Mother Imago

The mother imago is the internal psychic image of the mother — the composite, affectively charged representation built from the actual maternal figure, the archetypal pattern of the mother, and the particular affective history of the mother-child dyad. The distinction between the imago and the actual mother is technical and consequential: the adult’s relation to the imago is not straightforwardly the relation to the historical person.

The concept belongs to the Jungian theory of the complex: every parental complex has at its core an imago, composed in part of biography and in part of archetype, around which the affective charge organizes itself. The mother complex operates through the mother imago — which is why its transformation in analysis cannot be achieved simply by revising the memory of the historical mother but must engage the archetypal material the imago carries. The imago’s archetypal ground — the mother archetype itself, with its Great Mother and devouring polarities — is what gives the mother imago its transpersonal charge. See mother-complex and mother-archetype.

Relationships

• mother-archetype
• mother-complex
• imago