ABSTRACT
Pailthorpe’s lecture on “The Birth Trauma Series” (1938) highlights her contribution to the understanding of the “trauma of birth” within the psychoanalytic field. Her analysis of some of the drawings and watercolours in her series asserts how the foetus is aware of every move and noise. Pailthorpe was convinced that there is a biological importance in every vibration felt by the embryo or foetus. Everything is registered. The embryo or foetus is aware of every movement, jerk, increase in pressure (intra-uterine) and sudden noise. Pailthorpe’s interpretations of her series were based on Melanie Klein’s theory of early “infantile phantasies”. Like with Klein’s theory within the framework of “Object Relations”, they also articulate the idea that the transition from the womb to the outside world during birth causes tremendous anxiety in the infant and that this anxiety was the model for all anxiety experienced afterwards. Pailthorpe’s analysis of “The Birth Trauma Series” in The Birth Trauma lecture illustrates how she attempted to push the frontiers of unconscious mental life back even earlier, to life in the womb, and it is because of this that she will be remembered as a genuine pioneer.
