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The bond between a mother and child is thought to be sacred. It is a phenomenon that society seems to expect as axiomatic based on the single biological fact that a woman carries her child, creating an inseparable bond; even for non-biological mothers, the bond is perceived as one of supreme importance. What happens to the mother and to the child, if this sacred bond is broken? The intent of this thesis was to focus on the perceived bond between mother and child and turn it on its head. As a work of fiction, Pretend Land is a series of interrelated short stories about a young woman named Dalia and her issues of abandonment and consequent coping mechanisms. My goal was to explore the effects of mother/child separation through the vehicle of storytelling and create a tale that would allow an honest narrative, not to prove one thing or another, but to finally bring a story to the forefront about an absent mother and the child she left behind.

This research focused primarily on exploring the talk of mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa, paying specific attention to their emic perceptions of the underlying causes of Anorexia Nervosa. The research sought to reveal the discourses underpinning participants talk. Further, the way in which these discourses serve to construct Anorexia Nervosa in particular ways as well as the function these discourses serve were explored. This study is qualitative and exploratory in design and provides a unique understanding of Anorexia Nervosa in the form of emic accounts gleaned from mothers' own experiences. The findings of this research suggest that mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa primarily reproduce a discourse on the causality of Anorexia Nervosa that is family or biomedically focused. Through analysis of the discourses embedded in participants’ talk, it became evident that participants reproduce discourses of gender and femininity and are influenced by societal pressure as well as the constructions of womanhood and motherhood. Insight into a side of the mother of the Anorectic, often concealed in the literature, was revealed through a semi-structured interview process with nine urban, middle-class, white South African mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa. Interviews were then transcribed and analysed according to Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis. Incorporating the silenced voices of mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa appears to have allowed for the emergence of a more generous view of the mother and has contributed to a larger set of discursive repertoires through which to understand Anorexia Nervosa. This research further gave rise to the realisation of a need for a critical education program whereby taken for granted notions can be revealed and actively engaged. This program would ideally seek to free the anorexic woman as well as the mother from the constraints of the uncritically constructed conceptualisations of Anorexia Nervosa and femininity.

Submitted by Nara Lays Domingues Viana Oliveira (naradv) on 2015-07-07T14:42:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RositaEstevesPsico.pdf: 4589927 bytes, checksum: 1571c9cace25a7d8e1598aa32bf7c141 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-07T14:42:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RositaEstevesPsico.pdf: 4589927 bytes, checksum: 1571c9cace25a7d8e1598aa32bf7c141 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-12-21 / Nenhuma / Este estudo buscou analisar e compreender como se apresenta a imagem do corpo em jovens mulheres com bulimia em relação aos próprios ideais e aos de sua mãe. O foco do estudo centrou-se nos aspectos psíquicos referentes à constituição da imagem do corpo e suas alterações na bulimia, utilizando o referencial psicanalítico. Também foram examinadas pesquisas científicas atuais que tratam da imagem do corpo e da bulimia. A abordagem foi qualitativo-exploratória, utilizando como estratégia o procedimento de estudo de casos múltiplos. As participantes do estudo foram duas jovens do sexo feminino, com idades de 19 e 24 anos, com diagnóstico de bulimia e suas respectivas mães. O estudo de cada jovem e sua mãe foi considerado um caso. O acesso aos casos se deu através de encaminhamento por profissionais especialistas do Centro de Especialidades em Saúde (CES) - Secretária Municipal da Saúde (SMS) da Prefeitura Municipal de Caxias do Sul. Como instrumentos, foram utilizadas entrevistas não estruturadas e semiestruturadas com as jovens e com suas mães, o Desenho da Figura Humana, o EAT-26, o BITE, o BSQ e a Escala de Imagem Corporal de Stunkard. Os resultados indicaram a presença de insatisfação com a imagem do corpo tanto nas jovens bulímicas como em suas mães, gerada a partir dos próprios ideais e dos ideais maternos. Também indicaram que as jovens participantes do estudo buscaram uma imagem de corpo ideal como manifestação de falhas na constituição do narcisismo e da identidade frente à relação pouco discriminada com a figura materna. Indicaram, ainda, que as filhas, através da bulimia, estariam respondendo aos ideais conscientes e inconscientes de suas mães. / This study aimed to analyze and understand how body image is seen by young bulimic women regarding their own ideals as well as their mothers’. It focused on psychic aspects related to how body image is constituted and its alterations in bulimia, using psychoanalytical references. Recent scientific research being carried out on body image and bulimia were also examined. The approach was qualitative-exploratory, using the strategy of multiple case studies. Subjects of the study were two young women, who were 19 and 24 years old, diagnosed as bulimic, and their respective mothers. The study carried out on each young woman and her mother was considered one case. Access to the cases took place thanks to recommendations by specialized professionals from the Centro de Especialidades em Saúde (CES) - Secretaria Municipal da Saúde (SMS) (Specialized Health Center – Municipal Health Secretary) which is run by the City Hall of Caxias do Sul. Research instruments used were non-structured and semi-structured interviews with the young women and their mothers, the Human Figure Drawing Test, the EAT-26, the BITE, the BSQ, and Stunkard Body Image Scale. Results indicated that both the young bulimic women and their mothers showed dissatisfaction with their body images, from their own ideals as well as their mothers’ ideals. They also indicated that the young women taking part in the study sought for an ideal body image as manifestation of flaws in the constitution of narcissism and identity given the relationship with the mother figure not being much discriminated. In addition to that, results indicated that through bulimia, the daughters would be responding to their mothers’ conscious and unconscious ideals.

