Motherself

Motherself, a concept represented in the book Motherself: A Mythic Analysis of Motherhood by Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi, a member of the English department at Syracuse University. Motherself is a spiritual and psychological concept that offers a method for women to achieve self-fulfillment through a gynocentric recovery of matrilineal spiritual heritages where mothers-as-women are celebrated, rather than through traditional patriarchal means. The concept of motherself involves a return to women as central figures in society through the ways they were perceived in the world of goddess worship, where a woman's ability to produce and reproduce life was valued as the ultimate form of [Page 859]power. Women who believe in and quest for one's motherself attempt to achieve individuation (a distinct sense of self) as well as a newfound self-respect for her role in Western societies.

Rabuzzi argues that in order to redefine womanhood and motherhood, it is important to recognize the role that myths, fairy tales, religious beliefs, and psychoanalysis have played in the vilification of women as monstrous mothers and sexual predators. This belief posits that through theological, mythological, and psychological methodologies, women have been effaced by and through the traditional hero's quest model, where the hero's ultimate goal is apotheosis (the elevation of a person to a deity), a process that, as constructed by men, is unattainable for women once humankind moves from a polytheistic world to a predominately Judaeo-Christian-Islamic orthodoxy.

Furthermore, the motherself concept forwards that through the equation of the hero's quest for apotheosis with the psychological quest for selfhood, Mary as mother of Christ is relegated to a status beneath that of the hero/son as opposed to the concepts of Goddess worship, which upheld the mother-as-deity due to her ability to give life. The key to this transformation is loosely attributed to the historical shift from the hunter-gatherer cultures to the stock and breeder cultures, when men realized the relationship between coitus and pregnancy. Once men understood their role in procreation, the Mother Goddess of pre-patriarchal cultures was assimilated into the mother-of-God role. In this capacity, the role of the mother as the reproducer of life is relegated to a subservient position in favor of the image of the father as protector of life. With the introduction of phallocentric psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, Rabuzzi claims that the role of woman and mother as less than man was further solidified in Western cultures.

Generally speaking, a list of characteristics attributable to contemporary heroes would include physical strength, ability to survive against impossible odds, and functioning as role models for others in society. While these same character traits could be attributed to mothers, Rabuzzi argues that Western societies have historically ascribed these attributes primarily to males due to the patriarchal images of power in the hero as father and/or son through religion, fairy tales, and popular media. Rabuzzi points to the advent of Judaeo, Christian, and Islamic doctrines and their valuation of the dominating power of men as responsible for replacing the ability of women to reproduce life as central to the survival of humanity.

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