Mother – Son: Psychoanalytic Reflections in Joël Pommerat’s Play, This Child

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the sixth scene of Joël Pommerat’s work, This Child, from the perspective of some theorems of psychoanalysis. The French writer introduces the reader/ viewer/ listener to a world of fast-paced plot with the help of autonomous characteristic snapshots that make up his works. In the sixth scene, Pommerat negotiates the unhealthy relationship between a young mother and her underage son where compulsion,  possessiveness and latent Oedipal references reign supreme. On the verge of a creeping threat, the mother exerts psychological violence on the young student whom she prevents from leaving for school and pressures her to keep close to home creating a suffocating circle, a space-time that tends to assimilate people and things. Silence is inevitable…