How Mother Became a Medium
About this Event

Matrix, Environment, Atmosphere: How Mother Became a Medium

From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature in pediatric psychological studies of Bad Mothers. Newly codified diagnoses of aloof “refrigerator mothers” and overstimulating “hot mothers” were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and race, including Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media, as well as maternal absence and (over)presence, echoes of which continue in the present in terms like “helicopter parent.” Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this talk attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children. The talk thus elaborates a media theory of mothering and parental “fitness.”

Learning Objectives

I. Learn how the human sciences, including psychoanalysis have approached theories of mothering.

II. Learn how the human sciences, including psychoanalysis have approached the increasing presence of new media.

III. Learn how diverse mental states have been linked to both mothering and media.

Hannah Zeavin is a scholar, writer, and editor, and works as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in the Department of History. Zeavin is the author of The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021) and Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the 20th Century (MIT Press 2025). She is at work on her third book, All Freud's Children: A Story of Inheritance for Penguin Press. Articles have appeared in American Imago, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Technology and Culture, Media, Culture, and Society, and elsewhere. Essays and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming from Dissent, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, n+1, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. In 2021, Zeavin co-founded The Psychosocial Foundation and is the Founding Editor of Parapraxis, a new popular magazine for psychoanalysis on the left.

Continuing Education

This class is approved for 3.0 CE contact hours for psychologists, social workers, and psychoanalysts:

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits for psychologists. The National Institute for the Psychotherapies maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0018.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #Psyan-0004.

Personalized CE certificates can be downloaded at the end of this event after completing an evaluation form. Attendance for the full duration of the lecture is mandatory for CE credits.

Refunds, & Cancellation Policy

Cancellation requests made more than a week prior to the event will be given a full refund of registration fees. Refunds will not be granted for cancellation requests made within a week of the first day of the event or for no-shows on any of the days event take place.