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The Chairman introduced the panel by making the following points. She noted that in analytic work with infertile women who need technical assistance to reproduce, the interaction of psychic reality with external reality was important. Analyses of these women could be difficult for the female analyst whose own psychic reality was touched by the patient's dramatic struggles with fertility. Furthermore, a woman's submission to humiliating and painful procedures might unconsciously represent a lesser evil than infertility. Such a submission could also reflect psychopathology. Reproductive techniques have tremendous impact on psychic reality, whether the woman's infertility was caused by her biological condition, her psychic structure or by the interaction between the two. Springer-Kremser concluded her remarks by noting that the introduction of the infertility specialist as a third party in the analysis could further complicate an already difficult transference and countertransference.
The first panellist, Blanck de Cereijido, observing that the new reproductive techniques offered women the possibility of changing their lives, said that the use of these techniques posed important questions. What made women submit to painful physical procedures? What were the psychical consequences of having children in these circumstances? Surrogacy, as well as in vitro fertilisation, made us question convictions about the place of the mother. Was mother the one who contained the genetic code, the uterus that nurtured or the person who gave maternal care? Would the concept of mother continue to be linked to the concept of gender?
The desire for a child was not only a biological impulse, but an acquisition in the process of female development, Blanck de Cereijido emphasised. An understanding of this development enabled psychoanalysts to detect points at which intrapsychic conflicts could interfere with fertility. The desire to procreate depended on the culture to which the mother belonged.