Lullabies And Unconscious Maternal Phantasies: An Exploratory And Comparative Study Of Traditional And Contemporary Songs

The main purpose of this study was the identification of unconscious maternal phantasies in lullabies used by contemporary mothers and the exploration of differences and similarities with the phantasies unveiled in traditional bedtime songs, collected in ethnographic research, and used in a previous reference study. Participants included a total of 84 women aged between 22 and 47 years (M = 34.22; SD = 4.74) with children of both sexes aged 2-36 months (M = 19.01; SD = 10.79). A total of 70 songs were collected, which were the subject of content analysis and categorization by three independent judges. Data show that 54.8% of the mothers still use lullabies when they put their children to sleep, and that intergenerational transmission of songs is present through maternal lineage. As expected, regularities and differences were identified between the contents of contemporary and traditional lullabies, but regardless of variances in time and culture, both of them seem imbued by the mother's symbolic work through on the imaginary dimension of the child's (and her own's) internal object phantasies.