ABSTRACT
The mother-foetus relationship can also be stated with profit in the following terms: if the biological ability of the mother to produce a real whole live baby is represented by 100 percent, her psychological ability can be stated as a rough percentage. There are many ways of putting into words the relation of a mother to the baby which she carries and bears, firstly, of course, there is the simple biological statement. In psycho-analytic writings there are copious references to the mother's conscious and unconscious fantasies about her child. Personal nursing and breast-feeding make a mother feel that a child is real, that is, if she previously doubted it owing to her less than 100 percent capacity for producing a baby in fantasy. There is only hope if the analyst can bring the fantasies of the inside into the analysis, and so face the biological inside from its secondary function as a repository for consciously repudiated fantasy.
