An impossible experience of mourning: Mothers who killed their child evaluation with projective tests

In this study, the relationship of mothers who killed their children with their own mothers and how they experienced separation, loss and mourning after their child hat they killed was investigated. This study was carried out with 6 women who were found guilty of killing their child in prison. After psychoanalytical interviews, Rorschach Test and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) were applied. Rorschach and TAT results are interpreted according to the French School by the content analysis. The results are show that the image of the early mother is frightening, damaging, and arouses intense persecutive anxiety, as well as a very intense symbiotic desire. It is thought that killing the child means destroying this deadly symbiotic bond with the mother. It seems that their long-denied experience of suffering, combined with the revelation of the crime, has freed these women from oppression.It was seen that the act did not process the feelings of separation, loss and mourning because of the helpless nature of the act, and for this mother, the death of the child was an impossible mourning because the mother could only save herself from this fatal fusion and survive by killing her child.