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In this edited collection Mali Mann provides the reader an in-depth exploration of the complex psychic experiences of individuals dealing with infertility and attempting to conceive using reproductive technology. The varied cases presented here highlight the importance of exploring the unconscious conflicts and fantasies awakened in both parents and children before, during, and after such conceptions. The vast landscape of themes she and her contributors explore includes issues around female and masculine identity; questions surrounding repetition compulsion in the treatment of infertility; the role of donors in the fantasy life of parents and children; the struggle with securing parental identity formation; ambivalence about motherhood; and the long-term effects on patients resorting to reproductive assistance. The presentation of moving case histories interwoven with these theoretical questions makes this book a worthwhile, original contribution to the complex and timely subject of reproductive technology. It is little wonder that this work received a Pinnacle Achievement Award from the National Association of Book Entrepreneurs in 2015 as best book in the category of parenting and family.
The book consists of two parts. The first offers a wide exploration of clinical perspectives. The second, a single concluding chapter, brings together in a coherent whole the major subjects addressed in the book.
The first chapter, written by Mann herself, invites the reader to consider, through the comceptual lens of repetition compulsion, the experience of repeated in vitro fertilization trials and failures. In some cases, the author argues, repetitive attempts to conceive through IVF can be understood as a repetition compulsion of earlier repressed trauma. Describing how women are profoundly affected by fertility failure, Mann stresses that the experience of infertility brings into question the identificatory link to the primary maternal object, thereby threatening self-represe