Clinical Understandings of a Mother’s Murderous Rage Towards Her Infant: A Hermeneutic Literature Review

aut.embargoNoen_NZ
aut.thirdpc.containsNoen_NZ
aut.thirdpc.permissionNoen_NZ
aut.thirdpc.removedNoen_NZ
dc.contributor.advisorSlater, Peter
dc.contributor.authorShaw, Angela Jayne
dc.date.accessioned2017-06-08T21:32:53Z
dc.date.available2017-06-08T21:32:53Z
dc.date.copyright2017
dc.date.created2017
dc.date.issued2017
dc.date.updated2017-06-07T23:35:36Z
dc.description.abstractMothers commonly experience non-acted out thoughts and feelings that are perhaps indicative of more or less conscious murderous rage towards their infants. In my training as a psychodynamic psychotherapist I have experienced difficulties in finding a way to remain with a mother’s experience of murderous rage towards her infant, in the context of both the need to ensure the safety of the infant and the mother’s fear of losing her baby. Two frequent clinical approaches to such thoughts can be identified in the literature, based in the defensive positions of devaluation and idealisation. However, if thoughts and feelings of murderous rage are understood as normative there may be a third, integrative position available for clinical practice, bringing the devaluing and idealising clinical stances together in synthesis. This research is a hermeneutic literature review. I have identified three key emergent and sequential themes: maternal ambivalence; idealisation and devaluation; and fear and anxiety. I have come to understand the dominant clinical stances as influenced by both the mother’s presentation and the clinician’s incorporation and use of primitive psychic defences operating in the socio-cultural and organisational realms. I have further explored how our clinical attitudes can evolve developmentally from the defensive positions of idealisation and devaluation towards more capacity for thought and for thinking about. I now comprehend that this will require the clinician to confront their own omnipotence, to allow them to stay with their own vulnerabilities and with the vulnerabilities of their patients. This research is of particular relevance to improved understandings of both preventative and early intervention clinical approaches, with the potential to contribute to a decrease in maternal distress and a reduction in the negative impacts on infant development.en_NZ
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10292/10531
dc.language.isoenen_NZ
dc.publisherAuckland University of Technology
dc.rights.accessrightsOpenAccess
dc.subjectPsychotherapyen_NZ
dc.subjectHermeneuticen_NZ
dc.subjectMotheren_NZ
dc.subjectInfanten_NZ
dc.subjectRageen_NZ
dc.titleClinical Understandings of a Mother’s Murderous Rage Towards Her Infant: A Hermeneutic Literature Reviewen_NZ
dc.typeDissertation
thesis.degree.grantorAuckland University of Technology
thesis.degree.levelMasters Dissertations
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Psychotherapyen_NZ
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
ShawA.pdf
Size:
1.12 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Dissertation
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
license.txt
Size:
895 B
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description: