**4. Discussion**

This paper reviews and re-works a previously published clinical case report [1] into a research case study as seen through the lens of an intrinsic case with unique characteristics, following an explanatory approach within a research case methodology, in line with the thinking of Wolf and colleagues [96]. This unique intrinsic case focuses on a client depicting the Snow White fairy tale in their spontaneously generated imagery through the progress of a single GIM session. Arising research questions are specifically addressed in relation to motherhood, the use and interpretation of imagery, new

*Reframing Motherhood within a Jungian Approach to Snow White: A Research Case Study Using… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109443*

theoretical and methodological understandings, and an understanding of the contribution of the GIM method in assisting with matresence and the change to motherhood.

## **4.1 Motherhood, imagery, and society**

Client materials emerging in this GIM session clearly focus particularly on issues of motherhood, building from the series of eight sessions prior to the birth of her baby daughter, who is now five months old at the time of this current GIM session. A previously explored "child" of an unsuccessful ectopic pregnancy also appears within the spontaneous imagery [100], leading to further integration.

Much of the existing literature about motherhood has been about the child being acted on by the mother. However, this chapter focuses on the extraordinary inner changes needed as a girl transitions to being a mother via the process of matresence. Many changes occur in the transition to motherhood, as a new identity and self-concept emerge within the mothering role [28, 30]. In line with this, the client expresses a number of issues about her change to motherhood through the imagery as individualized within this depiction of the Snow White fairy tale and its variations.

Self-perceptions of perfection and maintaining a sense of self connect closely to the issue of being a "good enough mother," as brought out by the Mirror of the fairy tale, and this suggests a sense of comparison along the generations, also incorporating intergenerational issues relating to changes in mothering practices with each new generation. The role of the "good enough mother" has particularly been addressed by Winnicott [106], where the mother's abilities are influenced by the social environment and emotional support available [108]. Further, Winnicott makes redundant the idea of the "perfect" mother [109], seeing this unrealistic ideal as being inferior to improving while doing and learning from failure toward implementing best practices [110].

Another aspect of the change to mothering brought out by the client through using the fairy tale is about the problems of mothers getting what they need, including food and nurturing as their roles and daily life change [2, 13, 31]. This occurs within the context of frequently needing to deny their own needs, as brought out by the client's imagery of forbidden food which can harm the baby. It is noted that this client is able to solve this dilemma by finding someone else to feed her baby so that she can attend to her own needs, thereby demonstrating problem-solving adaptability to be able to take in her desired food.

Accessing and acknowledging so-called negative feelings is part of a psychological re-evaluation of values, beliefs, and self in the transition to motherhood [18]. Feelings are brought out by the many "grumpy" people that the client awakens to a new transformed context after the poisoned food, and this grumpiness may indicate a general dissatisfaction and weariness caused by the implicit expectation of being an on-call mother selflessly focusing only on her baby.

The client's imagery also brings out a clear juxtaposition of identity about what it means to be single and then to become a family, as shown by the freedom but aloneness of the single childless woman and a recognition of her current envy of the single life but at the same time acceptance of belonging and family. This integration is even further underlined in the integration of opposites as the client's depiction of the fairy tale ends with walking into the sunrise as a new beginning.

Linking both the literature and the client's experience, it is clear that GIM can act as a method helping bring out and track issues of the inner changes in motherhood, which can then be interpreted from a Jungian stance as a user-friendly method assisting with adaptation to motherhood after childbirth.
