The devouring mother and the death drive

The mother wanting the son for herself,
As an extension of itself instead of a separate being.
This is the classic devouring mother.
She punishes/guilts the independence/autonomy of the son.
Leading to the son internalizing that “Autonomy is bad and ought to be punished”.
So then that sets up the death drive,
Where there is masochism/self-punishing,
To end the self and get back to the state of fusion.

The son may adopt the adage: “If you cant beat em you join em”.
Since his mother is actively or passively against him becoming a separate individual,
He starts actively trying to merge back into fusion with the mother to the prior egoless state,
Rather than having a separate self,
Which is constantly attacked and opposed by the mother.

In reality the son’s self-attack against having an autonomous individual self,
Is preemptively done, because the mother would oppose it anyway.
So here, the son starts to do that attack to himself in a controlled way,
Which is an internalization of the mother’s attitude towards his self/independence.
The over-attached/possessive/protective mother is clinging on to her son,
Expecting him to be a nobody and act as its slave.
This may be totally unsaid and well hidden,
But the mother’s behavior will show it.

So the son is guilted and threatened about this time and again,
That he ought to be the slave of his mother, but is acting independent.
His independence is actively attacked and discouraged and even threatened by the mother.
She threatens him that “he is not strong enough and will die if she withdraws her support, and that he better be her slave instead”.
That is why later the son is attracted to dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists etc.
All of whom who use him,
Which is basically the repressed anger of his mother against him,
Which he has internalized,
And projected onto the dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists.
The dominator/abuser/manipulator/narcissist is openly punishing,
Which represents the same unconscious relationship the mother has towards the son’s becoming a separate self.
The son via. the projection of the vengeant-sadist aspects to the dominators,
Gets to keep his mother image pure as being the caring positive mother.
The mother also may keep gaslighting the son and reinforcing that whatever he sees in her is all good only.

This anger of his mother is essentially against him becoming an independent self,
I.e. him betraying her, and leaving the state of fusion, and the state of being an unconditional helpless slave,
Is then internalized, repressed (made unconscious), and then projected as a punishing world that wants to destroy him.
Because it is much more scary for the son to see his only care-taking figure as the devil.
So he would rather make the whole world the devil and keep the mother pure.

This sets up the death drive, where the son is constantly trying to escape himself or destroy himself,
Constantly trying to escape the terror of being himself.
Because he is expecting the brutal attack of his mother for being autonomous.
So the only action of his self is to destruct itself, masochism essentially.
Be it through attracting abusive partners or by self-inflicted harm/abuse,
OR by consuming intoxicants constantly to drown out the awareness of the self as much as possible.
His mother only wanted a slave, an extension of herself, and did not want “him”, and would have killed him as a baby if he were to express himself in his true individuality.
So this is the primary trauma, of the fear of the wrath and punishment of the mother who would have killed him because she never wanted “him” per se.
So then the son/child escapes this by developing an ego that is on the mother’s side.
His own ego is against his self, just like his mother was against his self.
So the ego formed for the son is inherently self-destructive and antagonistic to itself,
And only attracts destructive forces to itself.
That was the very way it was formed,
Because of identification with a mother who never wanted him in reality.

Neglect compounds this, because neglect simply implies the mother is not interested in the independent self of the son at all.
Neglect then is an expression of unconscious hostility on the part of the mother.
It also clearly conveys the intention of the mother to not have her son individuate at all and remain in fusion with her.

The message of the devouring mother is “I will take care of you, but never leave me, if you leave me, you have betrayed me, and will face my wrath”.
So then the mother has instilled the need, fear, and guilt of:
“The outside world will kill you, you will not survive without me, you need me.”
“Also never become anything other than what I want you to be, else I will be very angry at you, and punish/abandon you for that.”
So then the son may internalize this mother’s message and project this out to his world view itself.
He will see the world itself as being a bad hostile evil place that is best abandoned.
He thinks: “It is better to not invest in the bad world at all (this also means the very act of having a self is seen as bad, because it is investing in the world that creates a self in the first place).”

So the son actively keeps attacking his own self, independence, autonomy, and sabotaging himself,
Where all his decisions serve the death drive (his own wish to end the self and return to fusion) and he therefor attracts only destructive forces to himself,
Including addictions to abusive people/narcissists/sadists/self-harming/painful information/bad news OR to intoxicants that will eventually kill him.
The intoxicants may also help him escape by numbing the awareness of sense of autonomous self itself – by fusing him into the intoxication-state as long as it lasts, which makes him repeat that again and again.

