The analyst's pregnancy and its consequences on her work.
In this paper I discuss with clinical examples how the analyst's pregnancy may affect the analysis in unique, subtle and at times unexpected ways to which the analyst must be alert. Like any major psychosocial crisis in the life cycle, pregnancy challenges the analyst's ability to hold on to the psychoanalytic attitude. It also confronts her with specific issues (primitive anxieties about the inside of the body, fears of loss of identity, of damage to the foetus etc.) which have to be acknowledged and which require consistent and at times painful working through. Overall, my experience was that by and large positive emotional growth took place, both in the patients and myself, during the pregnancy. I would suggest that the possible changes were not only due to the pregnancy per se but to the careful analysis of its effects which allowed for the psychoanalytic situation to be maintained.
Etchegoyen
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D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005201:Fantasy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011247:Pregnancy / Q000523:psychology*; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy