The analyst's pregnancy: the patient, the analyst, and the space of the unknown.
In this paper I have discussed some thoughts about the effect of the analyst's pregnancy on her patients, using material from my own experience. In the first part of the paper I have examined some of the issues evoked in the countertransference especially in the first trimester of pregnancy, when, because of my concern about the health of the foetus I was reluctant to inform patients of my state. In the latter part of the paper I have focused on some of my patients' responses as expressed in the transference: in particular on the question of how patients dealt with learning of and thinking about my pregnancy, which involved a threat to the sense of unity, fusion and non-separateness from me that in some cases were of paramount importance. To do this I have discussed at some length clinical material relating to two patients, the first a woman whose own pregnancy followed mine, in an imitative fashion that both denied any difference between us and also allowed her to develop her capacity to be a mother; the second a man who initially understood my pregnancy as rejecting of him, persecuting and guilt-provoking, and saw it as an event either unthinkable and/or to be dealt with omnipotently.
Mariotti
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D000184:Acting Out; D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005201:Fantasy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011247:Pregnancy / Q000523:psychology*; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology