terror, p.15].

Nowhere was perversion manifested so totally as in the crimes of Nazism. Any dictatorship is perverse, like the dictatorship of motherly love. Motherly love is often justified for any failure of mothers. Even the exposure of insolvency can be interpreted in a favorable sense for the mother. Motherhood evokes exalted feelings, motherly love explains everything, you can forgive and justify everything, and even find a positive meaning for what you have done. Meanwhile, motherly love, "knowing no boundaries", which is often perceived as the norm and more - the ideal, can be no less destructive than the lack of love. A responsible person is responsible for the result of their actions, and not for their intentions.

Here I will allow myself to deviate somewhat from the topic and turn to the film "The Pianist" by M. Haneke, based on the novel by E. Jelinek, Nobel Prize laureate in literature, narrating in a grotesque form about a real perversion in the relationship between mother (Annie Girardeau) - daughter (Isabelle Huppert). Erica (daughter) was born after long and difficult years of mother's marriage. "The father passed the baton to his daughter without hesitation and disappeared from the stage. Erika appeared, and the father disappeared" [Jelinek E. The Pianist: Roman, p.7] - the child "ousted" the father; the daughter moved to her father's place. Erica grows up in a hermetically sealed maternal prescription space.

In the words of Isabelle Huppert: "Erica is a grown woman and at the same time a girl, depressed by her mother."

The mother “lives” in her daughter, which is demonstrated by the scene when Erica goes to bed next to her mother, although the beds are separate, but the same and close to each other (the director's allusion to the incorporated image of the mother?; Other scenes - in the foreground the silent Erica, the figure mother is vaguely visible, but her merciless monologue is clearly audible; or the dark figure of the mother knocking on the door of the room in which Erica and the pianist-hockey player Walter barricaded themselves, deprived of physical given, "flesh and blood", looks like a shadow, also make one wonder about this question) … In the scene preceding this one, Erica says: "Mom, if my memory serves me, you had exactly the same dress in your youth," which indicates the cultivation of the image of a mother within yourself. The ending of E. Jellinek's novel is unambiguous. Erica returns to her mother: "Erica knows the direction in which she is going. She goes home. She walks and gradually speeds up her steps" [ibid., P. 397].

Today there is a wide variety of decoding of the fusion of female madness presented in "The Pianist". It is obvious that Erica is in dire need of separation, and therefore I will try to consider the plot line of "The Pianist" in her movement through the prism and filter, maturation, initiation and inner growth of the heroine. The first attempt to establish the boundaries of one's own I is associated with immersion in the musical world, which allows you to pave the distance between the mother, who does not understand music, and herself; the second attempt is the creation of a world of violence, which is embodied in the image of Walter as a pianist-hockey player; the third is the rejection of security and guarantees in general. In the special literature since the time of Freud, genital sex has been considered as an indicator of the adult psyche.

This dynamic of Erica's sexual life is presented in detail by the director: first, Erica sits in a closed booth of a porn parlor, sniffing napkins left over from a man who has an orgasm in the same booth; after she spies on the sex of unfamiliar couples; then Erica grows up to direct sexual contacts with Walter, which are reduced to immature forms of sexual contacts - looking, touching, oral sex. The genital debut with a pianist-hockey player occurs when the mother locks behind the door (locked with a key) in the next room: "It is my innermost desire - to lie in a locked room, and my mother outside the door cannot reach me," Erica tells Walter in letter. "Take all the keys to all the rooms, do not leave a single one," asks the heroine. This scene demonstrates that all of Erica's natural freedoms are blocked by her mother, and only her cruel exile allows the “entrance”, “entrance” to be opened, which is blocked by that destructive subpersonality of the mother, firmly stuck in the psyche of Erica.

A daughter needs a "good enough mother" who provides the necessary access to her so as not to provoke anxiety, but at the same time the mother must be unobtrusive so as not to suppress her daughter's creativity and independence.

