The Social Construction of
“Manymothering” Representations
among African-American Women
VALERIE BRYANT, PhD.
ABSTRACT
There is a tendency in feminist and psychoanalytic theory bases to not integrate race,
culture, class, history, and oppression as relevant variables to understanding African-American
female psychology. This paper contributes to psychoanalytic thought about African-American
females’ multiplex self organization that includes “manymothers” as a social construct evolving
within their individual and collective identities.
The variables of race, culture, class, history, gender and oppression are interweaving
influences in grasping the complexity of African-American females’ bonding experiences
in families, communities, and larger social systems. Too often these are not integrated
into feminist and psychoanalytic theory. Disregard of these factors reinforces AfricanAmerican Women’s invisibility and misrepresentation that only promotes negative
stereotypes. A clinical understanding of the psychic ambiguities within these
“manymothering” representations reflects contradictory societal attitudes in which
African-American women are admired for their endurance but simultaneously debased in
this society. Even within their own culture they are recognized as resilient and strong but
simultaneously seen as self-sacrificing and weak. Yet, imminent to an oppressed group’s
survival is its members’ ability to embody the values of perseverance, tolerance, selfsacrifice, hardiness, and courage and to endure despite great suffering. Case material will
demonstrate the various maternal transferential manifestations of manymothering
internalizations within the social context in which they live with these social and
psychological disparities. Besides addressing the specific relevance to the AfricanAmerican female population, these observations are germane to the expansion of
psychoanalytic and feminist theory.
It is my position that manymothering experiences fundamentally influence
African-American females’ complex selfobject organization. Othermothers was
originally a sociological concept that was defined by Hill-Collins (1984) “as women who
assisted bloodmothers by sharing mothering responsibilities” and is an institutionalized
phenomenon in West African and African-American families. This idea of othermothers
differs from a Western-European perspective that embraces exclusive mothering versus
kinship mothering. Othermothers fits into a cross-cultural view of the family as a
collective that was always, and still is independent of kinship ties rather than bloodlines.
Group affiliation, group loyalty, and preservation have always been high values in West
African and African-American cultures (Gutman, 1976; Nobles, 1980; Billingsley, 1992)
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because both cultures lived in extended family structures that were not necessarily
patriarchal or nuclear but sometimes egalitarian or matriarchal. Children’s socialization
has been in collective relationships rather than exclusive mothering or conjugal
relationships. Interestingly, polygamy and cowives affianal relationships in West Africa
can be understood as an aspect of othermothers in which women have greater
opportunities for freedom and mobility because older, younger, and married females
assist in child rearing and household chores. Unlike women living nuclear families, these
women have the opportunity to experience fuller autonomy and financial independence
because they do not need to depend primarily on men to support them (Sudarkasa, 1980;
Terborg-Penn, Harley, and Benton-Rushing, 1989). The long history of African and
African-American females working as breadwinners and businesswomen in both cultures
points to the continuing existence of female othermothers networks. Sociological studies
have considered African-American mothers’ ability to break their chains of oppression as
largely dependent on female kinship and friendship ties (Ladner, 1971; Stack, 1974).
Today, the collective othermothering relationships are’ still important to these women
who lack systemically the financial resources that women of privilege take for granted.
Importantly, these intense othermothering collective relationships remain an ongoing part
of contemporary West African society. They have survived because of the enduring
social stratification and loss that African-American females daily face.
The idea of motherhood as a social construct is important in recognizing its
variability based on culture and social organization. Since psychoanalysis has theorized
an ethnocentric notion of motherhood, the concept of othermothers could be
misconstrued in value-laden terms, i.e., parentified children or role reversals.
Consequently, this exclusion invalidates African American families’ externalized and
internalized realities. These theories reflect the widespread negative appraisals that have
always permeated African-American female psychology. Integrating the variables of
culture, race, history, and gender can serve to depathologize African Americans and
enhance our understanding of diverse experiences.
