ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the case study of Maria who had become pregnant. "Mental sterility" may be viewed as generated by obsessive and thoughts preventing fertilisation. In the presence of a desire to have a child, analytic work highlights how the obsessive ideas serve violent symptoms which arise as a horde of primitive the "task" of exploring different aspects of the equipment required for motherhood. Most children are born by chance. Increasingly psychoanalysts have the opportunity to closely investigate the issues in a clinical setting. The chapter focuses on one specific aspect: the anguish caused by the possibility of conceiving a child, and its consequences. In Maria's case avoiding drugs was perceived as unusual and significant by both the patient and the analyst. Every month they prevented Maria from being sexually approached exactly on the days that were favourable to a pregnancy.
