The Mother's Hands: Desire, Fantasy and the Inheritance of the Maternal EPUB

In this book the bestselling author and psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati offers a fundamental re-examination of what being a mother means today, in a world where new social and sexual freedoms mean that motherhood is no longer the sole destiny of women. Questioning the belief that a mother s love is natural and unconditional, he paints a more complex and troubling picture of the mother child relationship, observing that mothers may even resent their children as a result of unresolved conflicts between different dimensions of love. The mother s hands not only nurture but can also potentially harm. Recalcati argues that it is precisely in these competing demands that motherhood fulfils its function: only if the mother is not-all-mother can a child experience the absence that enables it to access the symbolic and cultural world.

Recalcati cuts through conventional wisdom to offer a fresh perspective on the changing nature of motherhood today. An international bestseller, this book will appeal to a wide general readership, as well as to students and scholars of gender studies, psychoanalysis and related disciplines.