This may also lead him into the spiritual paths of self-abandonment and surrender.
Where he justifies all his self-destructive actions as the ending of his own ego and reaching god.
The son cannot pursue his own self interests, because that would mean betraying the mother and incurring her wrath and punishment.
The son also cannot become a pure slave to the mother, because that slavery feels unbearable.
So this constant suffering with no remedy makes him look for every single escape/relief/or source of pleasure he possibly can, to make living bearable – this may include an attraction and/or addiction to porn, intoxicants, and various forms of dissociation etc.
This is the inner turmoil, double bind, the archetypal struggle,
Of becoming an individual and separating from the mother.

If the father figure is absent or self-absorbed in dealing with his own suffering,
And if the mother figure is also wounded and dependent herself,
Then the only identification left is with the mother, because the father has not invested in you.
The only option then is to identify with the mother who does not want you,
And this is the classic death drive setup.
Because you would then treat yourself the same way your mother treated you,
Which is to invalidate/neglect/abuse/gaslight/deceive/sidetrack etc.

So then you are trapped in a place where you don’t belong,
For too long a time with no escape.
And there is no help from the father, he is unavailable for you,
And neither is the mother helping you in any way because she herself is dependent and in her own grief.
And add to that the mother also has the unconscious agenda to have you not separate from her,
Which is why she may never nurture your independence and keep treating you like a helpless baby,
Because in truth she wants you to remain helpless so that she has something to do (so that she can fulfill her own narcissistic needs for purpose, esteem, usefulness through serving you).
The mother will then go around telling others “Oh my son needs me, he cannot manage without me”.
That is a truth that she herself has engineered,
Where she wants to maintain you as such.

Parenting possibilities

The different parent project types:
# Parents having vain projects (going nowhere, dead end) of their own.
Like eddies, going in circles, cyclical, virus like, dog chasing its own tail, neurotic + trying to draw you into that.
# Parents having successful projects (going somewhere in society, some vision, some longer term ideal etc.) of their own + trying to draw you into that.

Broadly speaking, here are the aspects:

1. Parents Recognizing The Independence Of The Child:
Positive parenting:
* 2 parents recognize the independence and support the independence of child.
Neutral parenting:
* 2 parents recognize the independence but do not support the child.

2. Parents Not Recognizing Independence Of The Child (purposely/unconsciously)
Treating the child like it is their product like their smartphone, designed to serve them, and they believe the child must be shaped as such.
Negative parenting:
* 2 parents trying to push their child in a common progressive project/direction they are already tuned into.
* 2 parents trying to push their child in a common vain direction they are already tuned into.
* 2 parents trying to push their child in different progressive directions, but tearing their child apart by the pulling. Here the child could choose any one path, but will disappoint the other parent.
* 2 parents trying to push their child in different vain directions, and tearing the child apart, uselessly. So in this case the child can take after neither parent and must find its own path, and end up disappointing both parents.

The unspeakable torture possible from the mother

This is to speak about a case where the mother clings to the infant stage of the child’s growth, and actively and violently opposes its development and independence beyond that stage, so as to keep getting great narcissistic supplies from the child of “adoration/respect/desirability/admiration/grandiosity/greatness/praise” and enjoy a god like feeling of power and omnipotence in comparison to the child.

Remember, all power is relative.
So the power differential between the infant and the mother is the greatest possible difference.
The mother can get instantly addicted to THIS level of narcissistic supply from the child, and this will esp. happen if the mother did not have any life of her own and had a dependent personality before the event of child birth.
Once deeply addicted to this care-giving and protecting role, the mother may actively oppose the child’s independence, be hostile to the developing child beyond the age of 2 itself.
The mother can actively reinforce the dependence again and again ad infinitum, conveying that “you need me, you cannot live without me” in a million ways said and unsaid.
Such a mother focuses the child only on itself, and the child sacrifices its own self-awareness to please the mother developing codependence.
Really after all the origins of codependence is the narcissistic parent who purposely enforces dependence in subliminal, indirect, and direct ways, and actively opposes the child’s developing separation and independence, so that they can have an endless source of narcissistic supply and meaning from the child.
Often they also cleverly hide it by programming the child to believe, it was its own choice to be that way, and that it can’t help it.
They may even keep telling the neighbors and friends things like “my child needs me for everything, they are such a burden, I keep telling them to do things by themselves, but they keep coming back to me, what can I do?!”
This is just the narcissists game.
This is a microcosmic version of the game of training a slave to believe that he is actually not a slave, but is choosing from his free will.
It all starts at this level.

