The bond between baby and mother is strong. Mother-child connection. What can be done in order to establish communication

The connection between the brain and skin The question may arise: what does the brain have to do with the skin? After all, the skin is on the outside, and maybe it is more influenced by external factors and what we use - creams, lotions, anti-wrinkle products, after shaves? No. Scientific

The connection between metabolism and sexual potency At all times, real men tried to demonstrate their natural masculine strength in front of their chosen ones. They tried many erotic drugs to improve potency, but in most

The Brain-Body Connection Strength training creates a subtle connection between the body and the brain. The easiest way to consider it is to start from the top - with the brain and the nervous system as a whole. Your physical brain - an extremely complex structure - collects millions of signals from

The Connection Between Running and Rebirthing When I was eighteen years old, I began to scrupulously practice both running and rebirthing. After reading the books by G.? P.? Malakhov, Paul Bragg on improving the body and a little reflection, I came to the conclusion that rebirthing and running are strongly related to each other.

SYMBIOTIC ASPECTS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTHER AND CHILD

N.V. SAMOUKINA

In the unstable conditions of the transitional period and crisis, people need values ​​that can be "relying on" and which are not destroyed under any political and socio-economic breakdowns. Such eternal values ​​are undoubtedly in the sphere of personal relationships - friendships, love and family. And in this area, the pivot bearing the main burden of people's value expectations regarding love and support, of course, is the relationship between mother and child. The life goals of a generation can radically change, the state in which a person was born disappear, lose their usual names of the streets on which he lived, met with loved ones and walked with children, the institution in which he worked, but the mother's love given to him from the beginning of life, will remain with him forever, nourishing him with his life-giving warmth.

The "pumping" of the main "array" of the internal energy of the value and emotional order from professional, social and other relations to the "most eternal" and "purest" relationships, which are the relationship between mother and child, no matter how sad it sounds, begins to deform and destroy precisely these, the most significant, relationships. Desperate to find her life niche in a crumbling world, the mother transfers all her strength to the child, trying to become a "wall" for him, protecting him from the difficult problems of the present existence. In turn, a child (of any age), faced with the aggressiveness and danger of the outside world, seeks to find a "quiet refuge" and protection in mother's love. As a result, they both make their relationship unnecessarily saturated, intense, interdependent and even painful, trying to realize themselves in them and only in them, since full-fledged realization in the twisted external world is difficult or impossible. They live for each other and do not let each other go, thereby creating the only opportunity for mutual love and warmth and at the same time mutual lack of freedom and an incomprehensible, unnaturally closed circuit.

X In one of the southern cities, after a seminar, I was approached by a respectable man of mature age. He asked to accept his elderly mother, who began to show sclerotic symptoms. During a conversation with him, it turned out that he holds the post of vice president of a large bank in the city, was married twice, divorced and now lives with his mother. They have common money, they shop together, watch TV, walk, relax in the country. And so it has been for several years. When I asked if he had a woman, he replied: "It's useless, with women I have

nothing works: they do not need me, but my money. Mom doesn't want anything from me, she just loves me. "

X At the reception - mom and her teenage son. The boy does not go to school while being homeschooled. One does not leave the house, always and everywhere - only with mom. During counseling, sits next to her, holding her hand.

There is a father in the house, but, being the owner of a large company, he works a lot and rarely communicates with his son. In the relationship between spouses, there is a distance that the husband experiences as natural, but the wife does not accept it and suffers. For her, her son became the only person on whom she could “pour out” her love and whom it was scary to let go of herself, because her husband’s work and constant overload caused her rejection: “I don’t want my son to be the same as her husband.”

X The family includes a grandfather, grandmother, a divorced mother and her twelve-year-old daughter. For about three years, the girl does not go to school, being homeschooled. Reason: the mother is afraid that at school her daughter will become infected with a viral infection, master abnormal vocabulary, be subjected to violence, and finally try drugs. The mother's fears for the health and upbringing of her daughter manifested themselves during the period of her divorce from her husband, which occurred after the husband lost his job. The "other life" that arose in Russia remained incomprehensible, terrible for the young woman and inflicted only destruction on her and her family, and it was from this life that she tried to protect her child.

X At the consultation - a mother with her second-grader son. She carefully removes his coat, straightens his clothes, smoothes his hair and leads him into the office. Complaint: the boy is passive in the classroom, does not answer the teacher's questions, although he prepares homework well. In front of me is a child with openly and trustingly wide eyes, almost never communicating. Every time a psychologist questions him, he turns to his mother, as if asking her how and what to answer. And the mother is responsible for the son.

The family includes a father, mother and two sons. Several years ago, the elder, who was brought in for a consultation, almost died through the fault of his father: they were crossing the street in the wrong place, and the boy was hit by the car of the "new Russian". The mother spent a long time in the hospital, nursing her child, and the father went to work in the company of a man whose car was hit by his son. The family continues to exist, but the mother has a constant fear for the child's life, and the father is completely removed from education.

