Unconscious Birth Fantasies in the Ninth Month of Treatment

This survey suggests that unconscious transference fantasies may not uncommonly make unconscious use of the first nine months of treatment as a biologically determined temporal framework within which to express themselves. Four case examples out of twelve in a five-year period are cited. A fifth case illustrates the same use of the ninth month following completion of treatment. The period of the first nine months of treatment appears to lend itself readily as a hidden vehicle of unconscious pregnancy and birth symbolism of manifest dream content, symptoms, and behavior, much as a day residue may offer itself as the manifest content of a dream. The full latent content behind the pregnancy and birth symbolism thus emerging is then a matter for detailed individual analysis in depth. Since unconscious birth fantasies at the end of the ninth month of treatment make highly economic and condensed use of the well-known analytic phenomena of transference, the ubiquity of birth fantasies, and the tendency of the unconscious to play with numbers, it should perhaps not be surprising that they are found quite frequently, although, as far as I am aware, attention had not been drawn to them heretofore. Their recognition may often clarify material and be of technical importance.