ABSTRACT
The ego of the pregnant woman must find a harmonious compromise between her deeply unconscious identification with the child, which is directed toward the future, and her identification with her own mother, which is directed toward the past. The idea of identification with her aggressive mother had filled her with almost conscious horror. Up to her pregnancy she had been able to be feminine by disregarding her mother problem; but this method no longer worked when she herself was about to become a mother. In defiance of her mother, Helene Deutsch had liked to think that her real parent had been her father. She was passionate in her wishes, and had tried to eradicate her mother’s influence on her. According to Helene’s psychoanalytic thinking, some women can “put too much, often their whole rich emotional world, at the disposal of this one child.”.
