This post is inspired by the graphic memoir Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel (2012). The image is from her book and is for nonprofit educational use only.
Last summer I decided to start seeing a therapist for the first time in my life. Before that time, I had never even contemplated it. Everything in my life always seemed in control, my happiness, my sadness, my guilt, my anger. It was all manageable. I considered myself a pretty “happy” person. I always had my sh*t together. Until one day, I realized I didn’t.
During the second to last session with my therapist, she recommended Are You My Mother? to me. She knew I had a complicated and at times painful relationship with my mother. In this graphic memoir, author Alison Bechdel rips open the curtains to her own lifelong drama with the mamma, using her personal therapy sessions as windows into the relationship.
The book covers so many layers of psychology and mother-daughter issues, and in such a unique and raw way, that it would be useless for me to try to summarize here. If you’re looking for some insight into either of these themes, read this book. I didn’t find it completely mind-blowing, but it is soul stirring in a way that is rare.
Bechdel refers to the ideas of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott often throughout her novel. One of Winnicott’s major contributions to the field was his concept of “true self” vs “false self.” Through his work with patients, often children, he began to understand the crucial role of the parent, especially the mother, in the development of a person’s sense of self — a process which begins in infancy.
According to Winnicott, if the baby is able to act in a spontaneous way and consistently receive the reassuring love and acceptance of her mother, she will develop confidence and feel safe to express her feelings and wants without inhibition. On the other hand, if the mother is unable to do this, due to death, too-soon birth of another child, or depression/personal preoccupations, the infant will learn to develop a false self which “complies” with those around him. By not taking on the risk of being “true” and spontaneous, the child attempts to protect himself from an environment that he feels is unsafe or overwhelming.
Can anyone relate? I can.
It seems that this protective layer of falsity only gets reinforced as we get older. The message that it is unsafe or undesirable to be just as we are invades our minds from all directions, from education to advertising to film. Most of us are taught that the proper way to act in life is to please our parents, teachers, bosses, and country by doing X, Y, and Z.
When are we taught to develop our true self? When are we told that we are unique individuals with our own gifts and contributions to make to society? When do we feel safe to be utterly spontaneously and wildly creative?
It is only now, at the ripe age of 28, that I am creating the conditions for myself to develop in this true way. It is only now that I am learning to give myself unlimited permission to do the things that I feel like doing, without considering who it pleases or does not.
It feels great, but it still saddens me to think of how much time I’ve wasted. How much time others are still wasting. I know, I know….it’s all part of the journey.
Bechdel also goes through a transformational journey in this book. I believe it revolves around learning to forgive her mother. She describes the “vital core” of Winnicott’s theory as follows:
The subject must destroy the object. And the object must survive this destruction. If the object doesn’t survive, it will remain internal, a projection of the subject’s self. If the object survives destruction, the subject can see it as separate.
By the end of her graphic novel, Bechdel proclaims that she has at last destroyed her mother, and her mother has survived her destruction. In her final pages she writes:
There was a certain thing I did not get from my mother. There is a lack, a gap, a void. But in its place, she has given me something else. Something, I would argue, that is far more valuable. She has given me the way out.