ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on woman as mother, and also woman as psychoanalyst. She considers the maternal creative function as a part of the analyst's creative function; this capacity may be present in female or male analyst. In her view, authenticity is based on some acceptance of external reality and some acceptance of oneself as one really is. The author believes that from very early on there is a conflictual struggle between creativity in the service of authenticity and creative inauthenticity. Wilfred Bion (1962a) has described the complexities around the earliest negotiations of dependence. He focuses on the way in which the mother takes in the baby's emotional experience. If she is able to feel and also give meaning to that experience she transforms it into something digestible for the baby. In the development of the infant, alongside an identification with the mother, there is always some more spurious 'takeover' of her function.