Excerpt: As both a daughter to a mother and a mother to a daughter, I have lived, and pushed against, and been formed by, the profound truth about mother-daughter relationships suggested by this book's title: it's complicated.

Twentieth-century American literature is filled with new images of motherhood. Long gone is the idealism of motherhood that flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in life and in writing. Long gone are the mother help books and guides on training mothers. The twentieth-century fiction writer ushers in new examples of motherhood described in novels that critique the bad mother and turn a critical eye towards the role of women and motherhood. This study examines the trauma surrounding twentieth-century motherhood and surrogacy; in particular, how abandonment, rape, incest, and negation often results in surrogacy; and how selected authors create characters who as mothers fail to protect their children, particularly their daughters. This study explores whether the failure is a result of social-economic or physiological circumstances that make mothering and motherlove impossible or a rejection of the ideal mother seldom realized by contemporary women, or whether the novelists have rewritten the notion of the mother’s help books by their fragmented representations of motherhood. Has motherhood become a rejection of self-potential? The study will critique mother-daughter relationships in four late twentieth-century American novels in their complex presentations of motherhood and surrogacy: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1990), Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Sapphire’s Push (1997). Appropriated terminology from other disciplines illustrates the prevalence of surrogacy and protection in the subject novels. The use of surrogate will refer to those who come forward to provide the role of mothering and protection.

Abstract In this thesis, I attempt to examine Jamaica Kincaid¡¦s re-negotiation with the politics of power relations in her novels. Kncaid¡¦s novels, through the strategic deployment of autobiographical writing, redress the power dimension in the notions of self and history. The fact that Kincaid frames the field of power relations within the thematic recurrence of mother-daughter relations structures her novels in a way that conflates her personal stories with her group history. Moreover, such a structure emphatically registers the self-positioning act of Kincaid¡¦s writing as a strategy for survival. The first chapter explores how Kincaid mobilizes her self-writing as an act of political resistance. On the one hand, Kincaid opposes her writing which is delivered in the name of herself or her culture to the poststructuralist pronouncements of the general demise of a writing subject. On the other hand, Kincaid, through implicating the poststructuralist fracture of self in the protocol of decolonization, attempts to strategically inhabit in what Homi Bhabha calls the in-between space to define herself. The second chapter deals with the inscription of historical forces on the body. Foucault¡¦s genealogical unpacking of history in the body here helps to investigate how Kincaid¡¦s fictional alter egos bear and, more importantly, act out against the inscription of power. The third chapter focuses on the politics of Kincaid¡¦s autobiographical writing. At first, I unpack the relations between history and the politics of women¡¦s writing in the West Indies, and borrow the poststructuralist interrogation of Western historical knowledge to contradict the West¡¦s epistemological claims to West Indian history. And then I turn to the analysis of Kincaid¡¦s autobiographical writing, which, through its thematic deployment of mother-daughter relations, turns on the political empowerment in her strategic integration of her personal and collective history.

