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The [[complex]] of the [[dead]] [[mother]] was described by André Green in 1980. Evidence of it emerges during the [[transference]], so it is often not [[identifiable]] when [[analysis]] is first requested. It is manifested especially by a "transference [[depression]]," a [[repetition]] of an [[infantile]] depression that is often not capable of [[being]] [[recalled]]. The essential characteristic of this depression is that it occurs in the [[presence]] of an [[object]] that itself is absorbed in [[mourning]]. The causes of this mourning can be many, and are not admitted by the [[maternal]] object. They are therefore, for the most part, hypothetically deduced through the analysis, with more or less [[certainty]].
The main observable consequence on the level of the [[counter-transference]] is insight into a cold, hard, unfeeling kernel at the heart of [[The Transference|the transference]]. This is the result of a brutal maternal [[decathexis]] that the [[child]] is unable to [[understand]] and that turns his [[psychic]] [[world]] upside down. After vain attempts at reparation, [[feelings]] of [[impotence]] became dominant. Complex defenses are then set up which associate a [[mirror]]-[[representation]] of the disinvestment in the maternal object with an [[unconscious]] [[identification]] with the dead mother. The result of this is the psychic [[murder]] of the object, which takes [[place]] without any [[hatred]]. The maternal affliction prohibits any [[aggressive]] expression, which would risk augmenting the maternal detachment. On the one hand, the pattern of [[object relations]] is punctured, while on the [[other]], peripheral [[cathexes]] are clung to at the edge of this [[hole]]. Silent destructiveness does not allow the [[subject]] to reestablish an [[object relation]] capable of overcoming the [[conflict]] and opening the way to connections that would strengthen it, or else definitive adjustments serve only as a shield that prevents access to the kernel of the conflict. The only [[thing]] that endures is a dull psychic [[pain]], characterized especially by an incapacity to [[cathect]] closely with any object having anything to do with affects. Hatred is as [[impossible]] as [[love]], and it is impossible to receive without [[feeling]] obliged to give back, so as not to owe anything, even masochistic [[pleasure]]. The dead mother is omnipresent, but without being represented, and seems to have seized [[The Subject|the subject]], making him captive of his mourning for her.
This [[clinical]] picture develops against the background of the child's inability to grasp the reasons for it. Important measures of infantile depression are the [[loss]] of [[meaning]], and the feeling of inability to repair the mourned object, to awaken the lost [[desire]]. Sometimes significant rationalizations displace the source of the conflict onto the [[external]] world, the mother's desire becoming inaccessible compared to what the child believes he has observed. The child then blames a failure of [[subjective]] omnipotence in relationships, leading, by [[compensation]], to a reinforcement of omnipotence in areas less directly connected with the [[Primary Object|primary object]].
An [[oedipal]] analysis of [[pregenital]] fixations and unconscious [[guilt]] is of no use in finding a way to move [[past]] this [[situation]], insofar as analysis is not centered on the configuration of the complex of the dead mother. For the mother is not directly identifiable in the [[discourse]] of the [[patient]]. She only appears to the extent that the [[analytic]] situation succeeds in drawing out evidence of her silent presence without being able to find her in this [[absence]] where even indirect [[signs]] of her [[existence]] are [[missing]].
[[Repression]] has erased the [[memory]] trace of her touch, of contact with her, and of the child's [[cathexis]] with her before the occurrence of his mourning for her, which put a sudden end to this forgotten relation. This is a repression that returns to bury her alive, even demolishing everything, including a tomb, that would mark her past existence. Winnicottian holding has collapsed in this situation, because the object has been encysted, with no trace of it [[left]]. The identification has been with the vacuum left behind by the disinvestment. The absence of all meaningful reference points cannot be too strongly emphasized. Since the modification of the maternal attitude seemed to be inexplicable, it led in turn to all sorts of questions which arouse a [[Feeling of Guilt|feeling of guilt]], and these in turn are aggravated by secondary defenses and [[displaced]] onto elements that have been annexed for that [[purpose]].
In effect, attempts to block problems not governed by repression of this untenable situation prompt some significant reactions. Their purposes are: (1) To keep the ego alive through secondary hatred of the object, by the frenetic, but unquenchable, [[search]] for pleasures, or through the headlong search for a possible meaning to the displacements that have been made; (2) To reanimate the dead mother, interest her, distract her, [[seduce]] her, give her back the taste for [[life]], breathing into her by any means possible, including the most artificial, a joy of being alive; and (3) To compete with the object of mourning in a precocious triangulation.
The dead mother complex, as a powerful and intense element, [[naturally]] draws to it other components of psychic life, and is closely tied to its most important systems. Consequently the [[fantasy]] of the [[primal]] [[scene]] attempts to make intelligible the competitive relations with the hypothetical object of sudden mourning, and to reawaken the pain of being decathected, by highlighting whatever recalls the [[primal scene]], and often in an apocalyptic way, through projective identification. The catastrophe thus envelops and retaliates against the maternal object, which shifts between indifference and [[terror]]. It is frequently the [[case]] that the [[father]] is the object of a precocious investment in an [[Oedipus]] complex that is rushed into for this very occasion, but [[lacking]] in its normal attributes. This variant complex brings with it not so much [[castration]] [[anxiety]], but a feeling of impotent rage and [[paralysis]], [[helpless]] against the [[violence]] that follows [[action]] against a supposed rival. The result is often an intensified feeling of emptiness, [[repeating]] and amplifying the most deleterious effects at the heart of the conflict.
On the bases of these clinical observations, André Green hypothesized a destiny of the primary object as a framing [[structure]] for the ego, hiding the [[negative]] [[hallucination]] of the mother. The dead mother complex demonstrates the failure of this [[process]], forcing its representations into a painful vacuity, and obstructing their capacity to [[bind]] together in any [[preconscious]] [[thought]] pattern. The dead mother complex opposes a "hot" [[castration anxiety]], linked to the vicissitudes of [[Object Relations|object relations]], which can be threatened with corporal mutilation, to a "cold" anxiety, which is linked with losses suffered on the [[narcissistic]] level (negative hallucination, flat [[psychosis]], dull mourning), resulting in the clinical [[treatment]] of negativity.