The article offered to the reader does not contain a fundamental theoretical analysis, it was written in order to understand the strange, contradictory and, in a psychological sense, unnatural relationship between a mother and a child - not only of pre-adolescence, but also of a grown-up and adult person.

How does the emergence and formation of such a relationship between mother and child occur in their everyday life every day, for many months and years? What are the impacts of the mother and what are the responses the child takes? What is the attitude of a counselor to this? What to take as a point of inner support in a conversation with a mother and her adult child? How can a counselor approach to correct these relations, which are shrouded in an aura of holiness for people living in Russia? What actions of the mother should be attributed to positive and developmental, and what to negative and destructive? Can a child who has become an adult, first with the help of a psychologist, and then independently rebuild his relationship with his mother, or is he forced to come to terms with her powerful maternal instinct?

Let us turn to some works in which the search for answers to these questions was carried out. Thus, in his monograph "Maternal Law" I.Ya. Bachofen emphasized not only the positive aspect of the child's attachment to the mother, but also the negative one. The first aspect is manifested in the unconditional love of the mother, since she loves the child not for something, but precisely because he is her child. All of the mother's children have equal rights to her love and care.

because they are her children. The negative aspect of attachment manifests itself in the fact that it can hinder the development of a person's individuality, since he remains for her (and, as a consequence, for himself) a child at a time when he has actually become an adult.

E. Fromm also described the positive and negative aspects of maternal love, conducting a comparative analysis of paternity and maternity in this regard. Many of the things he said come up in modern psychological counseling. It should be remembered that for E. Fromm, mother's love was all-preserving, all-protecting and all-encompassing, while the father's love was associated with submission or rebellion. Attachment to the mother is a natural, natural attachment (unconditional love), attachment to the father is an artificial system of relationships based on power and law (conscience, duty, law, hierarchy, oppression, inequality, submission).

The "positive" relationship with the father consists in the presence of an opportunity, depending on the child's own activity: the father's love can be earned, it can be achieved. The "positive" of maternal love is in its unconditionality, given at birth. The negative aspects of a father's love are associated with the fact that it is an obedient child who achieves paternal love (continuity is obvious, but there are also limitations in innovation). The "negative" of maternal love is that it cannot be won in any way or by anything: either it exists or it does not. And this is the tragedy for the child: if the mother does not show her unconditional love for him in "healthy" ways that make him develop (albeit in obedience), he cannot achieve her love, he has only neurotic ways: regression, infantilization, decrease from the level of their development to the state of a child.

The tragic nature of the relationship between mother and child lies in the fact that even in the case of receiving unconditional maternal love at the moment of birth and accepting it as protection and support, in the process of growing up, the child becomes (and must become!) Independent and autonomous from the mother, must separate and leave from her into "my life". The ringing sadness and longing of the mother's loneliness during the separation of her child and the deep feeling of the incipient "orphanhood" of the child himself, his constant and far from always satisfied, and in recent years most often unsatisfied, the need for emotional acceptance, support and security - this is the "price" for growing up and autonomy, and now in Russia - for the destroyed values ​​of human relations.

Accepting the fact that there are not only positive, but also negative aspects in child-parent relationships, A.I. Zakharov describes cases of overprotection of a mother in relation to her child (overprotection, overprotection, overprotection), associated with control of an admitting or restrictive nature. A.V. Chernikov writes about the phenomenon of "double clamping", E.G. Eidemiller and V.V. Yustitsky describe violations of the role behavior of the mother in the family and her experiences in this regard. V.V. Stolin records the presence of suggestion from the mother and considers cases of mystification when the mother communicates with the child and behaves as if he had certain qualities. Moreover, more often it implies, as it were, the qualities of a child that have negative characteristics.

So, negative aspects in the relationship between mother and child were described earlier by foreign and domestic researchers. But we do not find a detailed analysis of the process itself, in which first imperceptible and then destructive

internal changes, as a result of which these relationships from positive and developmental turn into negative and suppressive.

To understand how the relationship between mother and child is actually formed, it is necessary to find a logical scheme of analysis that allows one to "grasp" the dynamics of the emergence and implementation of progressive and regressive tendencies in their relationship. In our opinion, one of such logical schemes can be found within the framework of the design approach. Despite the fact that the theoretical and methodological possibilities and heuristic nature of this approach are shown in works devoted to the construction of a cultural-historical concept and theory of developmental education, nevertheless, in our opinion, the researcher's methods of thinking developed in its "layers" can be constructively applied in analyzing the problems of child-parent relationships.

At the same time, it is important to separate the concepts of "design" and "projection". Projection is a transfer by a person of his own unacceptable and unconscious motives to explain the internal reasons for the actions and actions of people around him. When explaining his personal difficulties by external reasons, a person relinquishes responsibility and achieves tranquility in a non-constructive, neurotic way.

