Based on analytical investigations of feminine psychosomatic disorders the girl's incapacity of identification with a fertile mother is considered as the central factor in her future problems of infertility. This incapacity is a consequence of her hostile and invidious fantasies towards her fertile mother and has results more serious and difficult to overcome, when an adverse reality—tragic accidents occurring to her mother or to her siblings—make her feel she has destroyed the loved object beyond repair. As an adult she will oscillate between paranoid and depressive reactions towards pregnancy. This is illustrated with clinical material in the transference level.

As Melanie Klein recently focused our attention on breast-envy and analysed its different consequences, the connexions between breast-and penis-envy are summarized, and it is shown how the understanding of early anxieties together with the conception of envy enables us to grasp the meaning and the psychosomatic mechanisms of many fertility disorders.