title: Medieval orality, mothers, and bonding.
abstract: The role of women in the Middle Ages was vilification, veneration, and exclusion. Due to the high rates of maternal and infant mortality bonding shifted from the mother-child dyad to one in which the Church, Holy Family, and king acted as pseudo-parents. In art this is suggested by the virtual absence of eye contact between the Virgin and Christ-child. Frustration of early oral needs consequent to lack of adequate mother-child bonding prompted a reactive emphasis on orality in art and legend. A decrease in infant mortality and a reciprocal improvement in mother child bonding contributed to cultural shifts in how self-realization would be accomplished during the Renaissance and in the later emergence of secular humanism.
authors.affiliation: New York Medical College, USA.
authors.forename: Scott C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Schwartz
mesh_terms: D002835:Christianity; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005502:Food; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation