Monsters in our minds : the myth of infanticide and the murderous mother in the cultural psyche

摘要

If, as author Toni Morrison believes, we tell stories about whatwe find most terrifying, then our cultural narratives suggest anoverwhelming preoccupation with the murderous mother – themonster in our minds. This dissertation examines some of themost powerful and enduring stories told about the murderousmother and considers how these stories are shaped by theunconscious fears and fantasies that dominate the culturalpsyche. Revolving around the idea of infanticide as an‘imaginary’ crime, this dissertation uncovers the psychoanalyticfoundations of the obsessive telling and consumption of storiesof maternal child-murder in Western culture and contends thatinfanticide narratives can be read as symptoms of psychoculturaldis(-)ease. Underlying all stories about the murderousmother is an unconscious fear of infanticide and fantasy ofmaternal destructiveness that is repressed in the individualpsyche. These fears and fantasies are expressed in our culturalnarratives. Chapter 1 examines fairytales as the literary formthat most clearly elaborates individual fears and psychic conflictand locates the phantasmic murderous mother withinpsychoanalytic narratives of individuation. Chapter 2 showshow individual fears and fantasies of maternal monstrosity aretransferred to society and revealed in the myths through whichour culture is transmitted. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on theparticular neuroses of ancient Greek society and early modernculture and consider stories of the murderous mother that mostpowerfully reflect anxieties of maternal origin and fantasies ofmaternal power. Chapters 5 and 6 shift to a contemporarysetting and consider stories that reveal, in differing ways, howthe murderous mother haunts the cultural psyche. Examining avariety of texts and drawing material from a spectrum ofdisciplines, including law, literature, criminology, theology,philosophy, and medicine, this dissertation concludes that it isonly by exposing the underpinnings of our cultural stories aboutthe murderous mother that we can hope to break free from theunconscious attitudes that imprison us. Emerging from thisstudy is an original and important theoretical frameworkconcerning conceptualisations of infanticide, the ways in whichwe imagine maternal child-murder and the limits of thatimagination, and how we might escape the murderous maternalmonster buried deep in the labyrinths of the mind.