EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES

A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism

Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor
European Perspectives presents outstanding books by leading
European thinkers. With both classic and contempotaLy works,
the series aims to shape the major intellectual controversies of
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For a complete list of books in the series, see pages 29798
Melanie Klein
by
Julia Kristeva
Translated by Ross Guberman
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
128 / THE CULT OP THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE?
lic period, and that she emphasized that the boy needs to told
his aggressiveness and to identify with a good phallic image of
father:
If he has a strong primary belief in the omnipotence off
penis he can pit it against the omnipotence of his father~
penis and take up the struggle against that dreaded and
admired organ. If his ego is able to tolerate and modi~
a certain quantity of destructive feeling against his fathel
and if his belief in his fathe?s good penis is strong
enough, he can maintain both his rivalry with his fathe~
(which is essential for the establishment of a heterosexii1,
position) and his identification with him.55 I
THE COMBINED OR COUPLED PARENTS
Kleins notion of the role played by the father and the mothei~
the childs evolution or in psychosis was discussed at length by tl
Anna Freudians and later, in a different way, by Lacan and; -:
own supporters. I will return later to Kleins theory of symbd1iz~
tion, which will help us examine, from a different perspective,tf
gaps in her work with regard to the oedipal triangle, and inp~
ticular to the symbolic function of paternity:
Paradoxically, it is important to note that Kleins relegation~
the penis to second place and, more important, to a functiolfi
the mothers appendagefdid not prevent her from basinj.h~
theory of splitting on the presence of the penis in the objectTtl~
breast) and from conceptualizing the first psychoanalytic mod~
of sexuality founded upon the couple.)Kleins theory is supportel
not by the father himselfnot even by the father of the prii~
horde (Freud) or the Name-of-the-Father (Lacan), nor by th~
mother herself (whatever the power of her breast as a sour~.6
anxiety but also as a way of harnessing that anxiety, which rnak4
it into a central part of the ego and the superego), but by both pisr~
ents. 1
~he two parents are at first combined in an act of sadi~d~
ECULT OF THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE? I 129
!eourse. The lack of distinction between the two partners
an aggnvEe sa ism, even a mental donffision, to the new
~which is precisely what generates the imago of the cohi
~dparents. On the heels of the depressive position, however,
~oung ego learns to distinguish bet~.een the two partners by
~ating the two distinct objects, and then the two total objects
~mother and the father, the woman and the man). This sepa
lessens envy and facilitates the working through of split
~The split-o141,elements can then become integrated with gen
sexuality Fr6m that point on, the ego (or the self) learns to
ose a dominant mode of sexual identification with the same
~parent.
tis as if the Kleinian universe functioneddespite her cult of
~maternal and particularly in the light of the Oedipus conflict
it merges during the depressive positionas a dual system:
5~nIn and man, mother and father. It is true that this intuition
~ never sufficiently supported by a cohesive theory of language
F~d ~he primal_a theory that is indeed lacking in Kleins work,
E~idh created a gap that has been identified by bo~h her succes
~sand her critics.56 Still, these initial steps toward a two-sided
~~igni prove to be rich with unexplored possilillities in the
a of psychic bisexuality as well as its ethical and p~llti&l
.Lpences.
~Although Klein based her theory on the dyad of the combined
rints, such a dyad is not merely the product of empirical obser
~:ions on the part of a mother anxious about her own children,
~ is it just a respectful way of recasting the notions of the Jew
~i,patriarch that Sigmund Freud was. In fact, and in anticipation
Oedipus complex, Klein set forth an original and creative
:oiiception of symbolism. From the beginning, Kleins tribute to
mother recognized both the parents and made the couple into
~hh&erogeneous source of the bisexual atonomy of the self: she
Jlocated (some) space for the father in her conception of the
~jfroto-Oedipus conflict, and afforded him an even greater role in
~the. depressive position. And yet in Kleins view, the cult of the
mother, which is paramount, is transformed into matricide. The
lo~ of the motherwhich for the imaginary is tantamount to the
.3
F
L
330 / THE CULT OE THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE?:1
death of the mother_becomes the organizing principle ftr~
sJ~ts symbolic capacity.
[It is worth remembering that the breast, whether good or L
emerges as the first structuring object only after it has: bel
devoured and destroyed.]The mother as a whole object mitig~
the exaggerated sadism of the paranoid-schizoid position r~
once she is 1 during the depressive position. When the chL
is weaned_and thus has separated himself effectively_from. tt
breast, he turns away from it and loses it. [In fantasy life4
course, separation or loss is tantamount to death~Paradoxicaily~
we can see, the cult of the mother is) in Kleins view, a prete~tfi
matricide. And yet accepting loss through love allows for the dev
opment of the depressive position.