Design is the process of forming certain qualities in a child or an adult, in which there is always a model that serves as the beginning of the process of formation and at the same time its goal. Projecting by the mother in the process of building her relationship with the child and raising him certain qualities, may or may not contain projection, but is never limited to the latter. Social norms and stereotypes, social and economic conditions of life, the personal history of the mother in her relationship with men in general and with the child's father in particular, the level of education and personal development, the ability for constructive reflection and self-awareness, and finally, the ways of interacting with her parents learned by the mother - all these and many other components, besides projection, saturate the process of projecting by the mother the psychological characteristics of her child.

Psychological design in the relationship between mother and child. When pregnancy occurs, a woman goes through a path not only of physiological preparation for childbirth. Together with her husband, she begins to think about who will be born - a boy or a girl, what the child will be like and what kind of mother she will be. She discusses the birth of a child with relatives and friends, walks down the street and pays attention to babies, looks at her childhood photos, asks her mother about what she was like as a child ...

In a word, a living, pulsating and changing image of her unborn child arises and forms in her consciousness, gradually emerging from scraps of her childhood memories and adult impressions, her preferences, desires and aspirations. As in her body the developing fetus is penetrated by the blood vessels that feed it, so in her mind the image of the unborn child is penetrated by the living "threads" of her soul and character, her past experience and the experience of her parents.

It is important to emphasize that long before the birth of the child, the mother treats him in a certain way: she loves and wants him to be born, or perceives his future birth as an unnecessary burden and gives birth to a child under the pressure of circumstances (for medical reasons it is impossible to have an abortion, "We have been living without children for a long time and once you have to give birth, then it will be too late ", etc.). Exactly:

the child has not yet been born, and his psychological "project" already exists in the expectations of the mother, her attitude towards him already assumes that he has certain personality traits, character and abilities. And after birth, consciously or unconsciously, the mother begins to communicate with him in accordance with her original project.

Of course, a child is not a "blank canvas" on which only the mother draws his portrait. In the course of development, he himself also strives to create his own self-portrait. He leaves some paints imposed by his mother, in some shades he changes them, and refuses some maternal strokes. But the fact is that he is approaching a "psychological canvas" that already has his own portrait painted by his mother.

Transmission and assimilation of a psychological project. So, in the process of daily caring for the child and communicating with him, the mother "puts on" a "psychological shirt" sewn in advance, even before birth, on her child. This transfer of the project takes place in direct and indirect form.

The direct form of project transmission is words that express the mother's assessment of her child and her attitude to what he does or has done. The indirect form is the views of the mother, the intonation of her voice, interjections, touches, her actions and deeds. Quite often, in the process of direct transmission of her expectations, the mother acts consciously, and in the case of an indirect form of projection, unconsciously. But the border between active consciousness, volitional striving, spoken words, on the one hand, and spontaneous movement, accidentally sounded intonation, unexpected look or action, on the other, is extremely subtle and plastically changing, therefore, the selection of these two methods of projecting by the mother of her child is very conditional.

This transfer of the project can be expressed by the mother in positive or negative ways that create an emotional background in which the child lives and develops over many years of his childhood, adolescence and adolescence. The positive way of transmission is expressed like this: "you are good", "I love you", "you will succeed." The negative way: "you are worse than I would like", "if you are better, I will love you", "if you are the way I want, you will be fine."

In the first case (with a positive method of project transmission), the child receives from the mother - as a spiritual inheritance - the opportunity to treat himself well, initially and, without any doubt, positively accepting himself ("I respect myself because I am a Human") ... In the second case, he rushes about and painfully doubts his own self-worth, as if rejecting his human being ("I am the worst of all," "I have nothing to respect myself for").

The assimilation of positive or negative self-esteem by a child occurs not only at the level of the formation of his acceptance or rejection of himself, but also at the level of his dominant emotional mood (activity, energy or depression, apathy), general philosophy of life (optimism or pessimism), orientation and attitudes (struggle for yourself or obedience to circumstances). These unspoken "contents" of emotional-background states are "recorded" in the unconscious sphere of the child's psyche, just as files are recorded in the computer's memory, and act either in the form of a "system block" (background state), or in the form of psychological "files" opened by life (human actions , sometimes unexpected for him).

Units of transmission and assimilation of a psychological project. Transfer by mother

your child of a positive or negative attitude and, accordingly, the formation of his self-attitude - acceptance or rejection of himself - can be decomposed into certain "units" of their verbal or non-verbal communication.

Thus, one can observe how the child is attributed positive or negative qualities that he does not have or that have not yet manifested in his behavior.

Positive attribution is, in essence, the task of the child with the nearest "development zone" as a progressive perspective of his inner movement. In this case, the mother communicates with the child as if he has in the presence and in the formed state positive, "strong" sides of personality and character ("Why did you take this toy in kindergarten? I know you are kind and honest. Tomorrow take it to your children, they want to play too ").

