“Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself—a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the Mothers.”
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
A boy with a devouring mother and absent father is at maximum risk of developing a negative mother complex. To understand what a negative mother complex is, we must briefly review what we have covered in preceding chapters.
The early symbiotic bond between mother and infant is profoundly intense. For the boy, the psychological challenge lies in separating from this bond of dependency in order to forge an independent masculine identity. This process is rarely smooth. Throughout childhood and adolescence, a boy is caught between two opposing forces: the call to grow into manhood and the seductive pull of regression. Thomas Gregor described the pull of regression as the yearning to take “the path back to fusion with the mother and the pleasures of infancy” (Thomas Gregor, Anxious Pleasures). While Carl Jung referred to it as “…the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious” (Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation).
If a boy is supported by a present and committed father, or initiated through a meaningful rite of passage, he may overcome his regressive yearnings and begin the journey toward mature manhood. But when he lacks cultural support, and when his father is absent and mother devouring, these regressive yearnings tend to persist in his psyche, follow him into adulthood, and consolidate into what is known as a negative mother complex.
A complex is simply a group of psychological contents which aggregate together and operate beyond the control of the ego, or as Carl Jung writes “Complexes are autonomous groups of associations that have a tendency to move by themselves, to live their own life apart from our intentions” (Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 18). Alternatively, Jung suggested that a complex can be viewed as sub-personality, or as put it: “Complexes indeed behave like secondary or partial personalities in possession of a mental life of their own” (Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion).
Many of us are familiar with individuals who have an inferiority complex or a power complex. In such cases, the individual’s feelings of inferiority or desire for power overwhelm the individual and make them act in ways that are contrary to their well-being. In the case of a man with a negative mother complex, psychological contents related to his desire to remain dependent on a maternal figure and to regress psychologically, group together in the unconscious and form a secondary personality which prevents him from maturing and developing his masculinity. Or as Anthony Stevens observed:
“A son trapped in this position cannot break free. Psychologically speaking, he is locked in the mother, devoured by his mother complex.”
Anthony Stevens, Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self
In this chapter, we turn to mythology to shine a light on some of the regressive energies which compose a negative mother complex. For the negative mother complex is not a modern affliction – it has been an ever-present threat to men since time immemorial. Across cultures and epochs, the negative mother complex has been symbolized in myth through the motif of the Terrible Mother, which Erich Neumann described as the motif of “the Great Mother and her dominance over the son-lover” (Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness). In different myths, the Terrible Mother assumes different forms, yet in all myths she is a destroyer of men. She is the archetypal symbol par excellence of the negative mother complex and hence of the regressive psychological forces that attack and weaken a man from within.
In this video we will explore various myths that reveal the power of the Terrible Mother and we examine how these myths are symbolic of the regressive unconscious forces that afflict the man with a negative mother complex.
“…myths represent psychological facts…myths actually represent typical [psychological] phenomena.”
Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 8
In The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann explains the connection between the mythological Terrible Mother and the negative mother complex.
“The Terrible Mother, the all-inclusive symbol of this devouring aspect of the unconscious, is therefore the Great Mother of all monsters. All dangerous affects and impulses, all the evils which come up from the unconscious and overwhelm the ego with their dynamism, are her progeny…When one knows how the Terrible Mother wreaks her vengeance in the myths, one can see [that]….in every case the central fact is…the overpowering of the ego by subterranean [i.e., unconscious] forces.”
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Conscious
In certain myths, the Terrible Mother destroys men with her devouring womb and castrating vagina. A vivid example is Medusa. With serpents writhing from her head and tusks reminiscent of a wild boar, Medusa embodies the archetype of the vagina dentata – the toothed vagina.
The vagina dentata is a universal symbol that is found in stories and myths in tribes and cultures all over the world. The anthropologist David Gilmore described this symbol as “the saw-toothed orifice that waits to mutilate the male” (David Gilmore, The Male Malady). While Norman O. Brown referred to it as “the vagina as a devouring mouth.”
These universal symbols were given visual form in the paintings Christ in Limbo by Hieronymus Bosch and Death Mouth by Zdzisław Beksiński. In these paintings adults scramble into a monstrous head with a gaping, tooth-lined mouth, i.e., the toothed vagina. They are entering the devouring womb. Or as Erich Neumann explains:
“The snapping–i.e., castrating—womb appears as the jaws of hell, and the serpents writhing round the Medusa’s head are not personalistic—pubic hairs—but aggressive phallic elements characterizing the fearful aspect of the womb…She threatens the ego with the danger of self-noughting, of self-loss —in other words, with death and castration…Among the symbols of the devouring chasm we must count the womb in its frightening aspect, the numinous heads of the Gorgon and the Medusa…and the male-eating spider…The open womb is the devouring symbol of the Terrible Mother.”
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness
While repulsive, the universality of this mythological motif points to its importance. For in psychological terms, the vagina dentata and devouring womb of the Terrible Mother are symbolic of the unconscious regressive forces which motivate a man to evade the responsibilities, demands, challenges, sufferings, conflicts and difficulties of life, in favor of returning to the womb.
“…he hopes to be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured. He seeks, as it were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, the condition of the infant released from every care…No wonder the real world vanishes from sight!”
Carl Jung, Aion
Or as James Hollis writes:
“One cannot overemphasize the power of this dreadful longing for the womb; sustaining the consciousness to counter it is immensely painful.”
James Hollis Under Saturn’s Shadow
Of course, to return to the physical womb is impossible, and so a man with a negative mother complex tries to satiate his regressive yearning via what Erich Fromm called a “symbiotic fixation to the mother”. This involves remaining pathologically dependent on the mother well into adulthood. Or as Fromm explains:
“…the symbiotic fixation we are discussing here [is] the wish of being loved like an infant, losing all one’s independence, being a suckling again, or even being in mother’s womb…it is a desire to lose completely one’s individuality, to become one again with nature. It follows that this deep regressive desire conflicts with the wish to live. To be in the womb is to be removed from life.”
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
A symbiotic fixation to the mother may lead one man to live in his mother’s house (a symbolic womb) well into adulthood, intentionally avoiding financial independence so that he can justify his regressive behavior by telling himself, and others, that he is being financially prudent. Another man may leave his mother’s house yet remain close by (in the womb of his childhood neighborhood), so that he can return to his mother for frequent visits and be at her beck and call. Another man may live physically apart from his mother yet still talk to her every day, share all the intimate details of his life with her, and rarely make a decision without first consulting her.
Regardless of the form it takes, a symbiotic fixation to the mother leads to the same outcome: the man remains stalled in his development, unable to move toward autonomy and mature individuality. Instead, he is pulled backwards into the symbolic womb by the regressive forces of the negative mother complex. And if the mother is of the devouring type, she will actively reinforce her son’s womb-seeking behavior by rewarding it with affection, attention, and financial support. Or as Carl Jung explained:
“If this situation is dramatized…then there appears before you on the psychological stage a man living regressively, seeking his childhood and his mother, fleeing from a cold cruel world which denies him understanding. Often a mother appears beside him who apparently shows not the slightest concern that her little son should become a man, but who, with tireless and self-immolating effort, neglects nothing that might hinder him from growing up and marrying. You behold the secret conspiracy between mother and son, and how each helps the other to betray life.”
Carl Jung, Aion
