Mother leaves behind the first idealised representations in the unconscious (7)
I believe the answer is:
imagoes
'representations in the unconscious' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are plural nouns, I cannot see how they can define each other.
'mother leaves behind the first idealised' is the wordplay.
'mother' becomes 'ma' (ma is a kind of mother).
'leaves' becomes 'goes' (I've seen this before**).
'behind' says to put letters next to each other.
'the first' suggests taking the first letters.
The initial letter of 'idealised' is 'i'.
'ma'+'goes'='magoes'
'magoes' after 'i' is 'IMAGOES'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for imagoes that I've seen is " flies finally?".)