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) 1 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 2 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 3 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. 4 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. 5 “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 6 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 7 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 8 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. 9 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 10 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 REFERENCES Ainsworth, M. D. S. (19Th), Object relations, dependency, and attachment A theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship. Child Develop. 40:969—1025. Ansa, T. (1995), Ugly Way L New York: Harcourt Brace. Auanucc, J. (1988), In whose terms: A new perspective on self, role and relationships. In: Mapping the Moral Domain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 20l-224 Barrett, S. (1990), Paths towards diversity: An intrapsychic perspective. Women &Therapy, 10:41-52. Belenky, M. ‘F., Clinchy, B M., Goldberger, N. R, & Tarule, J. M. (1986), Woman’s Ways of Knowing The Development of Self, Voice and Mind. New York: Basic Books. Bell-Scott p., & Guy-Sheftall, B., Eds. (1984), For mothers and daughters. Special issue in Sage, 1. _______ _______ Jones Royster, L, Sims-Wood, J. DeCosta-Willis, M., & Fultz, L. Eds. (1991), Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters. Boston: Beacon Press. Benjamin, J. (1988), The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books. Billingsley, A. (1992), Climbing Jacob’s Ladder. New York: Simon & Schuster Bowlby, J. (1973), Separation: Anxiety and Anger. New York: Basic Books. Bromberg, P. (1991), On knowing one’s patient inside out: The aesthetics of unconscious communication. PsychoanaL Dial., 4:399-422. Brown, L. (1990), The meaning of a multicultural perspective for theory building in feminist therapy. Women and Therapy, 10:l-21. __________(1995), Crossing over Jordan. New York: Ballantine Books. __________Gilligan, C. (1992), Meeting at the Crossroads. New York: Ballantine Books. Busby, M., Ed. (1992), Daughters of Africa. New York: Ballantine Books. Chodorow, N. (1978a), Early psychological development In: The Reproduction of Mothering Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 57-76. ______ (1978b), The relation to the mother and the mothering relation. In: The Reproduction of Mothering Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 77-91. Comas-Diaz, L., & Green, B., Eds. (1994), Women of Color Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities of Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press. Dahl, K. K. (1995), Daughters and mother: Aspects of the representational world during adolescence. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 50:187-204. New Haven, CF: Yale University Press. Davies, J. M. (1996), Dissociation, repression, and reality testing in the countertransference: The controversy over memory and his false memory in the psychoanalytic treatment of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. PsychoanaL Dial, 6:189—218. _______Frawley, M G. (1991), Dissociative processes and transference-countertransference paradigms in the psychoanalytically oriented treatment of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. PsychoanaL Dial, 2:5—36. Emecheta, B. (1975), Second Class Citizen. New York: George Braziller. Fanon, F. (1963), Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Foster, H. (1983), African patterns in the Afro. American family. J. Black & Studies, 14:201— 232. Frankel, S. (1994), The exclusivity of the mother-child bond. Contributions from psychoanalytic and attachment theories and day-care research. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 14 4986—105. New Haven, Cr: Yale University Press. Freud, S. (1905), Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria. Standard Edition, 7:1—22. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. _______ (1920), Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Standard Edition, 18:1-64.London: Hogarth Press, 1953. _______ (1933), New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Standard Edition,22:1—182. London: Hogarth Press, 1964. Fromm, E. (1973), The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Fromm-Reichmann, F. (1952), Principles of Intensive Psychoanalytic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Furman, E (1992), On feeling and being felt with. The Psychoanalytic Study, of the Child, 47:6784 New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Garrett, R. B. (1972), African survivals in American culture. Language, Communication and Rhetoric in Black America. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 193-202. Gilligan, C., Lyons, M., & Hammer, K., Eds. (1990), Making Connections: The Relational Worlds, of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greene, B. (1990a), What has gone before: The legacy of racism and sexism in the lives of black mothers and daughters. Women & Therapy (Spec. Issue), 10.121—142. _______ (1990b), Sturdy bridges: The role of African-American mothers in the socialization of African-American children. Women and Therapy (Spec. issue), 10205—223. Gutman, H. G. (1976), The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925. New York: Random House. Harden, A. (1984), Cross-cultural understanding among peoples of African descent: African continuities as a unifying agent. Journal of Black Studies, 15:31—40. Hill-Collins, P. (1984), The meaning of motherhood in Black culture and Black mother-daughter relationship. In: Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters, ed. P. Bell-Scott. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991. ______ (1990), Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Hooks, B. (1993), Sisters of the Yam. Boston: South End Press. Horney, K. (1967), On the genesis of the castration complex in women. In: Feminine Psychology. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 37-54. Jordan, J., Kaplan, A.J., Miller, J. B., Stiver, I., & Surrey, J. (1991), Women’s Growth In Connection. New York: Guilford Press. Joseph, G., & Lewis, J. (1981), Black mothers and daughters: Their roles and functions in American society. In: Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and W7iite Feminist Perspectives. Garden City, NY Anchor Books. pp. 122-163. Kavaler-Adler, S. (1993), The Compulsion to Create: A Psychoanalytic Study of Women Artists New York: Routlege Press. Kernberg, O. (1976), Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. New York: Jason Aronson. Kitzinger, S. (1988), Motherhood and subjective experience. In: Women as Mothers. New York: Random House, pp. 49-64. Klein, M. (1921), The development of a child, In: Love, Hate. and Reparation and Other Works 1921-1945. New York: W. W. Norton, pp.1- 53. _______ (1940), Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states In: Love, Hate and Reparation and Other Works 1921-1945. New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 344-369. 15 Ladner, J. (1971), Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Block Woman. Garden City NY Doubleday. Mahler, M. (1961), On sadness and grief in infancy and childhood. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 16:322-335. New York: International Universities Press. ______ Pine, F. & Bergman, A. (1975), The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation. New York: Basic Books. McCoombs, H. (1986), The application of an Individual/collective model to the psychology of black women. Women and Therapy. 5:67-80. Miller, J. B. (1976), Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston. Beacon Press, 1986. Mitchell, S. (1988), Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press. ______ (1991), Contemporary perspectives on self Towards an integration. PsychoanaL Dial, 1:121-147. Morrison, T. (1987), Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Nachman, P. (1991), The maternal representation: A comparison of care- giver and mother reared toddlers. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 46:69-90. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Naylor, G. (1980), The Women of Brewster Place New York: Penguin Books Nobles, W. (1980), African philosophy Foundations for black psychology. In: Black Psychology, 2nd ed., ed. R. Jones New York: Harper & Row, pp. 23-36. Omolade, B. (1994), The Rising Song of African-American Women. New York: Routledge. Person-Spector, E. (1988), Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion. New York: W. W. Norton. Robinson, T., & Ward, J. V. (1991), A belief is far greaser than anyone’s disbelief: Cultivating resistance among African-American female adolescents. Women and Therapy (Spec. Issue), 11:87—103. Schwartz, A. (1994), Thoughts on the constructions of maternal representations. Psychoanal Psychol, 10:331—344. Stack, C. (1974), All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Harper & Row. Sterling, D. (1984), We Are. Your Sisters. Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton. Stern, D. (1985), The Interpersonal World of the Infant A View from Psychoanalysic and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books Stoller, R. (1979), Primary femininity. In: Sexual Excitement Dynamics of Erotic Lift New York: International Universities Press, pp. 58-78. Sudarkasa, N. (1980), African and African-American family structure: A comparison. Black Scholar, 22:37-60. Sullivan, H S. (1953), The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton. _______ (1956), Clinical Studies in Psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton. Sutherland, J. (1993), The autonomous self. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 28:829-860. Terborg-Penn, R., Harley, S., & Benton-Rushing, A., Eds. (1989), Women in Africa and the African Diaspora. Washington, DC. Howard University Press. Washington, V. (1988), The black mother in the United States: History, theory, research and issues. In The Different Faces ed. B. Birns & N. Ben-Ner. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 185-.211 Weille, H. (1993), Reworking developmental theory: The case lesbian identity. Clin. Soc. Work j, 21:151-159. Winnicott, D. (1957), The ordinary devoted mother. In: Babies and Their Mothers. Reading, PA. Addison-Weslry, pp. 1-14. 16 Valerie Bryant 290 Carton Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 17