Maternal Narcissism
Not All Mothers Love their Children
Maternal narcissism. The term alone registers as an oxymoron. ‘Maternal’ evokes the primal source of love and nurturance. Narcissism on the other end connotes exploitation and cruelty. These disparate terms joined together describe a surreal form of abuse that causes complex relational trauma.
Victims of maternal narcissism present with complex trauma, dissociative disorders, addictions, mood disorders and pathological character traits. Yet they enter treatment confused about the origin of their agony. What is even more peculiar is that many clinicians fail to identify the cause of their pain.
How can this be?
Mothers have tremendous power. A child’s unconditional need for their mother is innate. We come into this world yearning to connect with the mother.
The idealized archetypal mother is lauded as the embodiment of benign tenderness and selflessness. This one-dimensional fixation makes it impossible to tolerate the darker dimensions of the mother, and in turn, those feared parts of one self and in others. Hence, when a…
