ABSTRACT
I presented this chapter at the ‘Maternal’ seminars which took place at the Philadelphia Association in 2011-2013. There has been little contemporary qualitative research informed by psychoanalytic concepts and one of the aims of this chapter is to address that gap. The chapter presents a psychoanalytic exploration of how masculinity is constructed in society, taking as its focus the experiences of a group of Kurdish men who spent their childhoods in Kurdistan (parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria), but moved to Britain as adults. As part of my Master’s thesis,1 I set up and conducted in-depth interviews with these men, excerpts from which are reproduced below. Presented here are some of my research ndings relevant to my current title: ‘Mothers and Sons’.