This paper reframes the social construct of othermothers in psychological terms as
manymothers who are defined as the many, actual, contemporary, and historic women
who have provided mothering functions to their African-American daughters. Therefore
the biological mother, aunts, older sisters, grandmothers, godmothers, greatgrandmothers, mothers-in- law, sisters-in-law, neighbors, teachers, cowives, female
elders, and ancestral mothers form the collective total who cross-generationally and
cross-culturally help in shaping, binding, and organizing the African-American females’
psychic identity. These psychic representations of the mothering functions are
internalized and constitute the actual and multiple maternal internalization who
intrinsically grieve for the idealized foremothers from an almost forgotten past. These
contradictory representations reflect a prehistory of female ancestors who were carriers of
socialization and culture for White and Black children, but who were and still are
nevertheless devalued in American society. Therefore, African-American females’
multiple social roles are complicated by the paradox of living in a society that admires
and exploits their maternal power but concurrently vitiates them. Furthermore, AfricanAmerican females’ complex self organization is driven by a psychic need to be defined
within nurturing othermothering affiliations that might sometimes demand self-sacrifice
and conformity for the sake of generational preservation and self identity. Yet
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simultaneously, the psychic struggle to establish an authentic and autonomous identity is
tested within the confines of the collective commune. Self-integration is achieved when
African-American females can live with, tolerate, and accept the wounds of societal
hypocrisy and myth that usually define their existence. An articulate voice slowly
emerges as they welcome the joys and outrages of their personal and collective being.
Therefore the interlocking variables of history, race, class, culture, gender, and
oppression greatly contributes to African-American females’ complex self-organization.
To elaborate, McCoombs (1986) recognizes and emphasizes the fact that “black
women’s identity is determined by both a personal (individual) history consisting of the
unique developmental dynamics of that individual and a social (collective) history
consisting of the developmental experiences of black women as a group” (p. 69). Linking
their individual and collective identities to the concept of manymothers enhances
understanding of African-American females’ multivariegated self-organization. This
paper postulates that African-American females’ individual and collective selfobject
representation is greatly influenced by societal attitudes which reinforce emotionally
intense manymothering internalizations that are rooted in psychic conflicts around the
devaluing and valuing of gender and motherhood, but also of race, history, and class.
To show this application to African-American women, I will interweave this
thinking from three areas—relational theory (Sullivan, 1953, 1956; Fanon, 1963; Fromm,
1973; Mitchell, 1988, 1991; Sutherland, 1993); feminist theory (Miller, 1976; Barrett,
1990; Brown, 1990; Gilligan, Lyons, and Hanmer, 1990; Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver,
and Surrey, 1991; Weille, 1993; Comas-Diaz and Greene, 1994) and African-American
cultural anthropology (Garrett, 1972; Foster, 1983; Harden, 1984). Each of these theory
bases shares a premise grounded in humans beings’ intersubjective experience with their
relational and social environment.
GAPS IN CURRENT PSYCHOANALYTIC AND FEMINIST THEORY
Psychoanalytic theory is indispensable in providing a structure for understanding
intrapsychic phenomena. It has faltered though, in not addressing the substance of
women, and especially African-American females’ externalized and internalized realities.
Historically, classical psychoanalytic theory emphasized constitution and the pleasure
principle as primary variables in personality formation (Freud, 1905; Klein, 1921).
Clearly, comprehensive psychoanalytic and feminist theories along with sensitivity to
female development have flourished in expanding the mother’s role in child development
(Winnicott, 1957; Ainsworth, 1975; Chodorow, 1978a, b; Attanucci, 1988; Kitzinger,
1988) exploring maternal loss and object love (Winnicott, 1957; Mahler, 1961) and
expanding female sexuality (Stoller, 1979; Person-Spector, 1988; Kavaler-Adler, 1993).
But typically these theory bases draw on a Western European nuclear family structure
with traditional feminine roles of passivity and subservience. These theories deemphasize
the extent to which culture plays a role in psychic development (Freud, 1920; Klein,
1940; Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, 1975; Kernberg, 1976; Bromberg, 1991; Brown and
Gilligan, 1992).