Negative attribution is programming a regressive life line for the child. The mother "molds" the negative aspects of the personality and character of her child, calling him "bad words" ("Why did you take this toy in kindergarten? You are bad! You are a thief!").

Let's take a look at this example. The child took a toy in kindergarten. He took action. For himself, the child is still "no"! He is neither bad nor good! The mother makes him good or bad - through her assessment of his actions. In her own words, she denotes not so much his action as himself: "You are good and honest" or "You are bad and a thief." The child's action is situational and transient, but the mother's assessment is "recorded" in his internal system in the form of self-esteem and his emotional background state: "I am good" or "I am bad."

Let's think: after all, such an assignment occurs daily, several times a day and over the course of many years ...

Projection also occurs through the raising or belittling of the child by the mother. Exaltation: "You are great! You know more than me! You can do what I do not know how! You are speaking correctly, perhaps I will heed your advice." Humiliation: "Little still, listen to what the adults say! Why do you understand! Now live with mine, then you will understand!"

The raising of her child by a mother gives him self-confidence ("If the mother praises, then I am worth something!"). This quality is accompanied by an internal state of active vitality, a desire for self-affirmation and the development of one's vitality.

And, on the contrary, belittling programs his self-doubt ("If mom scolds, then I am worthless, I am nothing!"). Such a quality as uncertainty goes "in parallel" with the internal state of over-anxiety, reduced vitality, and a tendency to depression.

The transfer of the psychological project by the mother occurs through the creation of a zone of freedom and opportunities for her child, or restrictions and prohibitions. Freedom ("Do what you want and consider it necessary") is the transmission by the mother of her trust in the child. And, as you know, you can trust a good, intelligent and strong person. It is this message that the child "reads" through the channels of the unconscious in communication with his mother.

The consent of the mother to the freedom of the child is also the recognition of his right to his own life. The mother gives the child something like this: "I live the way I was able to organize my life. But you can live your way, the way you can make yourself and your life." Here the mother assumes the psychological equality of herself and her child: "I am a human being and I live as I want. And you are a human being and you can live as you want."

Assuming the freedom of her child, the mother programs the need for him to rely on himself, on his own independence. It is in this moment that the child develops and develops the ability to be "himself" and to build his own life at will. This attitude of the mother to her child is extremely useful for him also in the sense of the formation of his psychophysiological system of self-control, self-regulation and reasonable self-discipline.

Restrictions, prohibitions and countless "no" - this is a deep mistrust of the mother to her child, the non-recognition of his right to equality with her. Restrictions and prohibitions inhibit or completely block the successful development of the child's self-regulation system, since they force him to constantly and tensely maintain a relationship with his mother ("What is allowed and what is not?").

This allows the mother to control and manage her child, because it is she (and only she!) Who acts as the main prohibiting or permissive authority for him: the child relies on her and believes her, does not lean on herself and does not believe himself. In this case, the mother becomes an externalized, subjective "regulation system" for the child, which he needs now and will need for a long time later. And during periods of sharp changes in society and crises, he will need her all his life.

The transfer of the project also occurs through the recovery or disability of the child. Despite the fact that this unit of communication between a mother and a child concerns, first of all, his physical health, there is also a psychological "lining" of his confidence or lack of confidence in himself, the formation of his idea of ​​himself as a person who is able or unable to protect himself.

Recovery is often expressed in this way: "You can walk in puddles, just make sure that the water does not reach the edge of your boots", "You can walk without a hat, but when it gets quite cold, put on a hood." You can notice that gradually, in the second part of her address, the mother shows her child that he can protect himself ("... watch that water does not flood the edges of the boots", "... put on the hood"). It is important to emphasize that the mother here relies on the child's activity and programs this activity: "Act, defend yourself!"

Disability is expressed in the fact that the mother evaluates the child himself as incapable of self-defense in advance: "You are so pale, are you sick?" Pay attention: "Pale - sick", "Weak - rest". This is the mother's programming of her child's passivity, his inability to defend himself. As we have already said, such programming is done by the mother often unconsciously, she really wants to protect her child, close him with herself, protect him from everything, and from the disease too. In this moment - the solution to the mother's formula, common in our culture: "A mother wants only good for her child."

Unfortunately, such a mother does not take into account that it is simply impossible to protect her child "always and from everything": a child can only protect himself from the adverse effects of the external environment by himself, through his own activity and through his own actions. Therefore, a reasonable maternal formula should sound something like this: "I will teach you to defend yourself, so that you can defend yourself, without me."

Psychological design extends not only to the area of ​​interaction between mother and child, but also to his social status, the position taken among friends and peers,

in relationships with people. I am referring to situations in which a mother makes a positive or negative comparison of her child with other children.

