ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the "dead mother complex," a particular situation associated with maternal depression, as described by Andre Green. Green's description is widely recognized as a superb analysis of a clinical situation that is both frequently encountered and of theoretical interest. It includes interactive events presumed to happen between an infant and a mother, as well as intrapsychic events. It provides a picture of adult reconstructive modifications of the original infantile representations. Compared with the infant's expectations and wishes, the mother's face is flat and expressionless. Most depressed mothers are very distressed by their relative unavailability for their infant and often fight harder against that than against any other feature of their depression, and with variable success. The chapter shows that how wide a range of experiences can be handled by the concepts of moments- and schemas-of-being-with. Experiences of anxiety provide another instructive example that may challenge our description of how these moments and schemas are structured.
