Ambivalence towards boyfriend emerging as death wish against one's child

A young woman, mother of 9 month old baby, dreamt the following:

A am at a clinic or in hospital where I keep going to doctors asking what to do with my baby who is dead, but with whom I am still pregnant. They keep telling me that they can do nothing about it. And I keep imploring them that if she is dead what is the point of my carrying her. I am afraid I will  be pregnant with the dead baby forever.

The patient is new to me so I hesitated to jump to the conclusion that some kind of death wish towards the baby had manifested in the dream. More difficult than arriving at the deduction was the difficulty in deciding whether to communicate it to the patient or not lest it provokes serious negative transference. For it was her second or third session with me. So I asked her how old was the baby in the dream.

"The baby is same age as she is now."

"So how did the dream show your carrying, if she was already 9 months old?"

"I was carrying her like a kangaroo carries its young one in the pouch."

"So your baby was outside your womb in the pouch."

"No, it was inside. But I had like an extra flap of skin over my stomach, and I could hold that flap up to the light and see her shadow through it."

"That behavior of holding up the flap up to the light, it must have some point of contact with something else you did perhaps on the day of the dream?"

" No, I always do that. Whenever I need to examine something in depth, I take it to the lamp in that fashion and look for flaws in it. Its a habit. I do it all the time."

Now looking for flaws, especially doing it as a habit (ritual) is a component of obsessional neurosis. And behind all obsessional rituals lie death impulses and countermeasures to nullify them. The end behavior is a compromise formation between the two which makes no sense till you analyze it and often then the two opposite impulses can be seen clearly. So I took the chance of asking her if behind the dream element of her daughter being dead could it be possible that there was a wish for her to not to be alive. Perhaps at times you find her a burden to you.

"No she is not a burden to me. I love her very much. But I cannot say the same thing about her father.If there is anybody I wish dead, it is him."

So here was an indirect confirmation that there was an element of death wish in the dream though emerging against the father of the baby, perhaps because it was more acceptable. There was greater guilt associated with seeing her daughter dead and the unacceptable wish could rear its ugly head only while she was asleep and only as a dream.

"Why would you wish her father dead?"

"Because he is good for nothing.  Does not support her. Never comes around. I cannot stand him. Yes I want him dead. If he dies I can be free of the anger that the jerk is ignoring us like that."

"Was it an accidental baby? And did you know her father when you got pregnant by him?"

"Oh I knew him very well. For 2 years. And it was planned. In fact to get pregnant I had my IUD removed."

"Why would you want to have a baby from someone you wish dead?"

"He was not like that when I knew him. But the minute he heard I was pregnant, he took off. And has never come back."

"Did it affect your attitude towards your pregnancy?"

"Did it! I could not make up my mind about abortion. I almost went for abortion at the first, the second and the third month. Even during the baby shower I was thinking of giving her up for adoption."

"Why was that?"

"For the baby has brought me so much trouble. I almost died when I was 4 months pregnant from profuse bleeding. She ruined my health. I developed heart condition and diabetes. Added weight. Thank God my diabetes is gone. But the problem with my heart valve remains."

"So you have reasons for wishing for her to have never been born. For only if she was not born you would not have had these complications."

"Yes, but at the same time I cannot imagine ever parting with her."

"No wonder the dream shows her dead and yet at the same time as a part of you forever."

There perhaps was another wish behind of making the baby a part of her forever - as a compensation for lack of penis. A wish that has to come to an end with the delivery and which is the central issue behind post-partum depression. But the patient was certainly not ready to explore this aspect of herself, and no attempt was made to do so either.

Infertile mothers becoming pregnant after adopting a baby

In my practice I have come across two women who could not conceive for a very long time until, giving up all hopes, they adopted a baby, and lo and behold, within months found themselves pregnant.

The immediate explanation that comes to mind is that taking care of a baby aroused their maternal instincts and changed their hormonal status and made them more pliable to conceive.

But there was something else, at least in one of them for sure, that raised questions in my mind whether in some women psychological, and not biological, factors do not play more important role as to why they cannot conceive.

The person whose case I am describing had been infertile all her life, and had adopted a new born, her nephew, in early forties, and after doing so, had become pregnant in matter of months.

Observing her I sensed that she had not conceived all her life because she greatly doubted her ability to be a mother. She grew up in a very stressful household where both parents suffered from mental illnesses. This factor though spurred her to become a successful show woman, it, at the same time, implanted self doubts as to her ability to be emotionally available to others, other than as a performer on stage. She feared she will be detached from her child, will not be able to give emotional warmth, will not develop tender bonds, and may actually hurt it. She had many traits of obsessional neurosis.

None of these fears proved to be true with her adoptive child. Perhaps because she did not feel any special obligation to be the perfect mother with someone who was not biologically hers and in whose case she felt she was doing a favor to someone else by taking care of him.

I have often wondered whether it is not such obsessive self doubt about one's ability to control hostile impulses towards one's children that lies behind so many women's inability to conceive. This factor also may be present in those men who never venture into parenthood or at least postpone it till late in life.

Only when they adopt a child and find how joyful parenthood is and that the thought of hurting the child is hardly present when interacting with the baby, and how happy the baby is from the attention and love it is receiving, that many women become fertile and conceive a child.

In olden days people lived in extended families or at least close knit communities and girls grew up taking care of relatives and friends children. This melted away their exaggerated fear of their destructiveness towards their helpless baby. It should not surprise in past centuries infertility was rare.

I wondered too if such obsessive doubts about being a good parent does not lie behind Post Partum Depression. Here of course the baby is one's own and already born, nevertheless, the fear that one could harm it prevents one from taking up the role of motherhood. The psychodynamics of post partum depression is, of course, more complex and the factor of sacrificing one's child to one's own mother - here one is reminded of the Hindu practice of sacrificing one's child to Kali, the mother goddess, for propriation and prosperity- for getting something even more precious in return, comes in as well. Nevertheless the fear that one may harm one's child lies behind post-partum depression too. The depression is triggered by unconscious defense mechanism to put a lid upon the impulse to harm.