A devastação na relação mãe e filha

Abstract

The present work aims at studying the relation between mother and daughter in the girl’s process of turning into a woman. Using the theoretical framework of Freud and Lacan, it will be studied the constitution of the female subject, the woman’s sexuation and the possible devastation in the mother-daughter relationship. At the beginning, Freud did not realize the importance of the mother in the daughter’s life. Freud said that he had underestimated the pre-oedipal mother-daughter relationship when he realized that this intense connection never ends, staying always active. Freud, in 1931, named catastrophe the conservation of active pulsional movements directed to the girl’s mother, which would compromise the constitution of the girl as a woman. Freud points out that some women never overcame their original connection with the mother. Lacan said that the mother is insatiable, unsatisfied and pointed out that the mother’s desire is devastating. In 1973, he used the term devastation to talk about the connection of the woman with her mother, from whom she seems to expect, as a woman, much more “substance” than from her father. He believed that the phallic claim and the love of the father are secondary in relation to the mother daughter issue. Lacan saw in the mother-daughter separation a chance for the daughter to get consistency in distinguishing both her own body and her own jouissance from her mother’s. It is up to each daughter to get separated in order to become a woman herself. Femininity is not transmissible: each woman must build her own feminine position. It is from the mother, as mother and wife, that the daughter expects answers for the constitution of her feminine identity. It is through the resolution of the involvement with the mother’s sexuality that the daughter will establish the constitution of her own feminine identification