Pregnancy, developmental crisis and object relations: psychoanalytic considerations.

Abstract

The psychoanalytic literature until recently was focused on the task of understanding and conceptualizing motherhood as 'not secondary' (to the girl's wish for the penis) but the central organizer of the woman's sexual drive. Pregnancy was viewed as a developmental crisis but little had been written on the internal shifts and realignments in the mental organization of the woman during pregnancy. Material from the analyses of three women during their first pregnancy is discussed and some theoretical conclusions are offered.