In children, depression, anxiety disorders mostly happen when they are not allowed to separate.

If you don’t allow your child to separate, if you refuse to frustrate your child, if you refuse to disappoint your child, always playing the magical fairy?

You are not a good mother. You are actually a very bad mother. And you are damaging your child for life.

You are not fairies. You are not wizards. You are not there to protect the child from life.

You are there to give life to the child, or to give your child to life.

It’s terrifying.

You take the thing that you love most and you have to expose the child to pain, hurt, danger and risk.

It’s terrifying. And many mothers don’t have the courage.

Also, it’s terrifying to be left alone.

In the pre-separation-individuation phase, you are the child’s world. After separation-individuation, you are just one more among many.

Narcissistic mothers would find it very difficult.

They need to be the center of attention. They need to be the focus of their child’s life and mental world.

They feel rejected and abandoned when the child separates. They are terrified of remaining alone. Or that they will not be able to recreate this oceanic feeling, this wonderful feeling.

We all need unconditional love. I will come to it in a minute.

The child is a drug. It gives you unconditional love.

Some mothers become junkies. And they refuse to let go of the drug. And they destroy the child for life.

This is the first risk.

I said there were three.

Oh, no. Okay, yeah, three.

The second risk is this.

Raising children seriously sucks. I prefer to work in a coal mine.

Raising children is tiring, breaks your body and mind. It’s the most horrible job imaginable after the chief of the WHO.

The first worst job in the world is head of WHO. Second is mother. It sucks.

So mothers have to lie to themselves. All mothers lie to themselves. You all lie to yourself.

And this process of lying, deceiving yourself, is called idealization.

You idealize the child. You create a representation of the child in your mind that is ideal.

You all know that your child is the most beautiful, intelligent, amazing child ever born.

This is idealization, of course, because he is not.

And yet, even if the child is not as beautiful and not as intelligent, you still have to change his diapers. And you still have to wake up at night or sleep two hours at night because this not-so-beautiful, not-so-intelligent child is crying all the time.

Idealization is very useful. If you were unable to idealize, I would not be here today.

In my case, the idealization was justified, of course. Of course.

But in the majority of cases, this is not the case.

What is idealization is, you make a photograph of the child, a snapshot. You put it inside your head and you Photoshop it. You use Photoshop.

Then you have an imaginary child in your head.

This process, for those of you who are here to study psychology for some reason, this process is known as internalization introjection.

I think I insulted him. It’s too much. He was not idealized.

So what’s the risk?

The risk is if the mother remains stuck in the idealization phase. She cannot exit the idealization. She remains stuck.

She doesn’t see the child as he really is, but she sees the idealized image of the child.

And she interacts with the idealized image, the introject, she interacts with the child.

So what’s wrong with it?

The child grows, develops, and gradually, if this is the idealized image, at the beginning, the child is almost like the image.

But then the child grows, develops, separates, has friends, has new interests.

When there is a gap opening, when there is a divergence between the real child and the idealized image, the introject, the mother becomes aggressive. She’s trying to force the child back into the idealized image.

This creates enormous conflict, and the mother begins to regard the child as an enemy. This is called persecutory object dynamic. Right.

She regards the child as a persecutor, as someone who is destroying her life.

Such mothers will say he’s a very difficult child. He’s disobedient. I can’t control him. I give up on him. I wish I would give him up for adoption.

She just wants to get rid of the child.

This is the second risk.

Remember, the first risk, you don’t allow the child to separate from you. You coset the child. You prevent the child from pain, hurt, disappointment, etc.

The second risk is you idealize the child, and then you get stuck on the idealization and refuse to see the real child.

These are the risks for good enough mothers.

Not for dysfunctional mothers. Dysfunctional mothers are dysfunctional, to start with.

This is risk for good enough mothers.

There’s a third risk, luckily there are only three.

There’s a third risk, and it happens in adolescence.

Not the mother’s adolescence. The child’s adolescence.

When the child becomes an adolescent, all children develop something called reactance.

Reactance has three components.

Let’s see you translating this. I got you.

Radle and I are doing this.

In adolescence, the adolescence develops reactance. All adolescents develop reactance. Reactance has three components.

The adolescence becomes defiant. Whatever you say he’s against, whatever you suggest, he is always against. And he’s against openly, in your face. It’s confrontational.

If this survives to adulthood, it becomes a main feature of psychopathy.

