ABSTRACT
The motherhood constellation partakes of both a life-course phase and something like a psychological complex—that is, a mental organization, whatever that might be. The motherhood constellation is an attempt to shift in the direction from general life phases to more domain- and task-specific, evolutionarily relevant mental organizations and still stay clinically useful. Leaving mother-baby issues out of the treatment can be done if the treatment was intended to be highly focused therapy. Generally, mothers of any age who are in psychotherapy and who have passed well beyond the early phases of parenting—their children are in school or independent—periodically have very acute and intense concerns about their mothering, both past and present. The experience of watching parent-infant interaction is an excellent training ground for recognizing the pragmatics of interactions, verbal or nonverbal. The schema-of-being-with is more closely related to the experience.
