ABSTRACT
The family is a space for the containment of psychological and somatic suffering, and it creates an environment in which the capacity for communication and thought develops. This chapter highlights the need for a long-term psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic treatment, at least for three years, since the traumatic effects could lead, two or three years after the event, to a condition that attacks the mother's immunological system, where the "defences weaken" and the mother's life is at risk. It promotes reflection on the resources that are at play when coping with the psychological suffering as a response to an unexpected neonatal death in a family formed by the father, mother, and a daughter. It is important that psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who provide care to bereaved families consider the contributions of those authors who have furthered the psychodynamic understanding of perinatal loss.
