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In the first study of its kind, Dr Piontelli follows the behaviour of eleven children from life in the womb, which is observed via ultrasound scans, through infancy and into childhood. This combined observational and psychoanalytic research aims (1) to discover whether there are continuities of behaviour before and after birth, (2) to investigate questions of ‘psychological birth’ and nature versus nurture, and (3) to study how children ‘live out and express’ pre-natal experiences.
Piontelli's qualifications for undertaking this study are impressive. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, she studied medicine and neuro-psychiatry in Italy. In London she trained and taught at the Tavistock Clinic, where she became familiar with the method of infant observation initiated by Esther Bick, which Piontelli later extended to the observation of foetuses.
Piontelli presents observational studies of three singleton and four twin pregnancies. They start at the 16th-18th week of the singleton pregnancies, by which time the foetus is ‘complete’, and at the 18th-20th week for the twins, the increased risk of foetal loss with twins accounting for the intentional delay. (Ultrasound scanning has revealed that twin pregnancies occur more frequently than the number of twin births would suggest.) To carry out her research, Dr Piontelli joined a team of hospital obstetricians carrying out routine ultrasound checks on the growth and development of foetuses. For all the observations, the author made monthly ultrasound video observations lasting about an hour, supplemented by tape recordings of the sessions and notes taken just afterwards to record her impressions and emotions. To examine the way intrauterine life is ‘lived out and expressed’, Dr Piontelli followed up her pre-natal studies by two-year infant observations. To this she adds descriptions of the analyses of six children under the age of 5, one of whom was observed in utero.
The most vivid research discovery is the continuity of pre- an