ABSTRACT
A significant factor in Alice’s story might help us understand how this couple functioned. Alice had a twin sister who was idealised and valued by the family. Alice often extolled her sister’s qualities as a mother in the observations, while she remained in the undervalued position: an “old mother”, “clumsy”, and “no one imagined a baby would come out of here”. Alice had come to trust and rely on the observer to the point that she wanted her at the birth. Silvia, Alice’s sister in-law, called the observer to say that she was already at the hospital and she “would not stop saying that a person had to be informed; that’s all she talked about”. Valentina’s development from pregnancy to her third year of life teaches people about the tenacity of babies and about their struggle to be born in an environment ruled by the rigid defence structures of control, invasion, and ambivalence that impair growth.
