Freud, in his text on narcissism, deconstructs the idea of an unconditional love of parents for their children. He states that Such love is nothing more than the narcissism of the parents reborn . To see oneself in a new being that we have made, to see an improved version of ourselves, to wish that he would accomplish and be what we cannot be.
The experience of motherhood seems to play all the time, in fact, with our narcissism; both inflating and injuring.
It inflates when we look at that cute, chubby, hot little being, that little being that everyone drools over, a true magnet of love and owlishness of family, close friends and, why not, strangers as well.
But it seems to me that the feeling that makes us more powerful, invincible, incredible is that of being able to calm a cry with just our voice. Realize that your baby who cries desperately, when he hears your voice, calms down. Feeling that when you pick him up crying, he nestles on your chest and the crying stops. Feeling that he completely relaxes when he sleeps on your chest, listening to your heart, much more than in any crib or stroller. Nothing more delicious, nothing more powerful, nothing more narcissistic. To some extent, we have become too Her Majesty the Mother and His majesty the Father .
I calm you down, I solve your discomfort, I support you in your despair. I'm the one who can do that for you. I am everything to you. You are everything to me. We actually make one, fused, glued. I can almost see an invisible membrane encompassing us, uniting us.
But then, the dawn comes, comes the crying that we don't decipher, we exhaust our checklist and our arsenal of tricks and distractions. The crying is desperate, it echoes in our brains and hearts. What do you mean, I'm everything to you, who solve your discomforts, who support you, I don't know exactly what you need? What do you mean you keep crying? A real coup. We lost the position of majesties.
We fall into this place of not knowing, into this place also of a certain helplessness. And it hurts, because we are then helpless together with this being who cries helplessly and who only has us.
Not knowing. Accept not knowing. To try and to make mistakes, to try and to get it right. Because it soon passes. And soon we became Majesties again. Until another indecipherable cry comes and strikes our narcissism squarely.