To break the incestuous connection and recreate the identification space of a woman, which is necessary for everyone in order to pave the boundaries between herself and others, a third person is needed, who can also be a friend. A friend, at a certain point in ontogeny, is one of those separators that creates a barrier to avoid confusion of identities.

In the dimension "mother + daughter = girlfriends", the formation of a pair occurs as a result of the exclusion of the third. Paired relationships based on the exclusion of the third can be formed by a common secret, which becomes one of the components of an incestuous situation. The mystery, as follows from the analysis done, is that which is initially associated with the border, leading the possibly dangerous beyond the "visible", maintaining the balance, whereby the borders are built. Disclosure of secrets is always associated with a change in boundaries and the crime of prohibition.

For a deeper understanding of the problem of perversion of the boundaries of mother-daughter relations, it is worth referring to the work of J. Chasseguet-Smirgel "Perversion and the Universal Law", which presents perversion as a person's attempt to avoid his condition. A perverted person, the author points out, is trying to free himself from his father's world and the law. J. Chasseguet-Smirgel believes that perversion is one of the inalienable ways and means that a person touches in order to push the boundaries of the permissible and transgress reality.

Thus, the existence of the dimension "mother + daughter = girlfriends" invariably also reveals violations in relations with the male figure, which, for one reason or another, does not perform the function of marking the space of boundaries.

In Marco Ferreri's The Story of Pierre, the protagonist of Pierre's (Isabelle Huppert) film grows up in an extremely dysfunctional family: the girl's father (Marcello Mastroianni) is wealthy enough, but weak-willed and unable to keep his wife (Hannah Shigulla) "in a fist", set the rules and mark the boundaries (in one of the scenes, Pierre easily enters the bathroom, where the father washes his wife, admiring her body). The father hides behind professional duties and, on this basis, does not notice the betrayal of his wife, resigns himself to the role of the second plan, and as a result is left to live out his term in a nursing home. In the final scene of the film, Pierre and his mother, both naked, merge in a kiss on the seashore. The sea, as a symbol of the feminine principle, is probably an allusion to the dominance of the feminine over the weak masculine (self-elimination of the father, placement in an elderly home, death). The father, as you know, brings certainty, distinction, separation and external reality into the child's world, which Pierre's untenable father does not carry out.

Between mother and daughter, an incestuous relationship is formed even easier than between mother and son, since they belong to the same sex. Women have a more pronounced bisexual nature, they are more open to homosexual impulses. The mother becomes a mirror to her daughter, who, in turn, is a narcissistic projection of the mother. In such cases, an almost telepathic communication is observed, which indulges "a mixture of identities between mother and daughter, their mutual inclination to confide each other all their thoughts and feelings, exchange clothes, etc., up to the feeling that they have one skin for two," and all the differences and boundaries between them are erased "[Elyacheff K, Einish N. Daughters-mothers. The third extra ?, P.67].

The destruction of interpersonal boundaries, on the one hand, and the exclusion of the third, on the other, are complementary factors. And in fact, and in another case, the border between two personalities does not coincide with the border between two really existing people - mother and daughter. It lies between the unitary essence they have formed and the rest of the world.

Such a mother herself has a deficit of emotional ties, which she compensates for by a relationship with her daughter. For a daughter, the rejection of such a friendship is fraught with the appearance of a sense of guilt, as a result of an imaginary betrayal of mother's love. Feelings of guilt are also associated with the phenomenon of boundaries. If shame is a blocker of rapprochement, then guilt appears as border control "on the other side" of the border, this feeling appears at the exit from the merger. The person who destroys the fusion feels guilty. The sense of guilt can be understood in the context of keeping oneself from moving towards autonomy. It was the feeling of guilt that made Yana continue the bond with her mother that was weighing on her for so long.

The interdependence of mother and daughter, however, does not indicate the proportionality of their positions. The structural hierarchy of relations, to which K. Elyacheff and N. Einish point out, asserts the unavoidable advantage of the mother over her child, since the mother is born earlier, precedes him in life and in the family tree, where her position is located above the position of the child. It is the mother who initiates such relationships, building their form; therefore, the culture of mother-daughter boundaries comes from none other than the mother.

