Sigmund Freud's Desire For The Breast

Sigmund Freud believed that desire had to do with a sense of connectedness or fullness and that all desire goes back to the child’s original desire for the mother, particularly the mother’s breast. This is as the mother is the first object of love with who a child identifies and therefore has created a bond and desire to remain forever as one with the mother. Freud alines desire towards the mothers breast, as the breast is depicted as a figure of nutrition, comfort and safety and is essential in determining the emotional and sexual development of the child. The first couple of years of a child's life it has no sense of differentiation between it self and its mother as it has yet to developed a sense of identity or psyche, this is a result of the gratification that the child experiences at the mothers breast.

As the child gets older and becomes independent and autonomous it must let go of it fundamental desire for its mother, this gratification of the breast also allows the child to transfer its desire towards more social acceptable objects.

Freud also argues that a child’s construct of desire is also influenced by the way in which the child was raised and influenced by socialisation. He also states that ‘desire is essentially mobile - it has no essence, no proper object, beyond the child’s hallucinatory desire for the breast’. Here Freud is suggesting the notion that the original powerful desire for the mother can never fully be erased that there will always be a desire to return to the mother and be joined as one with the mother. This Freudian idea of complete desire for the mother and returning to her is reflected through Allen Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, ‘seemed perhaps a good idea to try- know the Monster of the Beginning Womb..’ Here Ginsberg demonstrates how he returns or enacts his return to his mother through both memory and literature which he does by writing a poem about her where he recounts his memories and experiences with

her.