The child, vulnerable in the mother's desire.

Abstract

In this paper, by presentation of some clinical material, the author wishes to demonstrate that in some cases it is possible to detect very early in the phantasies and/or the psychosomatic manifestations of expecting mothers what later will be experienced by the infant as the loss of the first object of love. This loss, with its deeply destructive consequences (in terms of personality development) is one of the factors that can possibly sign the entrance to child psychosis. Although one can rarely attribute, with certainty, the onset of such severe emotional disturbances to only one factor, the hypothesis can be maintained that the desires and wishes of the woman, while expecting a baby, play a determining role on the fate of child. One should also add that it is not infrequent to observe various changes and fluctuations in the attitudes of mothers after the child is born. Still, the material of the cases under discussion (of which only two will be presented here) seems to point towards a development in which the pre-birth way of experiencing the child on the part of the mother puts a definite and particular sign on the object relations to follow.