Just like doctors who save patients are considered to be doing a divine profession higher in value and weight than most other professions, mothers are given this kind of deification and supreme value too.
So a mother can exploit this for a long time, by actively working to keep the child dependent on her and opposing the child’s development/independence in every crooked, unspeakable mystical way possible.
I can elaborate on all those psychic techniques but that may detract from the main points I want to convey in this post.

This can be experienced as extreme suffocation, stifling, and pain, for the child.
But since it is programmed to idolize the mother, it can never imagine going against the mother.
So it condemns itself, and thinks it is the real problem, and the god-like omnipotent mother is always right.
It thinks if it is pained by the mother, it is because, it is defective and needs to be fixed.
And later in life this may slide to depression if it loses all hope after trying out everything and failing.
In truth, this whole thing was really engineered and transmitted from the mother herself.
In the progression of this myth, from this child’s point of view, total powerlessness and despair and depression is an EXPECTED stage that has to be passed.

The mother’s relationship has to keep evolving as the child evolves/grows/matures/separates/independent-izes itself.
So for different people this happens at different times, depending upon the stage of development the mother herself is in.
If the mother herself identifies with being a helpless infant, then she resonates with the child only at that stage, and the child cannot grow beyond that, because it directly faces the threat of losing resonance with the mother.
So the child is then forced to stay infantile even in its later years.
It may be successful in society, but internally its egoic climate is still at the level of the infant only.
So the child may find himself/herself as helpless, powerless, at the mercy of circumstances, unable to establish any identity, and constantly wandering aimlessly.
It may find itself as hyper-sensitive, easily hynotizable and living in a dream-like feeling all the time, and many other such feelings.
It becomes like a Bonsai(miniature) tree, that has grown but not been allowed to grow at the same time.
Often, the child may feel this as a global feeling of being trapped in an incredibly oppressive world, and may become apathetic and depressed from the impossible struggle it would take to change anything in its favor.
Really, this projection of such a tyrannical world, has its roots in the tyrannical mother herself, because it was the mother who was tyrannical in the sense of opposing the child’s independence, and that is later felt by the child as a tyrannical world view itself.

What I speak about here is of unspeakable depth.
Things far less deep, are spoken about so much in society, as so called deep issues.
Real power is always invisible, and the power that is visible is always much lower.
For example here, the mother-child bond is done in secrecy, in the darkness, in great trust.
Nobody ever questions it, and you are shamed even if remotely begin to investigate.
This is a giant taboo in society, because any questioning of it breaks its supremely sanctified and sacred status.
My point is, great wonders and horrors can happen at this stage, at intensities even beyond the most powerful psychedelics.

There has always been extensive talk in society about abusive husbands etc.
Imagine a hyper-possessive husband who keeps his wife like his possession and pet, and pleases her when he wants, beats her up when he wants.
Basically keeps her like his trophy wife, seals her from the outer world, prevents her from having any life outside of him, and controls her like a pleasure-giving slave.
Does this horrify you?
Now, this example I gave above is a weak analogue of the mother-infant situation I describe.
Think about it: What is power? Isn’t all what we call power, a relative concept?
The relativity comes from the power difference.
What is the difference of power between this man and woman living as husband and wife?
And compare that to the difference between a mother (say aged 25+) and an infant(age 0-2)?
The mother for the infant is like an omnipotent god-like being and giant.
But you know what, society will speak endlessly about male violence against women etc.
And this mother-infant dyad, is shrouded, kept under wraps and wraps, sanctified, deified, and any torture that you faced here gets buried as YOUR shame, unspeakable shame of phenomenal intensity.

My point here is not to entirely blame the mother.
The mother herself maybe unconscious of her real power, and how much she affects the infant (the other developing being).
I might have pushed some buttons in this article, but this is in the interest of really looking into this territory of deep psyche experience.
Even if you are a woman, you were also brought up by your mother, so this is not gender-specific.
The purpose of this article, is to illuminate this realm, and to awaken people to it so that they can heal themselves and gain their own insights about their own deep psyche.