Elizabeth Fox
MIT, USA
Andre Green, "The Dead Mother," and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers
To extend work I will have presented at other conferences, I propose to use Andre Green's article, "The Dead Mother" (1980) to consider the dynamics between Gertrude and Paul Morel. Green's suggestion of a Dead Mother Complex takes for its name the case of a mother who is psychically dead. She withdraws attention from her child because she is "bereaved" by her own losses, physical or psychical. Not only do Gertrude and Paul fit the initial scenario envisioned in the theory; but Paul's inability to love, his "blank anxiety" (Green's term), and his difficulties progressing in life also parallel symptoms in the complex. Green analyzes the child's initial withdrawal of love and a mirror identification with a "Dead Mother": I propose to discuss Paul's behavior in term of these first defenses and a second set that Green proposes. Green draws on the theories of Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Kohut, and Lacan, among others; I hope to integrate some of the psychoanalytic approaches to the novel by using Green's theory.