Carl Jung identifies the mother complex with an innate feeling of care at the center of the emotional attachment between a mother and a child. However, in the absence of such an attachment, an archetype develops where someone’s mother fails to satisfy the essential demands associated with the relationship. The outcome leads the victim, the child, to seek comfort elsewhere (Bobroff 35). At the core of the mother complex is the mother archetype, meaning that in every emotional attachment, between the child and the mother, on the one hand, an archetype nourishing and security image manifests. On the other hand, an archetype that devours possessiveness, deprivation, and darkness comes out (Bobroff 36). In the film Every Secret Thing , a complex emotional attachment between Alice and her mother exists and forms the underlying relationship between the two and the association with the kidnaps taking place.
The complex relationship between Alice and her mother places Alice at the center of the kidnapping. Hellen is disgusted by Alice to the point of considering Ronnie her child of choice, a position that makes Alice deeply insecure. Moreover, the tension in interracial affairs is associated with the second kidnapping and having born a biracial child while in prison, and given it up for adoption, Alice becomes the primary suspect in the case (Berg). Alice’s mother, the mastermind behind the kidnap, in the first and second cases, and murder, in the first case, plants evidence to ensure Alice stands out as the main suspect. Hellen, through betrayal and deception, purposely Alice ends up in prison (Berg). Further, compared to the indifference in Ronnie’s parents, there is no emotional attachment between the parents and their daughters. As the film comes to an end, the audience learns that not only were Alice and Ronnie falsely imprisoned, the justice system failed to prove that Helen is the killer.