Clearly, some classically trained female theorists (Fromm-Reichmann, 1952;
Horney, 1967) refuted some psychoanalytic biases by recognizing the importance of
culture when exploring female personality development. Since then, notions once
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thought of as universal (penis envy, female masochism, and women’s inferiority) are now
considered largely attributable to culture rather than anatomy. Psychoanalytic theory
further developed as women’s psychic experiences were understood as indelibly
connected to their culture, family, and society rather than exclusively to psychological
repression. However, both groups of theories now uphold the view that intrapsychic
processes are by and large homogeneous and universal and only distinctly different
because of gender. Feminist theory often still adheres to a social construct that remains
loyal to the subordination of women and innate male privilege.
Clearly, feminist theory recognizes that gender development may be different for
girls and also the importance of mother-daughter empathy as necessary for female self
differentiation and cohesion (Jordan et al., 1991; Nachman, 1991; Brown and Gilligan,
1992; Schwartz, 1994; Dahl, 1995). In addition, African-American feminist scholars have
focused on the objectification of black women as influencing their self-image and selfesteem (Joseph and Lewis, 1981; Bell-Scott and Guy-Scheftall, 1984; Washington, 1988;
Greene, 1990a, b; hooks, 1993; Comas-Diaz and Green, 1994; Omalade, 1994). Yet
psychoanalytic and feminist theories are grounded in assumptions that only understand
family intrapsychic processes as triangular, patriarchal, and conjugal (Freud, 1905;
Sullivan, 1953; Mahler et al., 1975; Stern, 1985; Attanucci, 1988; Kitzinger, 1988). This
thinking magnifies long-standing cultural biases, which obliterate others’ cultural
internalizations as well. It also leads to the stereotyping of African-American women and
their invisibility.
DISCUSSION OF RECENT PSYCHOANALYIC THOUGHTS ABOUT
OTHERMOTHERS AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT
Developmental researchers once suspected that an infant’s attachment to multiple
caregivers would interfere with the child’s capacity to trust, which would later impinge
on selfobject internalizations (Bowlby, 1973; Ainsworth, 1975; Furman, 1992). A narrow
concept of a distinct and unified maternal selfobject representation does not give
credence to existing psychological and social phenomena showing that mothering
substitutes were always present throughout world history (Nachman, 1991; Frankel,
1994). Nannies, wet nurses, baby-sitters, and family members shared maternal functions.
Today traditional family institutions are being replaced by daycare centers, adoptions,
extended families, nontraditional families, all of whom are undertaking mothering
responsibilities. Schwartz (1994) argues “that there isn’t any single experience of
motherhood, but it is a social construct with fluid configurations consisting of active,
multiple maternal representations” (p. 385). Contemporary relational theorists (Mitchell,
1988, 1991; Bromberg, 1991; Davies and Frawley, 1991) crystallized a complex.
multiple self-organization that incorporates multiple meaning states in understanding
psychic development. This framework has specific relevance to the African-American
females’ multifaceted self-organization whose socialization is in the hands of
manymothers and their collective experiences as women who mutually share the same
illusions and disillusions.
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BRYANT
Motherhood is far from a uniform entity and is profoundly affected by social constructs
of culture, family, gender, class, history, ethnicity and race.
This exclusion of othermothers in psychoanalytic theory reflects a Western
European attitude that clings to nuclear and patriarchal families as the cultural norm. This
leaves othermothers invisible to psychoanalytic practice and theory, and also denies the
child’s dialectically constructed object world. Where the social denial of othermothers
does not exist (such as in matriarchal or egalitarian families), children in these
households are psychically able to internalize multiple mothering substitutes as similar
and different from the biological mother. This ability to psychically differentiate
othermothers creates distinct and unified maternal selfobject representations for children
growing up in these households. The commonly accepted category of motherhood is now
being challenged, inviting us to discover other “ways of knowing” (Belenky, Clinchy,
Goldberger & Tarule, 1986) that are based on multiple meanings of reality and its
varying internalizations.
