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For a number of years an interest has been growing increasingly in the psychological aspects of pregnancy (Benedek, 1952); (H. Deutsch, 1944/45); (Fries and Levi, 1938); (H. Klein, Potter, and Dyk, 1950); (Senn, 1948). The significance of this condition for the individual and for the family constellation cannot be overestimated by any student of human behavior. A number of intensive investigations are being conducted at this time, diversified in their specific questions and goals. It is hoped that the totality of these various inquiries will promote our knowledge in the field which is far too complex to be studied exhaustively by a single research team in a limited period of time.
This article is concerned with one of these studies, carried out at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston by a group of psychiatrists, pediatric and gynecological specialists, psychologists and social workers, with the help and participation of obstetricians, nurses, and administrative personnel of the hospital.
In the course of such explorations the direction and emphasis in design may shift—influenced and shaped by the sequence of findings, by the growing insight of the investigators, and by the necessity to concentrate increasingly on some aspects at the expense of others. Yet I suppose most investigators feel somehow bereaved when favorite initial conceptions have to be curtailed for the sake of greater simplicity in order to concentrate on those aspects which lend themselves best to exact observation.
This article is planned, not as a detailed report on an ongoing project, but as a historical presentation of the open questions which initiated this study, and thus we may permit ourselves to give equal