Analytic work concerning motherhood

This paper delineates the intrapsychic development leading up to and during the pregnancy of a patient in her seventh year of analysis who had achieved a comfortable albeit shaky sense of herself. Though many fundamental issues had already been worked through, the miscarriage and the pregnancy, the effect of loss on the one hand and the disequilibrium on the other enabled us to rework connections more affectively and give greater conviction to our work. She clarified and re-established boundaries, thereby moving from the position of being baby to her mother toward the role of providing for her child. In the paper there is some discussion of the maternal ego ideal, its complex formation, and the obstacles in its path. With patients who have a newly acquired sense of themselves, analysis during pregnancy can be invaluable. It enabled this patient to identify in herself what she admired in me in herself, and to believe she could provide for her baby what I had provided for her.