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Four pathological cases are presented in which the neurosis is centred around the illusion of motherhood. Only one of these women became a real mother, the other three constructed illusions of motherhood. The first, a case of obsessional neurosis, envied her mother's possession of children, behaved toward children as she would have liked her mother to behave toward her, had guilt feeling after the death of her mother but desired to demonstrate to her father her ability to substitute successfully for her, and satisfied these desires and also a consuming penis envy by an illusionary motherhood. Her desire for motherhood was found to be not feminine but anal-sadistic in its foundation. It proved to be an attempt to reach the phallic phase by way of an illusion of motherhood.
The second was a woman of masculine type and pronounced homosexual tendencies who developed paranoia and fulfilled her passionate desire for motherhood delusionally.
The third, a masculine type, expressed in a delusion of pregnancy her revolt against her domineering mother and her disappointment in her husband for his not giving her a baby.
The fourth, a case of compulsive motherhood, was motivated by a desire for revenge on the mother, the child being equated to a penis, the possession of which signalized triumph over the mother. The death of her first child was felt as a castration to which she reacted with an obsessional desire for direct compensation in renewed pregnancies.
These cases go beyond the already known mechanism by which penis-envy is related to the desire for a baby, in that the patients use their pregnancy, real or imagined, as a confirmation of their illusioned masculinity. They feel that once they have children and can thus show the world that they are feminine beings, they have established the right to play the masculine rôle. This seeming paradox has been confirmed by the findings of psycho-analysis and also in other fields of investigation.
Psycho-analysis of children has sh