Lucie Ceccaldi, mother of Michel Houellebecq

The reptilian left eye… I’m on your side, Michel!

From Liberation:

Dans son ouvrage, Lucie Ceccaldi reconnaît avoir délaissé son fils, qui a été élevé par sa grand-mère paternelle. «La grand-mère Houellebecq était du genre prolétaire haineux», indique la dame de 83 ans.

and

Jusqu’à présent, Michel Houellebecq n’a pas souhaité s’exprimer sur le livre de sa mère.

Hmmm, I think old Lucie has a pretty thick hide, she might well need it.

She certainly doesn’t mince her words:

Mon fils qu’il aille se faire foutre par qui il veut avec qui il veut, j’en ai rien à cirer. Mais si, par malheur, il remet mon nom sur un truc, il va se prendre un coup de canne dans la tronche, ça lui coupera toutes les dents, ça, c’est sûr!

For tronche, think bonce.

and this – an enterprising Guardian journo gets Houellebecq psychoanalysed:

The emotions laid bare in this public spat between Michel Houellebecq and his mother are surprisingly common, if somewhat unfashionably Freudian. “Much is made of the Oedipus complex, and the triadic relationship between mother, father and son,” says Dr Avi Shmueli, a psychoanalyst with the Anna Freud Centre in London. “But it is more accurate to say that each of us is born with an immature sexual identity and aggressive impulses, and these are played out with the primary care giver, usually the mother.”

A boy may explore his sexuality with his mother in his early years, discovering his own body and hers, as well as the differences between them. But eventually he has to come to terms with the fact that her body isn’t exclusively his, and that he’s in competition with others for her attention. “Usually this competition is with the father,” says psychotherapist Brett Kahr. In some cases the mother bonds with her son to the exclusion of his father, a situation that can create rivalry and sexual jealousy between father and son as well as an inability to form sexual relationships later in life, but in Houellebecq’s case, “to be a little boy, and to know that your mother has gone off to be a sexual libertarian, is to feel constantly replaced by each new sexual arrival, constantly pushed down the pecking order”.

This sense of displacement, combined with the abandonment of being left to be cared for by others, can have deep-seated psychological effects. “The adult son may feel rage, hatred and even sexual undesirability,” says Kahr. “He senses he is somehow not of sufficient interest to his mother, and rejects her lifestyle and her choices.”

For Ceccaldi, the emotional fallout will be equally complex. “Some of us find it incredibly hard to be parents, but live with a deep regret for having left our child,” says Kahr. This can turn to resentment and even anger towards the child.

“Hatred is a very instinctive emotion,” says Shmueli. “As every mother knows, a screaming baby can drive you mad, and at times you want to murder it. That doesn’t mean you’ll actually do it, or that there aren’t other aspects of you that love it, but in that moment there’s a need for self-preservation. A mother’s occasional hatred for her child preserves her sense of self and the choices she has made.”

Houellebecq’s anger may also be a form of self-preservation. “But it maintains a relationship as well,” says Shmueli. “It makes him feel closer to her. Hatred is easier to deal with than that more profound sense of loss that comes with bereavement, for example. Hating someone does not imply that you’ll never have a positive relationship with them. What it suggests is that this is a passionate relationship with extremes of emotion, both negative and positive, and there is work to be done.”