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One comes across two diametrically opposed opinions. One asserts categorically that pregnancy is a time when it is not possible to work psychoanalytically with a woman, and the other asserts equally assuredly that pregnancy is a time of particular availability for psychoanalytic work. The proponents of the former view tend not to write papers about the subject but it comes up in informal conversation about psychoanalytic patients. Goldberger (1991) even notes that she has heard the opinion that analysis should be interrupted during a patient’s pregnancy (p. 208). She, herself, however writes that ‘pregnancy is not a contradiction for analysis but, on the contrary, can facilitate analytic progress’ (1991: 207).
It is those who believe that pregnancy is a helpful time for psychoanalytic work, who write papers on the subject (for instance, Kestenberg 1976; Lester and Notman 1986; Pines 1990; Ablon 1994; Raphael-Leff 2000, ), usually because they have a special interest in the subject but they do not necessarily focus on transference issues. So, for instance, reviewing the work of Lester and Notman (1986) on pregnancy, Goldberger notes that ‘unfortunately, they did not specifically mention whether they thought the pregnancies interfered with or enhanced the analytic work’. The great paucity of papers on the subject of psychoanalysis during pregnancy is in itself noteworthy, considering that it happens not infrequently
and often poses technical problems in terms of practical obstacles after the birth of the baby.
The contradiction between the opinions is intriguing and my attempt to see what this might mean will be the guiding thread of the chapter. I will argue that pregnancy is a time of increased anxiety offering the possibility of a reorganizing of defences and internal object relationships but that whether this takes place will depend on the individual woman and the analytic pair, and that it is the change in cathexes and how it affects the analytic pair which will