ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the vicissitudes of a difficult analytic encounter with massive, devouring deadness in the self-mother relationship. It describes “black hole” experience and to find a deep understanding and analytical response within the overwhelming depths of deadness and emptiness. A black hole is the set of events caused by the massive collapse of a dying star. The child’s interpersonal/intersubjective emotional space is centred upon and dominated by the “dead” mother. Under the impact of the mother’s emotional and psychic deadness and overwhelming feelings of blankness and emptiness, the child forms a desperate, intense need to revive the mother and him. In Israel, as a result of the Holocaust and numerous wars, many analyses and psychotherapies involve people who grew up with psychically dead extinguished parents. There are many “dead” mothers who for a while felt that there was a breakthrough and a victory over death, but soon afterwards sank again into an abyss of depression, blankness, and deadness.
