ABSTRACT
Serious mental illness may develop in a woman which can be linked to her relationship with the biological father of their baby. The chapter explores how the defensive processes of splitting, denial, extreme projection, withdrawal and omnipotent control can draw a couple together and how a father’s need to use such unconscious processes may impede his willingness to enter psychotherapy. When it is not possible to work therapeutically with the mother and father of a baby together because of the father’s difficulties it is important to work with the mother and their baby, even if the father opposes this. The therapeutic work with the mother is to understand her attraction to relationships with men who behave in violent and abusive ways towards her. In these men mothers may ‘find’ states of mind and behaviours that are resonant of how they experienced their earlier childhood relationships, especially with their mothers, especially if their own fathers were experienced as absent/ineffective/unreachable. For her baby, a risk is that the mother transfers negative feelings from her parents and partner to her baby. Therapeutic work in such situations require ongoing assessment of risk and, to protect the baby/young children and their mother, other agencies often need to become involved.
