Investigation of collective imaginaries about motherhood with the themed drawing-and-story procedure

This study aims to investigate collective imaginaries about motherhood, focusing specifically on a situation in which children need extended and lasting care due to altered health conditions. Based on the strand of concrete psychoanalytic psychology, it is methodologically articulated as qualitative research using the psychoanalytic method by approaching 36 medical students, chosen as participants because they are engaged in training that provides proximity to mothers who accompany children in need of medical care. The material was produced in collective psychological interviews organized around the use of the PDE-Theme. Psychoanalytical consideration of the material led to the production of five fields of affective-emotional meaning: "Love, sublime love", "Painful mother", "Exclusive dedication", "Reconciling activities" and "Neither fairy nor witch". This sets up an imaginative situation that points to a contradiction whereby there is simultaneously a difficulty in perceiving the concrete living conditions of mothers, along the lines of the persistent idealization of the maternal figure in the sense of imagining her as strong, powerful and capable of unlimited generosity, while at the same time considering the mother as a person with qualities and difficulties who is called upon to authentically care for her children. These imaginings about the mother indicate a configuration that generates important subjective effects and gains a certain intelligibility in the macro-social context that establishes the sexual division of labor in capitalist society.