In the first case, she positively singles out her child: "You do the best," "You are the most beautiful with me." In the case of a negative comparison, the mother makes a choice in favor of other children: "All are children, just like children, only you are the only one so abnormal", "Look how smart Lena is! She succeeds in everything: she is the best student, educated and neat . And I have you - I don't know what ... "

In the positive and negative comparison of the mother of her child with other children, a projection mechanism manifests itself: if the mother is a confident person, then, as a rule, she praises her child and positively distinguishes him from other children. If a mother is an insecure person who feels herself in something worse than other people, she will treat her child in the same way, passing on her own insecurity to him.

A psychological project transmitted by the mother. You can often hear: "A mother always wants only good things for her child" and "A bad mother will never advise." But the transfer of a negative project is really happening - this is a fact! Let's see what the mother seeks to convey and why she consciously or unconsciously "chooses" negative methods of transmission.

First, let's answer the question: “What?” In our culture, parents want their child: “to be a good, decent person”; "was honest"; "studied well"; "was smart" (usually this means: "remembered the educational material well"); "brought the matter to the end," and so on.

In addition, often a mother wants her child to be able to do what she herself could not do, or achieve what she herself could not achieve. For example, if a mother had musical abilities, but due to certain life circumstances she did not manage to learn music, she seeks to send her child to a music school and expects success from him.

The mother can express her wishes not only regarding the child's occupation, but also the level of his aspirations and desire for success, the desire to have a certain social status, communicate in a certain circle, and stand at a certain level of the social hierarchy.

Thus, the mother wants the child to assimilate the cultural norms of inner life and outer behavior. Of course, positive norms.

Now let's answer the question: "Why?"

Why, despite her desire to make her child good and smart, does the mother still carry out negative projection? There are several reasons here, let us first dwell on those of them that determine the mother's conscious choice of negative influences on her child.

First: her parents, in particular, her mother, treated her in the same way, and, having no other experience, she believes that with the child "you need to be strict", "keep him under control" and "you need to scold him, not praise him. "(" I will praise - the egoist will grow up ").

Second, if the child is a son, externally and internally, similar to his father, with whom the mother is divorced, negative projection can be conscious and quite intense. The woman went through a life drama, she is offended, and her son resembles her ex-husband. She deliberately wants him "not to become what his father was" and makes efforts to ensure that this does not happen.

Third: the mother is fast and agile, and her child is slow and inhibited. When interacting with him, she often experiences irritation:

"Well, come on faster!", "You are always digging, because of you I do not have time for anything!" ...

The unconscious choice of negative design methods is most often associated with a woman's general dissatisfaction with a difficult life. And this kind of dissatisfaction, which is now quite a frequent occurrence, is "dumped" on the child ("I feel bad, everything around is bad, and you are bad, unsuccessful").

Quite often, the mother yells at her child and scolds him because of chronic fatigue, nervous exhaustion or lack of time to explain her demands: "I said, that's all!", "Do as I said, and don't reason!" , you always throw it around, you can't do anything yourself! "

If a husband suppresses his wife, she, in turn, unconsciously can suppress her child, involuntarily showing her difficult internal state in interaction with him and transferring to communication with the child the style of relations that the husband implements with her.

The child's attitude to the psychological project of the mother and the ways of its transmission. One should not think that a mother's attitude towards her child should always be positive and benevolent. Whether the negative project of the mother regarding the formation of a strong, autonomous son and a free, self-confident daughter, or, conversely, will make them overdependent social the activity of the child himself.

In the "force field" of overcriticism and overcontrol, a potentially weak child actually becomes "worn out", passive and submissive, as if giving his life and himself to the mother. A strong child will fight for the opportunity to independently build himself and his life, overcoming the mother's attitudes, and, having matured, leaves her.

A weak child can also leave the mother, affirming his adulthood and the desire to "live his own life." But often such withdrawal is associated not so much with internal development as with finding a strong partner for him and accepting this leadership instead of the mother's leadership.

However, both strong and weak children within their consciousness, in the hidden "depths" of their psyche, can reject themselves. But if the weak often resign themselves to this, then the strong either build a rational program of protection at the level of mind and duty ("I must be strong and independent"), or, in turn, themselves become overcritical and overcontrolling parents for their children. Let us note in passing that authoritarian, dominant and tough leaders are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the sons and daughters of authoritarian and domineering mothers.

There is one more, more rare "variant" of overcoming the negative maternal project by the child: escape from reality into the symbolic world of creative self-expression. If in real life, in interaction with the mother, there is complete dependence, control and inhibitions, then a talented person consciously or unconsciously seeks an area of ​​activity in which he would feel free and significant. Such a sphere can be artistic or musical creativity, scientific work, writing and other activities in which you can freely express your individuality and which are not available for controlling actions on the part of the mother.

Contradictions in the psychological projection of the mother. Negative projection of the mother is a test for

child, which he can still survive constructively, strengthening his individuality or showing himself in creativity. More serious difficulties arise for the child when the mother behaves with him in a contradictory, ambiguous way. Often this is expressed in the fact that in statements addressed to the child, she expresses a positive attitude towards him, and in her actions and deeds - a negative one.

