[The psychoanalytic approach to contraception today (author's transl)]

The authors look at a consultation for contraception from the point of view of the doctor and emphasize the unusual character of this consultation: on the one hand the doctor is not asked to exercise his usual therapeutic function, and on the other hand he is put into the position where he has to be a "sexual educator", a particularly delicate position to be in especially when dealing with adolescents. The authors look then at the subject from the point of view of the patient who is consulting the doctor for contraceptive services and distinguish three stages: The patient or rather the consultee who is in full reproductive life and who asks for contraception (and its failures) in relationship to the ups and downs of her unconscious desire to have a child; the consultee at the end of her reproductive life who tries to establish a relationship of patient to doctor by avoiding a list of morbid symptoms; and particularly the adolescent whose demand for contraception is very delicate (as all medical interventions are at this age), and where the doctor finds himself in the privileged position of being able to restore individuality to the adolescent by refusing to allow the consultation to be directed by the mother.