Peaceful islands and dangerous jungles – pregnancy: opportunity or impediment. A psychoanalyst’s view.

One comes across two diametrically opposed opinions. One asserts categorically that pregnancy is a time when it is not possible to work psychoanalytically with a woman, and the other asserts equally assuredly that pregnancy is a time of particular availability for psychoanalytic work. The proponents of the former view tend not to write papers about the subject but it comes up in informal conversation about psychoanalytic patients. Goldberger (1991) even notes that she has heard the opinion that analysis should be interrupted during a patient’s pregnancy (p. 208). She, herself, however writes that ‘pregnancy is not a contradiction for analysis but, on the contrary, can facilitate analytic progress’ (1991: 207).