If, as author Toni Morrison believes, we tell stories about what we find most terrifying, then our cultural narratives suggest an overwhelming preoccupation with the murderous mother ??? the monster in our minds. This dissertation examines some of the most powerful and enduring stories told about the murderous mother and considers how these stories are shaped by the unconscious fears and fantasies that dominate the cultural psyche. Revolving around the idea of infanticide as an ???imaginary??? crime, this dissertation uncovers the psychoanalytic foundations of the obsessive telling and consumption of stories of maternal child-murder in Western culture and contends that infanticide narratives can be read as symptoms of psychocultural dis(-)ease. Underlying all stories about the murderous mother is an unconscious fear of infanticide and fantasy of maternal destructiveness that is repressed in the individual psyche. These fears and fantasies are expressed in our cultural narratives. Chapter 1 examines fairytales as the literary form that most clearly elaborates individual fears and psychic conflict and locates the phantasmic murderous mother within psychoanalytic narratives of individuation. Chapter 2 shows how individual fears and fantasies of maternal monstrosity are transferred to society and revealed in the myths through which our culture is transmitted. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the particular neuroses of ancient Greek society and early modern culture and consider stories of the murderous mother that most powerfully reflect anxieties of maternal origin and fantasies of maternal power. Chapters 5 and 6 shift to a contemporary setting and consider stories that reveal, in differing ways, how the murderous mother haunts the cultural psyche. Examining a variety of texts and drawing material from a spectrum of disciplines, including law, literature, criminology, theology, philosophy, and medicine, this dissertation concludes that it is only by exposing the underpinnings of our cultural stories about the murderous mother that we can hope to break free from the unconscious attitudes that imprison us. Emerging from this study is an original and important theoretical framework concerning conceptualisations of infanticide, the ways in which we imagine maternal child-murder and the limits of that imagination, and how we might escape the murderous maternal monster buried deep in the labyrinths of the mind.

If, as author Toni Morrison believes, we tell stories about what we find most terrifying, then our cultural narratives suggest an overwhelming preoccupation with the murderous mother ??? the monster in our minds. This dissertation examines some of the most powerful and enduring stories told about the murderous mother and considers how these stories are shaped by the unconscious fears and fantasies that dominate the cultural psyche. Revolving around the idea of infanticide as an ???imaginary??? crime, this dissertation uncovers the psychoanalytic foundations of the obsessive telling and consumption of stories of maternal child-murder in Western culture and contends that infanticide narratives can be read as symptoms of psychocultural dis(-)ease. Underlying all stories about the murderous mother is an unconscious fear of infanticide and fantasy of maternal destructiveness that is repressed in the individual psyche. These fears and fantasies are expressed in our cultural narratives. Chapter 1 examines fairytales as the literary form that most clearly elaborates individual fears and psychic conflict and locates the phantasmic murderous mother within psychoanalytic narratives of individuation. Chapter 2 shows how individual fears and fantasies of maternal monstrosity are transferred to society and revealed in the myths through which our culture is transmitted. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the particular neuroses of ancient Greek society and early modern culture and consider stories of the murderous mother that most powerfully reflect anxieties of maternal origin and fantasies of maternal power. Chapters 5 and 6 shift to a contemporary setting and consider stories that reveal, in differing ways, how the murderous mother haunts the cultural psyche. Examining a variety of texts and drawing material from a spectrum of disciplines, including law, literature, criminology, theology, philosophy, and medicine, this dissertation concludes that it is only by exposing the underpinnings of our cultural stories about the murderous mother that we can hope to break free from the unconscious attitudes that imprison us. Emerging from this study is an original and important theoretical framework concerning conceptualisations of infanticide, the ways in which we imagine maternal child-murder and the limits of that imagination, and how we might escape the murderous maternal monster buried deep in the labyrinths of the mind.