Women's internal reality: birthplace or graveyard

This article is an exploration of the etiology of female subjectivity and its relationship to unconscious and conscious images of mother and mother's body. Within the analytic process in dream and phantasy internal aspects of daughter's subjective beliefs and feelings about her body, sexuality, pregnancy, maternal capacity, and mental strength emerge. An analysis of their transformations into language, conscious beliefs, and cultural biases are juxtaposed with the development of women's subjectivity. The concept of the "illness of the signifier" is shown to be the outcome of the painful difficulties of realizing the meaning of the maternal presence as they are constructed internally and culturally.