Silverman also contends that a baby’s demands on the mother can be “very flattering to the mother’s narcissism, since it attributes to her the capacity to satisfy her infant’s lack, and so—by extension—her own. Since most women in our culture are egoically wounded, the temptation to bathe in the sun of this idealization often proves irresistible.” I have seen some mothers use their babies to fill a lack, or soothe an egoic wound, or bathe in the sun of idealization in ways that seemed pathological. But for the most part those people were pathological prior to having a baby. They would have had
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