A Study of the Psychological Processes in Pregnancy and of the Earliest Mother-Child Relationship—I. Some Propositions and Comments

Pregnancy, like puberty or menopause, is regarded as a period of crisis involving profound endocrine and general somatic as well as psychological changes. The crisis of pregnancy is basically a normal occurrence and indeed even an essential part of growth, which must precede and prepare maturational integration. It varies, individually, however, from woman to woman, according to her personality structure, her special kind and degree of adjustment and conflict solution with which she enters pregnancy, and the particular life setting and family constellation in which this event takes place.

An attempt is made to define the developmental process of pregnancy and motherhood in terms of the relationship of the woman to her sexual partner, to her "self," and to the child as it is expressed in the level, distribution, and vicissitudes of object libido and narcissistic libido. The woman moves through a phase of enhanced narcissism early in the pregnancy, until quickening undeniably introduces the baby as the new object within the self. The mother's relationship to her child, if it finally fulfills the maturational requirements, will have the distinctive characteristics of a freely changeable fusion—varying in degree and intensity—of narcissistic and object-libidinal strivings, so that the child will always remain part of herself, and at the same time will always have to remain an object that is part of the outside world and part of her sexual mate.