The second is negative identity formation. The adolescent defines her identity in opposition to you.

I am not going to be like my mother. I am never going to repeat my father’s mistakes.

There is negative identity formation. Negative identity depends on who you are and not on who you are.

The third is contumaciousness.

Don’t get along. Take your pill.

Contumaciousness means rejection of authority. It’s also called control aversion. Rejection of authority.

Because you are an authority, the adolescent rejects you.

This is very painful. Adolescence is a very painful period for the parents.

Because the parents are good friends, could be good friends with the child, until adolescence.

Now you can say, this is not true. My son is an adolescent and he is my best friend. And he sees me as a role model. And he never defines me. And when I suggest something, he usually says yes.

I recommend the nearest therapist.

These are not good signs. These are signs of disturbance in separation individuation.

Parents, good enough mothers and now also fathers.

These are known as good enough parents. If they regard this as a personal attack or personal insult, narcissistically, they will take it as a narcissistic injury.

They react with a power play. They create a power play. And everything becomes about control.

Who controls? Who makes the decisions? Who is on top?

Of course, if you stop to think about it for a minute, the parent becomes an adolescent. The parent is doing exactly what the adolescent is doing.

So this is the third trap and it happens in adolescence.

If a power play develops, there is a serious risk of psychopathy. Or at the very least, self-destructiveness. Self-destructiveness.

And this is because the adolescent is caught in a conflict, in a dilemma.

On the one hand, the adolescent is dependent on his parents. But on the other hand, he needs to separate.

The good enough parent allows the adolescent to behave in this place. The good enough parent creates something called sublimatory channel.

Sublimatory channel means the good enough parent creates for the adolescent ways to express defiance, rejection of authority and so on, in a way that is acceptable to society, socially acceptable.

In the first phase of separation and individuation, the good enough parent frustrates the child, rejects the child, pushes the child, disillusions the child.

In the second phase of separation, in adolescence, the parent encourages the child to behave in these ways, but in socially acceptable ways.

I’ll give you an example, defiance and rejection of authority.

If there is a power play with the parent, the child can become delinquent, can become a criminal.

So a bad parent, a parent who is playing macho with the child, this kind of parent is pushing the child away and the child can become antisocial.

But there is a sublimatory alternative, social activism, protesting against corruption, protesting against racism, protesting against climate change, protesting against professors of psychology who speak only English, protesting and social activism are sublimatory channels for defiance and rejection of authority.

These are the three risks, the three tracks that can convert you from good enough mother to bad mother.

What is the job description of good enough mother? How does she look like? What does she do? What is her behavior?

First of all, and most importantly, she sees the child. We all need to be noticed and seen.

You don’t believe me? Go on Facebook.

We all need to be noticed and seen.

I feel abused, molested. Thank you.

I hope you don’t take my jokes to bed, because they’re not jokes, they’re real.

We all need to be seen and to be noticed.

And I think that the rise in narcissism globally is because there are too many people.

Now we need to work hard to be noticed and to be seen, because there are too many of us. So we need to radicalize, we need to escalate to be noticed.

Go TikTok, if you don’t believe me. See what’s going on there? I mean millions of teenage girls undressing simply. They need to be seen, they need to be noticed.

Why? Why this need? Even in adults. Why do we have this?

Because as a baby, if you’re not seen, you’re dead.

As bebelush if you’re not seen, if you’re not noticed, you’re dead bebelush.

Because mother needs to notice you to give you food. The need to be seen is primordial, atavistic, is foundational, is a survival strategy.

When we are not noticed and not seen, we feel dead. And we develop anxiety. And then we divorce.

There’s a lot of problem in being seen in relationships.

The good enough mother sees her child.

She allows the child to see himself through her eyes, through her gaze.

When the child sees himself through the mother’s eyes, the child realizes there is someone there who is not money.

If mommy sees me, then I am not money, because mommy sees me.

And this is the beginning of the self. Part of individuation, beginning of the self.

Also, this helps to develop empathy.

If mother sees the child, and because she loves the child, it’s a great definition of empathy, is to see someone lovingly, compassionately.

Radu has severe difficulties with empathy. He cannot translate this word.

The good enough mother sees the child, actively, proactively. She tells the child, I’m seeing you, I’m noticing you. You’re here. Oh, you’re here. I love you.

These are all indications that you are seen. Your seeing is separate from me.

So you can begin to have a self safely, and you can begin to empathize the way I am empathizing with you as your mother.