THE RELEVANCE OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN
SYMBOLIC LINKAGES WITH TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA
CULTURE. AND MATERNAL LOSS
Joseph and Lewis (1981) described African-American mothers’ symbolic link with
culture, “in that culture is an important aspect of mothering, as mothers are the
disseminators of culture because she is the first and foremost channel through which the
culture is communicated to her girl child”(p. 79). The mother’s symbolic relationship
with culture and the very early process by which she introduces culture to her children is
not extensively explored in feminist and psychoanalytic theories. Interestingly, while the
mother’s role is minimized, the father’s role of introducing the world/culture to his
children is often highlighted (Freud, 1905, 1920; Mahler et al., 1975; Chodorow, 1978a,
b; Benjamin, 1988). This exclusion reflects a pervasive render and ethnocentric bias in
each theory.
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“MANYMOTHER1NG” REPRESENTATIONS
The mothering role is vital in the socialization and acculturation of a woman’s
children. At birth, the mother is at once a culture-carrier who transmits specific maternal
ministrations mirroring her particular cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, norms, and
behavior culture is symbolized through the inter- subjective experience of transitional,
phenomena by which this mother and her child can share interpersonal illusions,
collective projections, and fantasies as the child connects with bits and pieces of the
mother’s dress, adornments, language, naming practices, intonations, gestures, gazes,
prayers, singing, storytelling, music, food, ways of feeding, dressing, diapering, holding,
and bonding with her children. Relevant to African- American mothering, the
manymothering collective represents culture for the child, and is the original place from
which the infant daughter introjects ‘ ‘good and bad’ ‘aspects of African mothering
carried by cultural internalizations from the African Diaspora, colonization, slavery,
segregation, and present-day oppression. African-American females’ individual and
collective selfobject organization interlocks with the manymothers in binding a female
cultural identity that reflects their dual realities of oppression and resilience. An ability to
integrate these selfobject duplicities depends on the acknowledgment and acceptance of
these ambiguous internalizations along with mourning the symbolic, and actual maternal
losses from an oppressed past. The following case vignette will provide clinical material
describing various maternal transferential manifestations of manymothering selfobject
representations in African-American females.
CASE ILLUSTRATION OF AN OTHERMOTHER
INITIAL KEPERRAL
Ms. R was a 40-year-old, married mother of six children who had been very depressed
over a six-month period. She had been ill with a bad bout of bronchitis that caused her to
feel feverish, weak and fatigued so that she was not able to work for several weeks. She
never recuperated from her physical illness during which a severe depression ensued.
Initially she thought that her immobilization was related to the bronchitis but after several
lethargic months, she was referred for a psychiatric consult and psychoanalysis.
VERY BRIEF CLINICAL HISTORY
The client was the eldest daughter of five children, four girls and a boy. Interestingly, her
mother was also the eldest daughter of five. Importantly, both mother and daughter were
othermothers to their siblings because their mothers were forced to work after their
husbands deserted their families. When her mother remarried though, this client became
very close to her stepfather.
As an othermother to her younger siblings, she took pride in her role by being
obedient and compliant so that her mother would not feel further burdened. She would
cook, clean, discipline, review homework, and make sure that her siblings performed
their daily responsibilities in a timely fashion. She intuitively felt the importance of
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othermothers to help in maintaining family stability. She remembered her mother telling
her how important it was that she be her mother’s helper.
Naturally, when she married, she also enlisted several othermothers such as her
mother in-law, sister in-law (who lived with her during the week) and her own mother to
help take care of her children when she worked. When she became ill, it was the
othermothers who (without a word) immediately took over the mothering tasks so that the
family could sustain its homeostasis.
EARLY TRANSFERENCE
Initially she established a fairly positive transference. She said that my mannerisms were
similar to a best friend from junior high school whom she had not seen in many years.
LATER TRANSPERENCE DEVELOPMENT
Later, 1 began noticing that this client seemed to be discounting much of what I was saying.