A mother's acquisition of her own identity requires individual creativity in the processing of symbolic boundaries. A woman who has become a mother must abandon her inner child and recognize her child as a child, which becomes impossible in the case of the mother's infantilism, her unwillingness to grow old and abandon the role of a child.

According to F. Dolto: "A mother should strive to achieve an exceptional understanding of her child from an emotional point of view … she should not remain too young and immature …" [cit. by Elyacheff K, Einish N. Mothers and daughters. The third extra ?, pp. 420-421].

Here are some examples from practice. The lack of emotional and sexual experiences with the husband of Vera's mother forces her to turn into a mother-friend who helps her daughter keep a "monthly calendar" in order to avoid unwanted pregnancy of the latter, this is a pure act of transgression, and also not only platonic incest between mother and daughter, but also a transition to symbolic incest of the second type (according to K. Elyacheff, when the mother and daughter have the same lover).

This example also indicates that under the guise of friendship between mother and daughter, control over the daughter's life may be hidden; however, this brings the discussion into the plane about the types of mothers-friends, among which one can, as a first approximation, single out the positions of the mother of "controller", "older friend", "equal friend", "subordinate friend", which expands the initial idea of the discussion and requires separate consideration.

Here's another example that points to the importance of keeping boundaries in parent-child relationships. Inna recalls that at the age of about 10 she accidentally heard fragments from a conversation between her mother and her friend, from which she realized that in her youth, her mother had a certain important man for her, with whom the relationship ended dramatically. The conversation interested Inna and she, after some time, asked her mother to tell this story. The mother's answer, Inna recalls, was a categorical "no", which surprised Inna, since the mother was quite open in communication with her daughter. Inna recalls that occasionally, later, she repeated her request, but the mother's answer did not change. Inna recalls that she showed her last interest in this topic at the age of about 17-18 and was not privy to the secret again, after that Inna did not raise this topic anymore. At the time of the story, Inna was 29 years old. This story became available for Inna's recollection in the course of psychotherapy, during which Inna discovered a lot of resentment against her mother, expressed doubts about her mother's competence, accused her of a failed relationship. In the process of transformation of the infantile position, Inna's memories and narratives were transformed, the ability to separate from the mother, to let go of the mother's "sins" appeared. She commented on this recollection as follows: “Mom was protecting me from something, she knew that I had better not know this story, this is maternal knowledge, instinct. but to God God ", this is not my business, the interest has disappeared." This memory, which appeared during psychotherapy, manifested the building of once broken boundaries in Inna's relationship with her mother, a debut in building new functional relationships.

Yana's next dream also tells about the restoration of boundaries in relations with her mother and eloquently indicates the importance of a friend. Yana's mother calls her and tells her that she has long lost her passport and asks Yana to restore it. Further, the dreamer finds herself in the maternity hospital, where she meets a woman, in whom she recognizes the girl, with whom she was friends in the sanatorium, where she was with her mother at the age of 9, who gives her an envelope. Yana notices that her friend is wearing a blouse like her therapist. When Yana opens the envelope, she is surprised to find in it two passports, one of which is for her mother, and the second for Yana herself. When the dreamer comes to her mother, she finds her mother sewing, which surprises Yana (the mother, at one time, graduated from a sewing school, but did not work in her specialty, since she considered it a "boring" occupation). Yana realizes that her mother is sewing herself a shroud of white fabric.

