The Seba library treats Mockery in 4 passages, across 3 authors (including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Berry, Patricia, Douglas L. Cairns).
I know of a mother who completely lamed her son by her witty tongue. Every time he wanted to assert his masculinity and be enterprising, she would make a little mocking remark which killed all his elan and made him look ridiculous.
Von Franz argues that maternal mockery is a primary psychodynamic mechanism by which the negative mother complex arrests the development of masculine agency and heroic initiative in the puer aeternus.
, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, 1970thesis
by which it can be done is through mockery. I know of a mother who completely lamed her son by her witty tongue. Every time he wanted to assert his masculinity and be enterprising, she would make a little mocking remark which killed all his elan.
This parallel passage confirms von Franz’s thesis that mockery, specifically the wittily dismissive maternal voice, is structurally destructive to masculine individuation and is why primitive male initiations exclude women.
, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, 1970thesis
There is the scene where Hamlet, reading from a book, uses the text as pretext for his mockery of Polonius.
Berry identifies mockery in Hamlet as an intellectually mediated act — the written word deployed as instrument of satirical deflation — revealing mockery’s role in the play’s broader economy of language, power, and psychological displacement.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
concern for the status of herself and her family is combined with fear of mockery, the obligation to show gratitude, and other, practical considerations relating to the quality of life Macaria and her family could expect.
Cairns demonstrates that in Euripidean ethics, fear of mockery functions as a constitutive social pressure structuring self-sacrificial decisions, showing mockery’s integration into the Greek shame-honour complex.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting