In today’s sessions, I realized there’s an aspect of the Mother archetype that I haven’t written about enough.
The Death Mother archetype and the emotional exile of the eldest child is a theme I encounter quite often in my practice.
When a new baby enters the family, the eldest child often feels emotionally rejected. The mother’s gaze — once warm, attentive, and undivided — is now turned toward the newborn. The older child may begin to feel that their mother no longer loves them.
For the first child, the bond with the mother often begins as a strong, all-encompassing connection. The mother is the center of the child’s world, the source of love and the foundation of psychological safety. But once the younger sibling is born, the mother’s attention and psychic energy shift. She turns toward the newborn, who is fully dependent on her. For the older child, this may feel like emotional abandonment.
This is not a conscious choice by the mother to “love one more than the other.” Rather, it’s a reorientation of the Mother archetype within her psyche. Her libido — psychic life energy — is unconsciously directed toward the newborn. The eldest may experience this shift as a profound loss, as if they have been expelled from paradise, from the warm embrace of the mother’s love.
At this moment, the Death Mother archetype often enters the family dynamic — the hidden side of the Great Mother. She is not only a giver of life, but also a symbol of emotional coldness, control, and destruction. Emotionally, the mother may become distant, inattentive, or even subtly rejecting.
Within the child’s psyche, this emotional coldness may transform into an inner voice that whispers:
“You are no longer loved.”
“You’re no longer needed.”
“You take up too much space.”
“You’re not good enough.”
The Death Mother is not only external — she becomes an internal psychic structure. If this internalized pattern is not brought to awareness and healed, it can manifest later in life as chronic guilt, depression, self-criticism, emotional withdrawal, or the inability to receive or give love.
Carl Jung described the Great Mother archetype as both a giver and taker of life. She is simultaneously nurturing and devouring, creative and destructive, loving and annihilating. The Positive Mother nourishes, protects, and fosters growth. The Negative or Death Mother, on the other hand, suffocates, withholds love, restricts life-force energy, and unconsciously implants fear, shame, and inner paralysis in the child.
This archetype doesn’t necessarily mean that the actual mother is cruel or abusive — although unfortunately, that can also be the case. Often, it’s present when the mother herself has experienced intergenerational trauma — rejection or abuse from her own mother, the loss of her mother, or another wound that led her to unconsciously identify with the Death Mother.
Most often, the Death Mother acts entirely unconsciously — through emotional unavailability, coldness, overcontrol, or the lack of emotional or physical presence. In the child’s psyche, she may take the form of an inner voice that says:
“You are not enough.”
“You’re in the way.”
“You’re a burden.”
“You don’t have the right to exist.”
The Psychological Impact
When the Death Mother archetype is activated in the psyche — whether through real experience or perception — it can leave deep psychological wounds. Children who grow up under the influence of this energy may experience:
🧩 Guilt or shame without clear cause
🧩 Persistent fear of being a burden
🧩 Self-sabotage
🧩 Difficulty trusting love or forming close relationships
🧩 Dissociation or a symbolic “inner death”
Sometimes it manifests as depression, self-denial, or the feeling of being cut off from the source of life. Jung considered these symptoms to be signs that the individual is “trapped in the realm of the Death Mother.”
The Archetypal Dimension
The Great Mother is dual — both creator and destroyer. In myths, the Death Mother appears in many forms — the goddess Kali, Hecate, Baba Yaga. They are fearsome, but also profoundly transformative figures. They are not merely symbols of evil and destruction; they are initiators, guiding us through the shadow into a new kind of psychological rebirth.
The emotional rejection of the eldest child is not only a loss — it can also be an initiation. It’s the first encounter with loss, boundaries, and the need to become a separate being. It is the child’s journey away from symbiosis with the mother and toward the formation of selfhood.
These themes present the Death Mother not as pure evil, but as a transformational force — one that demands ego death, surrender, and rebirth.
She appears in literature and film as well — as the cold or absent mother, the emotionally distant caregiver, or the nurturing figure who silently drains the life from those around her.
Healing Through Shadow Work
In therapy, healing occurs through bringing the shadow into consciousness. The Death Mother must be named, seen, and worked with — not suppressed or denied.
This process includes:
🌀 Recognizing the inner voice of the Death Mother — becoming aware of how we unconsciously relate to ourselves and others through her lens.
🌀 Allowing ourselves to grieve the absence of emotional nourishment — acknowledging the pain of a mother who was not emotionally available.
🌀 Consciously separating from the Death Mother archetype — realizing that the voice inside is not “me,” but an inherited psychic pattern.
🌀 Intentionally identifying with the Positive Mother — reconnecting with the inner nurturing force through nature, water (bathing or swimming), creativity, body-based therapies, healing relationships, or psychotherapy.
Importantly: the goal is not to banish the Death Mother — that’s not possible — but to integrate her power. Like the mythic descent into the underworld, facing this archetype is terrifying, but also initiatory. It can become a gateway to deep transformation, soul strength, and spiritual maturity.
A Loving Possibility
Healing begins with awareness.
The transformation of maternal love to include a new child, while still not excluding the first, is a beautiful and absolutely possible psychological reality. When a mother becomes aware of the archetypal forces moving through her, she can balance her instinctive bond with the infant with emotional presence toward the older child.
She can notice and speak to the eldest child.
She can say:
“I see that you’re feeling left out.”
“You are still my child, and I love you deeply — even when I’m tired.”
“There is space in my heart for both of you.”
This kind of conscious presence can become a tender moment that interrupts the unconscious Death Mother pattern and restores warmth and connection.
The Hero’s Path of the Eldest
The other dimension of the Death Mother archetype is that she is also a force that drives individuation — and this is the eldest child’s Hero’s journey.
The firstborn often becomes the Hero in the family myth or fairy tale. They are pushed out so they can find their own path. That path is hard — filled with pain, longing, and inner struggle — but it also carries immense potential for profound transformation, soul depth, creativity, and strength. 🧚♂️
Psychotherapy 
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