Great Mother

The Great Mother Archetype

From a psychoanalytical perspective, the Great Mother is the archetypal manifestation of the collective cultural experience of childhood development. More specifically, the influences exerted on children are not so much the product of the mother herself, as an individual, but rather the product of the archetypal mother image rooted in the collective unconscious. As such, the image of the Great Mother reflects both the feelings of maternal support, comfort, and love for a child and the negative capricious experience of vulnerability, helplessness, and dependence experienced by the child in development. In this sense, the archetypal image of the mother is nurturing and loving but also capricious, mysterious, and linked to feelings of vulnerability and seduction (Jung 1968).

Thus, there is an intrinsic duality to the archetypal representation of the Great Mother. The imago of the divine feminine is paradoxical, serving as an archetypal manifestation in the...