Voyages around mothers – departures and returns

This piece is a personal response to the articles in this special issue of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies. It identifies three themes that seem to unite the articles: children’s emotional labour; repair and generativity; and après-coup or Nachträglichkeit. It is also suggested that there is an absence – the shadow of envy, competition and rivalry, which also tends to run through the matrix of so many mother–daughter and supervisor–supervisee relations. Further, it is suggested that any future iterations of these relationships would be enriched by integrating contributions on the ways in which not only collusion, competition and oedipal struggles, but also hierarchy and asymmetry are especially problematic sources of psychic pain when women supervise women.