Both the cult of the mother and matricide play a saving ~
From all appearances, however, matricide is far more than just
cult of the motherfwithout matricide, the internal object can 3
be formed, the fantasy cannot be constructed, and reparation, a~
well as the redirection of hostility into the introjection of the sel~
is foreclosed.] Kleinian negativity, which, as we shall see, guidel
the drive to intelligence byway of the fantasy, chooses the mothe~
asks target: ~~rder to think, one must first lose the
paths to~rd this loss diverge: splitting leads us on the wron
track, whereas the depression that follows the separation andia~
death is much more befitting. In the end, a pure positivityit~
too, innate_serves as the very capacity for love. And yet this grc~
depends greatly on the vagaries of envy or, rather, on the capaclt~
to rid oneself of envy toward the mother_or, to put it morel
bluntly, to rid oneself of the mother altogethet
In the history of art, and Western art in particular, Medusa~
head_an image not only of female castration, as Freud rightfiill34
observed,57 but also of the loss of the archaic mother that thel
child absorbs during the depressive position_emerged just as th~
West was discovering psychic interiority as well as the individual1
expressiveness of each persons face. This primary beheading
(Medusas lost head and sliced-off head) was followed by m&e
eroticized ~gijres. Some of these figures manifest mans phallie-J
symbolic power (such as the beheading of St. John the Baptist as
rTuE CULT OF THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE? I 131
?announces the coming of Christ), and others manifest the
r struggle between men (David and Goliath) or between
~man and man (Judith and Holofermes), and so forth.58 The
~hading of the mother, understood as both a putting to
L!ath and a flight to be taken both with the mother and against
a necessary precondition for the psychic freedom of the
~bject: that is what Klein had the courage to proclaim, in her
~i1~ay and without equivocation.
I have already noted, Kleins later works, particularly Envy
Pnd Gratitude, emphasize the childs innate capacity for love or
ztitude that reinforces effective mothering. When this love for
~einother buttresses the capacity for reparation that is an inte
~a1:part of the depressive position, doesnt it erase the tendencies
kvard matricide that characterize the childs archaic positions
the positions that appear to dominate our authors earlier writ-
[rigs? Some critics have endorsed such an interpretationL~4~le
dthers see this shift in Kleinian thinking toward love as being a
variant of caritas, even the germ of a new form of socialism.59
~. And yet this oblative tone does not overcome the negativity
Ehat dominates Kleins listening toand interpretation ofthe
thnonscious. ~g~use the death drive is forever, reparation and
~I~atitude are buj oracrstallizations of negativity as well as
~it~ dialectical resting points. Tl~c~~acity for gratitude must be
forever cared for and rotectedand such assiduous attention,
in modern culture appears to be the exclusive domain of
~psychoanalysts, demands that we constantly heed the destructive
Wanxiety that works tirelessly by forcing love and gratitude into.
~?vy, if not by annihilating them through the fra mentation of
~ ~the. As for reparation itself, it is by separating from the
~thother, to which the self was once linked through an initial pro
jective identification, that the self learns to engage in reparation.
~At that point the self can rediscover the mother, but noti~Wonce
~knew her. On the contrary, the self never stpp~je-creating the
mother through the very freedom it gained frornj~~~gs~pgard
L ~ her. The mother is a woman who is always renewed in
L ~
images and in words, through a process of which I am the cre
ator simply because I am the one who restores her.
CfrAEtJ~y
61/Mt
/
pt4
132 I THE CULT OF THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE? THE CULT OF THE MOTHER oa AN ODE TO MATRICIDE? I 133
Pity and remorse, which accompany die reparation of the lost
object, carry the trace of the imaginary and symbolic matricide
that reparation constantly evokes. In fact, the fear and anger com
mon to die state of war that links me, in the paranoid-schizoid
position, to Mummy-the breast are followed by a compassion for
die other that Mummy becomes through the depressive position.
And yet this compassion is no more than a scar of matricide: the
ultimate evidence, if any were needed, that die imaginary recon
ciliation with the mother, which I need to be and to think at the
cost of a putting-to-death that is excessive and of a matricide that
becomes futile but that leaves me a memory that haunts me. It
inhabits my dreams and my unconscious, and it appears on the
surface of words to the extent that I set out in search of lost time.
AN Oresteia
Just as the myth of Oedipus illuminates Freudian theory, Klein
focus~s on the myth of Orestes after diagnosing the matricidal
fantasy in her clinic and after unearthing its underlying logic.
In fhct, in Some Reflections on The Oresteia,60 Klein high
lights a different sort of logical process that reflects subjective
autonomythough without ever denying the importance of
Freuds Oedipus. In the ancient Greek play, the murder of Orestess
mother grants him freedom, though at the price of a depressive
remorse that symbolizes the endless hounding of the Erinye.