Using qualitative analysis, this thesis analyzes intergenerational support, conflict, and ambivalence between aging mothers and their middle aged adult daughters. In-depth interviews with 30 mother-daughter pairs explored respondents&amp / #8217 / relationship history, changes in the relationship over the life course (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage of daughter, parenthood of daughter, widowhood of mother), social network composition, frequency of contact, expectations, type and frequency of intergenerational support, intimacy, compliance, conflict or disagreement, and comparison of self with the other party in terms of parenting styles and filial behaviors. Moreover, similarities and differences in the personalities of mother-daughter dyads were investigated from both mothers and daughters perspective. Participants reported that, there is an ample amount of intergenerational support between aging mothers and their adult daughters. Conflicts between mother-daughter pairs arise from interference, irritating personality traits and behaviors and differing views. Daughters experience more ambivalent feelings than mothers in their relationship. Both parties employ passive and secondary relationship maintenance tactics with the goal of preserving relationship harmony. Three distinct types of mother-daughter relationship emerged: close/peaceful, ambivalent and distant. Mother-daughter relationships have undergone transformations with life stages: daughters&amp / #8217 / marriage, daughters&amp / #8217 / parenthood, mothers&amp / #8217 / aging and declining health and mothers&amp / #8217 / widowhood. Effects of certain historical events and social changes emerged from the study. The research findings were discussed with reference to Turkish cultural characteristics and they were compared with Western research findings.

Most girls in Gopher Slough, Florida, worry about whether GSHS will win the next football game (they won't), when their boyfriends will take them muddin', and how many times they can sneak cigarettes behind the bleachers before they get thrown into in-school suspension. Libby Hoyer is not most girls. Instead, Libby is worried about her slipping grades, especially in Geometry, where she can barely keep her head up long enough to take the weekly quizzes. She's concerned about losing her friendship with her best (only) friend, Bobbi Jo, who's distracted with her own Aber-zombie boyfriend, and she's unsure of how to define her new relationship with Neil, a mysterious boy from her class who is not as carefree as he pretends to be. Libby is also troubled by the fact that she can't seem to remember her distant father, even though he only left five years ago. Everyone else, it seems, is worried about Libby's sporadic eating habits. If she continues to refuse to eat or to purge anything she's forced to eat, she might disappear. But Libby isn't afraid of disappearing. She's afraid of being seen.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The analytical and creative chapters of my thesis display the best and the worst of bicultural daughters and their mothers as writers represent this relationship in short stories. Throughout the analytical chapters, I show that the through their fiction these writers help us understand that the bicultural daughter/immigrant mother relationship not only is affected by general feelings of matrophobia – as Adrienne Rich points out – but also by different pressures and paradigms that can only be experienced if the daughter belongs to and/or associates herself with a different culture than that of her mother. I hypothesize that the stories reflect these paradigms as usually negative because the pressures from both “American” society and the immigrant mother are often so great that the bicultural daughter cannot embrace either one fully. However, with the adverse feelings from both mother and daughter, comes a realization from both that neither will succeed in dominating the other. Once this is established, both mother and daughter will either reach a consensual agreement to disagree, or will continue having a hostile relationship. By including my own short stories in context with the analyses done for the stories by Kingston, Tan, Pietrzyk and Danticat, I hope to bring interest to this genre for further analysis on the bicultural daughter and immigrant mother relationship as depicted in short stories.