So, the mother can talk to the child as long and eloquently as she likes about her mother's love and how good he is, but her eyes will be cold and detached, and her voice will be aloof and devoid of warm, loving intonations. She can inspire him with the idea that "She is a mother and wants only good for him," but in reality, in her actions, she will be guided only by her own goals, neglecting the goals of the child. As a result, a contradiction arises between the positive content that is spoken by the mother and which the child hears and understands - and that negative general atmosphere of the relationship, as well as the expression of the mother's face and the sound of the voice that the child sees and hears. The child can feel the contradiction and discrepancy between the spoken and demonstrated content when observing the actions and deeds of the mother. Doing something, she says: "You need it," but in reality he sees and understands that it is not he who needs it, but only her.

The inconsistency of the psychological projection of the mother can be expressed not only in the discrepancy between what is spoken and demonstrated in relation to her child, but also in the instability of these relations. Today mom is calm and loving, she understands everything and forgives everything. And tomorrow mom is nervous, aloof, doesn't want to understand or forgive anything. Such drastic changes in the mother's mood and relationships are always unexpected for the child, he is frightened and, not understanding the reason, often blames himself for this (“I did something wrong and bad, so she stopped loving me”).

In this regard, we can talk about a situational and constant contradiction in the psychological projection of the mother. We spoke above about the form of relations between mother and child, in which she constantly manifests contradictions and ambiguities. The action of situationally contradictory psychological projection takes place only in certain situations that are super-significant and frustrating for the mother. In these cases, she loses her inner balance and becomes contradictory for the child. In other, more "calm" situations, she can manifest herself more unambiguously. Let me give you a concrete example.

X In one family it was customary for a ten-year-old daughter to be in the mother's field of vision when walking in the yard of the house, so that every time she looked out of the window, the mother could see her child. But one day, with the onset of evening, the mother did not see the girl and began to look for her. The search yielded nothing, and the woman became seriously worried.

When it got completely dark, and she was already desperate to find her daughter, a girl appeared in the back of the yard, running towards her mother. She played with her friends and started getting ready to go home when it was getting dark. The girl rushed to her mother, trying to snuggle up to her, because she herself felt the fear of being lost. In turn, the mother also stretched out her hands to her, but instead of affection and love, she suddenly began to loudly scold the girl for the fact that she backed down from the agreement and left the courtyard of the house.

As you can see, in this case, a situational contradiction arose between mother's love, the joy that the girl was found, and the mother's desire to protect herself from worries. Such a mother really loves her child, but she has problems maintaining internal balance in

difficult, stressful situations, as well as in adequate expression of their own feelings about the safety of their child. As a result, instead of the joy of meeting her mother, the daughter experienced bewilderment and, possibly, emotional shock from the outburst of irritation from the mother.

The child's attitude to the contradictory psychological projection of the mother. The contradictory and ambiguous attitude of the mother to the child significantly inhibits his personal development. So, there may be certain violations in the emergence and development of his internal image of the I, as well as in the formation of a relationship to oneself. A child, involved in a contradictory relationship with his mother, subsequently does not find a place for himself between the definitions of himself: “Which one am I - good or bad? Smart or stupid? but, not receiving support and reinforcement from the mother as the most significant person in this period of his life, he doubts his movement and stops, without fashioning anything concretely effective and concretely self-sensing from himself.

If we return to the topic of the "psychological portrait", which we touched upon at the beginning of the article, then we can say that the child cannot fully accept the image that the mother offers him because of the ambiguity and contradictory nature of the means of influence implemented by the mother in relation to him. But he also cannot "draw" his portrait on his own, because he does not know in what psychological "colors" - light and bright or dark and faded - to dip his "brush".

This contradiction in relations with the mother is especially acute in a teenager who enters the period of the formation of his personality. If at this age stage, with her contradictory attitude, consciously or unconsciously, the mother blocked the formation of his self-image, self-attitude and self-esteem, he may not build his personality and remain “none”, without an inner core, as if an unformed piece of plasticine, amenable to any external influence.

During this period, in relations with his mother, a teenager rushes between the desire to have close, trusting relationships with her and the fear of being misunderstood and humiliated by her. In the future, in his future life, not having a stable image of the I, he will also rush in a vicious circle: strive for emotional closeness in relationships with other significant people and feel fear of the opportunity to have emotional closeness with them. He will accept and at the same time reject himself, desire and at the same time be afraid of his partner.

Most clearly this internal contradiction, which can be defined as "the desire of fear", manifests itself in the son of a man in relations with girls. Perhaps less vividly and directly, but still taking place, such a contradiction is also visible in a girl who had an ambiguous relationship with her mother during childhood, adolescence and adolescence. With all the strength of their souls, both the one and the other strive to love and be loved, but they can also actively, consciously or unconsciously, avoid close and stable relationships, experiencing incomprehensible anxiety and inexplicable fear.

