Overview

Personal and Cultural Shadows of Late Motherhood explores the topic of delayed motherhood from a Jungian psychoanalytic perspective, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including interview transcripts, diaries, dreams, and Jung's world renowned Word Association Experiment. It provides a unique contribution to our understanding of the pressures faced by women today on the topic of delayed motherhood. We may consider an affect to be in place when a woman allows her relationship to her body and its procreative capacity to slip away from consciousness, only to awaken at a point when redeeming her past choices becomes a hunger. This book delves into personal, cultural and collective spheres of influence that have been split off waiting for the right moment to reintegrate. Working with Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and Jung’s Word Association Experiment, the author identifies aspects of the psyche arousing late procreative desire and considers the differing accounts of maternal and paternal parents, within affective experience of growing up female beside a male sibling. The book examines women’s procreative identity in midlife, identifies complexes of a personal, cultural and collective nature and considers how the role of mother is psychosocially performed, taking in feminist psychoanalytical thinking as well as Queer theory to explore new meanings for late motherhood. This book will be of great interest to clinicians, researchers, academics, postgraduate students of Jungian psychoanalysis, gender theory, psychosocial studies, and those travelling alongside a woman's journey into later motherhood.

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9781138349766

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Through this innovative study, Dr. Barone-Chapman explores the unconscious processes that necessitate a shift in midlife for women to seek a procreative identity. Psychosocial aspects of delayed motherhood are thoroughly researched through related literature, particularly the evidence of a historical patriarchal bias towards women, in psychoanalysis. Transforming Jung's Word Association Experiment (WAE) into a key feminist research methodology for accessing personal, cultural, and collective intergenerational complexes within delayed motherhood, Dr. Barone-Chapman revitalizes and modernizes Jung's important research tool for examining unconscious complexes and their symptomatology. This book makes an important contribution to feminist post-Jungian studies and will be an invaluable resource in furthering interdisciplinary studies into motherhood, psychoanalysis, and WAE. --Elizabeth Brodersen, PhD, Accredited Training Analyst and Supervisor, CGJI Zurich. Author, Taboo: Personal and Collective Representations, Origin and Positioning within Cultural Complexes (2019) Maryann Barone-Chapman has written a fascinating book about delayed motherhood, including (as she says) its idealization, denigration, avoidance, and ambivalence, in psychological significance. From the personal to the archetypal, and from the literal to the symbolic, the meanings associated with delayed reproduction in women are compelling. Barone-Chapman has covered them all. Postponing childbirth and being able to become pregnant through new bio-technical means have implications for women all over the planet, but especially for those who are educated, and determined to lead their own lives. If you are a woman considering your own reproductive possibilities, or a clinician treating women struggling with infertility, indecision, and/or fear of decision-making, this book will help you see the complexity of women's newfound autonomy. I very much appreciated the depth of Barone-Chapman's inquiry and her desire to see motherhood in a new register. --Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Author, Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path This important book demonstrates the unconscious complexities of late motherhood, moving beyond any blame game towards a far-reaching understanding of the situation facing an increasing number of women today. Highly recommended. --Valerie Walkderdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University Barone-Chapman majestically invites us to rethink what a mother complex is. Her research into the layers of a woman's decision to wait until midlife to become a mother reveals how consciousness grows from frustration and conflicts suffered with a trickster's ability to turn double binds around. This ground-breaking work points to the happy surprise of a child who can recognize how much more there is in the mother when women dream their agency forward to generate lives that are genuinely chosen. --John Beebe, M.D., past president, C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Author, Integrity in Depth

Through this innovative study, Dr. Barone-Chapman explores the unconscious processes that necessitate a shift in midlife for women to seek a procreative identity. Psychosocial aspects of delayed motherhood are thoroughly researched through related literature, particularly the evidence of a historical patriarchal bias towards women, in psychoanalysis. Transforming Jung's Word Association Experiment (WAE) into a key feminist research methodology for accessing personal, cultural, and collective intergenerational complexes within delayed motherhood, Dr. Barone-Chapman revitalizes and modernizes Jung's important research tool for examining unconscious complexes and their symptomology. This book makes an important contribution to feminist post-Jungian studies and will be an invaluable resource in furthering interdisciplinary studies into motherhood, psychoanalysis, and WAE. --Elizabeth Brodersen, PhD, Accredited Training Analyst and Supervisor, CGJI Zurich. Author, Taboo: Personal and Collective Representations, Origin and Positioning within Cultural Complexes (2019) Maryann Barone-Chapman has written a fascinating book about delayed motherhood, including (as she says) its idealization, denigration, avoidance, and ambivalence, in psychological significance. From the personal to the archetypal, and from the literal to the symbolic, the meanings associated with delayed reproduction in women are compelling. Barone-Chapman has covered them all. Postponing childbirth and being able to become pregnant through new bio-technical means have implications for women all over the planet, but especially for those who are educated, and determined to lead their own lives. If you are a woman considering your own reproductive possibilities, or a clinician treating women struggling with infertility, indecision, and/or fear of decision-making, this book will help you see the complexity of women's newfound autonomy. I very much appreciated the depth of Barone-Chapman's inquiry and her desire to see motherhood in a new register. --Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Author, Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path This important book demonstrates the unconscious complexities of late motherhood, moving beyond any blame game towards a far-reaching understanding of the situation facing an increasing number of women today. Highly recommended. --Valerie Walkderdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University Barone-Chapman majestically invites us to rethink what a mother complex is. Her research into the layers of a woman's decision to wait until midlife to become a mother reveals how consciousness grows from frustration and conflicts suffered with a trickster's ability to turn double binds around. This ground-breaking work points to the happy surprise of a child who can recognize how much more there is in the mother when women dream their agency forward to generate lives that are genuinely chosen. --John Beebe, M.D., past president, C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Author, Integrity in Depth

Author Information

Maryann Barone-Chapman, Ph.D., is a Jungian Analyst, Supervisor and Professional Member of the Association of Jungian Analysts in London. Her interest in female development lead her to research personal, cultural and collective complexes of delayed motherhood at Cardiff University’s School of Social Science. Her published works have appeared in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, Behavioral Science, Feminism and Psychology, Quadrant, and edited volumes on Jungian psychology published by Routledge.

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