You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Certain open questions which initiated a study of pregnancy (not yet published) in the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, and the Harvard Medical School, are outlined. The basic proposition in many writings on the subject is that only women who are in some way neurotic will be affected adversely by their pregnancies. This proposition is queried and the assumption is advanced that pregnancy is a crisis that affects all expectant mothers, and may, like other developmental crises, lead to acute disequilibria which under favourable conditions result in specific maturational steps toward new functions. All women show what look like remarkable far-reaching psychological changes while they are pregnant. The outcome of these crises then has profound effects on the early mother-child relationship.
In our modern culture the progress of knowledge and techniques has removed certain concepts and activities (some of them not rationally acceptable to us but of importance psychologically) which may have been of help in organizing and channelling the intense emotional reactions of the pregnant woman.
A further open question is whether certain experiences which are offered to women in the modern world, such as natural childbirth and rooming-in programmes, are helpful to those women who by the delayed or inadequate resolution of their pregnancy crises are not yet ready for their role as mother, or whether these might not even increase their perplexity.