ABSTRACT
In the author's work in a NHS psychotherapeutic day clinic, he sees women who have suffered serious trauma as children. That trauma overshadows their whole life. They know something is very wrong, but they don't know what it is. All around them are other women who seem happy with their babies; they think that perhaps having a baby will make them also happy, and when that does not happen, that disturbs them even more, and after the birth they become depressed. Analytic psychotherapy with a postnatally depressed mother who brings her infant to all of her sessions poses many questions. Maintaining the focus of intervention exclusively on the mother seems artificial, particularly when there is a baby playing an active non-verbal part in the consulting-room and often showing signs of disturbance as well. The therapeutic alliance is working well when the mother begins to develop a narrative of her own childhood experiences of anxiety and suffering with the appropriate feelings.
