Harold and Maude, a romantic black comedy film directed by Hal Ashby in 1971, has been captivating audiences every Sunday at Galerie Cinema in Essen, Germany since 1975.

Known for its unique screenplay, Cat Stevens' music, and talented cast, the film tells the story of Harold, a 17-year-old who lives with his wealthy mother in a grand mansion. Despite all the splendor and riches, Harold is disengaged from life, spending much of his time staging fake suicide attempts to shock his mother. The rest of his time is occupied attending funerals.

At the beginning of the film, Harold's repetitive fake suicide attempts and his urge towards death seem incomprehensible until Maude enters the scene, gradually giving everything meaning. Maude, at 79, is the opposite of Harold, full of zest for life, disregarding age and conventions, and embracing life with both hands. Interestingly, both share a common interest in attending funerals. Their paths cross at a funeral, sparking the foundation for a relationship between them.

Freud's theory of seduction is evident in the film. According to Freud, the mother is the child's first seducer, stimulating the child's childish sexuality (this is not genital, adult sexuality). In this context, the mother functions as an "object of desire." In the film, Maude, in a way, mothers Harold, attempting to seduce him with her love and affection towards life.

Explained through the lens of self-psychology, the seduction phenomenon could clarify the mother-child relationship between the two. According to self-psychology, the baby emerges in the external world through self-experiences. The baby's self-experiences occur along with emotions. In the external world, the caretaker in the role of mother observes the child's emotions, interprets them correctly, and returns them to the child. While doing so, the mother speaks the child's emotion and reanimates the emotion with facial expressions, allowing the child to perceive that the emotion belongs to him or her. Besides, Kohut calls the caretaker's function selfobject. Through the caretaker's selfobject function, the child experiences his or her self and clings to life in a desire-filled way. In the absence of a selfobject, the death impulse dominates the child. In the film, Harold yearns to end his life with repetitive expressions as if he were someone who did not have a selfobject, but Maude becomes an object for Harold, starting to taste life for him.

Actually, Maude occupies the position of Harold's object of desire. Maude openly seduces Harold towards life against the impulse of death. The friendship relationship between the two inevitably turns into a romantic relationship, despite the age difference, and they begin a romantic relationship. Once seduced, he clings to his object with all his desire, but he forgets something: the object of desire withdraws from the child when the time comes for the child to turn to others.

As the film progresses, the child raised by the mother begins to exceed her. As Harold shows his desire for existence, Maude plans towards disappearance instead and leaves behind Harold, who wants to marry her on her 80th birthday, to commit suicide. Actually, Maude's suicide is very meaningful because according to Winnicott's concept of a "good enough mother," after making the necessary investment in life for the child, the mother withdraws and makes it autonomous. Moreover, keeping the child in the first object of desire is also prevented. In this respect, Maude's death means Harold declares his independence from his mother. Maude's seductive approach enables Harold to move towards life.