The female guilt: Is it always the mother’s fault?
updated the 14 July 2015 à 18:34We often blame the mother to find an answer to our neurosis. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t forget the father, another essential figure in our childhood.
The mother is the easy target to blame. As soon as there is a problem of scoliosis or neurosis, we blame the mother. She gave birth, so she has to manage. According to psychoanalyst Virginia Megglé, it’s time to rectify this: “We always implicate the mother, but it is not because she carried the child that she is the all-powerful person. The mom also transmits the paternal lineage.”Forgetting that the father is a key person in our creation only aids in that assumption. In doing so, we create the guilty feeling from mother to daughter. In the equation, once again, we forget that the father plays a role for his daughter. “Behind a strong guilty feeling, there is always an authoritarian education, a parental projection of frustrated ambitions and a requirement of perfection. The child will feel guilty of not being the ideal child,” explains Virginia Megglé.
“You can do better… Stuck under the weight of perfectionism and orders, we have many difficulties in taking control of our life. Moreover, we no longer have a single free hand by wanting to be at the same time a great girlfriend, a great mama and a great manager! It is not any more about having one of the qualities of Bionic Woman, but being Bionic Woman or nothing.” “To do things properly, I would have to do…”,”But who do you think you are?” These are the horrors that in secret eat away at our self-confidence as soon as we dare to launch ourselves into something. Thank you mom, thank you dad. And thanks you other adult referents who preach us from morning till night: “don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t say this, say that, it is bad to… ”
Read more from our ‘Guilt‘ report:
We were born guilty, but guilty of what?
Is there anything good about feeling guilty?
Test your guilt
Testimonies: I depreciate myself all the time
Grégoire Provost
