Putin’s Maternal Drama Act II: The Brothers Putin

Wikicommons

The Cast of Characters For The Unconscious Script:

Viktor Putin b. mid 1930s died sometime between 8 September 1941 – 27 January 1944

Albert b. mid 1930s died during infancy

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin b. 7 October 1952 – the “double” replacement child

Maria Ivanovna Putina – the mother (née Shelomova; 1911–1998)

The Brothers Putin are Viktor and Albert born in the 1930s with Vladimir being born some twenty years later after their deaths. Albert died when he was a baby and Viktor died due to diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi German forces of World War II. Maria Ivanovna Putina, the mother, must have been overwhelmed with grief, anxiety and traumatized. Working through such mourning seems to have been highly unlikely given Putin’s penchant for terrorism and total annihilation.

To the best of my knowledge nothing about Putin being a replacement child has been written. Yet the concept provides some clarity to the insanity that we are witnessing in the Ukraine. The concept of being a replacement child in Putin’s case is doubly complicated by having two deceased brothers. It is crucial to understanding how Putin relates to death and annihilation.

A replacement child may be defined as a child born after the death of a sibling and that child is used to keep the fantasy alive that the dead child is not really dead. This is because the mother in particular has not been able to mourn the death of the child. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replacement_child Initially the term was used to describe a child immediately born after the dead sibling as a kind of replacement but the term has taken on a broader meaning.

The key idea is that the replacement child does not have a sense of self. Often the child does not feel like he genuinely exists. They may be overprotected and hence anxious and unable to go through a separation individuation stage of development with regard to the mother who cannot mourn. Separation individuation is of utmost importance in order to be able to see the forest from the trees. If not the child remains glued in fusion to the mother psychologically and engages in blaming and projection.

The child is often obsessed with death because he or she is caught up in the mother’s projected fantasy that the dead sibling is still alive. This also causes a lack of self-esteem. The replacement child has been denied the freedom necessary to discover his or her own desires and has unmet needs and significant emotional deprivation. The plethora of unmet needs cripples the replacement child – riddled with rage yielding sadomasochism. The mother has offloaded her anxiety on to the child. In the case of Putin he was a double replacement child for his two dead brothers Albert and Victor.

In my preceding blog post entitled “Putin and Kadyrov’s Chechens in the Ukraine: Act I Putin’s Maternal Drama I noted that the level of his rage and destructiveness demands complete annihilation. This shows that he cannot separate fantasy from reality. For him they are one and the same. Think of his annihilation of Aleppo or Grozny and now what is going on in the Ukraine.

Such concrete behavior is, as if, he were trying to work through the difference between fantasy and reality but is caught in a catch-22 constantly reenacting the unconscious script inherited from his mother. That is why limits have to be set with him, interventions must happen now, to bring an end to his obsession with annihilation. The concrete violent behavior is his way of trying to feel alive. His brothers’ deaths have overshadowed him his entire life.

Rita J. Battat and Dr. Abigail Brenner in The Replacement Child have subtitled their book “The Unconscious Script.” It may be hard for lay people to understand that Putin is playing out such an unconscious script with everyday being like Ground Hog Day. The repetition compulsion is a sign and clue to intuit what he will do next. It is not nuanced sophisticated thinking rather it is crude, blunt, concrete and violent.

Part of the unconscious script entailed being coerced and coaxed into resurrecting his dead brothers because his mother could not adequately mourn the deaths of her first two sons – an enormous unimaginable trauma that was then transmitted to Putin intergenerationally. The fact that Viktor died during the siege of Leningrad reveals a clue to Putin’s bizarre projection on to the Ukraine with his obsession for denazification. It is as if he is trying to resurrect Viktor through victory.

Generally, when the replacement child syndrome is discussed concepts such as aggression and rage are touched upon in passing but tend to be minimized. True not all replacement children will become a Putin. There is a broad spectrum but many struggle with intense rage because they do not have a sense of self and feel emasculated by having been smothered by mother, especially if a brother is a replacement child. He, in turn, may become vicious with other younger siblings and by extension others outside the family. In the case of Putin because he is a double replacement child for his two dead brothers, this caused an unusual triangulation. It must have been exceedingly confusing too as to which dead brother he was being forced to re-enact by the projection of the fantasies of his mother at any given moment. Obviously, she must have been terrified of losing him as well as facing her own mortality. All of this is part of the script.

We should recall too that Russia is an eastern culture and it is highly imbued and preoccupied if not obsessed with shame and honor as in other Asia cultures. In shame honor culture there is an unconscious prohibition against “leaving” or separating from the mother. The female is devalued and only gains honor or power through the existence of the male child who is venerated. Maria Ivanovna Putin lived her life through her surviving son. She was his power source. This kind of maternal enmeshment is humiliating because of dependency needs and vulnerability. It has been noted that humiliation was the norm during Putin’s adolescent being small in stature and bullied and now he is “the aging terminator.”*

Is it helpful to know that Putin is a double replacement child who has run amok? Better to know who your enemy is in depth than to live in denial.

*Juhani Ihanus, Putin the Aging Terminator: Psychohistorical and Psychopolitical Notes, The Journal of Psychohistory, 35 (3) winter 2008, p. 240-269.