She could not seem to “take me In” fully. This was not surprising given her unfamiliarity with
the analytic process and deep depression. However, a seemingly shy personality and
historical data exemplifying an obedient daughter clashed with what I was observing for
she decisively voiced her differences with me. Yet though she often rejected my ideas, she would
later repeat them as her own. Inquiry around this emerging pattern revealed that she was
oblivious to it but she began to free associate:
I didn’t want to be in a position of talking to a therapist for problems that I did not
know I had. I’m beginning to face though that all was not well because, if that was not
the case, I would not have gotten sick I just feel ashamed for not taking care of my
family in the way that I had previously. I feel badly that other family members had to
pitch in because I could no longer take care of my home and children. I’ve always felt
very good about being a mother and enjoyed taking care of them. It is a very special
experience for me. Yet at the same time, I remember some coworkers, family
members, and neighbors making negative remarks about my having another
pregnancy! Their teasing only defined me by negative mothering stereotypes. I
remember a neighbor assumed that my children received free lunch at school
insinuating that my family was poor and couldn’t afford to pay for it.
In addition, when trying to leave an abusive situation with my first husband, the
Employee Assistance Program referred me to a White male therapist who asked me
“Where are you as a Black mother going with five babies and without a man?” A lot of
choices were not available to me because I could not get into a shelter with all of my
children. Ironically, because I worked, I was not eligible for many resources for
battered women. I could not find affordable housing. I was seen as a poor Black
woman with too many children and marginalized like most Black mothers who
hold little privilege compared to White women. The fact that I was middle class
didn’t matter because there wasn’t any help available for me. The need to defend
my mothering choices felt humiliating. I became infuriated because I was being
labeled in stereotypical ways.
Quietly, she said: “I believe that a woman’s body is her own, and that women
are entitled to bear as many children as they want based on their maternal
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instincts. Since my depression, my anger has escalated because I’m getting more
resentful of these negative comments.”
COMMENTARY
The intersubjective experience between analyst and patient intersects with race, class, and
gender. This oppositional manner seemed to be partially related to a complex multiple
self-organization composed of conflictual maternal selfobject representations stemming
from society, the African-American community, her coworkers, a White therapist, and
neighbors. An inquiry of her fantasies regarding my motherhood, status, and reactions to
her mothering role revealed that she perceived me as a Black analyst, an “outsider” who
was probably also judgmental toward her. The forementioned stance revealed her clear
distrust that I might not truly empathize with her.
Embarrassingly, I realized that I harbored certain classist and racist assumptions
concerning this patient being the mother of six children. I had to admit that during the
initial consultation, I thought that she was a single mother! This awareness helped mc to
recognize the insidious nature of negative value-laden stereotypes that I unconsciously
felt, despite vigilant self-awareness. Negative societal appraisals coupled with an
analyst’s own negative cultural internalizations need constant analysis.
Intersubjectively, this patient and I had created and colluded in inviting those negative
stereotypes to be felt and experienced, and to resonate between us. It reinforced on a very
deep level, the often powerful and conflictual emotions connected to being an AfricanAmerican woman in this society. Clearly, this illumination of African-American females
complex self organization needs to be understood in the con text of culture, race, class,
gender, history, and social organizations.
Historical, psychological, racial, class, and cultural force intersect in understanding
the above dynamics. For middle class African-American mothers may often identify with
the majority of African-American mothers who are stereotyped an exploited. Such
middle-Class mothers are aware that they are still relatively more vulnerable than other
mothers in the majority culture. African-American females’ negative stereotypes and
actual social, political, and economic exploitation encourage a certain mistrust,
suspiciousness, and paranoia that serve as signals for potentially threatening situations.
Therefore early in analysis, African-American women may exhibit some suspiciousness
due to the unfamiliarity and possible projection of the analytic environment as
threatening. In an attempt to locate a familiar point of psychic safety, they could make
inquiries regarding the analyst’s birthplace or hometown, etc. It is important to explore
these anxieties from a psychoanalytic perspective but sustain a cultural sensitivity to
women subjugated by societal oppression. Bowlby (1978, p. 142) substantiated this idea
when he linked separation anxiety to instinctual paranoia. He suggested that when a den,
pack, or herd instinctually fear attack by predators, they would immediately seek the
solace of safety with like species. The African-American women’s cultural paranoia may
be instinctual and a vital adaptation for generational survival.
