Not a drop of milk.
So I was reading this article from the New Yorker about writer's block--a quite informative and interesting piece cataloging the history of the concept--and I ran across this paragraph:

Edmund Bergler, a Viennese émigré who in the forties and fifties put forth what is probably the most confident theory of writer’s block ever advanced. First of all, he coined the term. (Formerly, people had spoken of “creative inhibition” or the like.) Second, he proclaimed its cause: oral masochism, entrapment in rage over the milk-denying pre-Oedipal mother. Starved before, the writer chose to become starved again—that is, blocked.

Well, I thought, that's interesting, and I picked up the phone straightaway and called my mother.

"Mom, I have a very random question for you," I prefaced to her.

"Okay," she said, somewhat cautiously. Mom is not too terribly shocked by what I ask her about.

"Was I breast-fed as a child?"

"No."

She went on to explain that the reason for that was that it simply "wasn't in vogue" during the early 70's. She had planned to work after she had me, and there simply weren't provisions for a breast-feeding mother back in those days, nor was it talked about.

After a little more conversation, I still wasn't satisfied with her answer, so I rephrased my question.

"So, did I get any breast milk whatsoever?"

"Not a drop," she replied. I went on to tell her about the aforementioned quote from the New Yorker, and she added with deadpan, "Yes, I'm the great denyer."

After a little teasing back and forth, I threatened to go and buy some human milk to try to reclaim what had been taken from me--namely, the love and warmth that comes from a suckling infant taking nourishment from his mother--to which she responded, "Go ahead. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes."

I took that to mean that she wasn't impressed. Of course, she wouldn't be. She was the great denyer.

[article via mefi]
- posted by frank crist @ 12:49 PM