Artistic narratives of self-concept during pregnancy

Abstract

This article explores how a woman's self-concept, as expressed in art, changes during her journey toward motherhood in her first pregnancy. The event of pregnancy was examined through verbally framed artistic narratives of a woman's experience of self during her pregnancy with her first child. The three women interviewed all had their first child within the 2 years before the qualitative interview. As part of the interview process, participants created artistic self-symbols to explore changes in self-concept. The narratives created in this study show a definite change in self-symbols as the pregnancy progressed. Symbols move from abstract to concrete, representations of the baby all become larger or more prominent, and colors move from cooler to warmer. There are specific indications of the child within from the beginning of the pregnancy. Jungian theory of archetypal symbols was utilized in the analysis of artistic data. The art suggests that the mother-identity is formed at the earliest stage of pregnancy, and grows in the woman's concept of self throughout the entire pregnancy. This researcher utilized artistic analysis to come to a deeper understanding of the symbolic meaning of a woman's transition to motherhood during a first pregnancy.