Glossary
This is a work in progress. If there’s a term you’d like to see added, or a definition you feel needs updating, please get in touch.
Our m/other tongue is an attempt to take the experience of tacit maternal knowing out of the lived reality of early mothering and turn it into a worded theory. This theory can be used by anyone who wants to care for others in a way that is non-hierarchical and promotes the facets of tacit maternal knowing, as highlighted in my doctoral work:
Commitment to not knowing/letting go
Commitment to dependence/interdependence
Faithfulness
These are the foundations to creating relationships that enable a felt sense of security from which people can take risks to explore their world, flourish, and connect to others without using their power over others.
Some definitions draw on others’ work: you can find a Reference List at the end of the Glossary.
Terms
WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic
White supremacist capitalist patriarchy (WSCP)
Changing bag
A notion currently under development as part of operationalising our m/other tongue. It has grown out of contrasting the idea of a toolbox with the way a mother tends to the constant, repetitive care of an infant – not to fix, but to comfort, clean, and connect, by meeting needs as they are expressed. It is concerned less with tools and techniques, and more with how a relationship of care is established, and with what is needed in the maternal realm of enabling an infant to thrive. For now, it remains a metaphor that needs to be elaborated and extended before it can become a fully usable concept.
Manstream
A term used to prompt awareness that much of the theory, practice, and research - including what is valued - is grounded in a white, male, Westernized, predominantly Christian perspective. This perspective has become so deeply ingrained and normalised that it is seen as mainstream knowledge and is, therefore, unquestioned in terms of planning or critiquing practice. It is similar to bell hooks’ (1984) concept of the ‘white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal’ framework, but tries to be slightly less ‘in your face’. Nonetheless, it still seeks to unsettle and disturb the reader just enough to create a ‘crack for a light to come through’, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen.
M/otherland
The (theoretical) place where the m/other tongue is the first language spoken. A place where people are communal and affirming. Whereas, in the manstream, it is every person for themselves, focused on survival – a place where the foundations of trauma, too much for too long with no other to care for you, are built in as normal – the m/otherland is where the impulse is to work together for the good of each and every person in the community. Using oneself in the service of another is the norm. Equity here means people getting what they need, each in response to their need, so that mutual flourishing becomes possible.
Structure
One of the four dimensions of the Theraplay model of work. In her foundational book outlining the method, Ann Jernberg (1979, p.62) discussed Structure as one of the “classifications of maternal behaviour that are being considered for their attachment-promoting and autonomy-enhancing qualities”.” She defines Structure as the actions where a “mother limits, defines, forbids, outlines, reassures, speaks firmly, labels, names, clarified, confines, holds and restrains her baby”.
These days, we might feel a bit uncomfortable with some of those words. It’s important to remember that when any of the four dimensions are used exclusively rather than in balance and harmony with the other three, they fail to contribute to attachment-promoting and autonomy-enhancing experiences. Structure is one vital part of the overall experience of relationship, as are each of the other dimensions.
Structure underpins the internalisation of a felt sense of safety through mother-infant interactions that provide the infant with an outside to inside regulatory experience. This helps the world feel predictable and ensures the infant will not be destroyed by the outside world being ‘too much’, nor their inside world being ‘too much’ for themselves or their primary caregiver. The result of such experiences of limits, definitions, boundaries, and preventative actions, combined with reassurance and warmth, is a world that feels stable and predictable. Structure makes for a felt sense of safety or, to use other words, ontological security.
Tacit maternal knowing
Tacit knowing, a term coined by Michael Polanyi (1958), refers to ‘knowing more than you can say’. It is an embodied process of knowing by doing, through innumerable muscular acts that lead to expertise of action. Tacit maternal knowing refers to the specific expert knowledge developed by mothers. Naomi Stadlen writes about this in her books What mothers do (2005), How mothers love (2015), and What mothers learn (2020).
Tacit maternal knowing, as developed in my doctoral work, focuses on the knowledge mothers develop in the very early days of mothering when the interdependence of the embodied experience of mother/infant is vital to the infant’s survival. As I make tacit maternal knowing a theoretical thing, it takes it out of lived reality and turns it into an idea. Ideas are not the same as lived knowing, so tacit maternal knowing as an idea is idealised. Tacit maternal knowing as a lived experience is unique to the messy, muddled, flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, getting-it-wrong-and-doing-your-best-to-put-it-right-and-sometimes-not-succeeding reality of caring for an infant.
Theraplayer
A Theraplayer is someone who embodies the philosophy and attitude of Theraplay, as expressed through the four dimensions and nine core concepts of the model. They may not necessarily be certified as Theraplay therapists/practitioners, nor do Theraplay in a clinical setting, nor utilise Sunshine Circles or group Theraplay in schools or other settings. It refers to being Theraplay, a state of mind and embodied living out of choosing to care for the more vulnerable other, or choosing to use your power in the service of the less powerful other.
Toolbox
Stemming from Audre Lorde’s idea that we cannot dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools, the notion of a ‘toolbox’, in the context of speaking our m/other tongue, refers to practices in research, theory, and service delivery that subtly place the ‘blame’ for ‘failure’ on the ‘object in need of repair’. It represents a deficit model of human development, and rests on the unrealistic assumption that an expert, armed with the right tool, can ‘fix’ something so that non-problematic functioning is restored and the object (or person) can then be put to use for the benefit of the toolbox owner. This notion is still being developed.
Trauma
Trauma comes when fear, as an appropriate response to a situation, is too much, for too long, and with no capacity to influence the situation in any way by eliciting and/or accepting helpful relationships from another. The felt experience then becomes one of helplessness in the face of annihilation. An undying dread that you are going to cease to be, physically or emotionally. Trauma is aloneness in facing that disjoining terror, the humiliation and horrific disbelief of being cast out from the safety net of connections to others. Shame and abasement grip you from the experience of not being worth any effort on the part of others to keep you as part of the tribe and so keep you alive. But it is worse than being dead, it is experiencing living-deadness without the relief of death.
WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic
An acronym coined by Heinrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies in an article criticising the heavy reliance of psychological research on participants from these populations.
White supremacist capitalist patriarchy (WSCP)
A term used by bell hooks (2015) to describe the interlocking systems of domination that structure modern society. It refers to the combined and mutually reinforcing forces of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy, which together shape social, political, and economic power, and sustain inequality along lines of race, class, and gender. hooks uses the phrase to emphasise that these systems cannot be understood or challenged in isolation, as they operate together as a single, organised framework of oppression.
Reference List
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?. The Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(2-3), 61–135. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X
hooks, b. (1984) Feminist theory from margin to center. South End Press.
hooks, bell. (2015). Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. Routledge.
Jernberg, A. (1979) Theraplay. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Lorde, A. (2018). The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=8D57C658-66D4-401C-891E-9BC385F65341
Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal knowledge. Routledge.