Transferential maternal manifestations of various many mothering constructs were
continuously projected and re-introjected as treatment continued. The psychic room for
African. American females to voice, dream and dissent is necessary for contradictory
devalued and valued cultural internalizations to internalizations to be experienced,
tolerated, understood, accepted, and integrated. An appreciation for their difference
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within the context of being the other, along with its ambiguities is required for the
integration of “good and bad” maternal introjects.
Precipitated by my beginning a session a few minutes late, I felt little power struggles
emerging in the sessions as Ms. K struggled with the above introjects. She began to
demand that I start exactly on time regardless of circumstance. She seemed to want to
keep tabs on me, asking me to account for my time far beyond our sessions. She seemed
to demand that I give her unconditional obedience, loyalty, and respect, all in the name of
the analyst-patient relationship. Similar power dynamics were not only activated in the
transference but these same manifestations were evident in her relationships with her
sister, brother, two mothers-in –law, and a sister-in-law. Inquiry around these new
demands seemed to ve the only avenue that she knew to seek nurturing from buried
emotional yearnings and contact that she couldn’t directly ask for.
I’m beginning to enjoy these sessions. It gives me time to reflect. Your words
are soothing. I wanted to keep this feeling inside without my sharing my thoughts
with you. I enjoy the luxury of having something that is mine and that I do not
have to share or give up. I’ve always had to share my belongings, toys, and
sacrifice for others. These sessions are, beginning to remind me of what I’ve been
missing and most especially, the lack of emotional contact with my family. This is
very painful for me. I am not so sure anymore of wanting to be a mother if it
means so much that I have to give up. I’m aware now that I have not been
invested in being a mother for quite a while. Once I became depressed, I began to
feel more burdened by my children’s demands and found it much more difficult to
be empathic with them. When they expressed their dismay with me, I felt like a
failure. Prior to my depression, I enjoyed and loved being with my children.
Maybe the initial reluctance in coming to see you was related to what’ you would
think of me. Fears that you might reject or be critical of me for having these bad
feelings. My shame feels worse as I am aware of probably having had conflictual
feelings about mothering for a long time. But yet, trying to control these feelings
with my demands.
However the analysis was becoming a pleasurable experience, in which she could
bask in defining, redefining, and experiencing authentic feelings without feeling so
ashamed. ft might be easy to interpret this laid-back quality of behavior as resistance. Yet
I understood it as a psychic play space in which she could be herself and not feel forced
to dialogue or “give up” her feelings too soon. Othermothers may not have had the
opportunity to spontaneously experience positive internalizations without first catering to
others. Consequently, her awakening consciousness realized that some of her negative
maternal feelings were at the forefront of therapy and sometimes opposition. She was
beginning to recognize that she had been performing her mothering duties out of
obligation, from an othermothers’ role that she was socialized into and compulsively
perpetuated in being the mother of six children, and yet she had not enjoyed this role for a
long time.
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CONTINUED INTERSUBJECTIVE MANYMOTHERING TRANSFERENCES
UNFOLDING
Interestingly, I began having bizarre thoughts outside of the sessions illuminating the
intersubjective experience between this patient and myself: Countertransferentially, I became
aware that I had this weird idea that I would like to offer this client a few of my dresses
because we wore what looked like the same size. At first, I couldn’t understand what this was
about because I’ve never shared clothes with anyone. I grew up as the only girl in a family of
two brothers and relished the fact that I had my own room and didn’t have to share items at
all. However, this fantasy allowed emotional access to memories of sharing myself
between my mother and grandmother. Although my grandmother never lived with us, she
was a very present othermother during my growing up years. Although I felt special being the
only girl, this position was replete with the responsibility of trying to please the two of them,
sometimes at the expense of my own personal self-satisfaction. Obviously, this patient’s
sacrificial behavior triggered my forgotten but now remembered experience as an othermother.
Interestingly at this same time, she associated to as follows:
I was recently reading an African novel called Second Class Citizen by a Nigerian
woman author (Emecheta, 1975). This novel was about a Nigerian mother who had been
orphaned at an early age, and deemed insignificant at birth because she was a girl. Her only
value was determined by how many children she bore. Despite her efforts to seek success and
importance in her own right as an African woman, her culture only expected, prepared, and
planned for her ultimate self-denial and self-sacrifice.
MOURNING, CULTURE. AND INTERNALIZATION
Obviously, my patient identified with the protagonist as they both shared a belief in the
importance of motherhood and self sacrifice. However, they both were embarking on a journey to
discover other aspects of self besides mothering. Intersubjectively, I attuned to, and partially
introjected my own sacrificial mothering, which resonated with this patient’s maternal introjects.
Deep feelings of maternal desire and longings as well as maternal deprivation were accessible in
the transference that triggered my countertransference. Understanding this client’s complex,
multiple self organization in the context of culture, class, gender, and history were important in
helping this client to affectively experience the impact of the deep maternal sacrificial
Internalizations from the present and ancestral past. These profound identifications with strong
but sacrificial many- mothers were associated to with herself, mother, maternal grandmother, and
maternal great aunts. She became aware that many of these women equated self-sacrifice with
maternal love. During those times, self-sacrifice was sustained through the mammy role at home
and at work camouflaging deeper emotional needs. This mammy role cannot be relinquished
unless compulsive behaviors such as pseudo-independence overeating, obsessive cleaning,
religiosity, promiscuity, procreating, or fixing others is analyzed. A powerful urge to bear the
mammy role no matter how painful hides the shame of negative cultural introjects and maternal
loss. Exploring these introjects is challenging because often self-sacrifice is cloaked under the
cultural tradition of promoting strong Black women. The renunciation of compulsive mammy
roles will give females the psychic space to identify their needs, explore their choices, and
selectively opt to sacrifice if they so wish. Having an opportunity to decide who, when, how or
whether they will sacrifice is empowering and invaluable for psychic integration.
Both the client and her mother shared similar positions as eldest daughters and as
othermothers. Their early othermothers’ roles ultimately left them with deep yearnings for
nurturance that the patient compulsively acted out by having one child after another. Despite a
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shared identity, this patient still felt a sense of maternal rejection from a mother who seemed to
expect unconditional loyalty and obedience as a daughter but not as a self-differentiated adult
woman. The threat of differentiation is especially painful between African- American mothers
and daughters because maternal loss is integral to African-American history. Collective
manymothering anxieties may be related to dissociated grief states resulting from pervasive fears
of maternal abandonment, that if not recognized and worked through could lead to similar
maternal reenactments. This unresolved mourning is accentuated by a culture that disavows the
significance of these real maternal losses and its psychological impact on future
generations. Collective manymothers’ reluctance to encourage psychic differentiation
sustains an illusion of psychic security. The social constructs of gender, history, class,
race, and culture helps us to understand the interplay of many forces on selfobject
differentiation.
This client attempted to abdicate an othermothers’ role in the hopes of preserving
some psychic autonomy by running away from home with a boyfriend at 18 years of age.
Although she learned very early about self-reliance and independence, cohesive
selfobject internalization was splintered as a pseudo- independence emerged, which only
psychically bound this daughter more closely to her mother.
Later though, this client returned home as a prodigal daughter giving mother and
daughter a second opportunity to arrive at common points of contact, understanding, and
acceptance. Mother and daughter’s re-uniting made it possible for deeper emotional
contacts between them, that helped this daughter to eventually discover the disowned
maternal aspects of herself, while widening her life choices.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY
Historically, African-American females were expected to sacrifice their needs over others as they
held no legitimate rights. They could not choose a mate, husband, or a father for their children.
Nor could they lay claim to their own bodies. Slave mothers were used as breeders and expected
to labor in the fields, regardless of their emotional or physical needs. The earliest commandments
that slave mothers and their daughters learned were “Thou shall be submissive to Master and
work regardless of age or health.” Under slavery, males were still recognized as the head of the
family within the slave quarters, larger community, and under church rulings; a married woman
was still expected to obey her husband, be submissive, and sacrificial. To sacrifice was the
epitome of a good slave mother. Poor maternal nutrition, unsanitary, inadequate maternal care,
and the realization during childbirth that many slave mothers would not be able to mother their
own child led to various forms of infanticide to protect their children from these harsh realities
(Sterling, 1984; Busby, 1992). African-American motherhood can be intrinsically conflict-ridden,
as slave narratives and African-American novels depict often sinister or wrenching acts of
maternal self-sacrifice (Naylor, 1980; Morrison, 1987; Ansa, 1993; Brown, 1995). AfricanAmerican maternal representations are thus fraught with ambivalence because mothers could not
protect their young daughters from suffering coupled with societal images of African-American
motherhood that were never idealized (Bell-Scott & Guy-SheftalI, 1984; Hill-Collins, 1990).
HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC COMMENTARY ON APRICAN-AMERICAN
FEMALES’ AGGRESSION AND RAGE
When engaging in resistance, gender and racial stereotypes intersect that distort AfricanAmerican women’s image. Historically, African-American women were forced to employ
subversive acts of rebellion like outsmarting, abortion, stealing, negotiating, sexual
11
abstinence, and infanticide, all as ways of resisting (Omalade, 1994). Therefore an inquiry
around this client’s past methods of protest and resistance were explored. It seemed that
she would either reluctantly conform or inappropriately act out her resentment with temper
tantrums, etc. These different forms of resistance were explored as she unraveled and
understood these forms of protest in the context of her societal status, family role, and
culture in the hopes that she could develop meaningful ways of influencing others, so she
could be heard and be effectual. As another African-American female patient mused, “Fighting is
part of being in a collective, like cubs in a den that will fight for milk from the lioness and will
push each other over to get to the mother’s milk.” This patient then began to develop healthy
ways of articulation in which her mother, family, and community listened to her rather than
ignoring her. The importance of African-American females finding a voice of resistance is
ultimately empowering (Robinson and Ward, 1991). There is psychic healing in healthy
resistance.
MOURNING AND INTERNALIZATION
The above case vignette of this African-American woman conveys simultaneous
maternal, culturally devalued, and idealized manifestations conveyed within various
manymothering transferences. An open, yielding transferential space provides the
capacity for healing old and present-day wounds through various maternal identifications.
This client’s split-off manymothering aspects began consolidation as she came to the
multiple aspects of dissociated maternal objects. These negative part object
configurations reflect the shame, betrayal, resentment, and fears of African-American
women being raised by mothers who are often stigmatized and shunned in the dominant
culture. A recognition and ownership that they have a legitimate tight to their shame,
pain, rage, and grief is eventually empowering.
Ms. R intimately connected with her maternal, communal history by asking her
othermothers for family stories of old. This was not through societal appraisals but
inspired by the manymothers memories of their ancestors. Their remembrances helped
link this daughter to her family, history, and culture in a way that she had never
envisioned. Psychic integration evolved as her sameness and difference from the manymothers were worked through. She began to tolerate and accept the ambiguities of her
existence as diversified manymothers possessed both bad and good attributes but who
were nevertheless authentic. A relinquishing of the split-off idealized-devalued manymothers is
necessary in grieving the losses of the past and redefining the past, present, and future selves.
Reuniting time, space, and generations through mourning reclaims a psychic past that once was
separated by many oceans and history. Mourning is an important avenue for African. Americanfemales in reversing the African diaspora by reconnecting to a shared cultural spirit with their
manymothers This process of connecting and disconnecting, experiencing and re-experiencing,
and mourning our foremothers is important in reaching different forms of contact and
internalization to fortify a cultural feminine identity.
CONCLUSION
This paper broadens our understanding that females’ psychological maturation processes are not
universal but based on racial, cultural, gender, and historical dynamics that translate into various
psychological themes and patterns. These variables force us to expand on what was once thought
12
of as an objective basis of conventional knowledge to look at multiple meanings and truths in
understanding African-American female development. This vision helps us know that there is no
right way of viewing race, class, and gender but rather various views present certain ambiguities
and paradoxes to reflect on all human behavior.
13
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Valerie Bryant
290 Carton Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
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