How does an adult, a man or a woman, who grew up in conditions of contradictory maternal influence behave?

Overdependence. Unable to build their own image, I, a son or a daughter, as you know, can stay with my mother and live with her all my life. Wherein

consciously or unconsciously, the mother will tie them to herself, experiencing the fear of loneliness and old age, especially if it is a woman who has raised a child without a husband. Such children can make attempts to build their own life and their own family, but these attempts are often unsuccessful, and they return "under the wing" of their mother.

Tying her son or daughter to herself, the mother is supercritical of their love interests, always finding certain shortcomings in their chosen ones. Influencing her child, the mother gradually "pulls" him away from the loved one, creating in him the illusion that "he (she) can find better."

As a result, the lonely son stays with his mother, making up a kind of married couple with her. Without physical incest, such a family is a case of psychological incest. We can say that such a mother, not finding a husband among adult men, raises a husband for herself out of her son.

Overdependence on the mother can also be manifested by a daughter who returned with a child after an unsuccessful marriage to her mother or who did not marry at all. In these cases, the mother gets the opportunity to organize a kind of family, in which instead of one child (daughter), she already has two children (daughter and grandson or granddaughter). She begins to patronize and control not only her daughter, but also her child.

When the daughter returns to the parental home after the divorce, the mother begins "life anew." She again feels young and necessary, active and caring. But, unfortunately, this surge of the mother's vitality is "fed" by the daughter's vital energy, the mother, as it were, takes her life away, again becoming a family leader. And it is not always clear why the daughter could not get along with her husband and was forced to divorce: because she was initially dependent on her mother, infantile and not ready for an independent family life, or because the dominance and authoritarianism of the mother in conflict with her son-in-law did not allow her daughter to have a prosperous family?

Both the grandson and the granddaughter, who grew up in such conditions, may not have a personal life either. Affected by the lack of real experience of full-fledged female-male, love and family relationships, in which the boy gets the opportunity to "read" forms of purely male behavior, and the girl - female. A young man brought up in such a female family still has certain chances to organize his own family, if only because in Russian conditions he has a fairly wide choice due to the numerical predominance of women over men. A girl from such a "three-story" female family, who watched lonely grandmother and mother, is practically doomed to loneliness. This phenomenon is popularly defined as the "crown of celibacy".

Becoming lonely people, such grown-up children experience increased anxiety in front of the world, acutely feeling their own insecurity and vulnerability. They are tormented by fears, they are suspicious and suspicious, expecting from the people around them any unseemly actions towards themselves. Often such negative expectations are exaggerated and are not related to the real attitude of people towards them. Fears and experiences of danger make them closed, as if "withdrawn into themselves." They seek to find protection from their mother, who, as it seems to them, reliably, like a "wall", closes them from the aggressive and unpredictable outside world.

Addiction. If, however, a child, a boy or a girl who grew up with such a mother, nevertheless built his own family, there are typical for such

cases of psychological difficulties. Thus, a son often remains dependent on his mother, being physically an adult, and psychologically an immature and infantile child. Such a young man is usually called mama's boy by people. If he married a girl soft, emotional and weak in character, the older woman (mother-in-law) will retain and even increase her influence on her son. He will be guided by her opinion, ask her advice, give her money, etc.

But most often, such a son chooses a strong woman as his wife and translates a mother's position in a love relationship in order to unconsciously end his relationship with his mother. In his family, he manifests himself in contradictory and ambiguous ways: on the one hand, such men demand that they accept their male leadership, on the other hand, they really act as dependent on their wife. As a result, a woman is forced to “play along” with her husband: to pretend that he is in charge of the family, but to really make decisions, earn money, deal with family affairs, raise children, that is. be a family leader.

Unconsciously, nevertheless, experiencing pressure from the mother, such a son can “throw off” his irritation on his wife, trying to “finish building” himself with her and become an adult and mature. Such a desire is often expressed in unjustified aggression towards the wife, focus on personal self-affirmation, and even some male tyranny. The aggressiveness of such a dependent husband is often intensified by the fact that subconsciously he feels a sense of guilt towards his mother for the fact that he had to leave her for another woman - his wife.

There may be another solution to the problem - the husband's conscious acceptance of his wife's leadership. Often such men call their wife "mother", and she does not have to be older than her husband. But families in which a woman is physically and psychologically older than her husband and in which she is the leader, and he unquestioningly obeys her, are built according to the type of child-parent relationship, in which the husband acts as a “son” of his wife.

Such families are stable and stable if the wife is an active, energetic woman, shaped like an "older sister". He seeks to receive care, she - to take care. But families break up if next to an immature husband and a child there is an equally immature wife and a child. The people call such daughters mama's daughters. The infantilism of the wife is manifested in the fact that she retains her dependence on her mother, who begins to lead in the family of young spouses: to make decisions, distribute money, raise grandchildren as her children, and so on.

