ABSTRACT
Analyzing pregnant women has always been a unique opportunity to clinically investigate “The female body—inside and outside”. Pregnancy and giving birth to a baby is not only connected with obvious changes to the female body observable from the outside, but also with the stimulation of intensive unconscious (inside) fantasies which have a specific gender quality. The “Medea fantasy” presented here is one example of such an unconscious fantasy concerning the female body and mind. The “Medea fantasy” is reactivated when a woman/couple has to decide on life or death of their unborn child after a positive finding in prenatal diagnostics PND. We investigated nearly 2000 women/couples in an interdisciplinary, European-wide study: Ethical Dilemma due to prenatal and genetic diagnostics (EDIG). As will be illustrated, psychoanalysts have specific professional knowledge and skills to cope with these reactivations of archaic unconscious body fantasies. Two case examples will show that this expert knowledge can help women/couples in crises interventions to recognize the archaic state of the mind in such a situation, and to return to a more mature way of psychic functioning. As the EDIG study showed, this is very important for the short and long term 130consequences of such traumatic experiences. Protective and risk factors coping with possible traumatic experiences after a positive finding in PND will be discussed.
