Books

“Throughout my underworld journey, I learned to listen to the mythic truth of infanticide represented throughout history, and in the many tales of children abandoned or killed by parents or archetypal wicked witches. Fears of abandonment, rejection and infanticide are universal childhood experiences that reveal the child’s awareness of its vulnerability and helpless dependency on the mercy of powerful adults. For many unfortunates, these innate fears become lived reality. The greater story of infanticide as a human truth occurring throughout time, place and culture has something essential to teach us about the way we kill off the most vulnerable and creative parts of ourselves and others. Guided by this mythic consciousness, which might equally be named ‘collective unconscious experience’ or ‘intergenerational trauma’, I felt that exploring the psychohistory of infanticide had much to reveal about this dark recess of our collective and individual psyches.”

“Historically, when murder or direct abandonment were no longer morally acceptable, desperate mothers found other ways to dispatch their children, getting rid of them psychologically whilst rationalising that they had not abandoned the child but provided it with other care. In the nineteenth century this handover was to baby farmers or foundling hospitals, both of which had notoriously high mortality rates. Yet the double bind remained tightly in place – what other choices could a woman make without support and social acceptance?”