Mother-daughter relationship among women with psychogenic infertility: psychological-psychoanalytical perspective

Abstract

The subject of this research is the mother-daughter relationship and the image of a mother among women with psychogenic infertility. The object of this research is the child-parent relationship in women’s development. There is a small number of studies that indirectly confirm the correlation between distressed relationship of a woman with her mother in childhood and the genesis of psychogenic infertility. Women with psychogenic infertility usually had conflicting, ambivalent and unstable relationships with their mother in childhood, particularly in puberty period. Often, the image of the mother is subconsciously imprinted in woman’s psyche, affects her stance on motherhood, even if this image has nothing in common with the actual relationship in the dyad. This article describes the aspect of proneness to conflict and aggression in mother-daughter relationship among women with psychogenic infertility. The novelty of this research consists in formulation of a theoretical model of development (psychogenesis) of mother-daughter relationship among women with psychogenic infertility from psychoanalytical perspective. One of the elements of such model are the hostile and conflicting mother-daughter relationship among women with psychogenic infertility. The acquired results demonstrate that women with psychogenic infertility consider their mothers averse and less accepting than women without such disorder. They perceive their mother as showing enough emotions, care and love, or have memories of hostility and aggression towards them in childhood. Women with psychogenic infertility were impacted by lack of maternal attention than women without this disorder. Women with psychogenic infertility are characterized with avoidance and ambivalent type of affection for their mother and are more likely to view maternal deprivation as an unfair circumstance in life.