Babies in the Consulting Room: Discussion

In each of the three cases presented in this section, we can see the interplay of two forces. On one hand, there is what has called “maternal desire”—a wish to have and care for children, which may vary in intensity and expression from one woman to the next. For some, maternal desire has the kind of urgency we might associate with a drive, and its thwarting—for example, by infertility—may be a psychological catastrophe; Jane Kite (2007) has written beautifully about this elsewhere. On the other hand, there are feelings of uncertainty and ambivalence about mothering, and toward children. In every mother, there are fears of what Barbara Almond (2010) has called “the monster within”—an assortment of feelings that may range from ordinary resentment in a “good enough” mother to more pernicious excesses of hostility. In some women, fears of that monster may be muted; in others, they are quite pronounced. Proscriptions against the expression of maternal ambivalence also may vary in strength from one patient—and one analyst—to the next.

In analytic treatment surrounding a baby's presence in the consulting room, we might expect to see strands of maternal desire and maternal ambivalence—arising from both patient and analyst—intertwine. The analyst, then, must work to help a patient develop her better mothering angels, while allowing the “monster within” to have its say. One possible strategy is for the analyst to take refuge in her own, best mothering self, noticing and fostering all that is good in the patient's relationship with her child. The analyst might in fact make a deliberate effort to provide a