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From Fetus to Child is a brilliant and original work, which may possibly influence our thinking forever.
According to Freud, “There is much more continuity between intra-uterine life and earliest infancy than the impressive caesura of the act of birth would have us believe” (p. 138). Piontelli sets out to prove by observational and psychoanalytic research that this continuity truly exists. Like Freud, who said it was his fate to
discover what every nursemaid knew (infantile sexuality), Piontelli has discovered what many parents have always believed, that each fetus, like every newborn baby, is a highly individual creature. By drawing on her experience as a child psychoanalyst and on her observational research, Piontelli has investigated issues relating to individuality, psychological birth, and the influence of maternal emotions during pregnancy. Piontelli's findings suggest that the interplay between “nature” and “nurture” begins much earlier than is usually thought, and that prenatal experiences may have a profound emotional affect on the child, especially if reinforced by postnatal experiences. In Piontelli's view, nature and nurture have been interacting so long in the womb that the idea of heredity and environment as separate entities is totally useless.
During her preliminary ultrasonic investigations, Piontelli was struck by the richness and complexity of activities one could observe even from the earliest stages. She was also impressed by the freedom of motion each fetus could enjoy in the amniotic fluid. Long before the mother could perceive the movements of the fetus, it could suck, yawn, kick, stretch, scratch, and rub its hands and feet. Her vision of the fetus was increasingly enlarged to one of growing singularity of movement of each fetus, including its own preferred postures and reactions. She could no longer regard each fetus as a nonperson, as each seemed already to be a separate person with its own personality, preferences, and reactions. Each fet