Childhood and memory: the river running through us
Search for other papers by Marilyn Charles in
Current site
Google Scholar
Identity forms in relation to the interpersonal narratives through which our histories are constructed. Psychoanalysis affords opportunities to reconsider important relationships from different vantage points and to recognise how these relationships have informed meanings and being. Entering psychoanalysis invites direct engagement with this universe of childhood, memory, meanings and also the gaps left by trauma and neglect. In this article, I consider ways in which those gaps have been active forces driving my journey towards a more competent, facilitative and generative mentoring than had been available to me. Revisioning my story entailed an exploration of the ways in which my mother’s absent presence haunted me almost invisibly, so that the threads were left to emerge and transform over time in relation to my own development. This transformation was made possible by psychoanalysis and self-analysis, and also through meeting my mother from the other side, so to speak, as I found myself at the maternal edge of the various developmental precipices she and I had traversed together. This process of re-envisioning has left its mark in ways that now call to others needing a type of validation that has not been easily forthcoming. I will discuss how a process of marked mirroring enabled one woman to find what she needed in me in ways that enhanced the development of each. That experience has informed my current ideas regarding pedagogy and the ways in which an embodied, aesthetically driven maternal perspective may enhance the largely paternalistic canon of psychoanalytic thought and pedagogy.
-
Bion, W.R. (1977) Seven Servants, Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.
-
Charles, M. (2011) What does a woman want?, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, 16(4): 337–53. doi: 10.1057/pcs.2010.20
-
Charles, M. (2014) Shame and the possibility of insight, in Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan, Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, pp 29–35.
-
Felman, S. (1993) What Does a Woman Want: Reading and Sexual Difference, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Hillman, J. (2005) Senex & Puer: Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman, Vol 3, Putnam, CT: Spring Publications.
-
Lacan, J. (1981) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, J.A. Miller (ed), A. Sheridan (trans), New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
-
Lacan, J. (2016) The Sinthome: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII, J.A. Miller (ed), A.R. Price (trans), Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
-
Milner, M. (1987) The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men: Forty-four Years of Exploring Psychoanalysis, London: Tavistock.
-
Tomkins, S.S. (1963) Affect, Imagery, Consciousness – Volume II: The Negative Affects, New York, NY: Springer.
-
Winnicott, D.W. (1971) Playing and Reality, London: Hogarth Press.
-
Woolf, V. (1931) The Waves, London: Hogarth Press.
Search for other papers by Marilyn Charles in
Current site
Google Scholar
| May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 342 | 206 | 17 |
| Full Text Views | 233 | 61 | 0 |
| PDF Downloads | 227 | 61 | 0 |
Institutional librarians can find more information about free trials here
We are a leading social science publisher
committed to making a difference.
Bristol University Press and
Policy Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk