Maternal Desires and Compulsory Motherhood: The Metaphor of "the Child of the Night" in Women's Reproductive Fantasies

Abstract

Maternal desires have been explored from contrasting approaches in psychoanalysis. Women’s urges to have children have roughly said been put into two categories: positive maternal desires and compulsive or corrupted maternal urges. But can a perspective be developed, that holds together both sides without either idealizing or denigrating maternal desires? Can maternal subjectivity and ambivalence be appreciated without blaming the mother for negative aspects of maternal desires? This article is an attempt to present such a perspective with the works of Italian psychoanalyst Silvia Vegetti Finzi and her idea of the metaphor of omnipotence called “the child of the night.” Her theory has inspired my clinical work; psychoanalytic psychotherapy with women who are not yet mothers. Inspired by psychoanalytic ideas about the value of holding together opposites for reflection and by feminist critique of societal dynamics, I describe a way to use metaphors for omnipotent fantasies to deepen our understanding of maternal desires. If women are to find their own definitions of mothering in a feminist and matricentric sense, we may help as clinicians and scholars by holding space for the omnipotent fantasy trope of the child of the night.