The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood

293 Pages·2010·3.26 MB·English

by  Barbara Almond

The Monster Within
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of the General Endowment Fund of the
University of California Press Foundation.
The Monster Within
The Hidden Side of Motherhood
Barbara Almond
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2010 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Almond, Barbara.
The monster within : the hidden side of motherhood /
Barbara Almond.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-520-26713-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Motherhood—Psychological aspects. 2. Mother

and child—Psychological aspects. 3. Love, Maternal—

Psychological aspects. I. Title.

hq759.a436 2010
306.874'3—dc22 2010020836
Manufactured in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100%
post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC
recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is
acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by
BioGas energy.
This book is dedicated lovingly
to the  memory of my three mothers:
my real mother, Anne Rosenthal,
my grandmother Bessie Feinsod Rosenthal,
and my dear aunt Madeline Greenberg,
all of whom loved and encouraged me
in all my endeavors to the end of their lives
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CONTENTS
Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xxv
Chapter 1. The Ubiquity of Maternal Ambivalence
1
Chapter 2. Motherlove: The Power of Maternal Desire
22
Chapter 3. The Subtle Ambivalence of the Too-Good Mother
38
Chapter 4. “Before the Beginning”: Women’s Fears
of Monstrous Births
51
Chapter 5. Women’s Reproductive Fears: More Clinical Examples
73
Chapter 6. Rachel’s Story: Internalized Ambivalence and
the Dangers of Hidden Guilt
89
Chapter 7. Whose Fault Is It? The Externalization of Ambivalence
105
Chapter 8. When Fears Are Realized
141
Chapter 9. From the Child’s Point of View
154
Chapter 10. Vampyric Mothering: From Stage Moms
to Invasive Moms
165
Chapter 11. The Darkest Side of Motherhood: Child Murder
185
Chapter 12. What Happens Later: The Fate
of Maternal Ambivalence
210
Chapter 13. What’s a Mother to Do?
225
Notes
245
Bibliography
251
Index
255
PREFACE
This book developed from two primary sources: my own experi-
ences, struggles, and anxieties as a mother and my clinical work
with patients in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis over the course of
thirty-seven years of practice. Having gone through medical school
thinking I would become a pediatrician, I became a mother first. And
once I was a mother I found it too disturbing to imagine taking care of
ill and sometimes dying children. I decided to pursue instead further
training in adult psychiatry. Within psychiatry, my interests turned
to the practice of psychotherapy and eventually to psychoanalysis.
Despite the many amazing and helpful developments in psychophar-
macology over the past thirty years, my deepest interest was and is
in the mind, its conscious and unconscious aspects and how these
connect to disturbed feelings and behaviors.
The work I do with my patients, whether psychotherapy or psycho-
analysis, is based on the premise that what you don’t know can hurt
you. Our personalities are deeply connected to our experiences in
early life, most of which we have forgotten. However, these expe-
ix