[Kleins essay, which is somewhat disorganized and which she never
completed, was published posthumously despite its gaping holes)Tt
appears that she wrote it around the time ofOn the Sense of Lone:
liness, which was also published after her death. As we have seeh,
Kleins reflection on solitude concludes with a tribute to the inte
gration of the good breast. These two published legacies reflect an
antinomic crossroad in Kleins thought: the tension between tli~
reparation of the mother and a rec6nciliation with the object, on
the one hand, and the loss of the mother or her being put to death
and symbolization, on the other. These are two inextricable sides of
the complex process known as the individuation of the self
Kleins study of The Oresceia addresses three aspects of Aeschy
luss work from the perspective of her theories. She begins by
describing Orestes fate. Orestes is the son of Agamemnon, who
sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods so that the Greeks
might embark on their war vessels immobilized by Neptunes
wrath. Orestes kills his mother, Cl~temnestra, to avenge his father,
whose murder she had encouraged to avenge the death of their
daughter Iphigenia. And Orestes is also the brother of Electra, who
indulged in passions no less matricidal, though they were more
restrained in c,pmparison. It was Electra who demanded that
Clytemnestra-be killed at the hands of Orestes. Klein could not
help but see her own clinical universe in Aeschyluss implicitly
incestuous and explicidy murderous imbroglio, as hers was a world
in which libido allows itself to be absorbed into the death drive.
Such are the consequences of putting Clytemnestra to death:
matricide clearly led to Orestes guilt, but he acquired an immense
freedom and a preeminent symbolic capacity along the way.
In the final pages of her Oresteia, Klein tells us that the ego
seeks whatever means are necessary to create symbols that can
become an effective oudet for its emotions, but she also asks her
iTwhyit is that we have symbols at all. The answer is simple: ~
is because the mother is insufficientprecisely because she is
Inca able of satisfying the childs emotional needs. Get rid ofyour
mother, or you no longer ne~~~g: that would be the ultimate
_
message of symbols were they able to explain to us why they exist.
And then Klein proceeds to recall one of her earliest writings: her
study of little Dick and of the difficulties he had in acquiring
symbols and attaining thought.6
Does Orestes drama serve to introduce Kleins reflection on the
birth of symbols and her tribute to symbols? Or does this mytho
logical detour explain that the symbol is the murderer of the
mother? Or, in the end, is Klein implying that the symbol is the
most effective murderer of the mother? It is clear that any such
murder, as depicted and encouraged by the psychoanalyst, is but afi
imaginary one: the point is not to kill ones mother, nor is it to kill
anyone else, at least not in reality: No reality situation can flilfil the
often contradictory urges and wishes of the childs fantasy life.~2
2
d
-j
-4
-1
I
I
rncSi41t~t
e.fr fl
134 I THE CULT OP THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE?
- [Crimes and other aggressive actings out are merely failures of
the symbol; they represent a failure of the imaginary matricide
that, by itself, paves the way to thought. On the other hand, the
creation of thought, and then the exercise of the sovereign free
dom that has the potential to give birth to a work of genius, reflect
a successful matricidal fantasy.]
The antihero Orestes, an adherent of matricide if there ever
was, displayed a devotion to deicide that was just as unrivaled.;
Unlike Oedipus, a man of desire and repression and an accom
plice to the gods, Orestes was an avatar ofJupiter. tOedipus, a cre
ator and a destroyer of enigmas, embodies the profile of the
believer.]Io believe in the father, in the gods, or in knowledge: the
differences among them are not as dramatic as some have
claimed, for all manifestations of belief absorb both the desire to
experience pleasure and the desire to die. Orestes, for his part, is
the antison and the antihero . . . precisely because he is antinature.
Klein rightfully explains that killing the mother-nature is tanta
mount to rising up against God: murdering the mother results in
guilt, she wrote while reflecting on the depressive position, which
iiself creates remorse. Here, however, the analyst goes a step fur
ther and deduces that the mothei; who is feared because she
ihflicts punishment, is the prototype of God.63
Such an interpretation i~ not far removed from Sartres own
reading of The Oresteia, a reading that informs his play The Flies~
there, the son who murders his mother is radically deicidal.64 Yet
if Klein is promoting her nonbelief herejust as the mother of
Fritz/Erich was said to be an atheist65she is also making it
clear that her version of matricide bears not a hint of nihilism. To
rid oneself of the mother becomes the sine qua non for accessing
the symbol.
Indeed, it is when this access to symbolization is lacking that the
dark side of Orestes emerges: where we find that side is also where
the failure of Oedipusof his desires and his repressionshall be.
