The unwelcome child and a lack of acceptance of new ideas.

Abstract

Ferenczi's idea of the unwelcome child and his death instinct is used as a background for discussing the treatment of adult patients who do not expect to be received and understood and who turn their aggression back upon themselves, destroying their will to live. When these patients enter analysis, they are very difficult to reach because they have internalized an obstructive object (Bion, 1958). Further, I have linked the unwelcoming of a child to the hatred of the new idea. The paper highlights the deadening defenses that arise in response to awareness of premature separateness between mother and baby, inevitably experienced by an unwelcome child. Coming alive involves suffering the pain of the original loss. To avoid this pain, patients reject anything new, and become stuck in monotonous, seemingly lifeless, patterns where new ideas and new ways of being threaten the static order. This includes the threat that relationship with the analyst brings.