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Three asthmatic mothers whose children were asthmatic had never felt 'complete'; as adult life, requiring separation and responsibility, was reached, the deeper longing to cling to their mothers became increasingly strong. Only with pregnancy did the asthma lessen or disappear and each mother became aware of a sense of vitality and completeness. Each felt possessive toward the unborn baby for whom she could breathe, whom she could protect and care for without her own mother's interference. She identified herself passively with the foetus, her regressive longing was fulfilled. After the child's birth the wish to be 'unseparate' caused strain. The mother expected the child to have asthma because then identification would again be complete.
Early in life the child fell into resonance with the mother's needs, developed clinging possessiveness, and learned that feelings of sameness could be realized by disturbances in respiration. For the mother, relief from her own fears of incapacity and death from asthma and from her unconscious fear of abandonment was obtained by identification with the aggressor (protector) and by protecting her child from the same anticipated fate. At times of stress the child responded with asthmatic attacks and the mother promptly attempted to rescue the child from its distress. By unconsciously provoking such an attack in her child, the mother herself was spared an attack.
The child partly desired to maintain infantile symbiotic union with mother, but as it grew older craved to grow up independently. It feared abandonment, retribution, and death because of its resentment toward the mother for being kept dependent yet not having its impossible wishes fulfilled. This conflict could be most safely expressed by asthma. During treatment the child became aware that emancipation could be obtained, that the asthma was not necessary for comfort and libidinal gratification.
Other children whose mothers did not have asthma also showed inability to