The subject returns to splitting and to the destruction of the soul
in which psychosis hinders the psychodrama of the neuroses and
breaks the psychic realm into bits. Isnt it true that Kleins patients ~
who displayed traces of The Oresteia are the precursors of todays
THE CULT OF THE MOTHER OR AN ODE TO MATRICIDE? I 135
gratuitous killers, of the mindless robots without a soul, and of A
Clockwork Orange? Today, some of these fragmented personalities
find refuge in art exhibits and other schizoid manifestations whose
minimalist obscenities are welcomed by publishing houses claim.-
F ~be avant-garde. Psychoanalysts, for their part, sense the
failure of Orestes as well as of symbolization in the new maladies
ofthe soul that take refuge in the merchants and other players who
populate our new megalopolises.
And yet Orestes also displays a more reasonable side. The
philosophical agenda that accompanies Kleins genius strives to
rehabilitate those features in order to discover within them ~
~~mate preconditions for thp~gptthat is, within the very space
~at harbors the advent of psychic space and intelligence but that
ilso accumulates the dangers of its suffocation. When the gods are
fired or otherwise compromised, all we can do is to reflect upon
these fertile sourcesto care for them, preserve them, and foster
them.
Alongside these acerbic interpretations, Kleins ode to matri
cide is a plea to preserve our symbolic capacity. The mother of
psychoanalysis considered symbolism, the exclusive domain of
humans, to be an tThcertain miracle that is always already threat-
- ened and whose fate clearly depends on the mother, though only
as long as I can get beyond her. CThe gist of what Melanie
Libussas daughter is saying here is that, although the mother is
Qrnnn~sent, we canand we mustmake do without her and
F that we are all the better fbr it. That is the messa ea s ~mbolic ~1.
one it turns outof the Kleinian crime.
We can thus understand why some feminists have praised
Klein for being the modern creator of the myth of the mother-
goddess, while others hold her in contempt for the very same rea
son: isnt it intolerable to envy ones own mother? Still others
reject Klein because they believe she encourages matricide.
Perhaps the only people who truly understand Klein are the
female authors of detective stories, though they neither read her
nor need to read her: such authors share her unconscious knowl
edge that when I talk about murder, it is not because I hold a
grudge against men who carry the phallus or because I wish to
net,,
~ cut
extricate myself from themat least those are not the only x~
sons. Instead, it is because, whether daughter and mothrj
daughter or mother), I know the sort of ehvy ofwhich In~
rid myselfthe overwhelmingly sadistic desire to work throuL
lose, and in a sense killso that I might acquire a baseline fril
dom to think. The detective story seems true to the extent th~
surpasses the sott of popular literature that recounts the lowb&~
dramas and rather vapid charms of an eventually transg~ess~
repression. Such queens of pulp fiction dive into a catastrdphi
psyche that is no longer a soul worthy of that name. Acts of splt~
t~ng and dismembering (as Klein understands them), rev~rsaF
acts of envy and ingratitude, an4 incarnated phantoms thatr.ece
the concrete objects and tyrannical superego of Mother Meladi
all haunt these spaces, which are exposed and then exploreda~
exhibited with the sweetness of a relatively serene mournii~
process. The queens of pulp fictionand we should emph:E
the feminine nature of this vernacular expression, as if it were sell
evident or commonplace_are[depressed women who have.t-~
onciled themselves with being put to death, who remember tI -~
in the beginning was an envious sadism, and who never stop cu~
ing themselves from the sadism they describe.]
I imagine that these women display the quiet violence of the eldj
erly Mrs. Klein, who hersel~ might have written pulp fiction ha~
she been given the oppprtunity to possess a mother tongue andU
she had not becomera primary detectivealso known as a psych9-
analyst.3And an analyst she was, in any event, and without a doubt;
even when she appeared to forget that enigmas still remain and
when she rushed to apply a ready-made body of knowledge thts
had developed in her earlier investigations. Still, even when-sh~
pushed the templates of her systems too far, she laid anxiety bare~;
and, as with Richardshe did so with a perfect aim and a rnagi~
touch in order to trace more effectively the labyrinth of thought. 1:
______ ~/
THE pHAAsYASA
METAPHOR INCARNATE
~THE
~d-~matterhow far back Klein reaches into childhood, she always
:isc~vers a fantasizing ego. A sundry entity. made up of verbal and
~overbal representations, sensations, affects, emotions, move
~iets, actions, and even concretizations, the Kleinian phantasy is
h~holly impure theoretical construct that defies the purists as
~ich as it fascinates clinicians, particularly those who specialize in
Lchildren, psychosis, or the psychosomatic disorders. And yet
~4elanie Klein never explicitly reconciled her various approaches to
~~h~-term phantasyin fact, it was an article written by her disciple
rSu~an Isaacs that pursued that subject and rendered it credible.1
~As a way to highlight the originality of Kleins concept in the
~cohtext of the famous Controversial Discussions that shook up the
~Eritish Psycho-Analytical Society between 1941 and ~945,2 Susan
REPRESENTATIVE BEFORE REPRESENTATION
136 I THE CULT OF THE MOTHER OP. AN ODE TO MATRIcIDE?~~
*
1~
I