If a young husband strives for independence, he will fight for his family, conflict with his mother-in-law and strive to "tear" his wife from her mother. In case of success, the family will be preserved, in case of failure, the husband leaves, and the daughter and children remain with her mother.

Who is guilty? Considering the sad personal stories of lonely people, you often ask yourself: who is to blame - mother, son or daughter? Professional experience shows that this typically Russian question can be answered as follows: everyone is to blame - both the mother and the children.

the head of the family, in which her partners are a son or daughter, she acquires the illusion that she is living a family life.

Therefore, the mother makes two mistakes in life. The first mistake is that she does not know how to overcome the style of relationships she has acquired, without understanding and feeling that the incomplete family in which she grew up is more likely not a rule, but a sad exception. A mother who lives by repeating the experience learned in the parental family usually thinks like this: "My mother was a single woman and raised me without a father. And my son (daughter) will live alone (alone)." For comparison, let us give the logic of reasoning of a mother who seeks to overcome the stereotype of dysfunctional relationships in which she was brought up: "My mother was a single woman and raised me without a father. And I will be happy if my son (my daughter) has a family."

The second mistake of the mother is that she could not "release" her child, son or daughter, at that age period when they needed it. This is primarily adolescence, when a child goes through the path of personal growth, as well as the period of adolescence, when a son or daughter has his own love affections.

So, during adolescence, a mother must necessarily recognize the independence and independence of her child, despite the fact that she may experience difficult and painful experiences. At this time, mothers usually say: “I have completely ceased to obey. She does everything in her own way!” In fact, every teenager wants to be independent and independent, since such a desire is the main life task of his age development. The child will not pass this period successfully - for the rest of his life he may remain dependent and infantile.

When a son or daughter has the first love affections, the mother usually says this: "She gave him all her life, and he, ungrateful, only thinks about her!" ! ") or:" And what did he find in her !? "(" And what did she find in him ?! "). During this period, the mother does not take into account the life task of her son and daughter, who begin to go through a happy and at the same time difficult path of mastering the role of a man and a woman, in the future, respectively, as a father and mother.

You cannot be one-sided, blaming only the mother for everything, who in her motherhood is looking for a way to escape from loneliness. Of course, this search for a mother carries the features of inertia, inability to creative life and maternal egoism, but the relationship of two is always two-sided, both participants contribute to their content: both the mother and the child. It is quite justified to talk about the child's fault here.

A son or daughter entering the period of adolescence and adolescence can be accused of not fighting for themselves, for their growing up and for their independent life. In a sense, they take advantage of the mother, her vitality and experience, fearing growing up. After all, becoming an adult means taking on obligations, assimilating social norms and prohibitions, accepting the duty of love, motherhood or fatherhood. All this is hard daily work, performed not so much at will and in accordance with the principle of pleasure, but in accordance with a sense of duty and in accordance with the principle of objectively necessary.

So, a teenager striving for independence and independence must learn to communicate, understand

people, set their own goals and strive to achieve them. In addition, a teenager must understand himself, "draw" his individual psychological portrait, form his inner image of I. It is difficult, but necessary, to solve these life tasks.

A young man or girl, entering into a love relationship, should gain the experience of caring for another person, forgiveness and self-sacrifice. When a child is born, they must learn not so much to take as to give - themselves, their strength, energy and life time - to a small creature. Obviously, physically and psychologically, it is incredibly difficult to do this, and the always existing temptation to hide from life's problems "under the wing of a mother" is very great.

The guilt of a son or daughter who did not become truly adults can be briefly formulated as follows: giving up life's work and making a choice towards an easier life path, free from obligations, duty and self-sacrifice, building your life according to the principle "I want and give."

Despite the fact that outwardly such adult children live simpler and easier, without burdening themselves with worries and expenses, they "pay" for it incredibly dearly - by their rejection of their own future. Indeed, sooner or later the mother will complete her life's journey and leave her grown son (or grown daughter), and the latter will face an empty house and lonely old age.

Alas, sad fate!

1. Aleshina Yu.E. Individual and family psychological counseling. M., 1993.

2. Davydov V.V. Developmental learning theory. M., 1996.

3. Zakharov A.I. Neuroses in children and psychotherapy. SPb., 1996.

4. Romanin A.E. Basics of psychotherapy. M., 1999.

5. Rudestam K. Group psychotherapy. M., 1990.

6. Samoukina N.V. Paradoxes of love and marriage. M., 1998.

7. Stolin V.V. Self-awareness of the individual. M., 1983.

8. Fromm E. Human situation. M., 1998.

9. Chernikov A.V. An integrative model of systemic family psychotherapeutic diagnostics. M., 1997.

10. Eidemiller E.G., Yustitsky V.V. Family psychology and psychotherapy. SPb., 1998.

11. Bachofen J.J. Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 23. Das Mutterrecht. Basel, 1948.

Received by the editors 5. X 1999

source unknown