When asked if the dream was understandable, Yana replied that she was not very clear, but the dream, despite the presence of the shroud, did not frighten her. Emotionally, the dream is permeated with the emotion of surprise. Surprise signals the appearance of something unusual, which may be the call to Yana's mother on the eve of the dream she saw (after two weeks of silence on both sides, after another difficult conversation with her mother, during which her mother accused Yana of being "on the lead of his therapist, who makes her hate her mother "and" fires money ") and dinner invitations. During dinner, the mother behaved calmly, and at the end of the meeting she apologized for accusing Yana of wasting money: "Do what you see fit, don't think about money, money is not important, you are important." This gesture of the mother in a dream symbolizes the "long ago" lost passport (passport - identity card; mother's lost self-identification certificate), which she instructs to restore to Yana, i.e. to restore affiliation with maternal "citizenship"; finally, the consent that Yana needs psychotherapy in a dream - the process of psychotherapy gives a chance for a "rebirth" (maternity hospital), for a "certificate" of identity for both mother and daughter. The passport is issued by Yana's longtime friend, which indicates the restoration of an important channel for a woman's self-identity, the figure of a friend is a symbol of the world of equal women, Yana's recognition in it; a friend dressed in a therapist's blouse is the process of condensing the images of a friend and a therapist, those figures that serve as separators between the daughter and her mother.

And, finally, the ending of the dream is a mother who sews herself a shroud of white fabric, i.e. a mother who is ready to "die" is a symbol of transformation, transformation of the mother (recognition of the importance of therapy and its possible consequences). "White cloth", white - a color that does not hide another color (shadow moments in the mother-daughter relationship), a symbol of purification and transition to a new life, as well as a call for reconciliation. What is important in the analysis of a dream is not the actual analysis of the dream (decomposition, adequate interpretation, often "convenient" for the dreamer or, worse, the therapist), not the "opening" of meanings, but the "feeling of sleep". For Yana, the “feeling of sleep” was a “feeling” of purity, “innocence”, orderliness, which refers to the restored boundaries of Yana.

Violation of boundaries in the mother-daughter relationship can, in the ordinary naive consciousness at the ego level, disguise itself as trusting, friendly relations, which, from the measure of blurring these boundaries, one might think, have a different degree of pathogenicity.

The friendly relationship between mother and daughter is a modality of platonic incest, traumatic in nature, the rupture of which involves the presence of a third person.

Functional relationships are filled with respect for the boundaries of each other, presuppose awareness of one's own psychic reality, separate from the other. And this awareness makes it possible, while maintaining a sense of separation, from each other, to build community and create intimacy.

Both mother and daughter need mutual trust, mutual support and advice, but subject to the exclusion of the shadow sides, which is the basis of the psychological health of each. The girlfriend, in particular, acts as the third one that allows you to break the incestuous connection and recreate the woman's identification space.

A mother-friend carries out an illegal and perverse action towards her daughter, violating the law of mental hygiene.

The modern cultural and historical era has given rise to a certain set of life dominants, which are perceived as the norm, style and way of life. The modern cultivation of eternal youth is a marker of the emergence of maturity issues beyond the framework of a separate fate and becomes a "nosoform" inherent in a modern immature woman, whose psychological problems fall into the fertile soil of sociocultural reality.

If neurotic or mental abnormalities are rooted in the internal problems of a person, then their external symptoms mirror the nature of society. Today, individual destiny, more than ever, is subject to perversion of the boundaries of the mother-daughter relationship.

The weakened function of the "masculine", or its complete absence, potentiates the risk of psychological incest between mother and daughter, which can be perceived as a manifestation of freedom, modernity and dress up in clothes of special virtue instead of a normal natural feeling.

Intimacy with a solid system of boundaries protecting the daughter's internal psychic ecology is possible provided that the mother has an integrated integrity that has a center, a system of functions, including regulatory ones, focused on ensuring the effectiveness of the daughter's development.

The mother must be flexible enough and sensitive to where the border lies, preventing the intrusion into the inner life of the daughter. The mother is also required to control and take into account the mobility of her own border, both for adaptation to legal, but not static, her own needs, and to the internal requirements of her daughter that change with the course of life.

It is impossible to eliminate the trend of the modern era, people, mothers, daughters, their girlfriends and husbands live in the modern world, build relationships characteristic of this era, but I am convinced that it is necessary to preserve the basic attitudes of previous cultures.

The mother-daughter relationship must be based on reasonable trust, obey the differential imperative and, if you like, the insistence of Jesus Christ: "(…) I did not come to bring peace, but a sword; For I came to separate a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, and her daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law "(Matthew 10:34, 35).