Between the mental and the biological: An analysis of possible reasons for pregnancy failure in women of childbearing age

Psychoanalytical research

Abstract

Problems of female fertility, maternal and childbirth disorders have become the focus of study by specialists from different fields: psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, biology and medicine, as well as the focus of neuroscience research. One of the leading ideas is the idea of refusing to divide problems related to infertility into physiological and psychological ones, but it is often psychological factors that can be a prerequisite for further difficulties in childbirth. The relevance of the psychoanalytic approach in studying problems of psychogenic infertility is important, despite current advances in perinatal medicine, physiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, high levels of neonatal practice, quality diagnosis of physiological disorders of the female and male reproductive sphere. Despite the fact that the field of psychology dealing with perinatal issues has been actively developed in Russia in recent decades, the causes of infertility of unclear genesis are only partially uncovered. The works of domestic and foreign colleagues: I.V. Dobryakov, G.G. Filippova, D. Pines, K. Horney, J. Magdougal, J.-P. Racamier, M. Klein, D.W. Winnicott, J. Raphael-Leff, M. Bidlowski, J. Prat have contributed to the study of female infertility.

In this article, infertility of unclear genesis in women of reproductive age will be considered through the prism of symbiotic relations, fixation on early object relations, difficulties in the experience of dyadic relations, primary identifications with the object(s), difficulties in going through the oedipal situation. The above difficulties ultimately contributed to the accumulation of experiences in the form of internal conflicts and led to the inability to conceive.