ABSTRACT
One of the most striking passages in M. I. Paul’s 1983 paper concerns the kind of countertransference that patients who use prenatal mechanisms can sometimes elicit in the analyst. Paul’s implication was that an unconscious connection had taken place in the patient’s mind between the analyst and the prenatal mother who had helped him get rid of his foetal wastes in prenatal life. J. Bowlby could be included among the writers who have told us something, albeit sometimes unwittingly, concerning prenatal life. Like A. Balint and many others, Bowlby had pointed out that there was more to the “child’s tie to his mother” that the orally centred forms of attachment so thoroughly studied by Melanie Klein and her followers. S. Freud’s concept of the “protective shield” was extended by Khan to denote the kind of shield that the early postnatal mother interposes between the infant and the outside world.
