The Black Sun

Abstract

This paper draws on my doctoral research into the experience of psychological infanticide. Weaving together infanticidal attachment theory, the psychohistory of infant murder, and pre-natal psychology regarding the experience of the unwelcome child before birth, I explore the alchemical image of the black sun and the Death Mother archetype as expressions of pre-birth annihilation terror. I argue that during pregnancy, the unwelcome foetus and unwilling mother form an infanticidal attachment centred on their shared experiences of helpless terror, and utilising mutual survival strategies of dissociation that orient the child towards death rather than life. From my perspectives as a psychotherapist and a former patient, I explore how terror of the Death Mother reveals itself in dreams, symptoms, fantasies, and in the transference, and consider how we might engage with such life-destroying forces.