The psychological nature of female psychogenic infertility: psychoanalytic reflections

Abstract

The theoretical basis of this work are the ideas of Maidi U., Mitchell J., Motz A., Pattis-Zoya E., Reinhold Joseph S., Langer M., Leisinger-Boleber M. The object of research: the phenomenon of psychogenic female infertility in the psychoanalytic understanding. The article shows aspects of the psychogenesis of female psychogenic infertility: the image of the mother, destructiveness and psychogenic infertility, denial of femininity and gender-role identity, violation of identification with the mother and identification with the "dead mother", transgenerational transmission and psychogenic infertility, unconscious conflicts and the Medea complex. These aspects are reflected in two psychoanalytic studies, the results of which are briefly reflected in this publication. The results showed the presence of common signs for women with psychogenic infertility: 1. In fantasies, the future child is endowed with expectations aimed at satisfying a deficient mother; 2. Women have a violation of gender-role identity - identification with the father; the desire to take the place of the father, playing partner and parent roles; 3. Ambivalent perception of the maternal figure; the image of the mother is idealized; 4. Women have a false self, pseudoedipality; 5. Women have a false femininity based not on identification with the mother, but on based on a primitive imitation of her. Identification with the "dead mother" is impossible; 6. The presence of a castration complex in women, reinforced by identification with the father. As a result, the process of childbirth causes horror, correlated with castration, which is denied and covered up by the desire to have a child; 7. The presence of a separation complex, where separation from a "dead mother" is not possible, because then one person will be "dead". 8. Parentification, "dead mother", "dead father", transgenerational transmission of conflicts "crypts and ghosts", untreated traumatization and unlived grief. The leading events in the life history of women suffering from psychogenic infertility are the experience of loss and violence.