These are crucial steps.

By the way, I’m serious now. I’m almost never serious, but now I’m serious.

If any of you feel the need to leave because you’re bored, or I don’t know what, I’m not, you know, Ceausescu.

You can live. I also think I look better than Ceausescu, but you know, this is my philosophy.

But you’re fee to leave. I will cry after that, but it’s okay.

When the child is seen, behold, when the child is beheld.

By the way, it’s interesting in English. To see is to behold. To see is not just to see, it’s to hold, to contain.

So when the child is seen, he feels safe.

It’s the sense of safety, because you remember with the bebelush, to be seen is to be fed. To be seen is to be safe.

When the mother sees the child, he feels safe, and the mother becomes something called safe or secure base.

Why does the child need a safe base?

Because he needs to say goodbye to mommy, and separate. If mother is not safe, the child will be afraid to separate.

Those of you who have children, I assume majority. You know that a child, when they begin to separate, they walk a few steps and they look back. They look back.

This is safe base dynamic. And they run back to you. This is safe base.

The safe base mother, by the way, never the father. Normally.

So the safe base mother is empathic, attuned, resonant with the child, can read the child almost without words, or usually without words, can read the child. She’s caring. She’s accepting. Caring. Sharing is caring.

Did you say scary? No, caring. All mothers are scary, but this mother is caring. Caring.

You destroyed my lecture. For Radu, he had to translate three of my lectures, and much more complex than this. He did a great job. He did a great job. That’s why I did not fire him. It’s a question of time.

Okay, these are all jokes. Don’t take any of it seriously. Radu will beat me up after them. Caring.

But above all, accepting. She doesn’t reject the child, or any aspect of the child. She provides safety, structure, order, predictability. This is the second element of a good enough mother.

The next element involves the father. Surprisingly.

The next element is preparing the child for reality.

There are three types of preparation for reality.

Physical reality. Don’t cross the road, because the car will run over you, and nothing will happen to the car. Don’t put your hand on a hot oven, unless you want barbecue.

So, this kind of, this is physical.

Social. Don’t spit on grandmother. For example, unless she deserves it.

So, this is social preparation for reality.

And preparation for hegemonic culture, for the dominant culture.

So, there are names for this.

Preparation for social reality is called socialization. And preparation for hegemonic culture, for dominant culture, is called acculturation.

So, here, the father is involved. Actually, the father is a socialization agent, like the mother.

When the father is absent, there might be problems in preparation for reality. It’s another important function of a good enough mother and a good enough father.

If they don’t prepare the child for reality, they are delinquent. They are not good.

The father has three roles, which are unique to the father.

The mother has little to do with it.

The first role is skills acquisition, acquiring skills. So, anything from banging with a hammer to studying in the university. It’s the father who provides this skill acquisition.

In today’s modern world, about 43% of children are raised by single mothers. These mothers have to provide skills acquisition. Because there are no men present. It’s a huge experiment, and we’re still not sure of the outcomes.

The second role of the father is to provide gender role differentiation. The father teaches the boy how to be a man, and teaches the girl how to be a woman.

It’s a common mistake to think that the mother teaches the daughter how to be a woman. The girls acquire gender role in interaction with the first male they seek, which is the father.

Gender roles are socially, culturally determined. They have very little to do with biology.

We have, for example, societies, even primitive societies, like northern Albania, where women can decide that they are men.

From the moment they decide they are men, they have all the rights of men, for example, to sit in a cafe and smoke.

In Africa, where I worked for four years, genders are totally free. You can transition between male roles, female roles in almost all the cultures that I’ve seen.

But don’t confuse gender with sex. Don’t confuse anything with sex, that’s a good idea. Sex is biological.

We have more than two sexes, but all of them are biological. Gender is social-cultural. That’s why the father determines gender.

The last role of the father is sexual scripts.

Sexual script is to tell the boy how to behave with girls and to tell the girl how to behave with boys.

In my generation, for example, which was the last few years of the dinosaurs, I didn’t go out with dinosaurs. But in my generation, for example, the sexual script was that I pay, if I go out with a girl, I pay, I initiate. I open doors, I take off coats, and if the coat is expensive, I live in the back door of the restaurant.

That‘s called sexual script, so fathers convey sexual scripts.

We are in a period of an enormous transition for two reasons. Fathers are missing. And they are no longer agreed upon, socially agreed upon, gender roles and such.