ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a number of stories about the workings of maternal imagination, impression, or imprinting, terms that are often conflated. It argues for a clear distinction between impression and imagination. The chapter also considers the far less common instances of paternal imprinting, and since maternal imprinting itself only became problematic as it threatened the assumed paternal imprinting, it might be better to address the problem as parental imprinting. The theory of parental imprinting was one way of accounting for divergences from the expected norm without admitting the likelihood of actual impregnation by an alienating male. The chapter deals with a story from the Hebrew Scriptures. For the Greeks, at least, the intentional use of images in a kind of pre-scientific planned-parenthood program overrode many anxieties about the failure of a child to resemble his parents. Paracelsus attributes to the woman's imagination the same positive effect that other texts assign to the woman's experience of looking at a painting.
