buncha stuff

as much as this book sets out to be about alison bechdel's mother, it becomes more of a cerebral, layered, introspective reflection of self and how both self and mother become mirrored, transposed, grafted upon each other. obviously this occurred in fun home as well and was as much about bechdel trying to come to terms with her own identity as it was about coming to terms with her father's, but this one feels different. as opposed to focusing on telling the stories of the past events themselves (obviously, these stories are there and do get shown, but this memoir is heavily focused on the mental process and various methods of therapy/healing/understanding), we are propelled into the mind, the intellectual and emotional journey of trying to make meaning out of experiences, connections, relationships. we see alison in her home element, at her computer, talking to and obsessively recording her mother's conversations (while barely contributing to them), we see her working out her anxieties, confusions, hang-ups in her therapist appointments, we see her postulating while driving, walking the dog at midnight, we see her dreams. the focus on the process of getting to the story of what's going on in her relationship with her mother feels connected to the fact that, unlike woolf, she has not "expressed some very long and felt and deeply felt emotion" (18). she is obsessed with her mother, with figuring out what exactly is at stake in their relationship, how they have and do interact with each other, but she can't get to the satisfaction and relief of writing it. she and her writing are both impeded and fueled by it.

at various points in this book, we see alison asking not only "are you my mother?" but "am i my mother?" (not necessarily in the sense of, am i becoming my mother, but am i acting as my own mother, am i getting what i need from a mother from myself?) and "is my therapist my mother?" and "am i my mother's therapist?" "which person is my mother, which person is my therapist, who am i in relation to any of them?" nothing is simply one thing, indeed. these questions and associations, also, frequently fold into each other. alison, indeed, has become a version of her own psychoanalyst, gorging herself on freud, winnicott, miller so that she may filter her experiences through the lens of psychoanalytic theory. though her mother may not be saying much, she also sits back, listens, records her mother for long stints, as is the role of the therapist-- listen, notate, filter, investigate. she comments that, in these conversations, she rarely offers up information of her own and her mother rarely asks deep questions about her. alison both values this and faults her mother for it. in her own relationships, she somewhat takes on this role. she is often pictured in her own little world obsessively reading at bedtime, barely listening to or asking about her girlfriend.

i wonder if this shifting out of self into mother, into therapist, into lover and changing of roles has to do with the quote from alice miller that she was so compelled by:

"the true self has been in 'a state of noncommunication,' as winnicott said, because it had to be protected. the patient never needs to hide anything else so thoroughly, so deeply, and for so long a time as he has hidden his true self. thus it is like a miracle each time to see how much individuality has survived behind such dissimulation, denial, and self-alienation, and can reappear as soon as the work of mourning brings freedom from the introjects." (54)

there seems to be a lot of introjection going on (meaning when you unconsciously take on other people's ideas or ways), especially in the case of this constant transposition of roles. acting as her own mother and therapist, also, seems to be a strategy that fills in for the absence of something personally needed that she feels frustrated without, which goes back to the winnicott stuff around the good-enough mother ("the good-enough 'mother' (not necessarily the infant's own mother) is one who makes active adaptation to the infant's needs, an active adaptation that gradually lessens, according to the infant's growing ability to account for failure of adaptation and to tolerate the results of frustration" (61). alison, in some senses, is her own good-enough mother until jocelyn becomes another version of a good-enough mother. her own mother was, to an extent, and for a time, but bechdel seems to suggest that that basically ended during that moment pictured in that series of photos where she is an infant and becomes aware of the camera's presence (31-32). she says somewhere (can't find the page) that her childhood ended in that moment. pretty intense to suggest an entire childhood ended in a short instant during infancy. but, in those moments, bechdel's mother is making active adaptation to alison's needs and alison's needs only and they are very rooted in physical expression and intimacy. that same fragment from winnicott continues to say "this active adaptation demands an easy and unresented preoccupation with the one infant; in fact, success in infant care depends on the fact of devotion, not on cleverness or intellectual enlightenment." a) we know that alison's mom is pregnant again in that photo, so that preoccupation with the one infant is about to decrease as her mother becomes more focused on the fact of being pregnant in itself, preparing for a new child, and then the arrival of that child. so maybe, due to the quickness with which that focused devotion had to necessarily shift, alison's childhood did, to an extent, end. if we are thinking of childhood as the period before the active adaptation lessens and a child has to deal with their aloneness and the waning influence/constant attention of a parent.

subconsciously (in dreams where jocelyn is filling the role of her mother-- particularly the pants-patching dream) and often consciously (51), alison expresses desire for her therapist to be her mother. jocelyn listens, jocelyn offers intimacy, solutions, relief, life wisdom. jocelyn shows obvious care. not that bechdel's mom does not, but she often comes off cold and more affectionate to her sons than to alison.